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Radical Islamists attack Malian city of Gao

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The mayor of Gao confirms that radical Islamists attacked his city in northern Mali, but were pushed back by Malian soldiers.

Mayor Sadou Diallo says the Islamists infiltrated from two different directions late Saturday, including from villages across the Niger River, but Malian troops later regained control of the city.

For nearly 10 months, Gao was under the control of the Movement for the Oneness of Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO, which imposed a brutal form of Shariah law, amputating the limbs of accused thieves in a square that became known as “Shariah Square.” In January, the city was liberated by French troops, but since then it has repeatedly been attacked by suspected MUJAO fighters who have carried out suicide attacks.

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Stepped up security in Gao after attack by rebels

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Soldiers from Niger are patrolling on foot through downtown Gao and Malian troops are driving around in pickup trucks to secure the city in northern Mali.

The stepped-up security presence remains two days after radical Islamic fighters attacked the center of Gao and fought a five-hour gun battle with the Malian army.

On Tuesday soldiers concentrated around the waterfront area along the Niger River where the fighters invaded the city by boat.

Gao was controlled by the Islamic militants for 10 months until a French-led military intervention dislodged them at the end of January.

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French, Mali Forces Re-Take City After Rebel Canoe Raid

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By Mark Russell It may be too soon to call Mali ” mission accomplie ,” after Islamic rebels renewed fighting in the eastern city of Gao last night, reports the Christian Science Monitor . About a dozen rebels sneaked across the Niger River over the weekend in canoes, placing snipers on buildings to fire at Malian… …read more
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People of Timbuktu save manuscripts from invaders

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For eight days after the Islamists set fire to one of the world’s most precious collections of ancient manuscripts, the alarm inside the building housing the repository blared. It was an eerie, repetitive beeping, a cry from the innards of the injured library that echoed around the world.

The al-Qaida-linked extremists who ransacked the institute wanted to deal a final blow to Mali, whose northern half they had held for 10 months before retreating in the face of a French-led military advance. They also wanted to deal a blow to the world, especially France, whose capital houses the headquarters of UNESCO, the organization which recognized and elevated Timbuktu’s monuments to its list of World Heritage sites.

So as they left, they torched the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research, aiming to destroy a heritage of 30,000 manuscripts that date back to the 13th century.

“These manuscripts are our identity,” said Abdoulaye Cisse, the library’s acting director. “It’s through these manuscripts that we have been able to reconstruct our own history, the history of Africa . People think that our history is only oral, not written. What proves that we had a written history are these documents.”

The first people who spotted the column of black smoke on Jan. 23 were the residents whose homes surround the library, and they ran to tell the center’s employees. The bookbinders, manuscript restorers and security guards who work for the institute broke down and cried.

Just about the only person who didn’t was Cisse, the acting director, who for months had harbored a secret. Starting last year, he and a handful of associates had conspired to save the documents so crucial to this 1,000-year-old town.

In April, when the rebels preaching a radical version of Islam first rolled into this city swirling with sand, the institute was in the process of moving its collection into a new, state-of-the-art building. The fighters commandeered the new center, turning it into a dormitory for one of their units of foreign fighters, Cisse said. They didn’t realize only about 2,000 manuscripts had been moved there, the bulk of the collection remaining at the old library, he said.

The Islamists came in, as they did in Afghanistan, with their own, severe interpretation of Islam, intent on rooting out what they saw as the veneration of idols instead of the pure worship of Allah. During their 10-month-rule, they eviscerated much of the identity of this storied city, starting with the mausoleums of their saints, which were reduced to rubble.

The turbaned fighters made women hide their faces and blotted out their images on billboards. They closed hair salons, banned makeup and forbade the music for which Mali is known.

Their final act before leaving was to go through the exhibition room in the institute, as well as the whitewashed laboratory used to restore the age-old parchments. They grabbed the books they found and burned them.

However, they didn’t bother searching the old building, where an elderly man named Abba Alhadi has spent 40 of his 72 years on earth taking care of rare manuscripts. The illiterate old man, who walks with a cane and looks like a character from the Bible, was the perfect foil for the Islamists. They wrongly assumed that the city’s European-educated elite would be the ones trying to save the manuscripts, he said.

So last August, Alhadi began stuffing the thousands of books into empty rice and millet sacks.

At night, he loaded the millet sacks onto the type of trolley used to cart boxes of vegetables to the market. He pushed them across town and piled them into a lorry and onto the backs of motorcycles, which drove them to the banks of the Niger River.

From there, they floated down to the central Malian town of Mopti in a pinasse, a narrow, canoe-like boat. Then cars drove them from Mopti, the first government-controlled town, to Mali‘s capital, Bamako, over 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from here.

“I have spent my life protecting these manuscripts. This has been my life’s work. And I had to come to terms with the fact that I could no longer protect them here,” said Alhadi. “It hurt me deeply to see them go, but I took strength knowing that they were being sent to a safe place.”

It took two weeks in all to spirit out the bulk of the collection, around 28,000 texts housed in the old building covering the subjects of theology, astronomy, geography and more.

There was nothing they could do, however, for the 2,000 documents that had already been transferred to the new library, to its exhibition and restoration rooms, and to a basement vault. Cisse took solace knowing that most of the texts in the new library had been digitized.

Even so, when his staff came to tell him about the fire, he felt a constriction in his chest.

The new library is housed inside a modern building, whose sheer walls are made to resemble the mud-walled homes of Timbuktu. Cisse braved his fear to slip through the back gate on the morning of Jan. 24.

The alarm was still screaming. The empty manuscript boxes were strewn on the ground outside in the brick courtyard. All that was left of the books was a soft, feathery ash.

Cisse then entered the library. The glass cases in the exhibit room were empty. So was the manuscript restoration lab, its white tables blanketed in dust. The manuscripts left out were gone.

But the librarian knew the bulk of the books was in a storage room in the basement. With the alarm still screaming, he walked down the flight of pitch-black stairs.

The room had been locked shut. And he was too afraid to open it, because the mayor of Timbuktu had warned residents that the retreating rebels had mined the town and booby-trapped strategic buildings.

So he waited.

On Jan. 28, a column of more than 600 French troops rolled into the city.

The same day, they came to inspect the institute. They spraypainted in pink the word “OK” in front of each room they cleared, working their way to the basement. They pummeled the locked door. When the door slapped open, Cisse felt as if his chest was about to explode.

They beamed a flashlight into the darkness. In the pools of light, he made out the little bundles of parchments sitting on the rafters. They were where they had left them nearly a year ago, in a room the Islamists had never discovered.

The director-general of UNESCO toured the damaged library this weekend, alongside French President Francois Hollande, who made a triumphant visit to Timbuktu. She described the manuscripts as a global treasure. “They are part of our world heritage,” said Irina Bokova. “They are important for all of Africa, as well as for all of the world.”

Cisse estimates that what was lost in the end is less than 5 percent of the Ahmed Baba collection. Which texts were burned is not yet known.

He stresses that all the manuscripts, which date back over 700 years, are irreplaceable. They are hand-written in a variety of scripts, and include ornate illustrations embedded within the text.

The collection is itself only a portion of the estimated 101,820 manuscripts stored in private libraries here, the product of the confluence of caravan routes which passed through Timbuktu and fostered an extensive trading network, including in books. Among the most valuable are the Tarikh al-Sudan and the Tarikh al-Fattash, chronicles which describe life in Timbuktu during the Songhai empire in the 16th century.

“We lost a lot of our riches. But we were also able to save a great deal of our riches, and for that I am overcome with joy,” Cisse said. “These manuscripts represent who we are…. I saved these books in the name of Timbuktu first, because I am from Timbuktu. . Then I did it for my country. And also for all of humanity. Because knowledge is for all of humanity.”

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Rukmini Callimachi can be reached at www.twitter.com/rcallimachi.

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Timbuktu, ancient seat of Islamic learning

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Timbuktu, the fabled desert city where retreating Muslim extremists destroyed ancient Arab manuscripts, was a center of Islamic learning hundreds of years before Columbus landed in the Americas.

It is not known how many of the priceless documents were destroyed by al Qaida-linked fighters who set ablaze a state-of-the-art library built with South African funding to conserve the brittle, camel-hide bound manuscripts from the harshness of the Sahara Desert climate and preserve them so researchers can study them. News of the destruction came Monday from the mayor of Timbuktu. With its Islamic treasures and centuries-old mud-walled buildings including an iconic mosque, Timbuktu is a U.N.-designated World Heritage Site.

The damage caused by the fleeing Islamists was limited, but irreplaceable treasures were lost.

Most of the manuscripts, which are as many as 900 years old, were gathered between the 1980s and 2000 from all over Mali for the Ahmed Baba Institute for Higher Learning and Islamic Research, which moved into its new home in 2009. The library held about 30,000 manuscripts of which only about one third had been catalogued, according to its Web site. The world may never know what it has lost.

The manuscripts cover subjects ranging from science, astrology and medicine to history, theology, grammar and geography. All are in Arabic script, in the Arabic language and African languages.

They date back to the late 12th century, the start of a 300-year golden age for Timbuktu as a spiritual and intellectual capital for the propagation of Islam on the continent.

Michael Covitt, chairman of the Malian Manuscript Foundation, called them “the most important find since the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

Tens of thousands more manuscripts — no one knows how many — were kept at other libraries and private homes in Timbuktu. Some are believed to have been secreted against the Islamist fighters, who began their desecration of the city by systematically razing the 15th-century mausoleums of several Sufi saints in July. Among the tombs they destroyed is that of Sidi Mahmoudou, a saint who died in 955, according to a UNESCO website.

The International Criminal Court at The Hague has described the destruction of Timbuktu’s heritage as a possible war crime. Timbuktu has been attacked and conquered in the past, most recently in 1591 by Moroccan troops who sacked the city and burned libraries. But the city recovered and gained fame as a place where people from different races and creeds could live together harmoniously.

Even before Europeans landed in the Americas, Timbuktu had a population of 30,000.

The nomadic Tuareg tribe first set up their camel-skin and palm-mat tents there in the dry season, attracted by its location where the Niger River flows toward the southern brink of the Sahara Desert, prompting some to call it the point where “the camel meets the canoe.” The tents gave way to sun-dried terracotta-colored mud brick buildings built in the Moorish style as traders, medical doctors, clerics, artists, poets and others settled there.

The city is on an old caravan route where Arab traders brought salt and other goods that reached North Africa’s Mediterranean shores and traded it in Timbuktu for gold and Islamic books. It served as a major crossroads between Africa’s Arab north and black West Africa, bringing together black Africans, Berbers, Arabs and the Tuareg people that consider Timbuktu their town. Its dynamism has been overlooked by the English expression “from here to Timbuktu” — conjuring up an end-of-the-earth remoteness.

Islamist extremists started operating in northern Mali in 2011, and three Europeans were taken hostage from a Timbuktu restaurant in November that year, frightening away tourists. In April 2012, Tuareg nationalist rebels seized control of Timbuktu from government troops. A day later Islamist insurgents elbowed their way into the city. They banned music, insisted women cover themselves and began carrying out public executions and amputations.

On Tuesday, Timbuktu was in control of French and Malian troops, including some 250 French paratroopers dropped from the sky. The extremists melted into the desert without firing a shot. Townspeople were jubilant at the city’s liberation from intolerant Islamist extremists.

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Faul reported from Johannesburg

On the Web:

www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org

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French president raises terror threat level after Mali, Somalia military action

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The French president says the country will raise its domestic terror threat level after military action in Mali and Somalia, promising to increase protection at public buildings and transportation networks.

President Francois Hollande said Saturday he had ordered increased security after the French military operations in the two African countries against Islamist forces.

France has some of the world’s most recognizable monuments and a wide-ranging national transportation network; like the U.S., it also has an organized government response if there are specific fears of a terrorist attack.

French aircraft and troops are backing soldiers in Mali who are trying to push back Islamist offensives; in Somalia, French commandos launched a failed raid to rescue an intelligence agent held hostage there for three years.

With Islamist militants controlling more than half of the northwest African nation of Mali and threatening the rest of government-held territory, France launched airstrikes in a dramatic escalation of the conflict that some observers have called the next Afghanistan. French commandoes also reportedly attacked an Islamist base in Somalia to try to rescue a French hostage.

The raid early Saturday in Somalia could have been aimed at preventing al-Shabab fighters from harming the kidnapped French security official in reprisal for the French military intervention in Mali. A Somali intelligence official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not allowed to discuss the case with the news media, said the raid in Bulomarer killed “several” al-Shabab fighters but he had no information on the hostage.

An al-Shabab official confirmed the fighting and said the group held one dead French soldier. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
However, the office of Col. Thierry Burkhard, the French military’s main spokesman for overseas operations, said it had no information about any Somalia action.

Hollande said the “terrorist groups, drug traffickers and extremists” in northern Mali “show a brutality that threatens us all.” He vowed that the operation would last “as long as necessary.”
France said it was taking the action in Mali at the request of President Dioncounda Traore, who declared a state of emergency because of the militants’ advance.

The arrival of the French troops in their former colony came a day after the Islamists moved the closest yet toward territory still under government control and fought the Malian military for the first time in months, seizing the strategic city of Konna.

Sanda Abou Moahmed, a spokesman for the Ansar Dine group, condemned Mali‘s president for seeking military help from its former colonizer.

“While Dioncounda Traore asked for help from France, we ask for guidance from Allah and from other Muslims in our sub-region because this war has become a war against the crusaders,” he said by telephone from Timbuktu.

For the past nine months, the Islamic militants have controlled a large swath of northern Mali, a lawless desert region where kidnapping has flourished.

“French armed forces supported Malian units this afternoon to fight against terrorist elements,” Hollande said in Paris.

He did not give any details of the operation, other than to say that it was aimed in part at protecting the 6,000 French citizens in Mali, where seven of them already are being held captive.

Saturday’s raid in Somalia was swift and loud, local residents said. The Somali intelligence official said the French commandos were trying to rescue a kidnapped military adviser who they were tipped off was being held there. A French security adviser was kidnapped by the militant Islamist group al-Shabab in Mogadishu, the capital, in 2009.

“We heard a series of explosions followed by gunfire just seconds after a helicopter flew over the town,” Mohamed Ali, a resident of Bulomarer, told The Associated Press by phone. “We don’t know exactly what happened but the place was an al-Shabab base and checkpoint.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed that in Mali, France had carried out airstrikes. He refused to give details for security reasons.

France is operating helicopter gunships in Mali, two diplomats told The Associated Press. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation publicly. French special forces, who have been operating in the region recently, are also believed to be taking part in the military operation, one diplomat said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the AP that Senegal and Nigeria also responded to an appeal from Mali‘s president for help to counter the militants.

Residents in central Mali said they had seen Western military personnel arriving in the area, with planes landing at a nearby airport throughout the night.

Col. Abdrahmane Baby, a military operations adviser for the foreign affairs ministry, confirmed in the Malian capital of Bamako that French forces had arrived in the country but gave no details.

“They are here to assist the Malian army,” he told reporters.

Traore went on national television Friday night to declare the state of emergency, saying it would remain in effect for 10 days and could be renewed.

“The situation on the front is over all under control,” he said.

Traore called on mining companies and nongovernment organizations to turn their trucks over to Malian military, raising questions about the army’s ability.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. was “deeply concerned” by events in Mali, and that Washington was closely consulting with Paris. She said neither France nor Mali has asked for U.S. military assistance.

France has led a diplomatic push for international action in northern Mali but efforts to get an African-led force together, or to train the weak Malian army, have dragged.

The French quickly mobilized after the Islamists seized the city of Konna on Thursday, pushing closer to the army’s major base in central Mali. Late Friday, Malian Lt. Col. Diarran Kone said the government had not been able to recapture the town.

The United Nations Security Council has condemned the capture of Konna and urged U.N. member states to assist Mali “in order to reduce the threat posed by terrorist organizations and associated groups.”

Late last year, the 15 nations in West Africa, including Mali, agreed on a proposal for the military to take back the north, and sought backing from the U.N.

The Security Council authorized the intervention but imposed certain conditions. Those include the training of Mali‘s military, which has been accused of serious human rights abuses since a military coup last year sent the nation into disarray.

The fighting Wednesday and Thursday for Konna represents the first clashes between Malian government forces and the Islamists in nearly a year, since the militants seized the northern cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

The Islamists seized the town of Douentza four months ago after brief standoff with a local militia, but pushed no farther until clashes broke out late Wednesday in Konna, a city of 50,000 people, where fearful residents cowered inside their homes. Konna is just 45 miles (70 kilometers) north of the government-held town of Mopti, a strategic port city along the Niger River.

A soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, acknowledged that the army had retreated from Konna. He said several soldiers were killed and wounded, though he did not have precise casualty figures.

Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Africa has been a shadowy presence for years in the forests and deserts of Mali, a country hobbled by poverty and a relentless cycle of hunger. Most Malians adhere to a moderate form of Islam.

In recent months, however, the terrorist group and its allies have taken advantage of political instability, taking territory they are using to stock weapons and train forces.

Turbaned fighters control major towns in the north, carrying out amputations in public squares just as the Taliban did. And like in Afghanistan, they are flogging women for not covering up.

Since taking control of Timbuktu, they have destroyed seven of the 16 mausoleums listed as world heritage sites.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said his government was taking action because “in recent days, the situation unfortunately deteriorated very seriously.”

The delay by the international community in taking action allowed “the terrorist and criminal groups of northern Mali … to move toward the south with the goal of … installing a terrorist state.”

The Islamists insist they want to impose Shariah only in northern Mali, though there long have been fears they could push farther south. Bamako, the capital, is 435 miles (700 kilometers) from Islamist-held territory.

Hollande said the French government will address parliament on Monday about the operation.

The intervention earned quick, widespread support from leading voices inside France across the political spectrum. Even far right leader Marine Le Pen — one of the many critics of the unpopular Hollande — called the Socialist leader’s action “legitimate.”

France has hundreds of troops across western Africa, with bases or sites in places such as Senegal, Ivory Coast, Chad and Gabon. However, Hollande has said that he wants to create a new relationship with former colonies in Africa.

The operation in Mali is the first military intervention under his leadership, and comes just weeks after he pulled out France‘s last combat troops out of Afghanistan, ending an increasingly unpopular 11-year presence there.

France was a leading force in the NATO operation against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s forces in 2011. Also that year, France played a driving role in an international military intervention to oust Ivory Coast’s Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to leave power after disputed elections. Both of those operations were under Hollande’s predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy.

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French military arrives to help Mali government as radical Islamists advance

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A Malian official says that French military have arrived in the troubled West African country to help its military amid an advance by radical Islamists.

Col. Abdrahmane Baby, a military operations adviser for the foreign affairs ministry, on Friday confirmed that French troops were in the country but gave no details about how many or what they were doing.

The announcement confirms reports from residents in central Mali who said they have seen Western military personnel arrive and that planes had landed there throughout the night.

Radical Islamists held on to a city in central Mali Friday after sending the Malian military reeling in retreat. With the militants showing the capability to press even further into government-held territory, international aid organizations began evacuating staff from the narrow central belt of the country.

French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian wrote on his Twitter account Friday: “On the phone with (U.S. Defense Secretary) Leon Panetta about the Malian crisis. This afternoon with my European counterparts.”

Residents who live near an airport about 30 miles from the captured town on Konna reported hearing planes arrive throughout the night. Who, or what, the planes were bringing could not be immediately determined.

The United Nations Security Council condemned the capture of Konna and called on U.N. member states to provide assistance to Mali “in order to reduce the threat posed by terrorist organizations and associated groups.”

A regional military intervention to take back northern Mali from the Islamists was not likely before September, though the advance by the Al Qaeda linked forces in the desert nation in northwest Africa creates pressure for earlier military intervention.

“France, like its African partners and the entire international community, cannot accept that,” Hollande said in a speech to France‘s diplomatic corps, referring to the Islamists’ advances.

A top French diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said that France is now able to deploy military assets — notably air power — over Mali “very quickly.”

He insisted that Hollande’s speech is “not just words. … When you say that you are ready to intervene, you have to be.”

However, he declined to provide details about how such military action might take shape. France‘s position has been complicated because kidnappers in northern Mali hold seven French hostages.

For months, Hollande has said France would not send ground forces into Mali, and France is sticking to those plans, the official said. But Hollande’s speech suggested that French air power could be used, the official said.

The fighting Wednesday and Thursday over the town of Konna represents the first clashes between Malian government forces and the Islamists in nearly a year, since the time the militants seized the northern cities of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

The Islamists seized the town of Douentza four months ago after brief standoff with a local militia, but pushed no further until clashes broke out late Wednesday in Konna, a city of 50,000 people, where fearful residents cowered inside their homes. Konna is just 45 miles north of the government-held town of Mopti, a strategic port city along the Niger River.

“We have chased the army out of the town of Konna, which we have occupied since 11 a.m.,” declared Sanda Abou Mohamed, a spokesman for the Ansar Dine militant group, speaking by telephone from Timbuktu.

A soldier, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to journalists, acknowledged that the army had retreated from Konna. He said several soldiers were killed and wounded, though he did not have precise casualty figures. “We didn’t have time to count them,” he said.

While Konna is not a large town, it has strategic value as “the last big thing … on the road to Mopti,” said J. Peter Pham, director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Atlantic Council.

“I think the real target here is to seize the airstrip in Mopti, either to hold it or blow enough holes in it to render it useless,” Pham said. “If you can seize the airstrip at Mopti, the Malian military’s and African militaries’ ability to fly reconnaissance in the north is essentially clipped.”

Al Qaeda‘s affiliate in Africa has been a shadowy presence for years in the forests and deserts of Mali, a country hobbled by poverty and a relentless cycle of hunger. Most Malians adhere to a moderate form of Islam, where women do not wear burqas and few practice the strict form of the religion.

In recent months, however, the terror syndicate and its allies have taken advantage of political instability to push into Mali‘s northern towns, taking over an enormous territory they are using to stock weapons, train forces and prepare for jihad.

The Islamists insist they want to impose Shariah only in northern Mali, though there long have been fears they could push further south. Bamako, the capital, is 435 miles from Islamist-held territory.

The retreat by the Malian military raises questions about its ability to participate in a regional intervention.

Late last year, the 15 nations in West Africa, including Mali, agreed on a proposal for the military to take back the north, and sought backing from the United Nations.

The U.N. Security Council has authorized the intervention but imposed certain conditions. Those include training of Mali‘s military, which has been accused of serious human rights abuses since a military coup last year sent the nation into disarray.

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