Mali

The Mali of 2004, when Oumou Sall Seck was elected as the first female mayor in the country’s north, offered the hope of stable democracy and economic development, bearing little in common with the country since an insurgency took hold in January 2012. “Life in northern Mali before the rebels and Islamic extremists arrived was calm; we lived together harmoniously in a community of various languages and backgrounds, including people of Tuareg, Sonraï, Bambara and Peul ethnicities […] and our cultural diversity enriched us,” the mayor explains.[1] Any semblance of harmonious diversity in northern Mali has been supplanted by military clashes between government forces, Tuareg separatists, and Islamist groups including Ansar Dine, the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb-linked group enforcing its harsh interpretation of sharia law.[2] Complicating matters, in March 2012 Malian soldiers staged a coup d’état, ousting the existing government while opening a window of uncertainty during which Tuareg militias, then allied with Ansar Dine, gained effective control over the main cities of northern Mali.[3] The southern part of the country remains in the hands of the country’s weakened central government as it awaits military support authorized by the U.N. Security Council in December 2012. Meanwhile, the situation on the ground as the crisis in Mali reaches its first anniversary is already stark: “[a] Taliban-style rule of stonings and amputations has been imposed, […] 400,000 civilians have fled their homes, and, the United Nations says, 600,000 children under the age of five are threatened by severe malnutrition.”[4] U.S. foreign policy as President Obama enters his second term in office should focus on places like Mali, which seem to get little serious media and policy attention until it’s too late. While the evolving humanitarian crisis and widespread allegations of violations of jus cogens, the fundamental norms of international law, within Mali should trouble all states as a...