Tuareg Society Within a Globalized World: Saharan Life in Transition 9780755610914

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Acronyms and Abbreviations

AFRICOM AFVP AIDS AREVA ASA ATNM BBC CFA CIRED

CNPC CNRPAH

COMINAK CRIIRad

DANIDA DED

United States African Command Association Française des Volontaires du Progrès French Association of Volunteers of Progress Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome Solutions for Nuclear Power Generation and Electricity (former COGEMA) African Studies Association Alliance Touareg Niger–Mali Mali–Niger Tuareg Alliance British Broadcasting Corporation Communauté Financière Africain (currency) African Financial Community Centre International pour l’Environnement et le Développement International Centre for Research on the Environment and Development Chinese National Petroleum Company Centre National de Recherches Préhistoriques, Anthropologiques et Historiques National Centre of the Prehistoric, Anthropological and Historical Research Compagnie minière d’Akouta Akouta Mining Company Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity Danish International Development Agency Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst German Development Service

viii DGSE DRS DST EHESS EU EUCOM FAC FAN FAO FIDES

FLAA FNIS FWF GfbV GSPC GTZ IMF JEMED LUCOP MNJ

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure General Directorate for External Security Direction des Renseignements et de la Sécurité Algerian Security Services Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire Directorate of Territorial Surveillance Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales School of Higher Studies in the Social Sciences European Union United States European Command French Fund for Aid and Cooperation Forces Armées Nigeriennes Niger Armed Forces Food and Agriculture Organization (of the United Nations) Fonds d’Investissements pour le Developpement Economique et Social Investment Funds for Economic and Social Development Front de Libération de l’Azawad et de l’Aïr Aïr and Azawad Liberation Front Force National d’Intervention et de la Sécurité National Forces for Intervention and Security Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung Funds for the Aid of Scientific Research Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker Society for Threatened Peoples Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit German Technical Cooperation International Monetary Fund Youth with a Mission Programme nigéro–allemande de lutte contre la pauvreté Fight against Poverty project Mouvement des Nigériens pour la Justice Niger Movement for Justice

ACRONYMS AND ABBREVIATIONS

MPGK NGO OCRS OMV ONAREM OURD PSI PRS RCUK RFI SinoU SOMAIR SONICHAR TSCTI UDPS UN UNICEF UNWGIP US(A) WASP

ix

Mouvement Populaire Ganda Koy Ganda Koy Popular Movement Non-Governmental Organization Organization Commune des Régions Sahariennes Common Organization of Saharan Regions Österreichische Mineralöl Verwaltung Austrian Mineral Oil Administration Office National des Ressources Minières du Niger National Office of Mining Resources for Niger Japan’s Overseas Uranium Resources Development Company Pan Sahel Initiative Poverty Reduction Strategy Research Councils United Kingdom Radio France Internationale Radio France International China Nuclear International Uranium Corporation Société des Mines de l’Aïr Mining Company of Aïr Société Nigérienne du Charbon Niger Coal Society Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative Union pour la Démocratie et le Progrès Social Union for Democracy and Social Progress United Nations United Nations Children’s Fund UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples United States of America White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

Acknowledgements

In looking beyond traditional topics, including historical and colonial burdens, we are interested in the more recent multidimensional changes now affecting or even threatening the Saharan population of nomads, residents and transnational border crossers. To what extent are the Tuareg becoming global? What is their life in transition like? What does globalization mean for a tribal society spread over several countries, influenced by European, American, African and Arabian thoughts and placed at the gateway between the Maghreb and the Sahel? This was the main tenor of the international conference ‘Tuareg Moving Global’ held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna from 31 May to 2 June 2007. We would very much like to thank Andre Gingrich of the Institute for Social Anthropology at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Thomas Fillitz of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna and the OMV of Libya Ltd for their sponsorship. Their generous support made it possible to invite an international group of ambitious young junior researchers and well-established senior ones – Dida Badi (Algeria), Nadia Belalimat (France), Annemarie Bouman (Netherlands), Andre Bourgeot (France), Jeremy Keenan (Great Britain), Georg Klute (Germany), Baz Lecocq (Netherlands), Sarah Lunacek (Slovenia), Frederique Millot (France), Benedetta Rossi (Great Britain), Marko Scholze (Germany) and Gerd Spittler (Germany). Alessandra Giuffrida (Great Britain) and Susan Rasmussen (USA) were unable to attend the conference, but they have contributed to this publication. We thank all the participants for coming, for their lively discussions and for the fruitful contacts that resulted from the conference. We would also like to express our thanks to Walter Dostal for his inspiring opening address at the conference. We thank our colleague Sabine Decleva who presented an article by Hélène ClaudotHawad as a keynote address. We would like to express our thanks to all those students from the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna who attended the conference and gave lively

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responses to the papers and discussions. Last but not least we would like to thank Akidima Effad and Alhusseini Ibra, Imajeŕen from Niger who are now living in Austria, for taking part in the conference.

Terminology and Transcription

The term Tuareg refers to an ambiguous foreign designation that was introduced into the German, French and English languages. The society that populates most of the Sahara and Sahel calls itself Imuhaŕ in Algeria and Libya, Imajeŕen in Niger and Imushaŕ in Mali and Burkina Faso. Because these different designations originated from dialectic sound shifts, it is difficult to come to a uniformly suitable terminology. A recently developed tendency in anthropology speaks about Kel Tamasheq, the people who speak Tamasheq. This designation has an excluding tendency, however, since a large part of the society speaks Tamahaq. Anyhow, to deal with a comprehensive term and to avoid as far as possible the designation Tuareg, we tend to use Kel Tamasheq. The authors of several chapters, however, have chosen to use the self-designations from their respective research areas. The transcription of Tamasheq/Tamahaq faces similar problems. De Foucauld1 used the dialect of Algeria in his dictionary, whereas Prasse, Alojaly and Mohamed2 used the dialect of Niger in theirs. Sudlow3 examined the dialect in Burkina Faso and parts of Mali. Each linguist used his own special characters for the transcription. For this book we operate without special characters to guarantee easy readability: for the sound ‘gh’ we use the easily comprehensible ŕ instead of the often transcribed Tifinaŕ letter . Finally we would like to stress that Eurocentric terms like ‘nobles’, ‘vassals’, ‘tributaries’ or politically imposed conceptualizations like ‘confederation’, which are used again and again in literature, are replaced in this volume by emic names. One major tenor of our conference was an attempt to shed the colonial burden, which until now has been seen in the use of terminology that is often derived from the European Middle Ages.

1 Tuareg Moving Global: An Introduction Ines Kohl and Anja Fischer

Increasingly forced to switch from nomadic to urban lifestyles over the last few decades, lots of Kel Tamasheq in the Sahara and Sahel are being squeezed into sedentarization. Furthermore, the vagaries of international politics are pushing them into making transnational border crossings without documents, nationalities or citizenships. Global economic interests, EU sanctions, as well as several local and supra local attempts to enforce political hegemony have turned nomadic life into a challenging business. Recent geopolitical changes have had a crucial impact on the SaharanSahel population, but the rest of the world has neglected them. The Sahara and Sahel are more and more being transformed into a gateway for international politics and economic manoeuvres. Anthropologists should have a responsibility to bring the harsh political and economic circumstances with which these people are dealing to a broader audience. The contributors to this volume were free to approach the Kel Tamasheq from a wide range of themes, angles and regions. Our aim in this book is to identify a population living in deserted areas in the central Sahara and on its Sahelian fringes in the context of ‘global interconnectedness, suggesting a world full of movement and mixture, contact and linkages, and persistent cultural interaction and exchange’.1 While on the one hand complex mobilities and interconnections with economic and cultural flows2 characterize the globe today, we are faced on the other hand with more fortified territorial borders and strengthened political boundaries. As a transnational society, the Kel Tamasheq are wedged in between. The Sahara and Sahel are in the periphery in terms of global flows. Geographically, these regions are far from the global centres, even far from the centres of the periphery, which is the category into which North

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African and sub-Sahelian cities fall.3 Thus, the Kel Tamasheq occupy a peripheral position within the periphery. As they oscillate between resistance and accommodation, they have found several ways of dealing with global networks, the examples of which can be found in this volume. On the title of this chapter we want to stress three points. The word Tuareg, which is still used in anthropological literature, is a colonial construct, so in this volume we prefer to abandon foreign designations and concentrate on emic terms. We thus remedy an outdated approach that excludes nomads from the globalized world and associates them with a declining society. We should like to focus on local transformation and creative engagement by considering the Kel Tamasheq as embedded in the global ‘scapes’.4 The word ‘moving’ implies that we are dealing with and participating in global discourses. In recent years, Kel Tamasheq have been nomads, residents and borderliners5 who deal very actively with supralocal influences. Moving means agency, actively negotiating within a global space. Mobility has always been a crucial factor in acting successfully in the Sahara. Recent forms of mobility go beyond the movements of nomads with their livestock, but challenge national loyalties and policies in their translocal, transregional, or transnational design. Through a sense of the ‘global’ we should like to emphasize that the Sahara is not an isolated area apart from supralocal influences; it is a space of transition, agency and of movements of the people, goods and ideas that supralocal and global impulses power and activate.6 Global interweaving can have several different local effects because Kel Tamasheq society is a heterogeneous construction with an assortment of forms of living and acting depending on their respective place and time. Global interconnectedness means more than the intensification of economic, political, cultural and ecological circuits. Following Harvey,7 globalization is a process of speeding up and a manifestation of a changing experience in time and space. Shrinking space and compressed time became evident among the Kel Tamasheq during the insurgence in Niger in 2007, when the rebels posted film of all their missions on the internet. People all over the world could virtually take part in the attacks the rebels carried out. Improved modes of communication and information, together with more rational forms of mobility, have made it possible for Kel Tamasheq to engage more actively with their surrounding world. With the introduction of the internet,

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satellite communications and greater use of four-by-four cars, the Kel Tamasheq were able to establish a new space of agency in the central Sahara.8 These newly developed strategies often go beyond national loyalties but they never disturb or undermine the national economies. ‘On the contrary, they can make remarkable contributions to the subordinate economies by smoothing the imbalance of the national systems.’9 These new possibilities pull the Sahara and Sahel out of its peripheral position, and bring the whole region a bit closer to the rest of the globalized world. This development can go even further. The Sahara and the Sahel turn into an economic and political playground. Global players are looking for new resources to absorb the increasing consumption in the West. Before going on to give a short description of the chapters and topics in this volume, it may be helpful to outline some of the main events in the political history of these people. The Kel Tamasheq live in the central Sahara and on its Sahelian fringes at the gateway between Maghrebian, Arab and West African influences. Official agencies estimate their numbers at approximately one-and-a-half million, while the Kel Tamasheq believe it to be closer to three million. The variation does not rely on any reliable census but is dependent on the political stake represented by the ethnic demography in respective African states.10 Until the colonial period the Kel Tamasheq acted autonomously and interacted successfully with the surrounding societies. Five mountains served as central ‘meeting points’ in the Sahara and around them smaller social groupings of Kel Tamasheq were formed. The five mountains define the corners of a virtual parallelogram. The Ahaggar in Algeria, a powerful volcanic mountain in the centre of the Sahara, developed as the territorial home of the Kel Ahaggar, the inhabitants of this mountain. To its east, the Tassili n Azjer, a high narrow plateau located between Algeria and Libya, accommodates the Kel Azjer. The Ahnet and Mouydir mountains to the northwest of the Ahaggar are where the Taytoq and Kel Ahnet reside. To the south, the Aïr in Niger, which is a continuation of the same range, became home to the Kel Aïr. The Adaŕ n Ifuŕas, the smallest of the massifs, is the centre for Kel Adaŕ in Mali. Later on other groups, like the Kel Azawad, the Kel Gress, the Kel Denneg, the Iwellemmeden, the Kel Ataram or the Kel Tademekkat have developed in the Sahel.

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Sketch of the Kel Tamasheq area in the Sahara and Sahel (from Anja Fischer, Nomaden der Sahara: Handeln in Extremen, Berlin: Reimer-Verlag, 2008, p. 29).

The forced penetration of European armies into the Sahara in the midnineteenth century profoundly changed the social, political and economic structure of the Kel Tamasheq. Ottoman, French, British and Italian troops entered central Sahara from different directions, occupied the five poles and imposed their own colonial administration. The flexible, permeable nomadic boundaries between the various groups of Kel Tamasheq were severed and new colonial frontiers were established with a view to serving the purely economically motivated expansion of European interests.

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Following decolonization and the subsequent independence of African nation-states in the 1960s, impenetrable frontiers were set up in the Sahara and Sahel, which are seen as a clear manifestation of the modern state. The Kel Tamasheq were thus split between five completely different states with different school systems, competitive economies and hostile political ideologies. The five artificial countries – Niger, Algeria, Libya, Mali and Burkina Faso – took over not only the colonial borders but also the European models of states and democracy. The new states maintained their centres of power in Niamey, Algiers, Tripoli, Bamako and Ouagadougou respectively, thousands of kilometres away from the Kel Tamasheq areas. These recent political groupings, built on the Western model of the nation-state, have produced a new type of territoriality. In each of these states, the desert zones frequented by the nomads are situated on the periphery. … This is why in the Sahara the modern states are viewed as machines for turning out minorities who are relegated to the margins of the new centralities which are settled and urban, and in other respects separated from their ancient poles of attraction.11 The newborn states showed no consideration for the social, political and territorial integrity of the Kel Tamasheq and other societies like the Peul (Fulbe, Wodabee) or Berber (Imaziŕen), but in fact established their marginalization. Because membership and belonging are now divided into national categories, the Kel Tamasheq have become partial minorities even in their own areas. Thus, one speaks of ‘Algerian Tuareg’, ‘Libyan Imuhaŕ’ or ‘Kel Mali’. The political division has also resulted in a splitting of the language. Whereas all Kel Tamasheq living in the Sahara speak their own language, those in the cities are forced to communicate in French, Bambara, Hausa or Arabic. If they do not turn to these foreign languages and adapt to local habits they immediately lose their already precarious position in the political or economic environment. The Kel Tamasheq of today are forced to create new strategies to overcome their radical break in traditional structures. A new development is exacerbating the Kel Tamasheq’s current situation: up until now former colonial powers, especially France, have been present in the Sahara and functioned in the background as political ‘watchdogs’. Now new forces, like China and the United States, have

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come along and want to join the scramble for the natural resources and exhaustible raw materials that are becoming rare in their own countries. The presence of oil and gas in Libya and Algeria, and uranium in Niger have created huge problems and, in 2007, led to a rebellion breaking out among the Kel Tamasheq of Niger, followed shortly thereafter by those of Mali. The Kel Tamasheq face brand-new global circumstances, which once again challenge their society. In this book we should like to address the recent consequences of global influences on Kel Tamasheq society. We aim to locate the Kel Tamasheq in a global space and examine a Saharan life in transition at a theoretical, historical and practical level. The first three chapters in Part I, ‘Where is Saharan Anthropology Going?’ clarify new tendencies in the social anthropology of the region and concentrate on new approaches in research on nomads. Anja Fischer examines the current position of nomads and discusses recent theoretical approaches. She asks if the concept of nomadism is still adequate in the age of globalization and argues that, by overcoming Eurocentrism in postmodern nomadology, one can attempt to develop a new holistic approach, a Saharan nomadology. Alessandra Giuffrida explores different categories and variations of mobility and stasis in the Sahara and Sahel. She argues that mobility among the Kel Tamasheq is a system as well as a strategy, and that examining mobility in systemic terms beyond pastoralism can help us to understand structural fluidity and change in contemporary Kel Tamasheq societies. Baz Lecocq looks at how the pastoral nomads’ cultural and social capital decisively influence the ways in which they participate in a globalizing urban world. He argues that the essential element in shaping the participation of groups and individuals in patterns of globalization and the creation of a cosmopolitan environment is found in the shape, constitution and potential of human networks rather than in the form of mobility. The contributors to Part II – ‘From Past to Present: Ongoing Discourses’ – connect historic factors to recent changes occasioned by globalization, which have led to ongoing discussions about slavery, social stratification and reactions to foreign influences. Gerd Spittler analyses the relationship between cloth and identity among the Kel Ewey and raises the question of whether the Kel Ewey of Timia have a greater sense of tradition than other groups, and whether foreign commodities are important to their identity. Dida Badi looks at traditional social stratification and, through examining sedentary processes in Algeria,

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shows to what extent changing land rights affect social strata; he also delves into the origin of the binary structure that presses the Kel Tamasheq into a system of vassals and nobles. Benedetta Rossi gives a detailed overview of the status of the iklan, former slaves, and focuses on transformations of social hierarchies from 1850 to the present. She examines epistemological shifts in terminology, identity and status and refers to the last 20 years during which the political mobilization of slaves took place. Part III of the book – ‘Diversified Norms and Values’ – deals with changing norms and values. Annemarie Bouman focuses on marriages and marriage payments among the iklan in Burkina Faso. She discusses marital payments, refers to issues like fertility, domestic labour and sexuality, and raises the provocative question of whether marriage payments in money rather than in goods compromise women’s agency and turn the institution of marriage into a modern form of slavery. Susan Rasmussen explores changing concepts of the body, particularly female fatness or sense of beauty among Kel Tamasheq in Mali. She focuses on relations between local and global processes and asks to what extent they have changed among rural communities and in the urban context. Ines Kohl deals with the attractiveness of Libya for impoverished ishumar from Mali and Niger, Gaddafi’s national strategy of attracting young nomads and the complex relationships between locals and newcomers. Furthermore, she describes how changing structures of belonging and settlement are modifying the ishumar movement and turning irresponsible ishumar into proper Imajeŕen. Nadia Belalimat focuses on the musical style ‘al guitara’ and how from the 1970s to the beginning of the twenty-first century globalization has affected the topics of the songs and the contexts of the performances. She also gives examples of local ishumar bands entering the world music scene. Marko Scholze describes how Kel Tamasheq are becoming actively involved in tourism and on which strategies and resources they rely to succeed. In becoming acquainted with the modern world these people are creating their own subculture within the society, mixing modern and traditional elements to form a unique cultural blend. The contributors to the last part of the book – ‘Sahara: Global Playground’ – face up to the fact that the Sahara and Sahel region is becoming more and more of a playground for global actors. Sarah Lunacek describes Kel Tamasheq relations with Europeans and the ambiguous meanings, images and perceptions that Kel Tamasheq have

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constructed of the so-called ikufar. Her focus is on looking at the meaning of development by examining development projects at a personal level through the narratives, opinions and comments of people involved in them. Finally, Jeremy Keenan deals with the recent problematic situation in the Sahara and the rebellion that broke out in the north of Niger in February 2007. After describing the causes of the rebellion, he turns to the global ‘war on terror’ that the United States unleashed in combination with European and Chinese forces and the manoeuvrings of several secret services to obtain power in the Sahara-Sahel region and gain access to uranium and oil resources. The various chapters in this book clarify the plurality of Kel Tamasheq society. It is a society in which one finds people adopting different strategies for living and acting, in which nomadism coexists alongside all kinds of sedentary lifestyles, in which transnational movements impose harsh local state sanctions, in which tribal affiliations collide with national loyalties and in which people adopt a range of strategies either to elude supralocal influences or merely to join the global process.

2 Research and Nomads in the Age of Globalization Anja Fischer

Suda wears a digital watch from Japan. She drinks green tea from China and owns shoes from Italy. She is 30 years old, has three children and successfully manages a goat herd in the Algerian Sahara. She is a Kel Ahaggar nomad in the age of globalization. What is the current state of research on nomads? Does the anthropological globalization debate include nomads? Or does research continue to view them in an isolated way? In this chapter1 I shortly discuss contemporary research streams in relation to nomads, in particular those in the Sahara. A geographic-economic interpretation dominates theories of nomadism and ‘decline theories’ deal with the ‘last nomads’. Postmodern nomadology discourse focuses exclusively on privileged urban nomads. Rural nomads in the Sahara are thus marginalized and pushed to the edge of a globalized space. Nonetheless, nomads play a role in the world economy, for global commodities move in and out of the Sahara. Current research on rural and urban nomads shows a trend towards a holistic approach. RURAL AND URBAN NOMADS A nomad is a member of a people who move from place to place to find pasture; a person who leads a roaming or wandering life. From Latin nomades (plural) nomas (singular), from Greek nomad, nomas roaming about, especially for pasture, from base of nemein to pasture.2 The origin of the word ‘nomad’ refers to three components – a mobile lifestyle, a certain territory or pasture, and pastoralism. Regarding the origin of the word, the term ‘nomad’ differs from terms such as vagabonds or migrants because a nomad operates in a fixed area or pasture and works as a pastoralist. A nomad is thus defined as a mobile

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stockbreeder whose entire social group corporately participates in the movement within a fixed territory. The philosopher Vilém Flusser3 defines a nomad as a person who can be described in neither space nor time, by contrast with a person living a sedentary existence who can be defined in space and time. This corresponds to the postmodern definition in the debate at the end of the twentieth century. The components of a fixed territory and of pastoralism are omitted from the modern interpretation of the nomad, and the aspect of a mobile lifestyle is stressed. Here the term ‘nomad’ opens up to become a metaphor for a person acting in a mobile way. However, the postmodernist definition is used exclusively to refer to privileged Western people, such as leisure nomads, business nomads, luxury nomads or science nomads. They are also called big-city nomads or new/modern nomads. The so-called ‘traditional’ nomads in rural environments, such as Suda, are no less modern. Also, nomads have existed in urban environments for a lot longer than the last few decades. In fact, the English city ethnographer Henry Mayhew was already investigating them in the midnineteenth century and included them in his monograph on the costermongers (mobile vegetable, fruit and fish dealers) in London.4 Consequently, I shall differentiate nomads according to the geographic focus of their mobility and distinguish between rural and urban nomads. THE STATE OF RESEARCH ON NOMADISM First, we need to distinguish between the terms pastoralism and nomadism. Pastoralism refers to raising livestock on natural pasture and nomadism refers to moving from place to place.5 Salzman confirms this definition of nomadism: ‘To recapitulate, I would define nomadism as the regular and frequent movement of the home base and household.’6 This definition focuses on the ‘mobility’ aspect of nomadism research. In the English literature in particularly, the current convention is the combination of ‘nomadic pastoralist’.7 In this way the economic component of pastoralism is included, thus separating the term from ‘nomadic hunters’ or ‘nomadic traders’. In the German literature the term is used exclusively to refer to mobile pastoralists’ economic system.8 According to Khazanov,9 the main characteristics of nomadism are:

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• Pastoralism is the predominant form of economic activity. • Its extensive character is connected with the maintenance of herds all year round on a system of free-range grazing without stables. • Periodic mobility in accordance with the demands of pastoral economy within the boundaries of specific grazing territories, or between these territories (as opposed to migrations). • The participation in pastoral mobility of all or the majority of the population. • The orientation of production towards the requirements of subsistence. There is a clear preference in the nomadism debate for a geographic and economic characterization. The economic system is put before the way of life. Even Salzman10 warns of oversimplification by characterizing people’s complex lives and culture by just one feature. Statements to the effect that nomadism as a pattern of life and economy is declining everywhere or has already disappeared, fit in with the ‘decline theories’ (Niedergangsthesen)11 prevailing in nomadism discourse, suggesting that if there is a change in basic conditions, nomadism can only decline or nomads assimilate, but never develop or transform further. Furthermore, Scholz12 thought that we should potentially act on the assumption that nomadism would definitely disappear. These theories were mostly the result of the isolated way in which nomadic groups have been viewed, often without taking the context of surrounding societies into consideration.13 Recent studies14 on the tremendous vitality and flexibility in the economy of nomads and a high adaptation potential in nomadic life, now contradict the apocalyptic sentiment at the forefront of nomadism discourses in recent decades. It seems to be precisely their willingness to embrace change and their flexibility that typify today’s nomadic groups and that will enable them to survive in the future.15 Suda belongs to the Kel Ahaggar, a group of nomads in the Algerian Sahara who do not correspond to the ‘decline theory’. Suda does profitable stockbreeding. She has been married for five years and her younger brother and younger sister were married this year. The bridegrooms are familiar with life in cities like Tamanrasset and In Salah, but they deliberately chose to live as nomads in the Sahara. They are aware of the threat of unemployment in urban environments and of the assured profitability of stockbreeding; in fact, five new tent units have been built

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in the last six years, joining the small kingroup of about 200 nomads.16 Over the same period, one tent unit was abandoned because the family moved to the city, but this year the same family returned to the Sahara to resume its nomadic life. Jeremy Keenan17 also sees an increasing willingness to return to mobile stockbreeding in the Algerian Sahara. Some women who have become sedentary and who have been divorced return to their familiar work in the desert. The nomads’ vitality and great potential to adapt are being recognized more and more. Relationships with sedentary people are also more and more being taken into consideration, so that nomadism is presently defined by Leder18 as: • mobility that is permanent, cyclical and realized in groups (such as families), so therefore shapes their way of life; • the development of a livelihood through extensive pasture management or other means of living gained by mobility; and • interaction with sedentary people. With the mobility characteristics mentioned above, a distinction is made between other similar forms of livelihood in which there is also mobility, such as migrants or itinerant workers. The exclusiveness of pasture management is no longer central, and not only mobile stockbreeders are called nomads, even though that does not correspond to the origin of the term ‘nomad’. That pasture management is organized within a fixed territory is omitted and, now, interaction with sedentary people serves as a characteristic. No specification of the interaction is indicated. Whether the interaction is economic or political, for example, is left open. The main emphasis in the definition of nomadism, however, continues to be on its geographical (mobility) and economic (pasture management) components, thus excluding urban nomads. Nomadism experts have been analysing the economy of nomads for a long time. However, the analysis of economic processes is still incomplete. Taking the Imuhaŕ nomads in the Sahara as an example, one can see that the work of men is recorded in detail, whereas women’s work is barely examined. Male anthropologists have long analysed the work of men in breeding dromedaries. Thus, one can find detailed descriptions of how dromedaries are castrated or herded.19 But what about the work of female nomads? As preparation for my first field-work trip to the

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Algerian Sahara in the winter of 2002 I read several specialist books on the subject. Only Spittler20 described in detail the work of women and girls among Imuhaŕ nomads in Niger, but not among full nomads. Thus, I got the impression that nomad women’s work is not very extensive. However, during my field work I realized that the women work extremely hard. Consequently, to fill this gap in nomadism research, I decided to analyse all the economic activities of men, women and children in central Sahara and tried to conduct this analysis in a holistic way.21 In doing so, I examined the work environment from six dimensions ranging from elem (skin/body), that is the body as a work tool, to esuf (loneliness/universe), the overall universe. Besides a detailed ethnography of the labour, I also examined workrelated themes like collective work, career opportunities, motivation and remuneration. This finally resulted in a nomadic activity convention, which consists of continuity, flexibility, solidarity, hierarchy, morality, mobility and rationality. In the analysis, the creation of identity through work is viewed as more important than the creation of a livelihood. Apart from the incompleteness of the economic analysis in the nomadism discourse, the interpretation of mobility is strongly based on cultural-ecological aspects. The concept of service ethics,22 for example, includes the pastoralist’s subordination to the needs of his herd. The pastoralist’s attitude towards the animals and the work is primary, forming part of his lifestyle and his specific world-view, thus having a cultural orientation. Service, not work, becomes the central requirement. However, stockbreeding is not the essential reason for the nomad’s mobility. Primarily, it gives the nomad a chance to move. It offers her and him social flexibility. Economic activities are always embedded in social principles. The mobility of the nomad is not only an economic practice; it is also a philosophy of movement. ‘Nomadism is not only an itinerant way of life, associated with a particular economic activity, pastoralism, which is an extensive management of resources adapted to the arid environment. It would appear also to represent a philosophy, a manner of interpreting reality and acting upon it.’23 THE NOMADS OF POSTMODERN NOMADOLOGY Research on nomads should be referred to as nomadology, a term that Deleuze and Guattari introduced to philosophy.24 At the beginning of the 1980s, with nomadology, they developed for the first time a nomadic way

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of thinking in philosophy that characterized nomadic life as antitraditional and anti-conformist. A nomadic way of thinking was presented that, ‘in a defensive way’, consciously turned against a centralized national model. The subsequent postmodern debate romanticized the nomad as a geographic metaphor par excellence.25 Laptops, cell phones and credit cards are the preferred objects of a postmodern nomadic existence.26 In this discourse, nomads belong to the economic, political and cultural elite: luxury, leisure, science and business nomads fall into this category. Here, not only does nomadic thinking serve as a metaphor, but a postmodern vision draws on a nomadic lifestyle – it is a collective emblem of cosmopolitan existence.27 Deleuze and Guattari’s nomads are creative and innovative. Their thinking opposes national thinking. Philosophical nomadology glorifies the nomads’ deterritorializing forces. The geographical metaphor of postmodern nomads is not just deeply masculine and individualistic, it is also Eurocentric. Postmodern nomadology appropriates a non-Western experience for the benefit of developing a European theory.28 Modernity and globalization are associated only with privileged Western nomads. Mobility is a metaphor for new postmodern urban nomads. Actually, one could presume that the nomadology discourse should also show some interest in rural ‘traditional’ strategies of mobility and their recent developments. But rural nomads are marginalized, and their habitat is pushed into the periphery of the globalized space or perceived as transit space at best.29 Until now only Claudot-Hawad30 has analysed the movements of rural nomads in the Sahara in a nomadological way: This way of looking at the limits, viewing them as reversible (as places of friction or of contact), fits into a management of space that is open to the exterior, that is able to spread horizontally like a ‘rhizome’, to use Deleuze and Guattari’s image (2005), gathering other members to the existing body without changing the overall structure. Urban nomads in the Sahara like the ishumar31 are excluded from postmodern nomadology. Rural and urban nomads of the Sahara are marginalized in an ‘elitist’ postmodern nomadology and excluded from the globalization process.

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NOMADS AND GLOBALIZATION IN THE SAHARA Nomads of the Sahara are certainly not victims but instead play a role in the globalization process. Some 100 years ago the Sahara region was a centre of globalization in which the Imuhaŕ obtained information about world affairs at strategically important points and made use of it,32 and today the Imuhaŕ are considered politically and economically marginalized.33 Urban nomads of the Sahara like the ishumar, in particular, are well integrated into worldwide events.34 The old trade routes the Imuhaŕ created are still used today for a subversive international economy. On the other hand, African migrant streams move through the Sahara, using the routes frequented and completed by the Imuhaŕ. Thus, the Sahara is still a hub in globalized space. The analysis of nomadic life and its inherent adaptation can no longer be restricted to small territorially limited areas; instead, worldwide cause and effect chains should also be analysed.35 For example, the Imuhaŕ are known worldwide under the foreign designation ‘Tuareg’. This word has now become a ‘brand’ in globalized space. You can buy party tents, off-road vehicles, air conditioners and even motorcycle trousers with the designation ‘Tuareg’ all over the world. The brand name has already lost its proper meaning and in Europe ‘Tuareg’ is more likely to be associated with an off-road vehicle than with an African society.36 The positive image of the brand ‘Tuareg’ is also used in worldwide tourism. Guided tours across the Sahara in off-road vehicles are offered on all continents and are very popular. Thus, numerous ‘leisure nomads’ frequent the North African desert in the winter months. In the same way that tourists inappropriately call the Imuhaŕ ‘Tuareg’, an improper designation for all tourists exists among the Imuhaŕ. They call a tourist akafar (from the Arabic: non-believer). When Imuhaŕ are asked for an explanation of the word akafar, they usually mention ‘white person’.37 However, by now this has gone so far that the children of Imuhaŕ nomads also call Arab people who visit an Algerian nomad camp ikufar. Here, the original meaning of the word, which refers to religious belief, is also removed, and children call every stranger akafar, even though they are Arabs who have the same religion. Similarly, global commodities are appropriated and provided with new meanings much like these designations. Suda, a modern rural nomad woman Suda is the manager of a goat herd in the Algerian Sahara. Her clothes are produced in various parts of the world. The traditional headdress,

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the aleshu, made of woven panels, comes from Kura in Nigeria. The material of her wraparound garment, tesirnest, is manufactured either in Europe or India. Her plastic sandals are ‘made in Italy’. Suda’s little son wears a ‘Pokemon’ T-shirt and her daughter a T-shirt with the label ‘I love Paris’. She owns a watch from Japan, an electric torch from Korea and a radio from Taiwan. Suda bakes her bread with Algerian flour and flavours her sauce with a ‘Maggie’ stock cube. In summer, when her goats give little milk, she mixes powdered milk from Argentina for her children. During her work breaks she drinks green tea from China with her female friends. Her favourite brand is ‘A tee de sable’ (the tea of the sand), which shows on its package a traditionally dressed Amahaŕ sitting in the sand and filling a glass of tea. Suda is unaware of the colonial demarcation in the Sahara and the subsequent nation-state building. That her territory is located in a country named Algeria is of no significance to her. Rural nomads use global commodities. Thus, women regard a digital watch from Japan as a desirable object, even though they are unable to read it and time measurements in minutes have no relevance to their everyday lives. However, the watch grants its wearer respectability and prestige. Imuhaŕ selectively imbue certain global commodities with local cultural meaning.38 Appropriation, taking something into one’s possession, means that others previously possessed the commodity. Hence, appropriation always implies an interaction with another person and is not limited to the reinterpretation of things.39 This affects not only the commodity, but also its designation. The manufacture of the traditional bowl, tamennast, which the men use during trips for baking bread or for drinking, requires the use of complicated techniques. Lately, poorly made bowls have been called tamennast Taiwan and recently the Imuhaŕ began to call all shoddily-made goods ‘Taiwan’. They do not know that Taiwan is a country in Asia. They give all commodities they regard as cheap this designation, including traditional products like the tamennast. Commodity preferences are very selective. Children often wear European clothes, whereas nomad women and nomad men continue to wear ‘traditional’ clothes, although they can buy European clothes from local markets. However, particularly with respect to clothes, local links become apparent. For instance, female rural Imuhaŕ nomads in the southern part of the Sahara have begun to wear the colourful wraparound skirts of the Hausa women.40

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Tourism also leaves its traces. Down jackets or sturdy mountain boots that Sahara travellers from Europe left as gifts can be found among nomads. For example, a bright yellow, thick down jacket is used as a baby pad in a nomad tent because neither a male nor female nomad wanted to wear such a European jacket, despite the frosty temperatures. Pharmaceuticals from European tourists leave a more dangerous legacy. In one case a mother wanted to give her four-year-old daughter, who had a slight cough, prescription medicine for serious pneumonia. She received the medicine from a relative who works as a driver on tourist trips. When I told her that the medicine was inappropriate for children, the mother told me that the problem was that she could not read the package insert. Nomads are specialists at recycling and every type of commodity is reused. Old clothes are cut into strips and processed with a special technique into ropes for tying up goats. Broken manufactured goods are dismantled for their spare parts. Empty cans serve as storage containers or children’s toys. Thus, global commodities receive both a new meaning and a new use. Nomads not only use commodities from global sources, but they also give incentives to local and supralocal manufacturers. For example, they buy cheap Italian plastic sandals at the local markets, but since these quickly fall apart they have developed a special technique for sewing the upper sole onto the lower sole to make them more robust. For this procedure they use solid threads from flour sacks. Sedentary men from the cities have recently adopted this technique, so now one can purchase these plastic sandals on the local market with the additional seams already in place. However, the process continues. Now nomads prefer stronger leather sandals, which they reinforce in the same manner. The sedentary traders in the cities will surely soon follow their example, so that in years to come the leather sandals with the sewing technique the nomads developed will become available at the local markets. Bakai, a modern urban nomad man of the Sahara Bakai, aged 47, is sitting in a Viennese café drinking a ‘Melange’ (coffee with frothy milk) and talking on the phone with his relative in Niger. He wears jeans with a Lacoste shirt and commutes during the year between Africa and Europe. He grew up as a ‘real’ nomad child in the Niger Sahara. At the age of eight he moved with his parents to the city of

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Agadez. He never had the opportunity to go to school and as a teenager started to work in tourism. Initially, as a cook, he accompanied adventure-seeking European tourists on two-week round trips across the Sahara. Today he owns a travel agency and organizes a range of trips across the Niger desert in the winter months. In the summer months he comes to Europe and visits various European tour operators. He speaks five languages fluently. His office consists of the internet and his state-of-the-art mobile phone, with which he travels to Europe over the summer months in search of new clients. He keeps in touch with former clients and, in doing so, always has a place to stay. He uses a wide array of global commodities and frequents multicultural restaurants all over Europe. In summer he sells ‘traditional’ Imuhaŕ jewellery to his clients and at various Africa festivals. He operates in the milieu of European leisure nomads and now belongs to the group of privileged people in his home country. He meets the description of a postmodern nomad for whom international airports rather than wells or local markets serve as the junction for nomadic movements. Unlike European urban nomads, he remains integrated into a close family network in Niger and constantly keeps in touch with his relatives there. Silver necklaces with the Imuhaŕ ‘cross’ are very popular among European women. Blacksmiths in the Sahara manufacture them especially for tourists because domestic sales are low. Bakai is not the only person to bring these necklaces to the European market. Several Imuhaŕ who work in tourism make a partial living out of selling them in Europe in the summer months. Imuhaŕ jewellery is now also available on the internet from homepages mostly set up by Imuhaŕ people with the help of their European friends. While Berber blankets and water pipes are in especially high demand as souvenirs among tourists along the North African Mediterranean coast, in the Sahara the ‘typical’ silver jewellery of the Imuhaŕ is the bestseller. Now one can even find Imuhaŕ sales booths in the middle of the Sahara desert at locations tourist groups visit, such as the Mandara lakes. There the Imuhaŕ try to sell their jewellery to tourists on site. Imuhaŕ earnings in Europe are mostly invested in European commodities, from which relatives and friends in the Sahara benefit. The latest mobile phones, computers and televisions are transported back to the Sahara at the end of the summer months. Global commodities are commodities that are not produced for a regionally limited clientele, but rather for the whole world.41 The Imuhaŕ’s

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silver jewellery has in the meantime become a global commodity. The Imuhaŕ operate in globalized networks. Global commodities are used and imbued with local cultural meaning, but on the other hand global commodities are produced for the international market. Thus, the Imuhaŕ play an active role in the globalization process. NEW APPROACHES IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE NOMADS Current research rejects the perception that nomadic and sedentary ways of life are opposed to and in latent conflict with one another. It is not the confrontation, but the linkage of nomadic and sedentary systems with their different forms of political organization, social orders, understanding of space and moral values that historically had a lasting effect and helped to shape the face of vast regions and their societies. The supposed unity of space, place, culture and language turned out to be a fallacy. Culture is moveable and can move over long distances even without the movement of people, for example via communication. On the other hand, people in movement carry culture in their luggage as well.42 Anthropologists turn more and more to these interconnected links. Nomads are integrated into a worldwide network and can no longer be regarded as isolated groups. Even the rural nomads of the Sahara can no longer be regarded as ‘pure’ stockbreeders. They also work as traders or nowadays sometimes as tourist guides.43 They interact, particularly economically, with sedentary relatives and friends in the villages, which results in dense networks between sedentary and mobile Saharan residents. Today, the term nomad is no longer used exclusively for people who manage pastures; one can also define people operating in an urban environment as nomads. It is therefore important to develop a definition of ‘nomad’ in anthropology that is not just reduced to its economic and geographical aspects. In the nomadism discourse, however, the nomad’s activity as a pastoralist is predominantly considered, and his mobility viewed mainly from the cultural-cum-economic perspective. Rural nomads, by contrast, are excluded and marginalized in the postmodern discourse. Thus, one can neither characterize the mobility of urban nomads as nomadism, nor count rural nomads among the privileged nomads who are the exclusive subjects of postmodern nomadology. The study of nomads must be translated as nomadology. Detaching

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postmodern nomadology from its inherent Eurocentrism and integrating rural nomads opens up the possibility of a holistic study of nomads that looks beyond geographical and economic boundaries. Thus, anthropological studies like most in this volume cannot be defined as nomadism research. We could, however, define them as anthropological nomadology. In such an anthropological nomadology we could easily integrate rural and urban nomads in Asia, America and Australia. Thus, the conference ‘Tuareg Moving Global’, which claimed to present new concepts in Sahara research, did not result in a single contribution that can be classified as nomadism research. Nowadays, nomads have to be viewed in complex dimensions. In the era of globalization, holistic analyses within an anthropological nomadology are appropriate.

3 Tuareg Networks: An Integrated Approach to Mobility and Stasis Alessandra Giuffrida

Research about migratory movements in Saharan and Sahelian Africa tends to focus on famines, droughts and conflicts, modes of subsistence, ecological systems and specific ethnic groups. Overall, the study of mobility through conceptually isolated categories (like pastoralists, exiles, refugees or labour migrants) is not conducive to understanding mobility as an overarching system in all its variations. In view of increasing population flows in and out of Saharan and Sahelian Africa,1 I question whether isolating different categories of mobility in Tuareg society can account for the existence of the local and global networks that actors form through movement and stasis. Field data collected among the Kel Antessar and neighbouring Tuareg groups2 has shown that to separate analytically categories of mobility obscures the presence of social and spatial networks radiating out from a fixed locality to other regions and countries in Africa and the rest of the world. I maintain that mobility among the Tuareg is a system, or subsystem,3 as well as a strategy. Defining mobility and stasis in systemic terms and beyond pastoralism helps one to consider interrelations between different categories of mobility and networks and furthers understanding of structural fluidity and change in contemporary Tuareg societies. The case of the Kel Antessar and neighbouring Tuareg groups provides an opportunity to take up this challenge. A structural feature of Tuareg society is the presence of kinship, social and trade networks that have formed over time across ethnic boundaries, empires and nations. Following independence from colonial rule, mobility has increased due to politics as well as drought and conflict-induced migrations. In the contemporary context, networks continue to extend as structures in themselves linking local and

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global worlds through which the circulation of people, goods and ideas is ongoing regardless of whether political borders are or are not enforced. Migratory movements across already existing trade and other networks linking the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean and the Middle East are ongoing. The contemporary ‘state of flux’ in Saharan and Sahelian regions, and beyond, calls for a revision of anthropological approaches to the study of mobility in general and of Tuareg societies in particular. This chapter treasures and at the same time revises the legacy of structuralfunctionalism,4 Marxism,5 political economy6 and cultural-ecology7 and their contributions to the study of mobility in pastoralist societies with a view to achieving a systemic perspective of mobility and stasis so as to draw out structural aspects of change both in local and global contexts. Vertovec observes that the term diaspora today applies to ‘practically any population that is considered “deterritorialised” or “transnational” – that is, which has originated in a land other than that in which it currently resides and whose social, economic and political networks cross the borders of nation-states or indeed span the globe’.8 This applies to most people in Saharan and Sahelian Africa but particularly to ethnic groups that used to be highly mobile due to their reliance on seasonal climatic variations in rural areas. At present, competing discourses on Tuareg identity are rooted in the experiences of actors who use different idioms to define themselves, including nomadism and Islam. These discourses allow for multiple identities to be negotiated, contested and shaped in a variety of forms and cultural expressions within Tuareg societies and around the globe. The case I present in this chapter questions how contemporary Tuareg identities are being reinvented through colonial myths of the Tuareg and nomadism. In the eyes of Tuareg migrants, exiles and intellectuals, nomadism has come to symbolize a lost capital of their endangered heritage and tradition. Migration histories collected in a rural settlement, a village and two nomadic camps from a variety of actors who moved in and out and/or fixed their residence in the study area are interpreted by taking a diachronic perspective on movements through networks that have formed over time. The categories of mobility that emerged from data include intensive and extensive pastoralists, returned migrants and refugees, seasonal rural migrants and temporary urban migrants. As a whole, these form a system of social and spatial networks that constitute structures in themselves linking individuals and groups in a geographical location to kin

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and friends who have moved away from home. Interrelations between categories of mobility and stasis, beyond the opposition of nomadism and sedentarization, make possible mapping networks and people as well as observing the flow of goods, knowledge and resources in local and global contexts. As further discussed in the fourth section, this perspective helps one to identify how actors’ experiences of local and other worlds are affecting change in discourses about nomadism, women and men’s choice of spouse. AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO MOBILITY AND STASIS Displacement and the translocal lives of men and women in local and global contexts are gradually eroding a normative, ethnic and political Tuareg identity linked to an imagined stateless nation (tumast). After independence, the Tuareg underwent a slow process of deterritorialization, which gave rise to diasporic movements. Dissidents and exiles (ishumar) from Mali and Niger scattered across the political boundaries of Morocco, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Algeria and the Ivory Coast. Others reached relatives and friends in Libya and the Middle East. These voluntary movements had political motives and affected mainly Tuareg intellectuals of high status. Their movements are distinguished here from those of pastoralists who were forced to abandon their land during the droughts in the 1970s and 1980s and settled on the outskirts of urban centres, rural villages and aid-supported settlements. Despite the different causes, both types of movements had damaging repercussions for the Tuareg as far as land rights9 are concerned. During the 1990–96 conflict between the Tuareg rebel movement and the Malian army, actors’ mobility strategies varied significantly. In the area of the study, almost half the population did not flee (stayees). Men chose to stay at home to maintain access to what they perceived to be their land or country (akal) and to protect their women, children and herds. Some pastoralists became refugees, and displaced or joined migrant relatives outside Mali.10 After decentralization in Mali, returning refugees, exiles and economic migrants (returnees) from neighbouring countries joined their kin who had not fled during the conflict in rural settlements. Elsewhere I have argued that considering refugees as a sui generis category of mobility can be misleading because they are just one among other categories of mobility.11 Changes relating to the internally and externally displaced and refugees in the study area could only be isolated

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by comparing their experiences with people who had not fled. Stayees included individuals and households from different clans (tawsatin) including, among others, the Kel Antessar, Kel Tichŕayen, Kel Tit, Kel Taborak, Kel Ŕazzaf and Imedidaŕan.12 Paradoxically, stayees had to endure extreme conditions compared with refugees, who received food aid in refugee camps because they were cut off from rural markets and witnessed the atrocities inflicted on their men, women and children. Stayees who survived managed to save their livestock by hiding in areas that army vehicles could not reach. Their decision to stay was a conscious act aimed at defending their land and people, which also facilitated spontaneous returns from Mauritanian refugee camps. This was possible because people in refugee camps could communicate about the state of security with their relatives back home through rebels and relief workers who travelled across the borders. Like refugees, pastoralists can no longer be isolated from other categories of mobility and stasis. In the area of the study, pastoralism is increasingly reliant on relatives’ remittances and external aid as well as livestock gifts and loans that herders receive from their kin who reside locally or elsewhere in Mali and abroad. This suggests that the pastoral economy can only survive through the provision of external resources and the support of relatives who work in economic sectors other than pastoralism, such as development, the civil service,13 trade and tourism. Furthermore, local pastoralists cannot be isolated analytically from other categories of movers because they share the same tents, camps and settlements with returned migrants and refugees. Return movements give rise to the meeting of different life experiences. The contrast between the discourses of stayees and returnees helped me to isolate aspects of change in the area of the study and grasp the structural fluidity of their society thanks to their system of networks, which allows people in the bush to adopt a range of strategies, including stasis, to cope with and adjust to change. The study of pastoralists’ migration – the seasonal movement of people with their tents and herds in search of pastures – has often been used as a synonym of nomadism and studied in isolation from economic migration, exile, refugeeship and displacement. This approach misrepresents the contemporary situation of the Tuareg in general where actors, including herders, diversify their subsistence strategies, and join and split from camps and settlements where they may reside temporarily or on a

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more permanent basis. In view of the above, I suggest considering pastoralists’ migration in rural areas as one among other categories of mobility that correspond to different actors who are linked through kinship ties and other networks comprising outgoing and returning migrants, refugees and the displaced. Anthropologists have devoted many works to the study of the Tuareg and focus mainly on pastoralists’ seasonal migration in relation to either sedentarization14 or development.15 Nevertheless, if ownership of livestock and size of herds were to be taken as criteria to define the pastoralists’ ability to move and live as ‘nomads’ with their herds, very few nomads would exist. Those few who survive can only do so because their wealthier migrant kin ask them to look after the ‘family herd’, the symbolic capital that actors identify with a common heritage, blood and land. As I discuss further in the fourth section, the discourses of stayees and returnees associate nomadism with living in tents with herds, which in turn symbolizes a traditional way of life. This points to the salience of considering economic relations between pastoralism and different categories of mobility and stasis as being parts of the same social and translocal system linking pastoralists in the bush with migrants in other regions of Mali and abroad. After the 1990–96 conflict in Niger and Mali, researchers paid more attention to other categories of movers like exiles,16 economic migrants17 and returned refugees.18 To my knowledge synchronic studies of Tuareg refugees have never been carried out. This is possibly due to the difficulties of fitting refugees into classical anthropological models and theories, and/or to the methodological problems inherent in undertaking field research at times of war and in dispersed locations. The same paucity of studies applies to return movements of Tuareg migrants and refugees to desert areas, which after decentralization increased enough to boost electoral representation and visibility in local and regional administrations, and to enable registered residents to apply for funds19 destined for local associations and development projects. As Malkki remarks: ‘The structural invisibility of refugees in anthropology and political theory is transformed into a particular kind of markedness in the domain of policy – in the discursive and other practices of the states and non-governmental agencies that manage or administer programmes for refugees.’20 As far as the Tuareg are concerned, this has resulted in the misrepresentation of the Tuareg refugee crisis in policy

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papers21 or partisan and biased media accounts about the civil conflict and consequences of displacement during the 1990–96 conflict. These media accounts only present the views of high-status Tuareg intellectuals and rebels, not the voices of ordinary people who ended up starving, dying of thirst or being massacred while fleeing the raids of the rebels, the army and the Ganda Koy. In this section I have discussed the salience of considering pastoralists as part of a system where different categories of mobility and stasis occur simultaneously and must be considered both in synchrony and diachrony so as to draw out the formation of networks resulting from both voluntary and forced migration. I shall now focus more specifically on the importance of networks defined as structures in their own right in analysing mobility as a system. WEAVING THE WEB THROUGH SOCIAL AND SPATIAL NETWORKS Anthropologists working in pastoralist societies, including the Tuareg, have resisted adopting networks as structures in their own right. Models of social organization rooted in segmentary lineage theory and structuralism have proved extremely influential and persuasive. Kinship and political structures have been conceptualized on the basis of local and synchronic studies,22 which require some revision in view of the changes relating to complex variations of mobility categories beyond pastoralists’ migrations. Increased mobility and related internal fragmentation give rise to kinship, social and trade networks that have to be considered beyond the local level of analysis because they are structures in their own right representing ties among dispersed individuals. ‘These ties constitute the objective manifestation of a set of actors and their action.’23 Increased mobility in all its variations has to be approached systemically and systematically to analyse actors’ interrelations and mobilization of resources through existing networks. Transnational and translocal webs linking Tuareg living in cities, refugee camps, bush settlements or pastoralist camps cannot be limited to the analysis of local kinship relations. Although the local level of analysis is the starting point of any research that helps identify fundamental kinship relations, ignoring the ties linking local actors with other Tuareg on the move misrepresents their interrelations across networks. Their presence allows people and resources to circulate. In short, the act of moving or staying gives rise to networks through which social, political and economic

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relations can be articulated across local, regional, national and transnational contexts. Networks among the Tuareg have been conceptualized only in relation to kinship rather than as structural elements of a social system. As Claudot-Hawad explains, ‘the social importance of an individual or group can be measured in terms of the extent of mobility and the stages covered. Travelling over far-flung lands, establishing ties with neighbouring or outside worlds, means in fact being capable of mobilizing a vast social network and thus being powerful.’24 Yet, more research is necessary to articulate how this process occurs and affects change in groups and individual actors beyond the reckoning of visitors’ social origins, group membership and status. Perhaps one of the reasons why networks have not received much attention in the study of contemporary Tuareg societies is the enduring legacy of the ever polarizing colonial logic opposing ‘nomadism’ and ‘sedentarization’,25 which characterizes research aimed at engaging with policy. This logic continues to inform refugee rehabilitation programmes and development projects even though it limits understanding of the socio-cultural, economic and political dynamics inherent in the structural fluidity of mobile societies where actors’ strategies and categories of mobility weave a web of kinship through translocal networks. In this system, people negotiate their status and identities, give and receive support, exchange information and products, trade goods, establish and maintain ties of clientelism and patronage, collect political votes in exchange for favours, and so on. It follows that if one is to see how change related to mobility affects contemporary Tuareg at home or abroad, mobility must be conceptualized in such a way as to include interrelations with a range of migrants across networks linking local and global worlds. This means conceiving of mobility beyond a binary logic of opposition (nomadism and sedentarization, herders and farmers, rural and urban) and adopt a systemic conceptual framework that includes stasis, where stasis is the suspension of movement, either permanent or temporary, the conscious act of fixing one’s residence to acquire political visibility and representation, to access resources in rural settlements, cities and refugee camps, at home and abroad. Hence, if mobility and stasis are strategies and variations of the same system, to relate them to change they require both synchronic and diachronic perspectives.

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The relationship between mobility and stasis, defined as complementary rather than in opposition, enables one to draw out socio-economic and political aspects of continuity and change within a particular ethnic group and across different ethnic groups. Data analysis suggests that mobility and stasis among the Kel Antessar and neighbouring Tuareg clans structure socio-economic and political relations with neighbouring Songhay, Fulani, buzu and Bambara while simultaneously extending beyond the local, regional and national level through networks of kin and friends working, studying and living in Africa, Europe, North America and the Middle East. The metaphor of the spider web used to distinguish and relate the concepts of travel and nomadism,26 as well as to study local kinship relations,27 expresses the similar work that anthropologists and people on the move undertake. The thread of the web links kin across local networks as well as beyond through other types of relations including trade, institutions, associations and other forms of organizations. Because of increased mobility, and variations of mobility, the web radiates out beyond local relations to encompass friends, clients and patrons further afield. This fact requires us to broaden anthropological perspectives and methods to encompass systematically all categories of mobility and stasis beyond the classical synchronic field research in one place. While itinerant ethnographies à la Clifford28 tend to be theoretically rather weak, a systemic approach to different categories of mobility allows one to map networks more precisely by following kin and other relations of individuals radiating out of a fixed locality to regional, national and transnational contexts. Ongoing strategies and patterns of mobility and stasis show that some actors opt to remain anchored in an urban centre, or in a settlement around a well either permanently or temporarily, while relatives move to other locations across networks of kin and friends scattered across both near and distant locations, in search of employment opportunities or to diversify their economic activities. This suggests that the existence of networks depends on both moving and staying in one place. Nuclei of kin residing in one locality are points, knots or nodes in the web to which movers can return if they so wish. Their presence ensures claiming rights over land and territories that represent, in the mind of those who stay and go, an imaginary homeland or territory (akal). While the political ideology of tumast was the bulwark of the 1963 rebellion, in the era of globalization

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increased mobility and the formation of translocal, transnational and cyber networks, as well as new ideals and values, are emerging and will be discussed in more depth in the next section. To sum up, networks are structures in themselves underlying the organization of Tuareg societies as a whole. Through them people and resources flow and actors mobilize kinship and other relations to negotiate their identities, values and interests. Their presence points to the importance of transcending the polarizing logic of nomadism and sedentarization, and of defining both mobility and stasis as actors’ strategies aimed at optimizing and/or coping with opportunities and constraints in everyday life. Having defined networks as structures in their own right, I shall now turn to discourses about purity and pollution to point out aspects of change brought about by actors’ experiences away from home, and their significance for internal relations. PURITY AND POLLUTION: THE POLITICS OF NOMADISM, ISLAM AND ‘TRADITION’ Are nomadism and travelling comparable phenomena?29 If so, further comparative research needs to be undertaken to generalize their analysis to all Tuareg societies. As far as Kel Antessar intellectuals and returnees are concerned, discourses about nomadism raise a sense of nostalgia for past wealth and sovereignty30 and, simultaneously, reflect an internal cultural divide between the ‘last nomads’,31 the kel ajama, or people of the bush, and return refugees and migrants. In this section I consider changes that emerged from comparing the kel ajama with returnees who moved back to the bush after living in refugee camps and towns to rejoin their kin, marry and establish residence. Contrasts and tensions between kel ajama and kel aŕrum (people of villages and cities)32 point to internal cultural divisions as well as increased administrative fragmentation in which kel ajama are increasingly being marginalized by local politics. Cultural aspects of change, more than local politics, are considered here by evoking Douglas’s concepts of purity and pollution, which Malkki33 applies to the discriminating attitudes of Tanzanian state authorities and citizens towards Hutu refugees who are considered a threat (like gypsies and nomads in other contexts) because they are from a different country and ethnic group. The case of the Kel Antessar shows how discrimination and stigmatization can occur between people who share the same blood

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and tradition even when no visible or enforced political boundary or state border divides them. Stayees see returnees, particularly women, as contaminating their culture and traditions with foreign behaviour and values they have acquired in cities and refugee camps through having experienced foreign cultures.34 This internal divide raises questions about how kel ajama define themselves in relation to exiles, migrants and refugees, even though in theory they are members of the same tawsit. It also raises the question of how, given increasing internal divisions and political fragmentation, all Tuareg still share the notion of tumast. Kel Antessar entrepreneurs and intellectuals describe their ‘nomad’ relations as poor, backward and trapped in a miserable existence. Nevertheless, they exalt in their ability to endure such an existence because if they did not their heritage and cultural identity as Tuareg would disappear. To help their kin survive in the bush, some migrants send remittances, lend or give livestock and provide support in cases of illness or other needs. Tuareg people who work in government or development agencies arrange access to international aid to build houses, schools, dispensaries and facilities such as water wells, solar panels and communications in the desert settlements in which their relatives reside. Kel ajama who have never left home see their returning relatives as corrupt and impure because of their exposure in cities and refugee camps to foreign values, diets, beliefs and behaviour. Some imams and marabouts among them assert their religious authority and enforce observance of religious practices. They preach the teachings of Islam with a view to reverting to a state of purity and moral order, to purge returnees of the secular and polluting influences that are manifest in poverty and disease. Some encourage men to embrace polygamy to increase progeny and restrain women.35 The returnees, by contrast, see the kel ajama as backward, ignorant and dirty. However, like migrants, they idealize nomadism as representing a state of purity, heritage and tradition, which they perceive as being threatened by change and in danger of disappearing. Visiting and returning young men and women migrants express joy on joining their relatives at home after a long absence. They also experience nostalgia in remembering aspects of life in the refugee camps and comforts of living in town houses. These youngsters are caught between tradition and global entrepreneurial values. They hope to develop businesses and attain individual prosperity, wealth and Western goods,

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such as sportswear, satellite dishes, computers and mobile phones. However, their aspirations are often frustrated, for they live in settlements that in most cases have no electricity or solar panels. Despite this, they dream of building cities in the desert where they can reproduce an urban lifestyle while at the same time protect their ‘nomadic’ heritage. The idealization of nomadism mentioned above is also manifest in gender relations and the type of spouse men seek. Male stayees and returning migrants seek young women in marriage who have never left the bush. Women in this category are sought after for their gentleness, beauty and good behaviour. Also, though silent, illiterate and submissive, they can cope in the bush without the help of female domestic slaves. They can cook, pound grain, make leather crafts and raise children. Despite the internal and external changes, this type of woman has, in the eyes of men, retained dignity, pride, purity and value. All generations of male stayees and returnees seek ‘traditional’ women in marriage, particularly when they are in their teens and have not yet been exposed to the outside world. They are obedient, respect traditional status and age hierarchies and observe relations of avoidance with their in-laws. They are reserved and feel shame in the presence of strangers and visitors. The only education they have received, if any, is in Koranic schools (taŕarbusht). A nomadic woman, or Walet Ajama, is associated with the ideal wife and mother for her purity of blood and beauty. Her duty is to transmit language, tradition and heritage to the next generation. In short, she must reproduce biologically and culturally. Furthermore, men seek such women in marriage because they lack resources to make high marriage payments (taggalt). Most unmarried men aged between 20 and 30 live with their parents or other close relatives. They are unemployed and have no economic assets of their own, particularly if they are orphans. Young women in the bush, unlike those born into the wealthy families of established civil servants, do not require high marriage payments. In many instances the taggalt of these women consists of a few thousand CFA, which an intermediary (usually the groom’s younger brother) offers to the bride’s parents. In most cases, the payment in cash is reinvested to buy the bride’s tent, while relatives contribute with small gifts in kind. Some young male returnees complain about the pressure from their parents or relatives to marry these young women. They say their parents and relatives want ‘to glue’ their daughters to them because, once a woman leaves her mother’s tent and joins her husband’s

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camp or settlement, she no longer has to be fed. Their husbands are responsible for their maintenance. Therefore, even though taggalt very rarely consists of livestock, and transhumance is no longer practised, a nomadic woman is still considered to be the ideal wife and mother. Female return migrants and refugees, especially if divorced, widowed or single and no longer in their teens, are not sought after in marriage. Most men regard women who married in refugee camps or while residing in cities, but divorced or lost their husbands during the conflict, as difficult, badly behaved, disobedient and unwilling to put up with the hardships of life in the bush. They blame the change in returnee women on their experiences in cities and refugee camps where they could socialize with large numbers of people and undergo training to help them establish small businesses and become economically independent of men. Similarly, women who had spent time in urban centres had socialized with women and men of other cultures and had acquired different dress codes, manners and ways of behaving. Illiterate men also denigrate women who have attended secular schools in towns, married and had children with men who are not Tuareg, or even worse have had unwanted pregnancies before marriage. In short, men do not respect this type of woman because in their eyes she knows no shame and has lost her value and dignity. Consequently, most female returnees in rural settings are socially vulnerable. Whether divorced, widowed or single they find it difficult to find a husband. Very few, apart from the widows of civil servants or army soldiers who receive their husbands’ pensions are economically independent. Women who manage to make a living out of petty commerce or selling leather crafts are extremely rare. The majority of widows and divorcees live on the margins of villages and settlements with their widowed mothers and children. Some have no other choice but to resort to begging. The majority of female returnees struggle to survive in their own society even when they reside in the proximity of their parents, brothers and uncles. This suggests that, because of their impoverishment, the status of ‘noble’ women is changing. It also suggests that kinship relations, social cohesion and reciprocity are breaking down. These female returnees yearn to leave the bush. They dream of escaping to towns in the hope of finding a husband to look after them, regardless of whether they are Tuareg or from other ethnic denominations. To this end some women expressed their willingness to accept any condition, including polygamy.

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In this section I have touched on some aspects of the cultural change in gender relations and marriage that emerged in comparing the discourses of stayees and returnees with particular emphasis on discourses informed by the idealization of nomadism. The discourses are enacted through the stigmatization and marginalization of female returnees. Such changes have repercussions on how men perceive women and their choice of spouse. Parallel and discrepant discourses on religious purity and material wealth are helping to reshape cultural, economic and political processes as well as Tuareg identities, as discussed further in the next and final section in relation to the marketing of a Tuareg brand. CROSSING LOCAL AND GLOBAL WORLDS At the crossroads of the trans-Saharan routes that link the Atlantic, Mediterranean and eastern shores, processes of creolization characterize most ethnic groups whose boundaries and identities have become increasingly more permeable to globalization. As such, Saharan and Sahelian Africa could be considered the cradle of globalization, the meeting and mixing of different people and cultures. At present, the Tuareg fit into a global context in which technology (solar panels, satellite communications and the World Wide Web) connects people across networks of relatives, friends and businesses throughout the globe and in cyber space. In this context, discourses on identity and related practices are rooted in the romanticization of nomadism as cultural heritage, and in the revival of values that are constantly being reinvented, contested and marketed in a variety of forms within Tuareg society and the rest of the world. How far technology and global communications alone are altering the underlying cultural and economic structures and processes of change among the Tuareg is open to question. New frameworks are required to deal with the problem of the Tuareg becoming global. There is a need to conceptualize mobility and networks and to demystify the Tuareg as a whole in the eyes of both anthropologists and Tuareg people. Pandolfi36 deconstructs some of the Tuareg stereotypes that colonialism, with help from some anthropologists, had been reproducing for decades. It would be erroneous to overlook the extent to which the Tuareg internalized the colonial order’s exotic and seductive imagery of the ‘blue men’. Either consciously or unconsciously, some Tuareg use the colonial stereotype to attract tourists and researchers and to make business. Other Tuareg, by contrast, express a sense of

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shame at seeing how their heritage, which includes their women, has been reduced to an object of consumption. There is no pride in that shame, only frustration at having no choice but to observe silently how their people have lost the power to avenge their honour. In the words of a retired school teacher: ‘The French have made a museum of the blue men. Now, even though the museum has run out of money, the Tuareg continue to pose like lifeless mannequins in a desert that no longer belongs to them.’ With reference to cultural aspects of change relating to mobility, contemporary nomadism has been redefined as the act of travelling both in geographical and cosmological terms.37 In line with a postmodernist, fragmented yet global world, Tuareg musicians, tourist operators and blacksmiths38 are being described as reaching out to world audiences whom they seduce with the re-enactment of exotic images and myths about ‘veiled men’. These images have reached the global screen through films, advertisements, literature and the internet. In the global era, the knights of the desert pose on their camels in front of video cameras to shoot advertisements of Brooklyn chewing gum, portraying white women being seduced by camel riding nomads in the Sahara desert. Volkswagen sells its four-wheel drive ‘Touareg’ all over the world and Tuareg ex-rebels have replaced their kalashnikovs with electric guitars. Tinariwen and other groups perform resistance songs at festivals in the desert and the rest of the world. Although Tuareg world music is commercially successful, it is questionable whether it is in fact sensitizing world audiences to the Tuareg political cause or helping to solve the real problems at home. These representations of the Tuareg on the global media contrast sharply with the hardship ordinary people experience in the bush. Hence, how far global Tuareg jewellery, art and technology will actually benefit vulnerable Tuareg women and children is an issue to be explored along with a series of other questions. How much of the profit from the sale of Tuareg jewellery, art and world music is reinvested in dispensaries, schools, wells and other facilities to help the guardians of the Tuareg heritage in the desert? What impact do the individual experiences of a few travelling smiths and musicians have on the Tuareg people as a whole? Some local people report that the Festival of the Desert benefits only a handful of organizers in Bamako and their cultural association. All that the local residents are left with are the empty bottles and litter the festival participants leave behind, the plastic and other pollutants that goats and

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sheep find to chew on and turn into milk. In fact, most local residents do not take part in the event at all because (a) they are not invited and (b) even if they were they would not be able to afford the tickets. Also, very few Kel Antessar ever manage to travel abroad. It would be a gross exaggeration to assume that the travel experiences of a few individuals have any impact at all on Kel Antessar and other Tuareg tawsetin. Kel Antessar female singers in a band called Tartit, and the aggu who accompany their songs and dances, do not represent the average Kel Antessar. They represent a privileged minority with little interest in sharing their profits with their poor kin in the desert. A more interesting example is that of a musician born into a well-known Kel Antessar family of agguten and a close cousin of the musician who plays in Tartit who, at the end of the conflict, returned to Essakane from a Mauritanian refugee camp. A few years ago the Malian minister of tourism at the time, a Kel Antessar woman, asked him to play at the African Craft Fair in Paris. He accepted and for a few days, along with other Africans selling their crafts, posed in his Tuareg costume under the dome of the former stock exchange building at Les Halles. He received very little money for his performance and could barely communicate with people because his French is poor. However, he made some new contacts with other Africans and extended his networks of friends and clients. To him his journey meant an opportunity to tell stories back home to his family and friends. These examples suggest that travelling away from home is an individual experience that cannot be generalized to all Tuareg. Travelling through spatial and social networks for trade, pilgrimages to Mecca or forced and voluntary migration have formed structures through which the system of mobility is reproduced. At present, Tuareg who are able to travel out of Africa are a minority and include only a privileged few: students and academics, development workers, traders, diplomats and very few artists. Traders and artists participate in cultural events and markets at which Tuareg music, crafts and food39 are displayed to attract consumers of exotic myths and goods. Can their journeys away from home be considered new forms of nomadism? If so, further study and analysis is necessary to explain their implications for change in Tuareg society as a whole. Some Tuareg men and women have internalized the romantic myth of nomadism and the blue men, which they use as a brand to market their products – jewellery, crafts, music and package holidays. The Tuareg brand is sold on the internet, at international music festivals, tourist

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agencies and traditional craft fairs. Those who remember the days when brands were used only to mark their livestock idealize and romanticize a past of military might, sovereignty and wealth that survives only as a distant memory to be evoked through poetic words and stories of extraordinary subtlety, humour, irony and discrimination, and that suggest a profound awareness of change. Although a minority of entrepreneurs appropriate and negotiate myths about Tuareg people and nomadism on the global scene, Tuareg crafts are sold on the internet, words and images connect literate Tuareg in cyberspace, and people’s strategies of mobility and stasis continue to link pastoralists, migrants, exiles, businessmen, entrepreneurs, refugees and the displaced. Crucially, in this context, discourses about nomadism have transformed nomads into an ideal of heritage and tradition. At the same time, the majority of real pastoralists in the bush have no alternative but to subsist on very few resources. Their reduced mobility is directly related to their visible impoverishment and political marginalization, since they no longer own their herds and depend on favours and support from their migrant relatives. In this section I have explored some issues relating to the problem of Tuareg becoming global, but these points require further attention and discussion. My aim here is to raise questions rather than provide answers and I deliberately wish to provoke a debate in view of the danger in anthropology of being led into the trap of producing fashionable postmodern narratives and itinerant ethnographies about global and fragmented worlds. Counter to this tendency, it is worth pausing to reflect on the extent to which this approach actually furthers our understanding of those aspects of change that increased mobility, stasis and globalization are now bringing to the surface. CONCLUSION By way of conclusion and in view of the themes chosen for this book, the points raised in this chapter suggest that neither pastoralism nor nomadism can be omitted from the study of contemporary Tuareg, even if they are moving global. Rather, the ‘last nomads’ have to be conceived of as being part of local and global contexts that they share with Tuareg migrants, return refugees, exiles and the displaced. However, more efforts are needed to revise theoretical frameworks and explore methodological approaches that can encompass all categories of mobility and stasis, and

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the variety of actors’ experiences that reproduce, contrast and extend across local and translocal networks. Anthropologists who work among the Tuareg have to revise their positions to consider the relationship between increased mobility and structural change. Drawing on field data, I suggest we adopt an integrated approach to mobility to encompass all variations and categories that together form social and spatial networks. These are structures in their own right and extend through local and global contexts. Separating the study of pastoralists, economic migrants and refugees can be misleading and limit our understanding of how Tuareg actors mobilize relations and resources through networks. This approach can be particularly helpful in tracing aspects of continuity and change as well as understanding how economic and human resources circulate from a fixed locality across an intricate and extended web of people in and out of Tuareg society and beyond.

4 Tuareg City Blues: Cultural Capital in a Global Cosmopole Baz Lecocq

In this chapter I attempt to formulate an answer to the main question underlying a research project on ‘Modern Nomadic Migrations’ I embarked on in 2003, which can be summarized as follows: does their cultural background give pastoral nomads an advantage over sedentary people in adapting to a globalizing world? Of course, this question needs to be made operational. In this chapter pastoral nomads are Kel Tamasheq. Given the subject of this book, I take it that terms like pastoral nomad, Kel Tamasheq and sedentary people need no further explanation. Things are different with respect to globalization. The current standard measure for accuracy or generality of a term is the Google hit, which for globalisation is 14,100,000, and for globalization 26,900,000. In other words, the term has been diluted to mean practically anything. In the good company of more eminent scholars, I therefore propose to reserve the term globalization for the material realm and to use the term cosmopolitanism to define and describe the social and cultural realm of human global interaction and adaptation. To answer the question of whether nomads have a cultural advantage over sedentary populations requires a contextualized comparison. I therefore spend much of this chapter discussing not the Kel Tamasheq, but comparing two large ad hoc constructed categories – ‘Westerners’ and ‘Africans’ – with the Kel Tamasheq. I realize that what I do here is, to some extent, like comparing the category fruit with that of apples. However, I do hold that in some respects Westerners or Africans are enough alike to be taken together if the initial interest is in seeing them as sedentary populations, which fits the vast majority of Westerners and Africans.

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ON GLOBALIZATION AND COSMOPOLITANISM I shall here follow a school of thought that largely reserves the term globalization for the economic and material world to which people are subjected, while using cosmopolitanism to describe the human world of discursive, social and economic practices constituting their agency in a globalizing world. In this sense, cosmopolitanism serves as a counterweight to globalization, although it too is partly derived from changes in the economic material world. I use the term cosmopolitanism instead of exile and diaspora – terms that have been widely used in the description of Kel Tamasheq contemporary society – because of its different meaning and connotations. Exile and diaspora both have political connotations linked to the nation or the national home from which one is forcibly removed. Of course such terms were, and are, still useful in the description and analysis of the political movement and nationalist ideology related to the Kel Tamasheq rebellions of the 1990s. However, the terminology has been linked in ongoing debates on the constitution of the cosmopolitan in ways that some Tamasheq political thinkers and spokespersons might endorse. According to Pollock and his fellow authors: Cosmopolitans today are often the victims of modernity, failed by capitalism’s upward mobility, and bereft of those comforts and customs of national belonging. Refugees, peoples of the diaspora, and migrants and exiles represent the spirit of the cosmopolitan community. Too often, in the West, these peoples are grouped together in a vocabulary of victimage and come to be recognized as constituting the ‘problem’ of multiculturalism to which late liberalism extends its generous promise of a pluralist existence. Cultural pluralism recognizes difference so long as the general category of the people is still fundamentally understood within a national frame. Such benevolence is often well intentioned, but it fails to acknowledge the critique of modernity that minoritarian cosmopolitans embody in their historic witness to the twentieth century.1 Although I am a bit astounded by the contradiction between the authors’ description of minoritarian cosmopolitans as victims and their criticism of them being depicted as such in ‘the West’, I endorse the second part of their statement. I also think that most Kel Tamasheq and

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other African minoritarian and marginal cosmopolitans would wholeheartedly and fully agree with the entire statement. But here I shall not deal with the functioning of Kel Tamasheq migrants within the nationalist inspired political domain of their own world. I shall focus on their adaptation to and interaction with transnational urban surroundings and their capacity to function successfully socially, economically and culturally. In that sense, cosmopolitanism can best be described with Ulf Hannerz’s definition of ‘competence, a personal ability to make one’s way into other cultures, through listening, looking, intuiting and reflecting’, as well as by a skill to manoeuvre through different systems of meaning.2 I derive my idea of globalization here from Mbembe’s view of it as a compression, domestication and utilization of space and the appropriation and domestication of world time in interlacing temporalities.3 More practically put, it is the growing global exchange of people, goods and ideas, facilitated by ever more rapid and cheaper means of mass communication, mass transportation, international treaties and law. This compression is not a new phenomenon, only its increasing scale and speed justify its noted importance in the present-day world. Left leaning scholars, in particular, see humans as subordinate or having been made subordinate to capital within globalization. At worst, they are seen as part of that capital (human resources or human capital), and at best as owning or controlling that capital. In this view, Africans in general and poor Africans such as the Kel Tamasheq especially, are strongly disadvantaged compared with Westerners who dominate the global scene and who are unwilling to delegate. This imbalance finds expression in Europe in discourses on illegal immigrants who come to ‘profit’ and against whom walls should be erected around ‘Fortress Europe’, and in Africa in discourses on Europe as a land of milk and honey, or a land that should seek redemption for its colonial sin by sharing its wealth. Against this image, I would like to place another observation, namely that over the previous century Westerners have lost a large number of assets useful to living a global cosmopolitan life, whereas Africans have kept these assets, expanded them and could now be putting them to use. These assets can be described as personal primary networks and the capacity to adapt. I would like to argue that the essential element shaping the participation of groups and individuals in patterns of globalization and the creation of the cosmopolitan is not to be found in forms of mobility,

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but in the shape, constitution and potential of human networks. It should be asked first of all not how people go where they go, but why they go where they go and, means of transport aside, how they get there. The principal answer as developed in migration studies, in fact one of the few answers migration scholars generally agree upon, tends to be because they know people there who asked them to come and told them how to get there. Most migration scholars also agree that in the Western world most mobility is capital intensive and induced in professional networks driven by finance, whereas in the rest of the world most mobility is capital extensive and induced in social networks, where social capital is the most important asset. This is where Africans have the advantage, or rather, where their global movements become more cosmopolitan than those of Westerners. I should nuance this statement immediately by indicating that by ‘the West’ I mean the northwestern Atlantic and the Australasian axis of Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. The (labour) migration of southeastern Europeans has much more in common with African labour migration than with that of the North Atlantic, with the exception of their legal status within the EU. GLOBALIZATION AND THE WEST Over the twentieth century, primary social networks, or social capital, have shrunk considerably in the Western world. Referring to Alain Touraine, Sennett points out that in the Western world: a class difference appears between those laborers – mostly immigrants in the informal, or ‘gray’, sectors of the economy – who find room for themselves in a fluid or fragmented economy and those traditional working-class people, once protected by pyramidal unions or employers, who have less room for manoeuvre. … The institutional model of the future does not furnish them a life narrative at work, or the promise of much security in the public realm. In the network society, their informal networks are thin.4 The retreat into the nuclear family, the severance of extended family ties and weakening notions of family support severely reduced network possibilities. Likewise, secularization has led to a reduced network of coreligionists and social (or even financial) support from the parish.5 Even work related networks have diminished in importance in a society more

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heavily geared to economic performance and short-term financial output than to social capital. Trade union memberships have declined in number over the past few decades in most European countries, leaving workers bereft of these contacts. The decreasing power of trade unions brought about by their inefficient reaction to the globalization of labour (through outsourcing and relocation) strengthens this trend of diminishing social capital. Traditional political networks have declined in size and importance. Most national political parties have seen a fall in their memberships, while even historically internationally-oriented labour and liberal parties have been unable to strengthen international contacts and collaboration, despite the opportunities European Union institutions have presented. On a larger historical scale too, opportunities for living a cosmopolitan life have shrunk considerably in the heartlands of the Western world because of the advance of the nation and nation-state, and the resulting demise of ethnic and linguistic diversity. The uniformity in culture instated by nationalist ideology and practice has only recently been challenged in many Western countries by migration patterns introducing new populations from culturally different backgrounds. Responses to this development vary between an explicit multicultural policy of mutual adaptation in Canada, to accommodation through ‘politically correct’ discourse in public space and ‘positive discrimination’ policies without challenging the supremacy of the dominant WASP culture in the USA, and an outright and hostile retreat into nationalist and xenophobic political discourse in western Europe. This leaves the shaping of Western global movement and cosmopolitanism to few domains. First, there is what has been labelled the ‘creative class’, a true cosmopolitan crew of artists, academics and product developers, who are prepared to seek inspiration in cultural crossover and the migration to cheap and bustling cities. Second, there is the world of global economics, finance and business. It has been noted that, although moving global, this particular class is homogenous in both its worldview and common culture, which is a ‘specialized and – paradoxically – rather homogenous transnational culture, [with] a limited interest in engaging defined spaces in global cities’.6 This group has been labelled ‘cosmocrats’, a financial global elite that is mobile but, in its utter stereotype, inhabits a uniform space of internationally standardized airports, hotels and workspaces, eats an international diet of sushi, cabernet sauvignon and latte

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macchiato, ‘works out’ and plays golf.7 These two particular global or cosmopolitan lifestyles are fully dependent on professional networks and can only expand within that professional realm. Other networks cannot be included in this lifestyle. A last option to a global or cosmopolitan mobility is tourism. Neither network possibilities nor active economic participation characterize this particular movement. Rather, it is a strictly consumptive and transactional form of movement. It can be argued that it is not cosmopolitan as defined above, for the only agency involved is a travel agency. The last two important settings of Western global mobility are the interconnected domains of development, humanitarian aid and military missions. Of the aid world, it can be said that it entails a truly cosmopolitan setting where local victims and global aid organize an encounter in which both need to adapt to an unknown cultural and physical condition. Yet closer scrutiny of the humanitarian world learns that aid encounters are similar, not to say uniform, worldwide and largely dominated by Western principles of organization and discourses on need. In many ways, the encounter is unilateral. The last domain is that of military missions. All missions, whether legitimized by international law or not, are based on Western geopolitical hegemony, organization and discourse. Most UN-endorsed peacekeeping missions involve a majority of non-Western troops, but here too Western hegemony and the unilateral encounter are visible in the structure of the military camp, where the centre is formed by military equipment and troops from the West, surrounded by a ring of non-Western troops and an outer periphery of locally hired mercenary security personnel at the gates.8 In short, due to their perceived hegemony in globalization processes, the cosmopolitan encounters of the Western world are unilaterally hegemonic and largely take place in homogenous, uniform settings, created by the West, requiring the non-Westerners involved to adapt to Western perceptions, discourses, practices and tastes. COSMOPOLITANISM AND THE REST It has been argued that cosmopolitanism originates in a confluence of Western nationalism and imperialism, and is twinned with Christian missionary zeal, of which development work and even the present-day capitalist belief in the blessings of the free world market are offshoots.9 I would like to argue, however, that those Africans and other non-

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Westerners who do not partake in the encounters sketched above have options to engage in other forms of cosmopolitan mobility that are specific to their own conditions and the shape of their networks. We can indeed discern between cosmopolitanism from above and from below. The number of Africans partaking in the ‘cosmocrat’ lifestyle is, although not entirely absent, limited. The same holds true for the number of Kel Tamasheq adhering in one way or another to this lifestyle. They are limited, but not entirely absent. Again, this also holds true for the creative classes, where numbers of Kel Tamasheq participate. In this category of Kel Tamasheq cosmopolitans one can place Kel Tamasheq travel agents and inadan catering to a Western clientele in the West itself, and students pursuing their education in France, the Middle East, eastern Europe or China. Contrary to the European experience, primary social networks have only expanded for Africans over the past century. The extended family is still a fully functional social and economic unit of mutual support that extends further into village, ward or tribal affiliation and, beyond that, into ethnic solidarity, where Europeans only rely on a vague recognition of national solidarity. Religious networks have greatly expanded too. Both Christian and Muslim missionary activity since the eighteenth century has enlarged the possibilities for Africans to partake in global networks of solidarity. Pentecostal and revivalist Christian organizations from the Americas promulgate their activities in Africa, creating new religious cosmopolitan practices in which Africans partake. The recent activity of Da’wa organizations, such as the Tabliŕi Jama’at, among the Kel Tamasheq, have expanded both their knowledge of the religious practices of a global grassroots Muslim fundamentalism and their global horizon towards South Central Asia.10 African labour migration has been sufficiently studied to be taken for granted here as a given. What should be stressed, however, is that this migration is not limited to Europe and the USA. There is a long history of labour migration within Africa and since the 1960s there has been growing migration towards the Arabian Peninsula.11 These labour migrations create other cosmopolitan settings of importance, especially in the Kel Tamasheq world, where labour migration to Algeria and Libya dates from the 1950s, preceded by a much older migration towards the Arabian Peninsula, which grew out of the performance of hijra at the eve of colonial conquest and the performance of the hajj since time immemorial.12 There is an important difference between African and Western

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labour migration with regard to the structures that inform, shape and finance them. As noted above, Western labour migration is capital intensive and company driven and financed. It is an overstatement that Westerners only travel abroad for a limited period to do a job for the company for which they work and that the company pays for their travels. True, a minority of eastern Europeans perform migrations akin to those described below for Africans. The majority of eastern Europeans travel for restricted periods to Western countries to perform seasonal jobs. Their expenses are often partly paid for by a hiring company or interim organization that has mediated their job before departure. African labour migration is even more capital intensive if one looks at relative budgets and costs, but where in Western labour migration capital is seen as production cost, in African migration it is an investment by a social network and is employment driven. It is an exaggeration to say that Africans migrate for unknown periods of time to look for jobs they do not yet have. The setting of their migration and travels is not that of a company, but of a primary network: it is that of ethnic belonging, as in the case of the Sarakole network providing labour to the Parisian sanitation industry, or religion-based organizations such as the Senegalese Mouridiyya brotherhood. Kel Tamasheq labour migrations stand out in two particular ways, though they generally fit with African labour migration patterns. The first is that, depending on their destination, their mobility is at a relatively low cost, the exceptions being migrations to Europe, which are rare, and to Saudi Arabia, which are more common.13 Many people travel large distances on foot or by animal (camel or donkey). Many migratory itineraries are long in time, with relatively long stays along the way. It can easily be argued that this particularity has part of its origin in nomadic culture, where people are used to travelling long distances over a lengthy period of time with intermediary stopping points. The second particularity, shared with people with similar social structures, is that for the most part Kel Tamasheq migration in the Maghreb and West Africa is organized through tribal networks. It is for instance striking that a vast number of Kel Tamasheq herdsmen in Niamey who are not Kel Niger, are from kel ulli and related imŕad tribes from the former Tengueregif federation of the Niger bend. Kel Tamasheq migration expenses are partly paid by their direct family through the sale of livestock – aŕan meddan (paternal male cousins) would most likely function as a primary

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financial network – but more generally finance and other support comes from a larger tribal network. THE WEST AND THE REST COMPARED Since the twentieth century, people in Western cultures have characteristically lived in nuclear families. As sketched above, ties of solidarity with the extended family or neighbourhood have been weakened, while the elite practice of sending children to boarding schools has generally ceased. Only increasing divorce rates since the second half of the twentieth century have mitigated the primacy of the nuclear family. This means that many Westerners have been raised in successive recombinant nuclear families, which, in general, they leave to live by themselves for a period of time before starting their own nuclear families. Westerners are not used to leaving home to move and change networks and, like all human beings, experience stress in doing so. Africans, on the contrary, have more experience of living in larger families, of changing environments and of being separated from their loved ones from a young age. The practice of having children raised by parents in other places is widespread. In Chad and other parts of the Sahel, it is common to send children en route with an itinerant marabout as part of their education.14 It is even more common for advanced students in Islam to move from city to city, and from teacher to teacher to perfect their knowledge. Compared with Westerners, Africans seem to have more experience of changing primary networks and social settings from a young age. This seems to me a possible cultural advantage in a globalizing world. But being used to changing networks is not the same as leaving networks altogether. African sedentary cultures are characterized by a strong communal sense. Debates on the perception of the body and the individual, and on identity and transactional relations (gift giving), in Africa and elsewhere have focused on the relative absence of individualism in cultures impregnated with notions of dividuality and communality.15 All forms of cosmopolitan movement, Western or African, have one element in common. They involve movement towards the topographical and social extremes of one’s world. That is, if we visualize a social network as a web spread in space, global or cosmopolitan mobility means leaving the centre position of one’s social network to move to the periphery, where the network is thin, and dependency unequally balanced between those who move and those who are already there. Another common element is solitude.

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What sets the cosmopolitan apart from other travellers is the need to deal with the culturally and socially unknown, with alterity as defined by Simmel, in order not just to survive in one’s new environment but to enlarge one’s network and to enhance one’s social, cultural and economic success.16 Successful cosmopolitans are those who are able to acquaint themselves with the other, who ‘cross over’. This crossing over, as all anthropologists know, entails uncertainty, dependency and loneliness. Moving away from the known world causes stress and unease in every human being because we are principally set on a status quo. Human beings dislike being unsettled. Those who think this would be different for nomads – unbound, always roaming and the epitome of freedom – should recognize that nomads, like all human beings, have a home, a stable position and a social network that holds a centre. Exactly these experiences and how people deal with them are decisive in successful adaptation to new surroundings and cosmopolitan success. To put it bluntly, Africans are far less exposed to loneliness and the retreat into the individual than Westerners, and since globalization entails individualization and loneliness, Africans are disadvantaged. Kel Tamasheq largely share mobile experiences with other Africans, but there is one notable exception; their exposure to and way of dealing with loneliness, and their perception of the individual, is closer to the Western experience of dealing with loneliness and abandonment, or having the blues. TUAREG BLUES I would like to argue that the key advantage nomad pastoral Kel Tamasheq have over sedentary Africans is that from an early age they are taught to deal with loneliness, to experience solitude in facing the unknown. Dealing with esuf is the key element that equips Kel Tamasheq for the cosmopolitan experience. In fact, esuf is such a crucial experience in their life that it has engendered a huge amount of poetry.17 Writing poetry about esuf while experiencing it is a recommended and often used method of dealing with and overcoming the sentiment. Esuf is a complex term in Tamasheq. It stands for the unknown, the wilderness and solitude. Solitude can be caused by being alone in an unknown place or by the absence of loved ones through death or separation. Esuf also means space still to be conquered from nature and made inhabitable and social.18 Conquering this space implies a confrontation with the unknown. At the other end of the spectrum of its meaning is the

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emotional experience of solitude, of being alone in the unknown, cut off from the social world and cultural realm. Each new pasture that has not been exploited before is situated in esuf; to reconnoitre this pasture one has to experience esuf because one has left socialized space. Tamasheq boys, and to a lesser extent girls, are trained at a relatively young age to endure emotional solitude by being sent into the bush, into (to them) unknown areas, to look for stray animals or to herd animals in smaller groups than in the surroundings of the camp. In later phases of life, young men can experience esuf in looking for new pastures. Caravan trade too is connected to esuf in the full spectre of the term, for caravans traverse the wilderness, unknown undomesticated space, and this brings the experience of esuf to the drivers. Hence, esuf and city life have indirectly always been connected through the caravan trade. From my understanding of Kel Tamasheq culture so far, the practice of herding in general is excluded from the experience of esuf, with the exception mentioned above of children in training. Amadal, the pasture, is part of the social world and not of the wilderness. It is, very literally, domesticated space. Although the herdsman is lonely in his profession, in general his loneliness is not based on being removed from the domesticated world. Herdsmen can of course experience esuf in its other meaning, namely an emotion stemming from the experienced absence of loved ones, especially the departed. Nevertheless, the experience of herding is also part of the same range of nomad pastoral culture that sets them apart from the sedentary global mover. It is generally accepted in anthropology that pastoral nomad culture is decisively more individualistic than most peasant cultures.19 It is also a generally accepted theory that modern global existence is based on a culture of individualism, which finds its origins in the Western individualization of society.20 TUAREG CITY Globalization and cosmopolitism are essentially and practically urban phenomena. Most agricultural communities are affected by economic globalization, which they might resist or endorse, but very few are consciously cosmopolitan. It would be historically wrong to describe Tamasheq culture strictly within the rural world of pastoral nomads and to depict it as disconnected from various genealogies of globalization and cosmopolitan encounters. Kel Tamasheq society has always had urban and agricultural dimensions. There is a long tradition of horticulture in desert

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areas, partly abandoned or destroyed under colonial rule in some regions, such as the Adagh, but stimulated in others, such as the Aïr Mountains where it is now a blossoming sector.21 In Chapter 6 of this book, Dida Badi points to the sedentary horticultural origins of Kel Tamasheq political structure. Then there have long been Tamasheq agricultural communities, such as the iklan n egef (sedentary slave communities). Since the end of colonial rule, and especially since the droughts of the late-twentieth century, sedentarization has been high on national and international agendas, with mixed results. The number of sedentary, farming Kel Tamasheq is slowly rising. The historicity of sedentary existence aside, pastoral nomadic existence too is closely connected to urbanity in the Sahara and Sahel. As hardly anything is produced in the nomad pastoral economy apart from meat, skins and livestock, and the dairy products that were rarely sold prior to the droughts of the 1970s, nomads depend on city markets to procure most of their necessities. As Gerd Spittler shows in this volume, in which he describes the historical developments of Kel Tamasheq dress, most if not all items of clothing were procured from both sides of the Sahara through the caravan trade or the trade in livestock on the markets of the Sahel and Sahara. Kel Ewey, Kel Ferwan, Ahl Arwane and other caravan drivers and merchants have lived in Timbuktu, Taoudennit, In Salah, Agadez, Bilma, Teguida n Tesimt, Kano, Ghat, Murzuq and Tripoli for centuries, directing part of their pastoral occupation explicitly towards breeding caravan camels. In fact, the caravan trade is all about the connection of urban centres. Caravans traverse the desert to arrive at cities. It is a part of cosmopolitan city culture par excellence. It is interesting to note that the Tuareg-inhabited lands of the Sahara and Sahel are exactly those that are characterized by a long history of urban culture and identity. Some of the oldest cities of sub-Saharan Africa, such as Gao and Agadez, are part of the Tuareg world. Ruins of cities in the Sahara such as Essuq Tademekkat and Tamentit are further evidence of a long urban tradition of which the Kel Tamasheq form an integral part.22 The historicity of Kel Tamasheq city dwelling is documented to at least the tenth century AD, if one acknowledges that the Tanamak, the inhabitants of Essuq Tademekkat described in Ibn Hauqal’s Kitâb Surat alArd were Sanhaja.23 The Berber Masufa Sanhaja inhabitants of fourteenthcentury Iwalatan (present-day Walata) were very closely related to the Kel Tamasheq. This becomes clear in the description Ibn Battuta gives of their

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gender relations and matrilineal inheritance rights, as well as female ownership of the nearby saltmines.24 Even seemingly colonial cities have deeper histories. The city of Kidal, the colonial and post-colonial capital of the Adaŕ in Mali is often thought of as founded and created by the French. However, the foundation of the city is ascribed locally to the Dabakar, who have since moved, but who used the oasis as a date grove and had small allotments of tobacco and peppers there, besides stone houses that might date back to the same era as Essuq Tademekkat; Tessalit too was a village and a zâwiya to the Kunta Cheick Bay ould Sidi Omar al-Kunti with a considerable date grove of around 6000 trees prior to the colonial conquest. The historical link between Kel Tamasheq and city life becomes even more evident in the name Kel Essuq. The name is quite particular in referring to a group of not necessarily related ineslemen tribes that derive their identity from Islamic learning. Their name refers directly to the city of Essuq Tademekkat, which they all claim as their place of origin. Hence, in Tamasheq discourse, as in that of many other people, Muslim scholarship is intimately linked to urban culture. Inversely, the leading lineage of the Moorish Ahl Arawane, townsmen who live mainly in the town of Araouane, claim not to be Arab, but Tamasheq, and call themselves Kel Arawane, claiming Kel Essuq ancestry. In short, city, trade, Sahara, Sahel, the wider Muslim world and Kel Tamasheq culture have been historically enmeshed for at least a millennium. TUAREG CITY BLUES The Kel Tamasheq need not necessarily own or rent houses in the city to be present there. Heinrich Barth described how his host Cheick Bekaye, admittedly a Kunta Moor, had both a house in Timbuktu and a camp three hours away from the city where most of his family was lodged and where he stayed regularly. In a way, one can describe this relationship to the city as ‘suburban’, but certainly part of the city’s affairs. This particular attitude towards the city and this style of lodging is still practised today. Eŕless ag Foni, the former governor of the Kidal Région, for example, lived in a campsite 25 kilometres away from the city of Kidal and ‘commuted’ between his residence and the city by car. Location can be irrelevant in global and cosmopolitan networks and lifestyles. The cosmopolitan element in a location is situated in divergence, not locus. This holds true as much for Kel Tamasheq cosmopolitan experi-

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ences as it does for others. To the Kel Tamasheq, the diverging experience creating cosmopolitanism is situated in the polis. The urban lifestyle of wage labour, living in a house, dietary and vestimentary habits, is significant for their global experience. Primary among Kel Tamasheq migrants who had an explicit understanding and agency in the transformation of their culture towards an urban society were the ishumar of the 1970s and 1980s, who explicitly sought to transform Kel Tamasheq cultural practices.25 But was the teshumara a cosmopolitan culture? The teshumara was an explicit attempt to transform Kel Tamasheq society and culture and to adapt it to its new urban and (internally defined as) ‘modern’ surroundings. Particular discourses gained from travelling far and often, such as prestige, can easily be qualified as cosmopolitan. The prestige gained from duping the nationstate by acquiring multiple passports is already a more internal political discourse in that it was justified by the fact that all these states had ‘occupied’ Kel Tamasheq territory, akal n temust. Thus, it expressed an internal nationalist discourse. An important part of the teshumara narrative is a sentiment of exclusion from the new world in which they lived. They experienced what Georg Simmel26 observed about alterity or, in German, fremdheit. This narrative is not exclusive to the teshumara. Even now one can listen to narratives of alterity inside the akal n temust.27 Thus, the teshumara quickly turned away from a cosmopolitan perspective and inwards towards a political nationalist or separatist project that explicitly excluded other dissident groups. Then this nationalist project quickly turned into a regionalist or tribalist project in which Kel Tamasheq sought to exclude Moors, after which the Kel Adaŕ sought to exclude other regional groups and in which, finally, Ifuŕas fought bitterly for hegemony within the organization.28 Yet, in the post-rebellion period, as Ines Kohl shows in this volume, the teshumara transformed again towards a more cosmopolitan and far less nationalist outlook, exemplified in transnational labour migration and, especially, the facilitation of the migration of other Africans along the trans-Saharan roads. This change in perspective is further made clear by the current events in northern Niger, where the Niger Movement for Justice is largely formed by Kel Tamasheq, but explicitly leaves aside any ethnonationalist claims, focusing instead on economic and ecological demands, and incorporating other dissident groups, primarily from the army.29 Kel Tamasheq city dwellers are of course not immune to esuf. On the contrary, they experience and express it. Especially the absence of loved ones is hard for those who stay in a particular place for a particular reason.

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But leaving the city too can be a source of esuf. Women cry when saying their goodbyes to hosts or relatives with whom they have stayed for a considerable amount of time. But this esuf is not necessarily related to being in the city. People who usually reside in one place and then find themselves in another experience esuf over those who are now absent, but the city does not necessarily cause esuf itself. Of course, people may not experience esuf if they move to cities that are near their original social space, where more relatives have settled. In most Saharan cities one will find neighbourhoods largely inhabited by one particular tribe. In cities with a predominantly Tamasheq population, one sees this more poignantly. In Kidal, for example, the Ifuŕas dominate the Aliou neighbourhood, while Idnan and imŕad inhabit Intekoua. Only the city centre of Etambar is a mixed place. The Tudu neighbourhood in Agadez, where newly arrived Tamasheq from the Aïr are installed, is also divided by tribal affiliation into particular wards, such as Pays-Bas and Soweto. Here, the presence of kith and kin is assured, but esuf n akal, the longing for one’s place of origin, can occur lightly among the less cosmopolitan oriented. In their formidable overview of Tuareg culture, Johannes and Ida Nicolaisen point to the longstanding traditions of sedentary urban dwellings in their meticulous description of various types of stone, mud, brick and thatch houses. They also point out, however, that the vast majority of Kel Tamasheq live in portable dwellings.30 It should be recognized that, despite everything said here about historical city culture, horticulture and the cosmopolitan caravan trade, the vast majority of Kel Tamasheq have been pastoral nomad herdsmen. Contrary to what a first impression might lead one to think, I think that the nomadic pastoral lifestyle as Kel Tamasheq herdsmen practise it makes them particularly unfit for a global cosmopolite urban life. The knowledge and experience of a pastoral nomad is far removed from those called for in the big city. The world moves, we sit in ashes We herd our camels in the desert Learning to ply rope and fetters While we play tinde and ride up high The world goes up to the stars Makes rockets to go to the planets Goes towards the future, lives in oceans The TV shows things gone by, shows dead things

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Teaches all children, one after the other Mine, I teach them herding While she sits down to teach them begging.31 Kel Tamasheq have a very strongly developed concept of ‘home’, which is a regular cycle of places in time, where camp is set up in a particular form and spatial organization (depending also on wealth). Cycles of transhumance are more or less stable depending on climatic and ecological conditions. Only in times of need do they veer off the beaten track. The transhumance became further regulated and restricted under colonial rule, with nomadization permits and the delimitation of particular areas in which a particular tribe or Groupe nomade could dwell. Permission was needed to go outside these areas. By the end of the colonial era, and even more so afterwards, these internal borders had become fully internalized. With decentralization in both Mali and Niger, new forms of political and economic territorialization have been introduced that lead to both a further restriction of transhumance cycles and a reinforced sense of territorial belonging and locality.32 In urban spaces, depending on the wealth of the household, the same accommodation and appropriation of space take place, albeit with different elements. Many former pastoral nomads will combine previous elements of setting up camp in their new urban houses. In most Saharan cities, the courtyard is the central space and, if possible, they simply pitch their tent there. If there are trees in the courtyard, utensils and luggage bags (techekwat) containing foodstuffs or clothes are kept in them, as they would be in the bush. Some may only use the house, especially if it is a small one, as a storage place for precious possessions. Tamasheq who originally lived in leather tents practically always decorate the inner walls of the house with an esabar (or shitek), the long mat made of afazo grass and leather strips that serves as a windshield around the tent. They hang bags and pouches of various types on the walls. In Bamako, it is customary for wealthy city dwellers from northern Mali to use a salt plate from Taoudenni ornamentally, either as a table or lampshade. The large sideboard in wealthier households everywhere is invariably filled with knickknacks that have replaced other items of the classical bridal trousseau. The furniture is then completed with a set of Western style sofas (which are hardly ever sat on, but used as back supports when sitting on the ground), and/or Oriental style wall benches and the inevitable television set. This

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interior decoration contains elements of both esuf and cosmopolitanism. Undoubtedly, the elements of a nomadic lifestyle alleviate the alienation, the esuf, of living indoors in the city. Even if I wanted to live in a house, Always locked with a key, Where there is no cooling breeze. The body does not benefit from its shade. It has no use, only resignation.33 However, whether or not they feel at home in a house or tent, largely depends on whether they share it with strangers or loved ones. Networks are all decisive. BY WAY OF CONCLUSION A mobile global cosmopolitan way of life depends less on transport or other forms of mobility (though particular forms of transport can in part characterize it) than on access to networks. The trend towards individualization in the Western world in the second half of the twentieth century has severely reduced and transformed the primary networks of the individual, and the extent to which she or he can depend on what is left of it. In practice, only tourism and the corporate environment remain. The nature of tourism or corporate mobility, its portals and the financial security involved, largely restrain true cosmopolitan exchange. Africans, on the contrary, have seen their primary networks expand and adapted to provide social and economic use in their global mobility. African global mobility is less capital intensive and, in the case of economic mobility, depends not only on existing primary networks but also on positive interaction with local populations. In that sense, African global movement is truly cosmopolitan. However, because the Western world largely dictates the process of economic globalization, adaptation needs to involve a certain measure of adjustment to Western cultures and lifestyles, which are only mitigated by cosmopolitan social and cultural exchange. This global cosmopolitan existence is largely set in urban surroundings. Hence, adaptation to the urban world is crucial to success in the global world. Kel Tamasheq have a longstanding connection to urban life and Tamasheq culture is indeed partly urban in its history and in its present

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form. However, the (declining) majority of Kel Tamasheq still have a rural pastoral nomadic background. The pastoral nomadic life of the Sahara brings very few advantages to the new urban global and cosmopolitan surroundings. The skills and competences needed to survive in the Sahara are of little or no use for survival in the concrete jungle, which requires modern education and other modern skills. Other African newcomers to the global urban world share these disadvantages. Kel Tamasheq people have one particular cultural trait that might give them an advantage over other Africans in the global cosmopole: esuf, a pronounced sense of individualism, or rather, the appreciation of individual action within a network and the acknowledgement that loneliness is tough but unavoidable, and something with which to cope. As Western patterns partly shape globalization, it can be expected that individualism, esuf, is a shaping cultural force in the global cosmopolitan world.

5 Foreign Cloth and Kel Ewey Identity Gerd Spittler

Kel Ewey caravaneers who live in the Aïr Mountains always had close contacts with other ethnic groups: with the Arabs in the north, the Hausa in the south, and the Kanuri in the east. The Kel Ewey were familiar with foreign clothing. How did they react to it? Did it impress them? Did they imitate it? Or did they resist the foreign influence? I shall first give an outline of Kel Ewey clothing in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and then go on to attempt an explanation. My sources are European travellers who visited the Kel Ewey, and my own observations made among the Kel Ewey of Timia since the 1970s. Starting in the lateeighteenth century they were as follows: • • • • • • • • • • •

Friedrich Hornemann in Murzuq, Fezzan (1798) George Francis Lyon in Murzuq, Fezzan (1819) Heinrich Barth in Tintellust and Agadez (1850) James Richardson in Tintellust, Aïr (1850) Erwin von Bary in Ajirou, Aïr (1877) Fernand Foureau in Iferouane, Auderas and Agadez (1899) C. Jean in Agadez (1904) Angus Buchanan in the Aïr (1921) Francis R. Rodd in the Aïr (1922) Johannes Nicolaisen in the Aïr (1955) Gerd Spittler in the Aïr (1976–2006)

KEL EWEY MEN’S CLOTHING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY For over 1000 years, Arab travellers and historians have given us accounts of the ‘People of the Veil’. In these descriptions the veil worn by men always figures prominently. It is the origin of the name given to these

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groups – Mulathamin. Among European travellers, Hornemann was the first to provide a description of the Tuareg at the end of the eighteenth century. Coming from Cairo, he arrived in Murzuq in 1798 where he saw Tuareg traders from the Ahaggar and from the Aïr (Kel Ewey). He notes that the Tuareg are a mighty people, whose territory covers the Sahara from Morocco in the west to Tibesti in the east. He connects the language of the Tuareg with that of the oasis of Siwa. Linguists afterwards used the words he collected as the basis for the argument that the languages in the Moroccan Atlas and Siwa are related. Hornemann speaks in very positive tones about the Tuareg, and especially the Kel Ewey: These are thin in growth, rather tall than short; their walk is swift but firm; their look is stern, and their whole demeanour is warlike. Cultivated and enlightened, their natural abilities would render them, perhaps, one of the greatest nations of earth. Their character (particularly that of Kolluvi [Kel Ewey]) is much esteemed.1 Hornemann describes the clothing of the Tuareg as follows: ‘The clothing of this nation consists of wide dark-blue breeches, a short narrow shirt of the same colour, with wide sleeves. … They wind a black cloth round their head in such a manner that at a distance it appears like a helmet, for their eyes only are seen.’2 In view of this description, the copper engraving in his book is surprising. There, the Kel Ewey and Kel Ahaggar are not wearing veils but a pointed cap. Their face is not covered. It may be that they did not wear their veils because they were relaxing in their camp. However, it is unlikely that this picture is based on a sketch by Hornemann. The picture appears neither in the first German edition of 1802 nor in the first English edition of the same year, but only in the second German edition of 1803. It is probably not based on a sketch by Hornemann but drawn from the imagination of an artist who had disregarded Hornemann’s description.3 Some 20 years after the publication of Hornemann’s journal, Lyon’s A narrative of travels in northern Africa in the years 1818–20 was published. Lyon also went to Murzuq and was very impressed there by the Tuareg, who came with caravans from Katsina, Agadez and Ghat: ‘They are the finest race of men I ever saw.’ They behave proudly, even in the presence of the Sultan of Fezzan: ‘They never kiss the hand as other Mohammedans do, not even that of the Sultan himself, but advance, and, taking the hand,

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shake it, and then retire, standing erect, and looking him full in the face – a striking contrast of manners to that of the natives of Fezzan.’4 Lyon describes their clothing in detail: Their costume is very remarkable, and they cover their faces as high as the eyes, in the manner of women on the sea-coast. Their original motive for doing so is now forgotten; but they say it must be right, as it was the fashion of their forefathers. This covering extends as high as half way up the bridge of the nose, from whence it hangs down below the chin on the breast, much in the same way (but longer) as crepe or lace is hung to a lady’s half mask. This cloth is generally of blue glazed cotton; but yellow, red white, and many other colours are worn according to taste, or the ability of the wearer to purchase them. … Their red caps are generally very high but some wear yellow or green ones, fitted close to the head: others have no caps at all. … All wear turbans, which are never of any fixed colour: blue is the most common and cheap; but gaudy hues are preferred. A large loose shirt … called Tobe, is the common dress; it is of cotton, generally blue, or blue and white, and is of their own manufacture, although some wear those of the Sudan, which are considered the best that are made. The merchants generally dress very gaudily while in the towns, wearing kaftans of bright red cloth, or very gay silk and cotton striped, which they procure from the Tripoline traders. A leather kaftan is also much worn, of their own manufacture, as are leather shirts of the skins of antelopes, very neatly sewed, and well prepared.5 Lyon, who often conversed with Tuareg in Murzuq, first gives a detailed description of the veil, which he several times compares with women’s veils. Further, he describes the other garments and their variations. He also shows an interest in the origin of these garments. Some, especially those made of leather, are made by the Tuareg themselves, while others come from the Sudan, in other words Hausaland, or from Tripolitania. Lyon’s book contains three lithographs showing Tuareg men. They were produced on the basis of drawings made by Lyon. Each picture bears the remark: ‘Drawn from Nature by G. F. Lyon’. In precolonial times, home-made leather clothing was widespread in many Tuareg areas. It was still common among poor Kel Ahaggar at the

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Lithograph showing a Tuareg wearing a leather shirt and a Tuareg from Agadez (Lyon, A narrative of travels in Northern Africa in the years 1818–1820, p. 110).

beginning of the twentieth century.6 For the Kel Ewey, on the other hand, leather clothing is only mentioned in connection with children and during times of crisis like the Kawsen war (1916–18). During the whole of the nineteenth century, the Kel Ewey wore cloth imported from the south or from the north. That they also wore coloured clothes is mentioned not only by Hornemann and Lyon, but also by Barth and Richardson, who visited the Kel Ewey in their home area, the Aïr. After his first meeting with the Kel Ewey in the Aïr, Barth comments on how they differ from the Ahaggar Tuareg: ‘Their dress was more gay, several of them wearing light blue instead of the melancholy-looking dark blue tobes.’7 The German edition contains an additional remark: ‘Their headdress was made higher by a band of white cloth with a red stripe.’8 Richardson and Barth report that the Kel Ewey wear green caps on their heads, like those worn by the Hausa (baki n zaki), around which the turban is wound. According to Richardson, in the mid-nineteenth century, wealthy Kel Ewey in the Aïr were still wearing the coloured clothing originating from the North African coast that Lyon described at the beginning of the century: ‘The great men, and indeed all those that can

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afford it, despise the simple Kailouee costume, and indulge in all the rich dresses which are so much liked by the Moors of the coast, burnouses, shasheahs, turbans, veneeses, caftans, tobes of silk’.9 Some also wear coloured trousers. Barth describes the clothing that wealthy Kel Ewey wore during the feast of the sacrifice of the ram in Agadez on 16 October 1850: The people were all dressed in their greatest finery, and it would have formed a good subject for an artist. It recalled the martial processions of the Middle Ages, the more so as the high caps of the Tawarek, surrounded by a profusion of tassels on every side, together with the black tesigelmist, or litham, which covers the whole face, leaving nothing more than the eyes visible, and the shawls wound over this and round the cap, combine to imitate the shape of the helmet, while the black and coloured tobes (over which, on such occasions the principle people wear a red burnus thrown across the shoulders) represent very well the heavier dress of the knights of yore.10 In a footnote, Barth adds an interesting comment: ‘These red caps, however, are an article quite foreign to the original dress of the Tarki, and are obnoxious to the tribes of pure blood.’11 However, unlike the German edition,12 the English edition of Barth fails to mention the garment most prized at this festival, the ‘guinea fowl robe’ (tekatkat taylelt). In the English edition, Barth gives a description some pages later: All the Tawarek, from Ghat as far as Hausa, and from Alakkos to Timbuktu, are passionately fond of the tobes and trousers called taylelt (the guinea fowl), or filfil (the pepper) on account of their speckled color. They are made of silk and cotton interwoven, and look very neat. The lowest part of the trousers, which forms a narrow band about two inches broad, closing rather tightly, is embroidered in different colors.13 These dark-blue or indigo tobes were made in Hausaland and in Nupe, and they were very expensive (18,000 to 20,000 cowries). Barth himself could not afford one of these garments, which were very popular among both the Hausa and the Tuareg, until more money arrived for him in

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Guinea fowl robe (Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika, p. 593).

Kano. He sent samples to the Foreign Office in London. A fine example, which is illustrated as a woodcut in the English edition, is kept today in the Ethnographic Museum in Berlin, and can be seen as a photograph in an exhibition catalogue.14 In 1877 another German traveller, von Bary, visited the Kel Ewey in the Aïr. In Ajirou he met Belcho, the leader of the Kel Ewey at that time. At their first meeting Belcho wore a ‘black litham’ and ‘an old, blue robe’.15 Von Bary offered him a gift of ‘a gold embroidered kaftan and red trousers’.16 Yet, the sheikh returned the splendid clothes with the remark that they were good for the sultans of the Sudan but not for him; if he wore such clothes, everyone would soon be begging to borrow them and thus he would lose all pleasure; and he hinted that he would like a gun or some money or agate stones for his children. Belcho’s refusal to accept the valuable clothing as a gift can be interpreted in different ways. First, there is the argument that Belcho himself offered, namely that because the men are very fond of this kind of clothing, he would constantly have to be lending it out. But the first part of his statement can also be interpreted as meaning that this kind of clothing is inappropriate for the Tuareg and for himself. At their first meeting Belcho wore simple, classical indigo clothing. But perhaps Belcho refused the gift because he would prefer to have had a gun! The Saharan Mission led by Foureau and Lamy marks the transition

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Contest for the best-dressed man (photograph taken by Gerd Spittler, 2005).

from a scientific expedition to a journey of conquest. In 1899 the expedition arrived in the Aïr and met the Kel Ewey. The mission’s scientific documents contain a number of black and white photographs of Key Ewey.17 They are wearing blue or white clothes. In some cases, the white cloth is striped. Like Barth, Foureau also mentions that wealthy Tuareg wear the taylalt robe.18 And he does not fail to mention the red fez around which the turban and the veil are wound.19 In his travel account, Foureau mentions that both in Iferouane and in Auderas, the blue and white checked fabric the expedition brought, which is used in France to make cooking aprons, was very popular because it resembled the taylalt fabrics.20 Lieutenant Jean, who founded the post in Agadez in 1904, thus installing colonial rule, essentially confirms Foureau’s reports.21 He distinguishes the Kel Ewey from the Kel Ferwan by the fact that the former almost always wear white trousers, while the latter are dressed completely in black.22 KEL EWEY MEN’S CLOTHING IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In the nineteenth century, the Kel Ewey were much more colourfully dressed than what we think of as ‘authentic’ Tuareg. These colourful

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garments were adopted from the Hausa in the south and the Arabs in the north. Indigo-dyed or white clothing has always been in use but became firmly established as the ‘classical’ Kel Ewey dress only in the twentieth century. The English traveller Buchanan, who travelled through the Aïr in 1920, as well as Rodd, who travelled there in 1922, describe the clothing of the men as exclusively indigo or white.23 Only once does Rodd remark: ‘some wear the conical hats of Kano basket ware associated with the Hausa countries, but the practice is regarded as an affectation and is not very common.’24 Thus, something that was widespread 70 years earlier had become rare and excited no respect. Today, indigo or black and white clothing is still widespread on festive occasions, and dominate at contests, such as the Festival de l’Aïr. The men in the photograph on the previous page were contestants for the best-dressed man at the Festival de l’Aïr in 2005. Indigo and, to a lesser degree, white are the dominant colours. The veils (tigulmas) are made with expensive aleshu cloth (turkudi in Hausa). This indigo-dyed and beaten cloth consists of narrow hand-woven strips that are sewn together. The gown (tekatkat) is also indigo-dyed, but in this case they used machine-made fabrics imported from Europe or Asia. Although the clothes worn at this contest are what is considered to be authentic Tuareg dress in the Aïr, it is not the clothing predominantly worn today on festive occasions. Many men, including the jury, do not wear indigo-dyed or white tekatkat, but rather a coloured boubou made of damask (shadda in Hausa). This clothing resembles that of Hausa men. THE CLOTHING OF KEL EWEY WOMEN We have much less information about women’s clothing in the nineteenth century. In Murzuq, Hornemann and Lyon did not see any Tuareg women. In the Aïr and in Agadez, Barth saw women, but he does not give us much information about their clothing. Richardson describes the woman’s tobe as follows: The dress of the women whom we see about is a simple cotton tobe, covering them from neck to heels. The colour of these tobes is generally blue-black, dyed with indigo; some are glazed with gum. Many, however, are white, and ornamented in front about the neck with silken embroidery, a costume which gives them a very chaste and elegant appearance. Sometimes the tobes are variegated in

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colour, as are the trousers; but the sombre, or pure white, are the most popular.25 The most widespread colour is indigo, sometimes with a brilliant sheen.26 This is followed by white, and more rarely a bright colour as with the men’s trousers. Later on, Richardson gives a different description: The dark-blue cotton skirt of this lady was turned up behind over her head, so as to form a kind of hood; but underneath she wore a coloured petticoat. Generally, the women of Tintellust wear a frock, or chemise, and a piece of cotton wrapper over their head and shoulders.27 The lady first mentioned is ‘a fine dame, a person of fashion in this Saharan capital’. The first sentence is rather puzzling. How can a skirt be turned up over the head? Probably this is a kind of shawl. Underneath it she wears a coloured skirt. For ordinary Kel Ewey women, he mentions a head covering that he refers to as a shawl. A quarter of a century later, von Bary observes that all women wear a black cloth over their head and shoulders, that is called alesho.28 Foureau mentions blouses in blue, white or taylalt, the white blouse having coloured embroidery.29 Possibly this latter is worn by the women in Agadez.30 Rodd mentions an indigo wraparound skirt, an indigo or black blouse, and an indigo shawl (of the aleshu type). For the blouse he mentions simple embroidery, but does not say that it is coloured: ‘this upper garment is sometimes embroidered with a simple cross-stitch pattern around the neck.’31 That is how the women in Timia were dressed until recently. However, there has been a dramatic change in women’s clothing in recent years. Instead of indigo, the women increasingly prefer the colourful patterned fabrics that are common all over West Africa. In Hausa they are called attanfa. When I first visited Timia in the mid1970s, no woman wore attanfa. When the first women started wearing it, at first only in the house, the others made fun of their Hausa clothing. But today it is very common. At the end of 2003, this woman in the following two photographs won the contest for the best-dressed woman at the Festival de l’Aïr. She is wearing the traditional indigo shawl, and traditional jewellery. Her victory

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Young woman in festive clothing (left) and in everyday clothing (right) (photographs by Gerd Spittler, 2003)

may have been due to her blouse, which cannot be seen fully here. It is her mother’s wedding blouse, made of aleshu and embroidered in the classical manner. On ordinary days, she does not wear just a plainer version of this clothing, but the ‘modern’ attanfa. This now applies to all young women. For several years now, young women have worn the coloured fabrics common in Hausaland, even on festive occasions. In particular, this means the glittering synthetic fabric known as leshi. I have very briefly outlined 200 years of Kel Ewey clothing. We can discern some constants during this time. The men always wore a veil (tagelmust). Indigo-dyed cloth was always a widespread variant for men and women, but it became exclusive only in the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, clothing could include many colourful items. At the end of the twentieth century and beginning of the third millennium, this seems to be the case again. How are these differences to be explained? Is indigo cloth the authentic clothing of the Tuareg, and the rest just deviations? Before answering these questions, I will give a short account of different types of reaction to foreign influence.

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TYPES OF REACTION TO FOREIGN INFLUENCE: RESISTANCE, SELF-ASSERTION, APPROPRIATION32 Resistance to colonial influence has long been a key topic in African studies. Research on resistance is mainly concerned with questions like ‘resistance to whom?’, ‘strategies of resistance’, ‘successes and failures of resistance’. There is less focus on what resistance preserves. The question of preservation belongs to the domain of self-assertion. Values, norms and institutions can be preserved unchanged. In this case we speak of tradition, preservation, continuity, persistence or conservatism. Now interest in this area has faded. In present-day anthropology, traditions are not seen as persistent or unchanged but as constructed, strengthened, revived and hence modified. We find concepts such as revitalization, the invention of tradition, construction of autochthony and cultural renaissance. Appropriation means taking over foreign elements. In the concept of appropriation there is a certain emphasis on voluntary activity, even a kind of dominance (to appropriate in the sense of seizing something, taking possession of it). Foreign goods, institutions, cultural elements can be taken over unaltered and integrated in the group. They can be simply added to the existing elements or substitute them. As a rule, however, they are not taken over unaltered but are modified and adapted. Their meaning becomes subject to a new interpretation. Depending on the various disciplines and approaches, this modification process is referred to by different terms: indigenization, localization, globalization, cultural integration, incorporation, syncretization, or domestication. Most anthropologists today see the appropriation of foreign elements as a more important indicator of vitality than resistance to what is foreign. Appropriation is seen as a sign of dynamism, creativity, self-assurance, in contrast to stubborn resistance. But is appropriation always a sign of selfconfidence? There is another interpretation possible, which is common in sociology but seldom used in anthropology. If we assume a system of stratification, then appropriation very often means imitation. The lower strata imitate the behaviour of the higher strata. If we take the international system as a system of stratification, then nations on the lower level take over goods and convictions from the higher strata. Imitation is a kind of appropriation because it implies an appropriating activity and not just passive surrender. But is it a sign of vitality, of creativity and selfassurance?

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KEL EWEY REACTIONS TO FOREIGN MODES OF DRESSING First of all we must note one thing. In the whole period considered here, the Kel Ewey did not adopt European clothing. This is not surprising for the precolonial period. Some of the European travellers they saw were dressed as Arabs (like Hornemann) or Turks (like von Bary), or had at least adapted their clothing to some extent (like Barth). But even in the colonial period, the Kel Ewey did not adopt European dress customs. Here they showed complete resistance and were self-assured enough to retain their own style of clothing.33 When they did adopt other styles, they borrowed these from their neighbours, the Arabs and Hausa. This does not, however, apply to the fabrics used. The Kel Ewey neither produce any of the fabrics they use for their clothing nor are they produced locally. They are all imported. In the nineteenth century, handwoven cotton fabrics from Hausaland were predominant. Only a few machine-woven cotton fabrics came to the Tuareg from England via Tripoli and the Sahara. Only since the construction of the railway from Lagos to Kano (1911) did the machine-made fabrics imported from Europe begin to replace the hand-woven fabrics from Hausaland. There is one exception to this, namely the hand-woven indigo-dyed cloth that was, and still is, produced in and around Kano. For at least the last 200 years, the most valuable items of clothing, aleshu veils for men and aleshu shawls for women, have been made in Kura, a small town south of Kano, which depends for its living almost exclusively on manufacturing this cloth. As far as cloth is concerned, there is no authentic Tuareg cloth. Even the indigo colour is not as exclusive as it might appear to be. In the nineteenth century, hand-woven, indigo-dyed turkudi cloth and white cotton cloth were widespread in Hausaland, even if coloured cloths were also common there. Only the veil worn by men (tagelmust) was without doubt genuinely Tuareg. Nevertheless, the travellers regarded indigo-dyed cloth as genuine Tuareg clothing. White cloth is not regarded as genuinely Tuareg, and coloured fabrics even less so. Barth reports, in the footnote quoted above, that ‘pureblooded’ Tuareg do not wear red caps. Indeed, all travellers observe that the Kel Ewey had become mixed with the Negro race and were therefore darker than other Tuareg. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, this observation acquired a critical racial undertone. For the Kel Ewey themselves, this was no problem; on the contrary, they were proud of their dark skin. Annur, for instance, the leader of the Kel Ewey at the time of Barth and Richardson, even made fun of Richardson’s white skin: ‘I was much

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amazed by the predilection of En-Noor (who is not absolutely a white man) for black people. … As for me, his highness was almost inclined to express his disgust for the whiteness of my skin.’34 Why did Kel Ewey people choose to wear the colourful cloth of the Hausa in the nineteenth century and again today? The appropriation of cloth has different meanings in changing historical situations. I distinguish between three periods. In the nineteenth century, the Kel Ewey took over many types of clothing from the Arabs and the Hausa. The men wore red or green caps under their veils. Trousers and gowns were sometimes coloured. During festivities they wore the famous guinea fowl gown (riga n zaki). In my interpretation, this was a sign of self-confident appropriation. In the nineteenth century, the Tuareg were politically dominant in this area. I remind you that in Lyon’s description they did not kiss the sultan’s hand as the natives of Fezzan did. This domination made possible the self-confident appropriation of foreign goods. The Kel Ewey did not lose their identity by appropriating foreign cloth. Kel Ewey political dominance was broken during the colonial period in the twentieth century. As a result, we may observe seclusion in Kel Ewey society, a resistance to Hausa influence. The Tuareg continued to buy machine-made fabrics, but they no longer accepted the fancy, colourful Hausa cloth. Instead, they preferred dark blue or white cloth. In my interpretation this was a defensive resistance to Hausa culture. The Kel Ewey were no longer self-confident enough to adopt Hausa fashions for fear of losing their identity. Over the last twenty years, Hausa fashions have come back to the Kel Ewey. Thirty years ago, all Tuareg women made fun of Hausa women who wore colourful cloth called attanfa. Today old women continue to make fun of them, but the young women wear attanfa in everyday life and even at festivities. Is this a sign of selfconfidence; do they no longer need to resist foreign influence to preserve their Tuareg identity? Or is this a case of imitating Hausa culture, which is the leading culture in Niger? Up to now I have described how the Kel Ewey adopted clothing from the Hausa and the Arabs. But there is one reverse case as well: the adoption of the Tuareg veil by others. Barth mentions this in the case of the Hausa and Fulbe elite on the occasion of a visit to the governor of Katsina: ‘Most of them wore black “rawani”, or shawls, round their faces, a custom which the Fulani or Hausa have adopted from the Tawarek merely on account of its looking warlike, for they have no superstitious reason for

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covering the mouth.’35 In Barth’s interpretation we have here a case of appropriation by imitation, because the people recognize Tuareg military superiority. But for them the veil does not have the same meaning that it has for the Tuareg. During the twentieth century, the Tuareg no longer served as a model for Hausa culture. But even today veils and other Tuareg customs are spreading among the nomadic Wodaabe Fulbe, for whom the Tuareg serve as a model in various respects.

6 Genesis and Change in the Sociopolitical Structure of the Tuareg Dida Badi

Seeing Tuareg society as exclusively nomadic, which a number of researchers who studied it clearly did, explains its presentation in the form of scattered groups characterized predominantly by ‘ecological nomadism’. Why, in the first place, in the initial construction of this image, was the sedentary dimension excluded from the paradigm of analysis of Tuareg society? For the people under consideration here, namely the Azjer, two reasons, at least, can be advanced to explain this situation. The first is that Duveyrier,1 whose excellent nineteenth-century book on Les Touaregs du Nord has yet to be surpassed, excluded all current Tuareg relationships with sedentary civilization from his analysis on the grounds that he ascribed these to a black population that has since disappeared. I shall return to this point later. The second reason is that because the sedentary Tuareg did not resist the colonial troops in the way the nomads did, they never aroused as much interest. It is in this direction that Mammeri (1985) wrote concerning the Zénètes of Gourara: ‘All the groups did not arouse equal interest. Often, the most studied are those who mounted the sharpest resistance to the colonial conquest.’2 I shall, for my part, through an analysis of the knowledge and agricultural know-how of sedentary Tuareg in the Tassili n Azjer and from the point of view of historical anthropology, suggest a renewed reading of the socio-political structure of the Tuareg that tries to appreciate the changes in it by taking account of its sedentary dimension. I shall start by looking at some ethnographical data from my fieldwork and then, taking these into account, go on to define the socio-political structure of the Tuareg people and the emergence of policy among them.

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In the third section I shall examine the changes introduced to the Tuareg socio-political structure in the context of globalization and, in conclusion, shall propose a prospective reading of the situation in the light of these changes. SOME DATA FROM THE FIELDWORK In what follows, I shall expose, on a purely illustrative basis, an example of material relating to agricultural work among the sedentary Tuareg of Tassili, which I used as a basis for my analysis of the Tuareg political system. Date divisions in undivided garden property (al-khebes) A woman’s share of the harvest depends on how many female ancestors carry the name in which the habous was created: if there are three heiresses, as there were in the case of the Kel Timemmelin of Al-Mizan, in Djanet, the harvest, then, is divided into three parts, and each one distributed equally to the number of descendants still alive. Thus, as the number of heiresses constituting each of the three units increases, the size of each share decreases until it reaches what the Kel Djanet call telteŕ adad, literally the amount that will stick to a finger. In other words, someone’s share of dates could amount to no more than what sticks to a finger and is thus of negligible economic value. Beyond its obvious economic implications, this division has a symbolic value in that it develops in the people concerned a sense of belonging to an interdependent community bound by matrilineal ties. For example, at harvest time among the Kel Timemmelin, the man in charge of the garden will put aside the share that is due to the ground (namely to the female owners of the ground) after having taken his own share and that of the various other people who have helped with the agricultural work. Each person who has planted a tree in a garden belonging to the Kel Timemmelin puts aside the share that is due to the ground. Once the harvest is over, all the shares are put together in one cluster of dates and the whole divided into three equal parts corresponding to the three downward branches of Ghaïcha, Fedhu and Kaka for whom Abbetul,3 the female ancestor of the group, constituted the initial habous. The head of the clan (amŕar n akal) supervises this operation. Each of the three branches delegates a person to represent it at the time of the division and

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this task is often, if not always, reserved for a male member. It is, thus, the man who undertakes the management of the woman’s interests. Any heiress who temporarily misses out at the time of the division receives her share once she returns to the village. Those who miss out permanently because of marriage in other remote places like Ahaggar, for example, can claim their share and have it sent to them. Thus, this division of the harvest reactivates female genealogies once a year and reinforces family ties between the various segments of the group. It keeps them in touch with the agricultural cycle and attaches them to their ground, as a receptacle of their identity, even if they are far away from it. The clan head or man in charge of managing agricultural work (amŕar n akal) When replacing the man in charge of managing the agricultural work, two essential conditions must be met: he either has to be his nephew, if he himself is the son of a mother heiress of the ground, or he has to be the elder son of the elder heiress. In both cases, the new manager must fulfil the same terms of employment as his predecessor (his uncle). This means, he has a share of each palm tree he found planted, but for which he must henceforth ensure the maintenance and irrigation, and a share of each palm tree he himself plants until the tenth division, when he takes the totality of the harvest. A man who does not have a sister enjoys the heritage of his mother as long as he is alive, but as soon as he dies it is allocated to the daughters of his aunt or aunts. Thus, in turn, the son of his aunt, namely his uterine cousin, replaces him in the management of the ground. Heiresses without a tutor can allocate the management of their garden to a person they trust and with whom they enter into a contract. Thus, the nephew inherits from his uncle the responsibility of managing his mother’s garden after his uncle’s death along the same lines as the management of political power is arranged. THE EMERGENCE OF THE POLITY AND THE AMANUKAL I have borrowed the concept I use of a ‘political system’ in Tuareg society from Nicolaisen,4 who describes it among the current nomadic Tuareg with reference to the binary structure of vassals and nobles he observed on their premises. According to him, vassals specialized in breeding herds of goats – in

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fact the term kel ulli means goat-like – and certain cultural features distinguished them from the nobles, whom they later came to dominate because they owned dromedaries. According to Nicolaisen,5 the later intervention of the slave class further complicated the pastoral Tuareg’s political system because it lessened the vassals’ dependence on the nobles. Nicolaisen’s work, compared with that of his predecessors, particularly of the French school, is interesting because it recognizes among the Tuareg the existence of a political system with distinct institutions, of which the best known is the amanukal. Although some authors, like Casajus,6 only recognize the amanukal’s moral authority over certain groups of the confederation, my intention is not to measure its authority, which varies according to historical circumstances, but to explain its genesis and the changes it brought beyond the simple noting of its existence, which, however, remains a feature that distinguishes the Tuareg from the Berbers that Gellner categorized as segmentary societies without political institutions when he wrote: The political and social system of these tribes (Berbers) is segmentary, which is to say, each tribe divides and subdivides again and so forth until family units are reached. At each level of size, all segments are equal and there is no division of labour between them either of an economic or a political nature. Neither within segments nor between them are there any specialized political institutions.7 It should be said that the Tuareg, even if they are equipped with tribal organization, do not fit Gellner’s definition of the Berbers he knows best, namely those of the Moroccan Atlas whom he depicts as being without specialized political and economic institutions. However, I think that the diachronic approach to his analysis that made it possible to incorporate it into historical anthropology is the most appropriate method with which to outline this topic, for its historical dimension is obvious. Despite its pioneering character, Nicolaisen’s work is weak on the origins of the Tuareg political system because he failed to appreciate what possible bonds may have existed between the current Tuareg and the people who once lived in the regions they currently occupy, particular the Garamantes and Ethiopians whom earlier authors mentioned. Such bonds could tell us something about the context of what he called ‘the origin of

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the Tuareg political system’.8 Given that Nicolaisen’s study went along with those of his predecessors in that he disregarded the sedentary Tuareg, it could in my opinion constitute the missing link in our knowledge about the social and political organization of Tuareg society and, at the same time, help to explain his singularity among other Berbers. Instead of making a clean break with the research tradition of the old school that considered the Tuareg social and political structure as derived from European feudalism, Nicolaisen’s approach was used rather as an opportunity to justify and set in stone the research paradigm that regards the Tuareg socio-political structure as definitively and hermetically pyramidal. In his defence, however, it is necessary to say that Nicolaisen was only looking at ‘the pastoral Tuareg’, as the title of his work, Ecology and culture of the pastoral Tuareg, makes perfectly clear. From the ethnographical sources available to us, it would seem as if the nomadic Tuareg people’s current political system is nothing other than one step captured at a precise moment in time in this society’s long advance through desert space. The imposition of two successive layers of settlement (vassals and nobles), which Nicolaisen proposed and which form the basis of his theory on ‘the genesis of the Tuareg political system’, is based on just such an advance. It should be pointed out once again, however, that the sedentary dimension, on which this study rests, had always been missing in the field of Tuareg studies and explains the gaps Nicolaisen observed in the definition of the origins of the Tuareg political system. The woman also inherits political power, which the economic power she transmits to her daughters and which the man exerts on their behalf, consolidates. This structural similarity between female ownership of landed property and political power among the sedentary is an indication of the privileged place women occupy among the Imuhaŕ as the link with the ground, the origin of their universe and at the base of their political system. This principle derives from the structural model of Tuareg society that uses female descent as the ideological justification for access to political power and its exercise. Thus, among sedentary Tuareg, the social structure is transposed onto the land and imbued with an historical depth that deeply roots it in the ground. This deep-rootedness enables the structure to resist the religious orthodoxy’s constant attempts to undermine it with a view to imposing the patriarchal model that permeates North African societies in general.

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The structural model of Tuareg society also ensures that women are the conveyors of any new elements that are integrated into the society. A man who comes from outside, for example, will never be able to found a lineage that will claim him as a founding ancestor, as he would be able to in societies in which the matrilineal system is dominant. According to the initial Tuareg model, only the woman, through her connection with the ground, can grant access to the components of the local group’s identification. This model finds its justification in the woman being comparable with the ground the man irrigates. In other words, the man fertilizes the ground by irrigating it, but the harvest it produces does not belong to him. In the same way, he fertilizes the woman (sperm being compared with water) and gives offspring who also do not claim him. Here, the man is reduced to the simple role of parent and fertilizer, which explains the identification of the members of the group with the woman. Over time, the various tasks the man carries out in his work on the ground for the woman’s benefit have evolved, changed and become more complex, but nonetheless the man still retains his status as the woman’s ‘server’, and she retains her initial role of being ‘in charge of affairs’. This is at the heart of the institution of the amanukal. Authors have defined this institution, to which we owe other developments, in various ways. Duveyrier9 explains amanukal in terms of ‘the owner of the ground’ and authors like Lhote10 and Blangueron11 have gone along with him. The father of the discipline, de Foucauld,12 accorded amanukal the significance it nowadays has among the nomadic Tuareg, namely the ‘supreme head’, without seeking to break it up or explain its etymology. Nicolaisen,13 who refers to Prasse, breaks up the term as follows: amenu + akal = amenu (of the country or ground). According to him, the first part would be a singular that has disappeared from the word Imanan, the etymology of which is now unknown (but could be princes). Some time later, Prasse14 thought that the term amanukal came from M N + akal (country). Chaker,15 having reviewed various interpretations of the term since ancient times, concludes that ‘amenukal, which is known only in Tuareg, conforms to a formation that for the moment remains unexplained.’ All the authors who approached the term from a synchronic point of view, agreed to break up it into two parts:

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• amenu, the sense of which remains obscure, but which is closer to Imanan, and • akal, which is unanimously recognized as meaning ‘the land’. In the light of the ethnographical data above, it would be necessary, in my opinion, to break up the term amanukal into aman/u/kal: • aman means water • u is a determinative state of annexation that often precedes a substantive ‘name’; the term aman, which also implies a name, thus meaning water, and not am, which is well-known in Berber as a presentative formative of names, as in the case of amaŕid, the etymology of which is ‘goat-like’ but that designates a member of the vassal class (imŕad) in the Tuareg social system. • kal akal: note the fall of its initial vowel a, which is frequent in the phenomenon of annexation in Tamasheq, although the form kal exists in a free state in certain Berber speeches of the north (Kabyle and Chaoui, in particular) but is very rare, not to say non-existent, in Tamasheq. In a free state kal finds its initial vowel and becomes akal, ground. The determinant of the state of annexation u, which exists in Kabyle speech (thala u zemmur: thala n azemmur, in a free state) is rarely used in Tamasheq, though it does exist in certain forms: u-Tawat, to nominate a person living in the area of Twat. Just as among Mozabites u-waman means those of water.16 • n is a particle of membership meaning ‘that of’, or ‘of’, which does not appear in the term amanukal due to vowel harmony, although it is implied by the presence of the determining u. As for the u that determines it, the particle of membership n must necessarily precede a substantive (a name). Thus, we have aman n akal, water of the ground. It should be noted that the presence of the determining u and of the form kal found among the Berber of the north is very rare, if not non-existent among the Tamasheq. This is because the kal in amanukal militates in favour of the seniority of the formation of this term, which is transformed into a directing fossil that only the interpretation of ethnographical material based on linguistic analysis makes it possible to approach, which is why it is so difficult to break up into segments.

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Segmentation is, however, a precondition to its analysis and thus its comprehension. This term was thus formed in a sidelined Berber linguistic context. On the basis of this etymology, I propose to transcribe this term as follows: amanukal. Magnant, speaking about the Tubu of Chad, who are close to the Tuareg, wrote: If it is frequent that the priest of the spirits of the ground is the one who makes the rain come; it is also not unusual for one of the specialized priests to second him in this task. In this latter case, the man of the rain often has an object that has the capacity to call the water from the clouds.17 It is possible that the evolution of the role of ‘in charge of economic affairs’ (work on the ground) that a woman allots to a man, implied a semantic extension of the term (aman n akal) or amanukal, which ended up moving away from its initial significance to take on new specialisms and components that would bestow a political dimension on the man. Without going so far as to suggest that sedentariness might have been a precursor to nomadism among the Tuareg, I feel confident enough to advance the proposition that the institution of amanukal, in the form in which we now know it, corresponds to a precise moment in its evolution characterized by a horizontal relationship with the space that induces notions of mobility and conquest specific to nomadic societies; it is from this that the ambiguity of its etymology in this new context derives. The concept of mobility in wandering space, by contrast with the territorial anchoring of sedentary people, allows for the reproduction and refoundation of the latter thanks to the perpetuation of a modeller myth presented in the form of a structural diagram that coordinates the cultural and historical evolutions of the society and that is connected with a history legitimizing traditional power within territorial limits (tiserradh). This makes one wonder whether the Tuareg political system, given the proven bonds between the two peoples, might be a continuation in modern times of the sedentary farming community of Garamantes, of whom the inhabitants of the oases of the Tassili are regarded as the current representatives. That supposes that Garamantes have a political system similar to that of the current Tuareg. This last opinion, although

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sometimes disputed on the grounds that it is not based on established facts, had already been put forward by Oric, who wrote: Therefore what seems to have been an ancient usage has today its parallel among the Imushagh tribes and confederacies of the Sahara, e.g. in the Berber comprised in the Azgar confederation. So distinctive and deep-rooted does the government of the Saharan Berbers appear that it is advisable … to consider for comparative purposes its principal characteristic.18 It is not new to say that the conquest of a new space explains the binary format of the foundational myth of a noble woman and vassal, on which the binary structure of current nomadic Tuareg society rests and through which Nicolaisen explains the origin of their political system. At the top of this structure the group in command (ilellan) is descended from a noble ancestor, whereas in its middle the vassal descendants are descended from the ally of the ancestor of the nobles. The latter is always supposed, in the foundational account, to be in a position of vassalage compared with the ancestor of the nobles, as in the case of Tin Hinan and her ally Takemmat, the ancestors of Touareg of Ahaggar. CHANGES IN THE TUAREG SOCIO-POLITICAL STRUCTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION The relevance of these foundational myths is that they cross time. They mark the cultural, political and social evolutions of the society; they are indices and witnesses of such people’s cultural unit, thanks in particular to the perpetuation of a structural model that broadened the whole of Tuareg society. What varied essentially were the sex and name of the founding ancestor, which would determine whether the group in question adopted a matrilineal or patrilineal system. These variations are the indicators of the influence of cultures with which the Tuareg are in contact. In the context of Islam Islam, as a first manifestation of globalization, culturally changed the structural shape of Tuareg society by introducing patrilineal succession to the chieftaincy without, however, modifying the binary structure itself. A comparison of the two foundational myths of the two Tuareg groups, one adopting matrilineal and the other patrilineal succession, throws some

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light on the changes that Islam introduced to the modes of access to and retention of political power within the Tuareg. To illustrate this point, let us look at two summaries of two foundational myths. First, the myth of Tin Hinan, the mythical ancestor of the confederation of Kel Ahaggar: Tin Hinan arrived in Ahaggar from Tafilalet, in Morocco, riding a camel, and accompanied by her maidservant Takammat19 who knew how to save the small caravan from certain death by coming up with the idea of excavating an anthill in which she found grains. And thus she preserved the life of her mistress. On arriving in Ahaggar, they discover ignorant people who lived by hunting for mouflon and gathering wild grasses. These autochthons, whose tombs are now strewn all over the central Sahara, did not know the camel, spoke an antiquated Tamasheq and were called Isabeten.20 Here, then, is a summary of the myth of the Ifuŕas of the Adaŕ: When Mokhamed El Makhtar Aitta left Al Mughrib, he was accompanied by his father Ibrahim. The latter, however, died in Bouda, in Twat, but Aitta continued his journey towards Adagh, accompanied by another man by the name of Aggag Alemin, the ancestor of Iregenaten of Adagh. After spending some time in Adagh, Aitta decided to return to Al Mughrib, but came back later accompanied by his son Ghabdu Assalam and both remained in Adagh until Aitta’s death. Meanwhile, Ghabdu Assalam had many children. On growing old he decided to go to Ziyara in Twat and then on to Al Mughrib where he had left his parents, but he died before he got there and was buried on the way at a place in the Tanezruft desert called Iwallen, on the road to Twat. His tomb is still there. While quite a lot is known about the Tin Hinan myth, which has enjoyed literary popularity for a long time, little is known about its Kel Adaŕ alternative because the Ifuŕas, the group to which it refers, aroused very little research interest. At first sight, the essential difference between these two groups appears to be that the first operates a matrilineal lineage,

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whereas patrilinearity is in force among the Kel Adaŕ. According to the foundational myth of the Ifuŕas, the cultural component of Tuareg society succumbed to the influence of Islam, whereas its structure remained binary. Instead of two women, a noble and a vassal, as with Tin Hinan and her maidservant Takammat who founded two matrilineal lineages and occupied the same positions as their ancestors, in the case of the Ifuŕas, two men, a noble (ancestor of Ifuŕas) and a vassal (ancestor of Iregenaten) founded two patrilineal lineages. In the context of the modern state Whereas traditionally land rights were transmitted through a matrilineal descent group, they now pass to the state, which redistributes the land to all its citizens, including the men. Now that men can, through the state, acquire landed property has meant that in Djanet and Al-Barkat they prefer to create their own gardens with the property deeds in their own names rather than to continue to work those of their sisters. Those who continue to do so because of their attachment to traditions, find that their children are refusing to help them on the grounds that they have no wish to produce fruit in gardens they will not inherit. For these oases, this situation has resulted in the almost total abandonment of the old palm plantations. By relaxing the old codes on land statutes, agricultural work and the distribution of the harvest, which I described above, they have also lost the benefits of the female genealogies that cemented the group’s matrilineal identity and anchored it in the local community. Although this development is thought to have had a negative effect on the cohesion of the matrilineal group, in the oasis of Djanet, some men who had recently acquired gardens through the state concession are now registering them in their daughters’ names and thus excluding their own sons from inheriting these gardens, although according to Muslim law they inherit the other goods. This phenomenon, which combines the matrilineal inheritance of land according to Tuareg custom with the transmission of other goods in accordance with the rules of Muslim inheritance, corresponds to a form of local resistance to globalization. PROSPECTIVES IN THE LIGHT OF CURRENT CHANGES The binary division into vassals and nobles, which Nicolaisen held was

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at the origin of the Tuareg political system, seems to correspond to a short period in a long advance through desert space. The nomads adapted it to the new context after they had borrowed it from the sedentary context in which it originated. The notion of mobility among the nomads made this evolution possible because it implied conquering and refounding new territories. In the context of globalization, in which the ground belongs either to women or to the state that redistributes it to all its citizens, a return to the sedentary situation in which it was formed (working the land) is likely to ensure the disappearance of the binary structure and the destruction of nomadism. Some groups of sedentary Tuareg, including the Anestefidet among the Kel Ewey and the iŕawelen among the Kel Gress, studied respectively by Spittler and Bonte, have lost their binary structures altogether because, with land being valuable and now no longer restricted to slaves, both nobles and vassals gradually began to become involved in it, especially after they lost their livestock (camels and goats), which, as Nicolaisen pointed out,21 constituted one of the significant foundations on which the binary structure was based. Quite apart from what is currently observed among the Kel Ahaggar vassals and nobles, it is known that in the middle of the nineteenth century (most notably between 1830 and 1877) the oases farmers of TwatTdidkelt and Alkhaj Akhmed also drew on the amanukal system, in addition to their own slaves, to cultivate their gardens. But some time later, particularly after Algeria’s independence and the disappearance of the livestock, they were forced to do the work themselves. In fact, the first to be put to work in the gardens were the vassals, but it was not long before the nobles started to follow their example, thus inaugurating the disappearance of any real class distinction between the two groups. The examples of the Anestefidet and iŕawelen have shown us that the amanukal can function in a sedentary context in which the binary structure has disappeared. My own and Klute’s research among the Tuareg of Adaŕ,22 a group distinguished by being both essentially wandering and by the absence of the slaves, offer a different, even evolutionary, example of the binary structure in the imŕad and ilellan Tuareg, which warrants observation over the long term. We saw, through the study of the genealogies of the Kel Adaŕ, that all the groups present in this area tend to be attached to the same founding ancestor. This process, we think, will

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lead to imŕad integration into the genealogy of ilellan and the disappearance of the binary structure. In the long term, this will encompass the whole of the territory of Adaŕ (in the political sense of the term) and include both nomads and sedentary groups.

7 Tuareg Trajectories of Slavery: Preliminary Reflections on a Changing Field Benedetta Rossi

INTRODUCTION: RETHINKING TUAREG SLAVERY It is impossible to characterize contemporary Tuareg slavery in a unified way. First, the notion of ‘slavery’ today is used to refer to diverse phenomena, institutions and practices. It is applied to the vestiges of historical forms of enslavement, to the stigma attached to slave status, and to new forms of exploitation. Studying the place of slavery in contemporary Tuareg society1 requires a preliminary qualification of what is meant by ‘slavery’ today, and what ideas and practices are associated with it in different discursive fields at the global, national and local levels. Second, Tuareg society is diversified into subgroups that developed different ways of interacting with the environment and neighbouring societies. The institution of slavery varies geographically with the social structure and organization of different Tuareg groups. Until the beginning of the 1900s, slave constituencies had different relative sizes, functions and characteristics across Tuareg confederations. Throughout colonialism and independence, change has been uneven in what was already a diverse social canvas. In some contexts, practices of enslavement have disappeared, while in others they continued to exist in traditional or muted forms. Finally, interpretations of slavery vary vertically along social hierarchies: masters and slaves have different perspectives and interests. This is true even where dependent groups have partly internalized the elite’s ethos and values. Most studies of Tuareg slavery tend to reflect the views of the elites,2 whereas the perspectives of slaves and lower ranking groups

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have only started to acquire visibility over the last two decades. This is due both to changes in the research agendas of anthropologists and historians, and to the recent engagement of people of slave descent in public debate over slave status. Recent contributions to the study of slavery in Africa remind us that we should question the potential bias implicit in the English term ‘slavery’. We need to recalibrate the analytical tools at our disposition to account for possibly different notions of property, the person, hierarchy and labour, and to analyse slavery as a dynamic phenomenon that transforms itself along with changing historical and social conditions.3 In this chapter it will be useful to anticipate some considerations on how the concept of slavery is applied to Tuareg contexts across time and space. In Tuareg society slavery functioned primarily as a form of labour exploitation. Slaves (masculine singular akli, feminine singular taklit; plural iklan) could be required to work without their consent and could not negotiate compensation for their labour (individual exceptions to their capacity to negotiate better conditions or treatment may occur). The notion of ‘voluntary slavery’,4 which has become common in African studies, should be considered in the light of the particular context of choice within which enslavement is tolerated. Voluntary slavery reflecting a lack of viable or safe alternative livelihood options ought to be seen as a form of slavery. While, in the majority of cases, enslavement originated from an act of violence (such as war, kidnapping or raiding), violence is not the only mode of slave acquisition. Today, the categories called iklan, buzu or bella reproduce primarily biologically.5 Slavery refers to the individual or communal ownership of another person or group, with the term ‘ownership’ understood to reflect culturally specific meanings and forms of rights over things and people, as well as their modes of transmission and exchange. This commonly includes rights over the productive and reproductive capacities of slaves; rights over any assets they may have in their possession or use; and rights over their offspring. The ideological assimilation of slaves to chattels and their exchangeability (the possibility to sell slaves) are not necessary conditions for the existence of slavery in Tuareg society. Finally, slavery presupposes the legal or institutional legitimacy of the exploitation of slaves. Slave status is a bracketed status, which makes it acceptable, in a particular society, to suspend the laws applying to all adult male and female members of that society to account for the slave’s

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otherwise unjustifiable exploitation. Exploitation is suffered by other categories of free people. In contrast to the exploitation of slaves, exploiting non-slaves constitutes a punishable act. In normative contexts (including both state law and traditional or customary law) where slavery has been abolished, enslavement is considered a crime. In these cases, the illegal enslavement of people does not imply the existence of slavery as an institution. Tuareg societies today are integrated into state structures and subjected to the national legislation of their respective countries. Although enslavement has been banned in all African states, legal pluralism recognizes that state law can coexist with parallel normative universes. Alternative legal frameworks operate in semi-autonomous social fields,6 where customary law is invoked to justify the legitimate endurance of enslavement. Hence, the existence of anti-slavery state laws does not automatically imply the disappearance of slavery. In the 1800s, the institution of slavery underpinned the structural reproduction of Tuareg society, making it possible to talk of a slave mode of production taking shape alongside household slavery.7 Slavery was widespread in most Tuareg contexts until the first three or four decades of the 1900s. Its relatively recent disappearance accounts for the fact that large numbers of slave descendants are still called iklan, buzu or bella, even though they no longer face material conditions of enslavement. While a stigma is usually attached to these categories, stigmatization is also suffered by other disadvantaged groups. The categorical slave who freely controls his or her labour, property and progeny is not in the same situation as the slave. Stigmatization on the grounds of slave status, broadly attested for the Tamasheq-speaking groups known as iklan, buzu/buzaye, or bella should be kept analytically distinct from actually enslaved groups. Once ‘slavery’ is characterized in line with the above considerations, it is possible to argue that in contemporary Tuareg society the phenomenon of slavery has not entirely disappeared, but on the contrary has become highly circumscribed. Contemporary studies of Tuareg slavery highlight a variety of strategies of status transformation. These include strategies of upward mobility of former slaves trying to pass as non-slaves or to conceal their own origins and the political mobilization of people identified as of slave origin and stating their claims on the basis of perceived shared interests. Many people of slave origin moved away, physically, from areas where their identity was known. Others found ways

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of concealing and/or transforming their identity in loco, by redefining their status and ‘reinventing’ history. In southern Niger, ex-Tuareg slaves or liberated slaves have been ‘Hausaizing’ as a strategy to leave their inherited slave status behind.8 In Mali, some iklan groups have been adopting a Songhay identity.9 This suggests that in some contexts it may be easier to change ethnicity than to change status. In this introduction, I have argued in favour of a narrow definition of slavery to be kept analytically distinct from the endurance of relations of dependence of a patron–client type, and from practices of exploitation and stigmatization (even when these result from the categorical identification of the exploited or stigmatized group as slave or ex-slave). In the remaining part of this chapter I apply this framework tentatively to different Tuareg groups. I wish to stress the preliminary nature of this chapter and its need of elaboration by further research and debate. My greater familiarity with the Niger sections of the Iwellemmeden and Kel Gress groups and my reliance on secondary sources for other Tuareg sections within and outside Niger limit my comparative insight. STUDIES OF PRECOLONIAL AND COLONIAL SLAVERY Perhaps surprisingly, given the broad geographical spread of Tuareg society, anthropological studies focusing on different contexts suggest considerable intra-Tuareg convergence in the meanings and functions of slavery. While the practical organization of slavery followed similar principles across Tuareg groups, there are considerable differences in the terminology used to characterize different social strata from group to group. Studies of slavery written in the 1970s focus, analytically, more on social structures than on the actor’s experience of such structures. These studies provide valuable interpretations of Tuareg hierarchy, but do not usually convey the slave’s experience of enslavement. As I discuss in the following section, recent studies tend to redress this imbalance. In precolonial times, Tuareg elites10 controlled the greatest part of valuable resources. Some slave groups lived attached to their master’s family, the women taking care of domestic chores and the men providing the labour needed for their master’s productive activities, including herding, farming and foraging.11 Others lived in relatively autonomous hamlets scattered in areas that their masters controlled. These semiautonomous slave communities were particularly common in the region between the edge of the Sahel and the Sudanic savannah, where they

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functioned as ‘outposts’ for their master’s operations and as reservoirs of labour and resources.12 Their settlements were interspersed among the villages of manumitted slaves and the free villages of other ethnic groups. Unlike the iklan living with their masters, these iklan had to provide for their own subsistence. They held usufruct rights on the animals they herded and the lands they farmed. They represented a surplus labour force that the nobles could do without in prosperous times, and relied on in times of drought. Unlike free dependent tributaries and manumitted slaves, they could be called to join their masters’ families at any time, and the masters could take with them boys and girls from slave hamlets to add them to their ‘tent servants’ or to sell them.13 While the distinction between domestic slaves and semi-autonomous slave settlements is broadly attested, the terminology to refer to these groups varies. Most authors distinguish between esclaves de case or de tente (iklan n ehen) and esclaves de dune (iklan n egef). However, in the Iwellemmeden context the iklan n egef are generally considered free. They deny having ever been enslaved and no other group attests claims upon them. They are known for their past military role fighting with the Iwellemmeden Kel Denneg in precolonial wars.14 Similar inconsistencies occur in the case of the iŕawelen: de Foucauld15 and Bernus and Bernus16 translate iŕawelen as ‘esclave vivant librement sans être affranchi’; whereas Nicolaisen and Nicolaisen,17 Clauzel18 and Claudot-Hawad19 see the iŕawelen as manumitted slaves.20 The terms buzu and bella are also translated alternatively as ‘slave’21 or ‘liberated slave’22 by different authors.23 Contradictions across authors, and in the work of the same author, suggest that status categories cannot be evinced from terminology alone and require comprehensive case-by-case analysis. To avoid confusion, throughout this chapter I shall distinguish between domestic slaves and slaves living separately from their masters. Autonomous slave settlements had to pay tributes recurrently to their masters. Scholars disagree on the quality and quantity of such tributes. Bernus and Bernus,24 referring to the Iwellemmeden context, mention between 90 and 100 kilogram bags of cereals at the harvest; Guillaume, focusing on the Tuareg of the Imanan (originally Iwellemmeden who migrated to the Dallol Bosso in the early 1800s) suggests that the amount of tribute was not fixed. My own research in the area under Iwellemmeden control in the Tahoua region of Niger shows that ad hoc agreements were made with each dependent village, on the basis of the nature of the

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relation between masters and village representatives and their relative status vis-à-vis other local groups. Unlike slaves who had been captured in wars or kidnapped, domestic slaves were not usually sold.25 Traded slaves were often exchanged for other goods, such as horses,26 camels and livestock,27 or millet.28 Elite Tuareg denied slaves full human status. This criterion functioned to differentiate them from the ilellan (free), even after they had been freed.29 Slaves had no political voice30 and did not usually receive religious instruction, even when their masters were of maraboutic status.31 According to sources focusing on the Algerian Ahaggar, corporal punishment was very rare.32 However, in various parts of Niger, corporal punishment has been widely reported in surveys conducted by the NGO Timidria.33 Some iklan held usufruct rights over livestock and other productive assets. At death, none of these rights could be transmitted to their offspring, but would return to the master.34 Slaves had the right to be fed, clothed and protected by their masters.35 It would be dishonourable for a master to mistreat his or her slave, and a mistreated slave could change master by scraping or cutting a small part of the ear of another free man’s camel.36 Some authors underline that masters and slaves wore similar clothes and ate similar foods.37 However, clothing, and material conditions of life in general, reflected status differences.38 Some iklan carried weapons and fought in wars with their masters. Nicolaisen,39 referring to the Kel Ahaggar and Kel Azjer, suggests that this was generally the case for all slaves, whereas Guillaume argues that some categories of slaves (inezziyen) did not take part in conflicts, while other (isaha) fought as infantry.40 All slaves were considered legal minors unless they had been manumitted.41 This status is reflected in their habit of addressing their masters by the terms father or mother.42 Rules of fictive kinship also applied to the regulation of slave marriages and marriage payments.43 A taklit’s offspring belonged to the master of the female slave. The genitor role of the male slave was downplayed culturally, reflecting his incapacity to assume legal fatherhood.44 Even though slaves were the classificatory children of their masters, male masters were not prohibited from marrying their female slaves. Nicolaisen and Lhote, both commenting on the Ahaggar, differ in their interpretation of the status of the children born from such unions. According to Nicolaisen, they took the status of the free father.45 Lhote, instead, considers that the offspring born from the

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union of a free man and slave concubine is free, but acquires a new, inferior, status (iborelliten).46 Guillaume,47 studying the Tuareg of the Imanan in the Dallol Bosso, notes that a free man who married another person’s taklit was obliged to ransom her first at a fixed rate. This custom is similar to what I have recorded in areas of Iwellemmeden influence in the Ader. Marriage with a taklit did not contradict endogamic principles. Because the master had full rights over his taklit (or over another person’s taklit whom he had acquired), this type of marriage reinforced the groom’s patriline,48 as the offspring belonged exclusively to the father’s tawsit. Marriage strategies played a pivotal role in the structural reproduction of hierarchy. Endogamy was essential to the retention of privileges in the hands of a few elite families, for it denied the redistribution (through mixed marriages) of the surplus extracted from different categories of free dependants.49 Tuareg elites controlled sets of stratified groups by establishing, through military conquest and peaceful alliance, their supremacy over specific geographical areas. Iklan labour maintained and transformed the productive property (herds and land) of masters and was used in the organization of the caravan trade.50 Tuareg elites also received tributes from free dependants established in their area of control, and could count on the work of dependent groups of craftsmen for the provision of weapons and productive tools. Different confederations varied in the internal organization of production. Most Tuareg economies depended on extensive trade networks to diversify consumption and have access to goods they did not produce. Large cycles of transhumance allowed herds of camels to exploit different pastures and resources across seasons. It is possible to identify a north–south gradient, from high internal economic specialization in the Ahaggar, to greater internal diversification among the Kel Gress.51 External trade balanced out the relative internal specialization and/or diversification of production. Dependent groups were stratified according to gradations of dependence. Slaves occupied one end of this range of statuses and were, in turn, internally stratified. Masters could dispose of the productive and reproductive capabilities of their slaves at will, and the most marginal among them could be sold. Up to a certain number of slaves were controlled individually by their masters. Some elite tawsatin, however, controlled entire hamlets of slaves, functioning as reservoirs of labour and resources for their masters. This system was common in regions at the

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desert’s edge, such as the northern Ader under Iwellemmeden influence, where climatic variability across years turned these ‘reservoirs’ into a drought coping strategy.52 Masters had priority access over scarce resources in times of drought, and could take what they needed from slave settlements at any time. This possibly accounts for the relatively brutal conditions of enslavement in these contexts. Where the slave–master ratio was high and the land productive, slaves were more easily manumitted and turned into tributary dependants or sharecroppers. While these did not have to be fed or protected, elites could still appropriate farming surplus by setting the terms of the hierarchical relation. In contexts characterized by large cohorts of free or freed tributary dependants or sharecroppers, endogamy was essential to the maintenance of political and economic hegemony in the hands of a small minority. This explains why terminological discrepancies between authors over the term ‘iŕawelen’ in neighbouring Iwellemmeden and Kel Gress contexts are not minor issues of translation. While the difference between a ‘slave living an autonomous existence’ and a ‘freed tributary’ may be minimal in terms of rank, the former did not own any of his or her possessions, which could be seized at any time. From the master’s perspective, marriage with this group reinforced the endogamic principle, keeping privileges in the patrilineal line. On the other hand, freed tributaries or sharecroppers may have owed the master a large share of the harvest, but, at least de jure, they formed an independent political and economic entity. Marriage with it would have diluted, through redistribution, elite supremacy. Changes affecting the regional economy of different Tuareg groups induced rearrangements in the social structure. Thus, according to Bourgeot, the loss of control over caravan trade led to the increasing emancipation of slave labour, which had been primarily employed in herding and long-distance trade among the Algerian Kel Ahaggar. Emancipated slaves became sharecroppers, under conditions that in the mid-1800s were extremely favourable to the landlord (who owed one-fifth of the crop to the sharecropper) but improved with time.53 The conversion of slaves into free sharecroppers allowed the Imuhaŕ to maintain their control over the ex-slaves, while relinquishing responsibility for the slaves’ subsistence. This readjustment in the form of Kel Ahaggar domination led to the continued exploitation of a class of dependants. But the new status of independent sharecroppers laid the foundations for the

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development of class-consciousness.54 Also, among the Malian Kel Antessar the introduction of sharecropping functioned as a double-edged sword. It created new relations of dependence that supported the interests of the Kel Antessar elite, but it also transformed slaves into free (dependent) labour, with all the political, economic and psychological consequences that that entailed.55 In the Imanan, increasing reliance on agriculture made it possible to transform slaves into free farming tributaries.56 As mentioned above, similar considerations are made by Bonte57 with reference to the Kel Gress. In the second half of the 1800s, some large slave constituencies started turning into tributary farming dependants, suggesting that the emancipation process had begun before colonialism.58 One could argue that in some Tuareg confederations in the 1800s, ecological and political factors at the regional level determined the onset of ‘diminishing returns’ to slavery (seen here as a system of production). In the long run, the transformation of slaves into free dependants helped to undermine the elites’ hegemony. Retrospectively, it is difficult to discern the relative role played by internal change from the consequences of colonial conquest. At the beginning of the 1900s, colonial powers in West Africa abolished the legal status of slavery in the colonies. The French authorities’ position on slavery was ambivalent.59 Officially, on the part of ex-slaves and captives, representatives of the French Republic condemned slavery. On the other hand, they feared the political instability that could result from the sudden achievement of freedom.60 Emancipated slaves were sometimes asked to work on colonial projects and were known as ‘the slaves of the Commandant’. Forced labour recruitment and military conscription particularly hit servile and low status groups. ‘Pacification’ eradicated or substantially limited the military power of Tuareg warrior elites. Those elites who turned out to be more docile were compensated and maintained in power. Those who refused to collaborate were crushed: the Kel Denneg are a case in point.61 Colonial rule abolished the organs of Tuareg political control and established new administrative structures, carrying out a census and imposing a head tax. It put an end to Tuareg incursions and it granted rights to land to groups willing to collaborate. Emancipation per se affected labour relations less than the consequences of French occupation on precolonial forms of governance and production.

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Colonial economic policy was extractive, levying taxes also in years of drought and food deficit. It was not until after the Second World War that France established a development fund (first FIDES and then FAC). The droughts from 1968 to 1973 and from 1983 to 1985, significantly reduced Tuareg herds. By then, the elites’ capacity to reconstitute their herds and resume economic and/or political control over their old dependants had been permanently undermined. CONTEMPORARY TRAJECTORIES OF SLAVERY Terminology, identity, status Are there Tuareg ‘slaves’ today? There is no agreement on how to answer this question. This is partly due to the different intellectual positions of activists and researchers resulting in debates over counting and naming ‘slaves’. Anti-slavery organizations take a normative perspective. Starting from legal definitions of slavery provided in international conventions and national law, they strive to establish the magnitude of the phenomenon and to take appropriate policy measures. On the other hand, anthropologists and historians disagree over interpretations of slavery. Disagreements reflect sociological differences across research contexts as well as the idiosyncratic inclinations of the researcher and his or her primary informants. Bouman, who conducted fieldwork in the second half of the 1990s among the iklan of the Udalan (Burkina Faso), argues against translating iklan as ‘slave’: The consequence of a direct translation of the term iklan as ‘slaves’ or ‘captives’ is that after the abolition of ‘slavery’ the iklan are assumed either to disappear from the scene or to integrate completely into the other strata of society. The fact that iklan remain iklan even after the official abolition of ‘slavery’ by the colonials causes some confusion: the authors speak of ‘voluntary captives’ or ‘free slaves’ and doubt their position within society overtly. A solution offered by some authors is to translate iklan as ‘former slaves’ but often they do no justice to the contemporary status of the iklan, freezing their status into a ‘slave status’. But if slaves are ‘free’ aren’t they free men?62 The Udalan is particular in that the iklan constitute the majority of its

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Tamasheq-speaking population.63 Where master groups are no longer present, or have lost the (material or ideological) requisites sanctioning their role as masters, either the appellation ‘slave’ is dropped in favour of another name, or the term ‘slave’ acquires a new meaning. Even within the context studied by Bouman, while some informants accepted being called iklan (but advanced a new interpretation of the term), others wanted to be called Kel Edawra and took offence at being addressed as iklan, a term they understood to signify ‘slave’.64 Researchers studying contexts where ‘slaves are free’ resist talking of ‘slavery’, even if an anachronistic terminology has remained in use locally. In some regions the names iklan or buzu/bella have lingered behind while the actual status of their bearers has changed. In these circumstances, authors highlight a discrepancy between language and practice. Hence, among the Kel Antessar of the Cercle de Goundam (northern Mali), previous masters lost their earlier power following political and environmental upheavals. Instead, people of slave descent have been particularly resourceful in the face of adversities. Although the formalities of the relation between old masters and slaves have been partly maintained, Giuffrida notes: ‘Although traditional statutory hierarchies are still evident in everyday relations, tent slavery has totally disappeared, while the ex-slaves or bella have experienced remarkable economic mobility. It would thus be erroneous to interpret the discourses at the base of a statutory ideology as a survival of slavery.’65 Other situations are more ambiguous. Oxby discusses the southern Kel Ferwan of the Dakoro district of Niger where, at least at the time of her research in 1973–74, people of iklan status lived attached to their master and provided most of the productive and reproductive work in their master’s camp. Oxby notes that the people she studies ‘are still referred to by the term eklan, which in the past was used for slaves’. However, she argues: It is no longer appropriate to translate this term as ‘slave’, firstly because eklan are no longer sold and secondly because if they prefer an alternative way of life they can find a pretext for leaving the family they work for, and the national laws will protect their independence. Because eklan provide most of the labour force in the wealthy Tuareg households in which they live, and because they are rewarded with food, clothing and occasional gifts rather than with a regular salary, it is suggested that the most appropriate translation of the term today is ‘domestic servant’.66

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When Oxby conducted her research, many Kel Ferwan iklan still worked for their masters and lived in the same compound. They were considerably poorer than their masters. Oxby’s article, which provides a rare and valuable study of the interaction between kinship and labour, tells us neither which alternative opportunities would have actually been available to slaves if they wished to abandon their masters nor if national laws would actually have protected them. It describes a situation in which slaves belonged to particular masters and were inherited by their offspring, and iklan spouses were forced to split to follow their respective masters. Although they were no longer sold, the rights masters held over them at the time of Oxby’s research were unlike the rights that could be exercised over any other category of adult person. Ole Martin Gaasholt conducted his fieldwork from 1999 to 2001 among the imŕad Kel Gossi, their dependants and iklan in the municipality of Gossi of the region of Timbuktu (Mali). He describes a heterogeneous situation67 whereby some iklan gained considerable wealth and have come to occupy positions in the local administration. Few iklan still work as domestic slaves for their masters. Many use earnings derived from seasonal migrant labour to form their own herd and live independently of their old masters. Those who could not take up new opportunities continued to carry out tasks characteristic of slave labour for their old masters or other wealthy families who could afford to hire labour. Despite this diversity of practices, most iklan try to assume a new, less stigmatizing identity. Some try to pass as Songhay; others adopt the denomination Kel Tamasheq. Neither of these strategies is fully successful, for in the local arena people’s identities are known. Although the situation of the Kel Gossi iklan seems more diverse than the one Oxby described, and possibly more favourable to the iklan, Gashoolt opts to translate iklan as ‘slave’ because the notion of individual ownership of the iklan was still evident at the time of his research.68 Ownership is not the same as exchangeability. Scholars have different views on whether exchangeability should be seen as a necessary condition for slave status. When Nicolaisen conducted fieldwork (in the 1950s and 1960s) in the Algerian Ahaggar and Tassili n Azjer, slaves provided most labour and were ‘owned’ and transmitted though inheritance across generations of masters, but were not usually sold.69 Commenting on Nicolaisen’s data, McDonough observes that ‘the notion that the slave be continually exchangeable as a capital commodity is unessential in defining

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a slave mode of production.’70 He translates iklan as slave on the basis of the iklan’s lack of control over his or her own labour, body and valuable assets. A similar reasoning is followed by Winter71 commenting on the Malian Kel Aŕeris. Extensive rights of control over the labour, mobility, sexuality and offspring of adults can only be held upon groups designated as iklan. This consideration leads to the continued use of the term ‘slave’ to distinguish them from other free dependants. In circumscribed cases, people of iklan status are still the object of transactions. In the Tahoua department of Niger I was told that a wealthy Nigerian trader had paid to take a young woman of slave status as a concubine. The payment was camouflaged as bride wealth. But the woman’s master, rather than her father, received the sum. In the Tahoua region, people of slave descent, collectively known as buzu, occasionally pay ransom (Hausa: fansa) to their traditional masters to manumit themselves or their future wives. The cost of ransom varies from case to case and is generally more expensive for women than for men.72 This is because a woman of slave status who has not been manumitted finds it harder to marry. Men primarily fear the potential claims of masters or ex-masters on her offspring, but also on her belongings, labour and sexuality. The majority of people of slave descent in the Ader region of Niger (Tahoua) do not accept being called iklan or buzu, as these terms have a derogatory connotation. Many exiklan have ‘Hausaized’ over the last two generations and today speak Hausa as their first language. Some villages settled on poor quality lands, however, have maintained strong ties with their former masters, primarily of maraboutic status. They accept dependence as ‘insurance’73 in times of crisis and out of fear of the master’s religious power. Although their condition has changed substantially from that of slaves at the beginning of the 1900s, that they feel compelled to pay ransom is meaningful. These circumstances, which are becoming increasingly rare, should be seen as the last vestiges of traditional forms of enslavement. Not only have traditional forms of slavery evolved differently in different Tuareg contexts, accounting for the different interpretations put forth by researchers, but within any one Tuareg group the term ‘slavery’ has been stretched to cover different situations. Lecocq showed how local groups reappropriated colonial misreadings of social categories and statuses in Mali. The Tamasheq term iklan was avoided and replaced with euphemisms; instead, the term bella, a Songhay word for Tuareg of low status, was used by the French for Tuareg slaves, then by Malian politicians

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in the 1950s to refer to Tuareg slaves whom they sought to liberate, then by ‘intellectuals of unfree origins to refer to themselves as a separate ethnic group’.74 In ethnically plural contexts status terms are multiplied by the number of societies trying to interpret their own and their neighbours’ statuses and giving rise to competing theories of hierarchy. In the Tahoua region of Niger, Hausa people used the term buzu to refer to the slaves of the Tuareg. As the distinction between slaves (iklan) and various categories of liberated slaves (for example iŕawelen and iderfan) became blurred, the category ‘buzu’ came to include both slaves and low-status freed slaves. In some contexts, Hausa speakers use buzu in a derogatory way to refer to any Tuareg,75 and the word Buzanci is frequently used in Hausa in place of Tamasheq for the Tuareg language without a derogatory connotation. However, the term ‘buzu’ also has a separate history, more relevant in southern agricultural areas where groups of buzu, detached from their old masters, settled amid Hausa farming villages. Here, buzu is seen as an ethnic category, with mixed Tuareg and Hausa characteristics.76 The debate outlined above is not merely on terminology. Today, an anachronistic terminology is commonly applied to Tuareg of slave descent. Confusion is generated by the fact that the names iklan, buzu or bella refer to diverse situations. In some cases, the name is all that remains of its carriers’ dependent past. Accordingly, researchers studying these contexts refrain from translating iklan as ‘slave’. Other contexts are more ambiguous, and dependent relations have been maintained in practice. This is often the case when the alternatives to continued dependence have comparatively high opportunity costs. Social identities are shaped by ideology, with concrete implications for livelihood opportunities. Transformations in the relative economic status of master and slave groups are critical to processes of emancipation. Yet, ideological change lags behind changes in the material conditions of life. This forces iklan to engage in epistemological struggles over the redefinition of identity. Aid, voice, and migration Iklan groups seem to have lacked a shared political vision. With the exception of the 1946 revolt at Menaka77 and of the recent events of the 1990s ‘Tuareg rebellion’, I have not come across references to Tuareg slave revolts expressing ideological resistance to enslavement. Opposition to the Imajeŕen’s power and related political hierarchy came from Islamic reformist movements. For example, Muhammad Al-Jilani’s ideal of the

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equality of all classes in the jihad has become proverbial in Tuareg and Hausa folktales.78 Al Jilani opposed the Imajeŕen, whom he is reported to have called ‘serfs (buzu) of God’.79 However, these movements were neither led nor inspired by iklan, who only recently started to express themselves politically as a separate interest group. Over the last 20 years the political mobilization of Tuareg of slave descent has taken both violent and peaceful forms. The expression ‘Tuareg rebellion’ is commonly used to identify a hybrid movement that articulated distinct visions and agendas, and had violent repercussions in Mali and Niger in the 1990s. Clandestine movements of Tuareg groups envisioning the political autonomy of the Azawad region seem to have been at the origin of the events that escalated into the rebellion.80 In 1990 the Niger government’s violent repression of such movements ignited the Tuareg rebellion in Niger, which spread quickly to Mali. The Songhay militia’s Ganda Koy Popular Movement (MPGK) supported the Malian government’s repression and specifically targeted ‘white’ Tuareg civilians. Many ex-servile Tuareg groups are recorded as having joined the attacks against their old masters and elites.81 Political and economic tensions were expressed in the idiom of race, reducing divergent historical interests to a clash between people of black and white complexion.82 It should be noted, however, that ‘white’ elites did not usually take the victim’s place in ideological manipulations of race. More importantly, racialized rhetorics fail to convey the complexity of recent hierarchical permutations. When large numbers of ‘white’ Tuareg were forced to flee Mali, some iklan helped their former masters83 or followed them in their flight.84 The tensions that became manifest in the first half of the 1990s had matured over a much longer period; they had mixed genealogies and gave rise to heterogeneous reactions among both ex-elites and ex-servile groups. The uprisings in the 1990s caused enormous bloodshed. The extent to which the rebellion directly improved the social and economic status of iklan groups is unclear.85 New research suggests that the process of decentralization in Mali (1996) and Niger (early 2000) may lead to durable changes in iklan status. The initial impacts of decentralization in Mali and Niger have received mixed commentaries. Giuffrida86 highlighted the increased dependence on aid and the tendency of aid to be more firmly anchored at the municipal level, to the detriment of long-established strategies of

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mobility based on extra-municipal networks of support. However, even before decentralization, foreign aid projects were localized structures that targeted primarily settled populations.87 The consequences for iklan status of the broader phenomenon of aid and of more recent decentralization programmes should be analysed separately. At least since the 1980s, populations based in the marginally productive areas of the Sahel have been accessing two main sources of revenue – the revenue earned by circular migrants and the revenue made available in situ by various types of aid interventions. In contexts characterized by structural unemployment and chronic production deficit, the survival of the poorest sections of the population depends on accessing either of these sources. Access is based on alternative strategies: cyclical migration allows migrants to earn money by selling their labour in urban centres and regions where demand for labour exceeds local supply. Aid revenues, instead, are accessed through stratégies de courtage88 that require people to coalesce around (localized) aid interventions and reproduce aid logics. From the perspective of people based in scarcely productive regions, the presence of a project makes it possible to stay put and rely on temporarily available aid funds. In the absence of aid, unless they are economically self-sufficient, they either rely exclusively on migrant remittances or are forced to move. How are iklan groups positioned vis-à-vis these different strategies? At least since the 1960s, studies of Sahelian economies documented a less clear-cut distinction between pastoral and farming societies.89 Having little reason to hang onto a past of exploitation, dependent groups adapted more easily to change than their masters. Almost everywhere, exdependent groups have been the greatest diversifiers and started engaging in long-distance seasonal migration from its earliest stages.90 When aid is available, households rely on diversification at the household and extended family level. Boyer’s study in Bankilare and my own observations in Keita converge in showing that long-distance iklan migrants are almost exclusively men. Women do not migrate and try to become involved in development activities.91 Harvest failures and economic retrenchment, as well as reduced employment opportunities following liberalization policies, inflated the phenomenon of migrant labour and extended the duration of the migrants’ stay abroad. At destination, migrants tend to coalesce into ethno-professional groups in which shared cultural characteristics partly

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override traditional status boundaries. However, returning ex-slave migrants may be unable to renegotiate their low status.92 In contemporary Ader, I recorded examples of small migratory circuits that reproduce the trajectories of slave groups following their masters. While today such movements usually reflect the autonomous choice of contemporary migrants, their inferior status is implicit in the nature of the relations established through this type of migration. Long distance migration offers men of slave descent a temporary break from a context where their identity carries the stigma of slavery. However, young migrants emphasize the hardship and humiliations suffered abroad, where many of them fall victim to xenophobia, corruption and insecurity.93 Stories of ‘failed’ migration reinforce the idealization of life in the village and the acceptance of hierarchical relations at home. Instead, successful migrants bring back substantial earnings of up to one or two million FCFA, which can be seen as endogenous ‘projects’ of economic development.94 Their experiences abroad push them to reflect critically both on the persistence of traditional hierarchies and on the potential impacts of international aid programmes. Until recently, old elites have been able to maintain a privileged position in the local administration and the so-called chefferie traditionnelle.95 Even where old elites lost their past political authority at the local level they were rarely replaced by ex-slaves, as the low status of the latter made them unlikely candidates for political office. Administrative positions grant priority access to funds and projects. Where groups of slave descent achieve a social and economic role comparable overall with that of traditional elites, ex-slave and ex-elite constituencies compete over access to aid revenues.96 Alternatively, decentralization has opened new political spaces for groups of slave descent organized informally or joining new political parties explicitly defending slave or ex-slave interests. Based on research in the municipality of Bankilare, KomlaviHahonou97 suggests that the evolution of associative forms of organization plays a central role in shaping iklan collective consciousness and introducing new ways of talking about slavery, hierarchy, and status. His research in villages close to the ones studied by Boyer suggest that status mobility is slower in more remote areas and in contexts dominated by wealthy maraboutic groups, who use their religious influence to maintain the status quo.98 However, his evidence also suggests that when slave descendants reach positions of influence they do not necessarily promote

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a broader project of social reformism. Rather, they reproduce aspects of the politique du ventre that characterizes elite political behaviour. CONCLUSION Tuareg society underwent major transformations in the course of the 1900s. The emancipation of slaves had begun in the late 1800s as a consequence of the political expansion of some Tuareg confederations that favoured the development of (exploitative) share-cropping and tributary relations with free or freed dependants. Colonialism induced or amplified three main processes: it undermined the system of production that supported the political supremacy of Tuareg elites;99 it stimulated the growth of migrations among slave constituencies through the monetization of the economy and, until the 1940s, forced labour and recruitment; and, after the 1940s, it set the bases for the development of a new aid governmentality. The iklan followed different routes. Most of them have been more resourceful than their old masters, adopting strategies of diversification and gaining access to new opportunities and ideas through migration. The most successful iklan are those whose stories will never be told, but will remain buried behind new identities and statuses. The persistence of slavery is circumscribed to the most vulnerable people living in the poorest areas, where the benefits of dependence, to borrow Bouman’s expression, outweigh the risks of independent initiative. Such ‘benefits’ are greater for the elderly than for youths, for women than for men. Recently, ex-slaves started to mobilize politically. The fact that the reformation of old hierarchical logics is not their primary target should not surprise us, for their continued social mobility is predicated on new hierarchical logics. Over the last 50 years, aid and migration have been these logics’ playing fields.

8 The Price of Marriage: Shifting Boundaries, Compromised Agency and the Effects of Globalization on Iklan Marriages Annemarie Bouman

My research in Niamey about fifteen years ago showed that when Tuareg women settled in towns, in this case Malinese women mostly of Kel Essuq descent, their lives changed considerably. Two differences in particular had a profound effect on gender relations. The first was that women had always occupied their own ‘territory’ in the form of their tent, the symbol of their lineage and womb,1 whereas in town they mostly lived in huts and apartments that belonged to their fathers, brothers or husbands.2 The second was that women used to have access to their own cattle, which gave them relative autonomy, especially in the event of a divorce. In Niamey it was not only difficult to keep cattle but because money was now used for most property transfers it was also difficult to obtain the animals. Whereas in the bush the women had the usufruct of their cattle, bride wealth in Niamey in the form of the cupboards, beds and household utensils that parents gave to their daughters on their marriage, were seen as status symbols but, unlike cattle, could not serve as capital. Again, especially in the case of a divorce, this made women more vulnerable and dependent on their husbands, fathers and brothers. During my research in the Udalan, the northernmost province of Burkina Faso, I followed the iklan to Abidjan and studied the effects of migration and globalization on their identity. Again I was struck by the impact of the change on gender relations. This chapter demonstrates that these effects stretch beyond economic aspects of a cash economy, with its expanding infrastructure, access to remote areas, and introduction to cell-

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phones, refrigerators and television. It touches the very core of Kel Tamasheq society by altering its gender and kinship relations. THE IKLAN OF BURKINA FASO The iklan have often been depicted as the ‘former slaves of the Tuareg’. Among the Kel Tamasheq of this most northern province of Burkina Faso they are by far the largest group and, as such, their position is somewhat different from that of the iklan (also called bella or buzu) in Mali or Niger. I want to emphasize that the people bearing the label iklan were not a social group in the past. They still cannot be described as a distinct social group, but they have become ‘iklan’ in their own way. Thus, if speaking about ‘the iklan’, I speak about a construction, a classification that has escaped into the field from colonial records and academic treatises. Since the iklan have neither a communal past nor a territory to which to refer, they define their identity in two ways – through kinship and through their occupations. Migration and globalization touch on iklan kinship relations and occupations in a number of ways, but for the purposes of the argument here, I shall focus on kinship insofar as it affects their sense of belonging. Belonging can be seen as the most important pillar of iklan identity. Why is belonging so important to them? In the first place, it secures ‘survival’, not only physically but also socio-culturally.3 For individuals it is important to see the continuity of life, life that was there before them and will still be there when they are long gone. In the second place, belonging is important for social interaction; it defines social relationships. An individual needs to be ‘recognizable’ so that others will know how to behave towards him or her. It is important that this behaviour is sufficiently consistent to secure relationships within groups and among groups.4 The different groups of iklan had no common past or a long communal history. But, as George de Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross put it: ‘Concern with origins is a concern with parentage.’5 The intense focus of the iklan on parentage, descent and kinship can be seen as compensation for their absent past. They constructed their origins through kinship and, as such, they constructed their own sense of belonging. This construction was no random affair; they did so within the cultural framework they inherited – the framework of the ‘insiders’ (the other Tuareg). By copying the insiders’ framework they became insiders. Belonging was paramount to them as ‘acquired outsiders’,6 and the kinship system they

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copied became the pillar of their identity. Kinship was, to begin with, the only thing binding them together; it provided them with a substitute for the past they lacked, and a model of excellence for all relationships as well as a social security system. Belonging through kinship provides the boundary for their identity, which serves not only to keep outsiders out but also to keep insiders in. Like any boundary, it is symbolic and open to more than one interpretation. It is indeed permeable, but as we shall see in the case of the iklan, it is at a high cost. Belonging gives the iklan security and control over their most important resource – humans. Belonging, in this case through kinship, determines where and with whom people live, what work they do, with whom they share, and to whom they go in difficult times. It determines whom they marry and with whom they have children. And last but not least it is the tool with which to forge power and property relationships. Since it is so important to the iklan it leaves very little room for those who cannot or will not conform and hardly any opportunities to ‘escape’ kin pressures or renegotiate the boundary. As such, belonging has a toll and often means sacrificing agency for security, at a cost that differs from case to case. There is definitely an analogy between their history of belonging in the form of slavery versus belonging in the form of kinship, in which ‘freedom’ is still subordinate to the benefits of society as a whole. This becomes especially clear on the occasion of a first marriage. FIRST MARRIAGES Belonging in the form of kinship is very important to the iklan. Gaining and maintaining control over kinship, and thus over this very important human resource, is paramount to them. As such, endogamous marriages are the rule. Apart from maintaining control over the offspring, endogamous marriages regulate power and property relations. The pressure to conform to what relatives see as useful and necessary is tremendous. This holds especially true in the case of the first, often forced, marriage. There is no alternative; youngsters have to submit to the wishes of their parents. Among the iklan the parents always arrange the first marriage, sometimes even at the birth of a child. First marriages take place in four steps. The first is the betrothal, or semmekres. The betrothal is concluded by the parents, or in the case of his second or following marriage, by a man who asks a woman’s parents

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for her hand in marriage. At the betrothal a little brass or iron bracelet is given to the girl or young woman to indicate that she is to be someone’s wife, a custom called tasachteft. The betrothal can take place at any time and even babies wear the small iron bracelets indicating their ‘marital’ status. There is a tendency to ‘promise’ baby girls to adolescent boys, which accounts for the huge age difference between some couples. From a very young age girls are assigned their future husband. This happens in a joking kind of way; girls are supposed to be embarrassed when their future husband is around. I remember sitting with a group of women and children when a motorcycle approached the huts. One of the girls, she must have been no more than six years old, jumped up and started to run and I asked what had happened. The women, who were all laughing, said she was startled by the sound of the motorcycle because they had told her that her husband was coming to get her. The second step towards the actual wedding is the engagement ceremony conducted by a marabout. Future spouses need not be present and only have to pronounce their consent once they are considered adult. Here the marital payments are debated and set. The third step consists of handing over the taggalt, the most important marital payment. The content of this payment is discussed below. The wedding concludes the four steps of the marriage rituals. During the celebration, which can last up to a week, the woman moves to her husband’s house, or, if she is considered too young to have sexual intercourse with her husband (and that decision is left to her husband and his parents), to the house of her mother-in-law. The marriage itself can be held years after the engagement, but it need not be delayed until the girl in question has reached a ‘marriageable’ age. Long before the actual marriage ceremony takes place the parents-in-law can claim a girl to come and live with them. This can happen at a very young age and some girls are only about six years old when their parents-in-law claim them. Living among their parents-in-law is often stressful for those girls: they have to obey them and show them respect; they can be asked to do all the household work such as pounding millet, fetching water and wild grains, cooking and taking care of other children in the household. The relationship with their parents as well as with their first husband is marked by avoidance, which means absolute and total respect; this applies even when the marriage is endogamous (which many are) and the parents-in-law might be close relatives. Avoidance entails not

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looking at one another, not eating within sight of one another, no discussion and not calling each other by their proper names. There is no such thing as a ‘marriageable age’. Whether or not a girl has started menstruating is not considered important; whether aged 12 or 20, girls are never considered adult at their first marriage. They become adult only once the tamangad has been performed, the ritual that takes place when they are pregnant with their first child. At this point a girl turns into a woman and wears a headscarf. Until the tamangad she is considered a child, no matter what her age. Parents as well as parents-in-law have only one concern, which is to prevent the girl getting pregnant before she marries. They are not worried about whether or not she has sex, for there is no emphasis on virginity, but in a practical sense that probably amounts to the same thing. That virginity is not an issue is evident from the fact that women can always remarry no matter how many husbands they have had. The fear of early pregnancy makes parents, as well as parents-in-law, extremely prone to ensure that the marriage ceremony is held as early as possible. There is also no minimum age for the consummation of a marriage. The decision to have a sexual relationship is entirely in the hands of the husband and usually the pressure to produce offspring is so great that men are forced by their families to consummate the marriage when the girl is still fairly young. I have met girls who had their first pregnancy at the age of 12, with all the health risks that involves. A first marriage differs from a second marriage in a substantial way. Often only the first marriage is an arranged marriage that needs the support of all parents involved. After a divorce men and women can object to an arranged marriage or can propose a spouse. For women it is still necessary to have the permission of their parents. The spouses in a second marriage can talk to each other and use each other’s names. There is no avoidance relationship though there still is with the parents-in-law. Generally speaking, only first marriages are forced and often endogamous. The ties between the two families involved remain important and the avoidance relationship prevails between former spouses. THE IMPACT OF MIGRATION AND GLOBALIZATION ON MARITAL PAYMENTS The marital payment contains three different components – the illagan, the isan n tideden and the taggalt. The illagan, which is paid in money, goes

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to the mother of the bride and she divides the sum among all the women who will be present when they bring the bride to her groom. Those women have to present part of the girl’s trousseau (and they bring plates, pans, mats and decorations for her tent). The man, or his relatives, presents the isan n tideden, ‘women’s meat’, to the woman’s female relatives. This consists of an animal that the female relatives will eat. At the marriage ceremony the women will match this gift with an animal for the men, the isan n meddan. At the birth of a child the transfer of those gifts is repeated as a reminder of the marriage and its purpose – the production of offspring. The taggalt is the most important marital payment, and the most expensive one. It is raised by the father of the man or by the man himself. Officially, the taggalt is given to the girl. In reality, the taggalt, which is in the form of cattle or money, is given to her parents or brothers for ‘safekeeping’. If the taggalt consists of cattle, the cows remain her property throughout her marriage and in theory she can dispose of them freely. In reality, I have never met a woman who knew the full worth of the taggalt of her first marriage. Women also did not know what was left of the taggalt after years of marriage. While the usufruct of her taggalt is said to be hers, the parents decide what they present to the woman. Officially, the woman’s parents have to provide her with a trousseau in the form of a tent, along with all the necessary household utensils such as a bed and mats. It is becoming increasingly common for them to pay for these things from the revenue of the taggalt, especially when it is given in the form of money. Although all goods remain the woman’s property, goods do not accumulate as cattle are supposed to do and so, theoretically, the monetization of the taggalt makes women more dependent on their parents and husbands; actually, women hardly ever know what becomes of the taggalt from their first marriage. Again, in theory, a woman who wants a divorce can return the taggalt. Nowadays, however, hardly any women are aware of this practice and when their taggalt has been consumed this is not an option anyway. Since by this act her children will become illegitimate, it is not a popular practice. The taggalt, in my view, is neither a bride wealth nor a bride price, although Eric Guignard, for instance, who writes about the Kel Tamasheq of the Udalan and claims that women are ‘exchanged’ among families, thus portraying them as passive subjects and indeed a kind of merchan-

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dise, might suggest otherwise.7 Among the iklan of the Udalan, the taggalt is primarily a transfer of genetricial (childbirth) rights, and only secondarily a transfer of uxorial (sexual and domestic) rights.8 That the woman herself should receive the taggalt is not that surprising if we consider that the iklan attach even more importance to being a mother than to being a wife. By receiving the taggalt, she is indeed in debt. This debt relationship with the provider of the taggalt, whether it is her parents-in-law or her husband, is redeemed only with a first child, which most likely explains the fact that the relationship between parents and their first child is so difficult, and marked by avoidance. The taggalt is above all viewed as the sum with which a father acknowledges his (future) children. Since the sole purpose of marriage (according to the iklan) is the production of offspring, marriage is not complete without the taggalt being handed over. I would therefore refer to the taggalt as ‘child price’ rather than bride wealth. With the taggalt the man acknowledges that all children born from the union are his children, whether this is genetricially true or not. Furthermore, the taggalt gives him the right to keep the children in the event of divorce (in which case they are often raised by his mother). If the woman leaves her husband without his consent and does not return the taggalt, even the children she bears after she has left her husband (that is during the first months after she leaves her husband and not the children she bears in a new marriage) belong to her husband and his family. That the taggalt becomes the property of the woman and not of her family clearly shows that there is no ‘exchange’ between the two families in the form of compensation to the woman’s family for the labour it has lost. To call the taggalt a child price implies, however, that rights are transferred, in this case the right to (future) offspring. Of course, this theory is open to the same critique applied to the terms ‘bride wealth’ and ‘bride price’, namely that children are likely to become subjects of an exchange between families when in reality they will always ‘belong’ to both families. The taggalt serves to legitimize a man’s offspring and any children born within the union are considered his, whether or not they are his biologically. The rights to this offspring are in fact owned by the one who paid the taggalt, and by the ones who contributed to it. That at the death of the man the woman returns to her family and is not forced to marry the

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man’s brother (as in a levirate), shows that the taggalt gives rights to the offspring of the couple but not to the fertility of the woman.9 Furthermore, a first child is always raised by its paternal grandparents. This confirms even more strongly that the taggalt is a child price, since at a first marriage (likely to be the marriage resulting in the first child) the taggalt is paid by the man’s parents and not by the man himself. The child price is thus paid by the grandparents who are going to gain the right to raise the first child. Since the taggalt is a price paid for the right to offspring and, as such, for the fertility of a woman, it serves essentially to gain control over offspring and thus over belonging. The marital payments are payments for the ‘rights-in-persons’. They serve actively to construct and control not only one’s children’s position in the family, but also one’s own and evidently also the position of one’s children’s offspring.10 Whereas gender, age and status are important as ordering principles, only kinship can overrule those principles. The accumulation of worldly goods or indeed animals (all scarce) is subordinate but not unimportant to having good and multiple relationships with relatives. Family marriages create and reinforce kinship ties. The kinship system regulates every aspect of life – be it habitat, work, sexual relationships, security, property or power relationships. The migrations of iklan to Mecca and Abidjan have changed the way of looking at the taggalt as a means of assuring rights to offspring. When male migrants go away for the season, their wives, especially those who are still young and without children, return to their parents; they are guarded and if one of them happens to be pregnant the question arises of whether her child could indeed be her husband’s child. The taggalt as such no longer suffices to ensure genetic rights. Its emphasis is shifting from exclusive rights to offspring to exclusive rights to sexuality. Another important change is the fact that the girl’s parents, or her brothers if they are no longer alive, who used to provide the girl with her tent, bed and all the necessities for her household, today use part or even all the taggalt to do so. The impact of this shift is even more serious; whereas the taggalt used to be the woman’s property, it is now more and more used by her relatives who on some occasions have also started using it for their own purposes. As the direction of the gifts is changing, the taggalt becomes a gift to the girl’s relatives instead of to her, making it indeed a bride price, rather than a bride wealth or child price.

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IMPACTS OF MIGRATION AND GLOBALIZATION ON GENDER RELATIONS Whereas in the bush a girl’s whereabouts are easily controlled, in town this becomes more difficult, especially if the girl attends school and is away from home for several hours a day. A lot of parents-in-law ask for their daughters-in-law long before they finish school. Control over the girl’s sexuality becomes the number one priority. We see that, especially in towns, the age at which girls are married off drops. Migration and globalization make money a very important asset; it buys houses, mobile phones, fridges, cars, motorcycles and fashionable clothes. It buys status. Parents like their daughters to get a wealthy husband. As a result they ‘ask’ more and more money for their daughters, resulting in the prices of the taggalt rising. The taggalt is no longer solely in their daughter’s interest, it is turning into a kind of bargain. Among the Kel Edawra, who live around Gorom-Gorom, Arabization has an even stronger impact on the lives of married women than globalization. The Kel Edawra travel to Mecca as migrants and pilgrims and some of them work there for extended periods of time. Some of the men (but not yet whole villages, one should rather think in terms of individuals) have begun to seclude themselves from their wives and to build houses for them with separate women’s quarters. Their wives are only allowed outside when veiled from head to toe. These men mostly speak Arabic and call themselves marabouts. Among these Kel Edawra I also saw a revival in the practice of ‘fattening’ girls through forced feeding to make them look more mature and ready for marriage. Forcing girls to drink milk until they started to vomit took place in former times in wealthy families, but was more often practised among the imŕad, Imajeŕen and Kel Essuq than among the iklan in this region.11 In this context, the now adult sons of a wealthy Kel Essuq family in Beldiabé recall that not only girls were fattened this way, but that they too were subjected to this treatment. This practice, which is fairly common in Mali and Mauritania, used only to be practised by the Kel Essuq in the Udalan, for both men and women, so it might be that the Kel Edawra, who consider themselves marabouts, revived it to show their new religious status. In Touro, as well as in other parts of the Udalan, fattening girls (I do not know of any other case in which boys were fattened) has become a symbol of traditionalism, as well as of wealth, but is practised only on a small scale.

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If we look at all changes brought about by globalization and migration we see that they do not favour the position of women, which, especially for the first and often forced marriage, is moving in a negative direction. What are the implications of forced marriages for women? We see that: • The first marriages of both men and women are arranged and often forced. The age of a girl’s first marriage ranges from 11 to 18 years, though in urban surroundings there is a tendency to marry her off at a younger age because her parents are less able to control her. • Parents-in-law often insist on the girl coming to live with them and to work in their households. • Sexual relationships cannot be refused once the couple lives under one roof. This amounts to institutionalized rape. • Men can end their marriages relatively easily, by stating why they want a divorce and by calling the divorce official, while it is practically impossible for women to do so. Whereas in theory a wife can get a divorce by returning the taggalt, in reality they do not dispose of their taggalt and cannot ask their parents to return it, especially if they have used it to buy her tent or bed. • Girls often marry men many years their senior. Given that most of these girls are still minors, in terms of universal human rights, these could be considered paedophile relationships. • If girls become pregnant at too young an age they are likely to have difficult pregnancies and deliveries, frequently resulting for instance in fistulas rendering them incontinent for the rest of their lives, in the absence of proper healthcare, or even in the death of the mother and/or child. • Women have no rights to their offspring. First children are often taken away and raised by their grandparents. At a divorce women always lose their children to their husbands and his family. • It is generally accepted that men use violence to control their wives and to make them obey. Only a handful of youngsters actively resist the marriage their parents have in mind for them. Resistance is never straightforward, though, for children never confront their parents with words (they have to respect their parents). Running away amounts to exclusion, while claiming insanity or spirit possession has a life-determining effect on

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individuals. During my fieldwork at least three girls escaped their forced marriages by committing suicide. The pressure to conform to what relatives see as useful and necessary is tremendous, resulting in arranged marriages that are almost always forced marriages. The cost of resistance is often much higher for women than for men, but more important the agency of these girls is severely compromised. If we look at it from a human rights perspective, forced marriages could be seen as a form of modern slavery. Their fertility, labour power and sexuality become a commodity. This raises an important question: are forced marriages a form of modern slavery? FORCED MARRIAGES AS A FORM OF MODERN SLAVERY The fact remains that some iklan have indeed been ‘slaves’, but what were the components of this Tuareg ‘slavery’? I think that four elements have to be taken into consideration. The first has to do with rights to people versus rights to goods. The second has to do with agency, or the capacity of individuals to act independently and make their own free choices. This ties up with the debate over whether structure or agency attain primacy, in other words over whether structural factors such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity and customs limit the agency of individuals. The third element pertains to force and resistance and the fourth to stigmatization. As Miers and Kopytoff state: ‘At the heart of any discussion of “slavery” in Africa – and indeed anywhere – lie the rights that one person or group exercises over another – what anthropologists call “rights-inpersons”. Such rights, usually mutual but seldom equal, exist in almost all social relationships.’12 To depict slaves exclusively as a form of ‘property’ would deny them their own identity and self-consciousness and a place within Tuareg society as human beings able to act and reflect on their situation. The concept of ‘rights-in-persons’ is a good alternative. The fact that ‘rights-in-persons’ can also be used to indicate relations between, for instance, family members is in this context only an advantage. So what rights are we talking about? In discussions with individuals who had been put to work in Tuareg households (or whose parents had) the elements of slavery became clear: • Slaves herded cattle but could not sell or slaughter it and had no usufruct rights in the sense that the milk or meat was presented to their masters who in turn shared a portion with them (property rights).

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• Slaves could be asked to perform all household tasks ranging from preparing food, collecting water and wood, and taking care of and even breastfeeding the master’s children (rights to labour power, rights-inpersons: milk relationships creating ties between different social groups). • Slaves could be asked to cultivate and collect wild grains. All food collected this way was presented to their masters, who divided it among themselves and the iklan and who stocked the reserves (rights to labour power, rights of slaves to be fed). • Slaves could accumulate possessions but were never sure that they would be allowed to keep them because the group that dominated the area could confiscate them. That their belongings were not exclusively theirs is also visible at the moment of death, when they are divided among offspring and masters.13 This also holds for ‘slaves’ who were not working in the households of their masters, but lived in their own huts and villages. Their masters could always come and take their children or their possessions away (property rights). • A marriage between ‘slaves’ could be arranged by their masters in which case the man’s master paid the taggalt to the patron of the bride’s family. That some iklan were able to pay their own taggalt suggests that they could at least possess a minimum of cattle they could freely dispose of (rights of agency, property rights). • Masters could demand sexual favours from their female slaves. A marriage between the two was possible but not feasible. The children of such a couple would remain iklan (rights-in-persons: sexual rights, rights to offspring). • Children of slaves could be transferred to other locations to help with household work or to assist with the harvest. Parents could not object to this (rights-in-persons: rights to offspring). • Slaves could be ‘punished’ for not doing the work requested of them. Beatings were the most common form of punishment, but on one occasion I heard of a master setting fire to a slave’s house as a warning to him and his neighbours (rights-in-persons). It is clear that the agency of those slaves was severally compromised. They were usually unable to choose where to live and work, whom to marry and what to eat. They could not even choose their sexual partner or raise their own children. The same of course applies to girls in forced marriages. They too cannot choose where to live and work, whom to

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marry and what to eat (they depend on what their husbands or parents-inlaw offer them). One could argue that they could raise their own children, but this is only partly true. The first child, for instance, is for the parentsin-law. A mother (or father) cannot console this child or call it by its name. Second or following children can be raised by their parents but in the case of a divorce a mother will in most cases ‘lose’ her children to her parents-in-law. Apart from the threats, violence and physical punishments, slaves were also controlled by being kept ‘ignorant’ of their options. Girls are also punished when they try to argue or run away. I know of one who had been locked inside her house and escaped through the window. Another who had run away was tied up when her parents brought her back to her husband. Men often hit their wives and, although others might intervene, a husband is said to have the right to do what he deems necessary to control her. Resistance among slaves was not common. There are stories of individuals who actively resisted having to pay ‘taxes’ in the form of cattle and the harvest, but they are rare.14 Resistance to forced marriages is also rare because girls fear being expelled by their relatives. Since belonging is paramount to physical survival (they literally have nowhere to go) resisting is not easy. Girls who frequently run away are said to be possessed, which has lifelong consequences. Some commit suicide, but obviously that is only as a last resort. Slaves are stigmatized. They live off the remnants of others on the margins of society and eat things that others despise. The following riddle is illustrative of their position and the answer can be understood only in the context of this culture, in which every relationship is complementary but not equal: How does one divide three millet cobs among an amŕid, an Ifulan, an akli (all members of different social groups with their own occupations, backgrounds, norms and values) and a donkey? One pounds the millet, gives the remains to the donkey and the chaff to the akli, puts the cleaned millet in a bowl of milk so the Ifulan can drink the milk, and gives the millet that is left at the bottom of the bowl to the amŕid to eat. The akli is given the chaff, which is taken off the grains to make the millet edible. Only the iklan consider the chaff, which is the most nutritious part of the millet (it is used to fatten animals), as a reason for consumption.

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Others regard and use the chaff as food for animals and children. We see that such stigmatizations are sometimes turned around, that (former) slaves derive their identity from those elements that were originally negative. The iklan are proud that they eat all kinds of bush products that others will not touch. They are also proud of their work ethos. The stigmatization of girls who are forced to marry is not so obvious. While ‘slaves’ are stigmatized and marginalized, girls who are forced to marry do what is expected of them. One could argue that this aspect of stigmatization also holds for them, but in a different way: girls who try to escape a forced marriage do get stigmatized and they even risk being expelled from their own kin group. The stigmatization is, in this case, used as a powerful force to comply with the marriage. It is used as a threat that is in retrospect as real as the actual stigmatization of ‘slaves’. In the case of slavery, as in the case of forced marriages, we see that belonging has its downside and its benefits. Belonging secures physical and socio-cultural survival. Most individuals do not resist; they prefer to belong, which gives them some security at the expense of their agency, their freedom. Why should I insist on comparing slavery and forced marriages? Since my initial research focused on slavery I had a clear understanding of its complexity, of the difference between West African slavery, which had a lot to do with belonging and rights-in-persons and was modelled on kinship relations, and trans-Atlantic slavery, which was much more about dichotomy, freedom, individuality and property rights. I simply could not ignore the similarities between this West African form of slavery and what it meant to former ‘slaves’, and West African practices of forced marriages and their implications for the lives of young girls. Within the human rights discourse, forced marriages are accepted as a form of modern slavery. But why is so little attention given to this aspect from an academic point of view? This question deserves at least some academic introspection. If forced marriages are a form of slavery, then are girls who have been forced to marry slaves? I think it is not possible to call them ‘slaves’ in the traditional sense, but it is possible to call them ‘slaves’ in their marriages: they are ‘enslaved’. Their position is linked to the marriage itself, to the practice of marriage, which is a practice of (modern) slavery. They themselves cannot change it; only others can change their position and status, as is the case with ‘traditional slaves’. While slaves form a category, girls who are forced to marry do not form a separate category. However,

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girls who are in forced marriages are indeed enslaved and experience similar distress as ‘slaves’. Is it possible to detach the concept of ‘slavery’ from the concept of ‘slaves’? I think that it must be possible on a conceptual level. If we see slavery as part of a social system that regulates belonging and rights-in persons more so than rights-in-property and not as an institution, it is then possible to detach it from the concept of ‘slaves’ and to attach it to the notion of ‘acquired outsiders’ used by Miers and Kopytoff.15 It immediately becomes clear then that this is what girls in forced marriages are – ‘acquired outsiders’, and not ‘slaves’. This directly touches on another important question: if a girl’s own relatives force her to marry, can we call that slavery? I think we can, especially when marital payments point in the direction of rights being transferred between families or family members. Bride wealth does not bear children, but it ensures rights to the offspring. Women do not become a commodity, but their fertility does. In African societies property is hardly ever linked to one owner; it is always about the ‘rights-in-goods’, as it is about the ‘rights-in-persons’. As such, the taggalt is about the transfer of rights-in-persons. In this chapter I have shown how forced marriages can indeed be regarded as a form of modern slavery, both in terms of human rights and from an academic perspective. Calling those marriages a form of modern slavery makes it clear that they can no longer be ignored on the grounds of cultural relativism. Human rights are universal and issues like forced marriages have to be seen in this light to be able to open up a discussion, not only among human rights activists or academics, but also among the victims of such marriages and those who enforce them or allow them to take place (including governments). ‘Slavery’ has, as a practice, been abolished. I would like to see more academic attention given to the subject of forced marriages so that perhaps one day they too will be abolished.

9 Debating Beauties: Contested and Changed Female Bodily Aesthetics of Fatness among the Tuareg Susan Rasmussen

HISTORICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND: METHOD AND ARGUMENT In this chapter I explore the significance of fatness as a sign of female beauty in three Tuareg cultural settings, and analyse the impact of historical, political and socio-economic dynamics upon this aesthetic in each community. Although a woman, like a man, can be admired for traits other than her physical ‘beauty’ – for example, for her verbal wit – nonetheless, men and women alike are also judged by their appearance. Traditionally, many Tuareg tend to equate female fatness with beauty and health, and define ‘fat’ women as ‘beautiful’. Despite the usual scarcity of food in their harsh and unpredictable Saharan and Sahelian environments, and despite values of reserve discouraging husbands and wives from eating together in public, men often encourage women to eat a lot. In the past, some adolescent girls from an Imajeŕen background underwent elaborate, coercive fattening rituals inside their mother’s tent, but today these rituals have declined because of droughts, wars and other hardships suffered in the Sahara and along its fringe. Most, though not all, Tuareg still reside in rural areas. Many rural people combine occupations of herding, oasis gardening, caravan and other itinerant trading, artisan work and, nowadays, labour migration. Many Tuareg adhere to Islam, into which are interwoven many preIslamic beliefs and practices, and most are semi-nomadic, sociallystratified and combine matrilineal and patrilineal descent, succession and inheritance. Earlier matrilineal institutions were challenged, to varying

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degrees, by Qur’anic, French colonial and independent nation-state legal patrilineal biases.1 In contrast to some of their neighbouring peoples who also idealize fatness, most Tuareg women own property, may initiate divorce and are not secluded or veiled; rather, men are veiled.2 In general, there is much free social interaction between the sexes. As in some other societies, Tuareg idioms of bodily expansiveness are prominent in political, aesthetic, and gendered discourse.3 Ideals of female fatness and women eating well, which are increasingly difficult to achieve, have culturally-specific rather than universal meanings. Local, global and cultural, as well as material forces shape them. Undoubtedly, real hunger and fear of its sporadic recurrence in part account for this value. Nonetheless, one cannot interpret the ‘fat aesthetic’ solely in these terms; for the positive valuing of eating and fatness applies more to women, is expressed in times of relative prosperity as well as duress, and traditionally, fattening rituals were more prevalent among Imajeŕen, who until recently could practise conspicuous consumption because they monopolized large livestock, controlled trading and exercised military dominance over client and servile peoples. The imŕad raided and traded for the Imajeŕen. Islamic scholars (popularly called marabouts) still specialize in Qur’anic law, medicine and psychiatry. The inadan manufactured jewellery, weapons and household tools, and some served as oral historians and musicians for their noble patron families – but now many make and sell jewellery to tourists. Before slavery was abolished in the early twentieth century, iklan (those who were captured and owned) performed domestic work, herding and gardening. These people, now free, are popularly called bella or buzu in Mali and Niger respectively. Today, some former slaves and their descendants have obtained education and jobs in new urban infrastructures; whereas others still perform menial (though now paid) labour for former noble owners in the countryside. Currently, there are efforts at cultural revitalization and repatriation of refugees following the Tuareg rebellion against their central governments. New leaders urge everyone to forget the old privileges and rivalries, and to unify beneath the wider banner of their common language.4 I became interested in the female fatness aesthetic during my longterm socio-cultural anthropological field research on related topics in Tuareg communities in Niger and Mali.5 Many Tuareg men encouraged – indeed urged – me to eat well, explaining that ‘many of us prefer a fat woman’, but they became embarrassed when I asked why, cryptically

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instructing me to ‘go ask an old woman’. In the present chapter I analyse data I collected on this topic in three different settings, two rural and one urban – first, a predominantly nomadic stockbreeding rural community in northern Mali where the water table is too low for gardening and most residents, who belong to tawsitin within the Iwellemmeden and Ifuŕas groups, spend much of the year on transhumance; second, a more sedentarized, rural oasis gardening community of Tuareg in northern Niger who belong to the Kel Ewey tawsit and who are agro-pastoralists and caravanners residing much of the year in small hamlets; and third, an urban Tamasheq-speaking community in Kidal, a multi-ethnic town of approximately 20,000 residents in the Adaŕ n Ifuŕas Mountains of northern Mali. Despite some actual ethnic origin variation within many of these urban families, the members of this community identify themselves as Tuareg and base their self-identification as such primarily on speaking Tamasheq as their first language. In these settings I explore the social constructions of female fatness, the ways in which this beauty aesthetic is both reinforced and contested, and the impact of competing forces on this aesthetic. These settings are not representative of all Tamasheq-speaking communities, but they are not atypical either. This ‘three-way’ comparison is intended to do justice to the complexity of Tuareg and other cultures, thereby offering, it is hoped, one means of minimizing ‘essentialization’ in cultural analysis. The fatness beauty ideal is widespread in both the rural communities, but it is not practised to the same extent, agreed on, or identical in its meanings. To interpret these differences, one must examine more closely their wider contexts. Despite livestock losses in northern Mali, most rural Iwellemmeden and Ifuŕas remain more nomadic with larger herds than the Kel Ewey living in Aïr. Among the Kel Ewey, oasis gardening and caravanning are much more important.6 In both regions, there are ties to North Africa and some noble and marabout intermarriage between Imajeŕen and marabout Tuareg and Arabs. Among the Kel Ewey, there are also strong ties to Hausaland in the south. Other contrasts between the two rural communities pertain to past slavery. In general, more intermarriages have taken place between Imajeŕen and former slaves among the Kel Ewey than among the Ifuŕas or Iwellemmeden; among the latter in the countryside, some former slaves and their descendants now perform paid manual labour and ritual roles (serving food and singing at weddings, for example). Whereas among the

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Kel Ewey in the Aïr mountain countryside, rural inadan, rather than former iklan, tend to do this.7 Although some Kel Ewey oasis families are of mixed or servile origins, their social status there is not publicly marked today, and most no longer work for their former owners. In the more pastoral-nomadic rural Tuareg groups, slavery had been important in the economy in the past,8 just as it had been among some neighbouring people such as the Songhay, Bambara and Hausa. Although social relations in the more nomadic rural Malian Tuareg community between people of Imajeŕen and iklan origins (the latter now free) have always been very flexible and negotiable, I argue that they are nonetheless directly relevant to attitudes towards female fatness as a criterion of ‘beauty’. In this community, the fatness ideal for women embodies the Timajeŕen’s ideal of acquiring social prestige and economic independence through being herd and tent owners, being able to refrain from hard physical labour by engaging others to perform those tasks, and by supporting and protecting others. For example, except in reserve relations and during drought and other hardships, eating is a pleasurable yet hegemonic activity made possible not only by the labour of others but also by one’s own generosity towards them in (ideally) mutually-beneficial client–patron and (formerly) owner–slave relationships. Eating is a means of communication, part of wider free sociability between the sexes in most everyday contexts of informal visiting and courtship, except, notably, between certain people who practise reserve (takarakit) such as a husband and his parents-in-law. But these older meanings of eating and its bodily aesthetic manifestation, women’s fatness, are now affected, even threatened, by the sedentarization influences of both rural oasis gardening and urban bureaucracies. In rural northern Niger oasis gardening villages all women increasingly perform arduous labour in cereal processing and, since the establishment of women’s gardening cooperatives in the 1990s, planting and harvesting as well. In the past only client and servile people performed these tasks and, following manumission, until recently they were done only by men and a few elderly women. This rural community displays more marked ambivalence towards female fatness as a sign of beauty. I show how, for many sedentarized Kel Ewey gardeners, fatness is now being perceived as a burden rather than a beauty ideal, although there are some contradictions – for example, the continuing need for fertility, which thinness is believed to diminish.9

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In Kidal, the key vector reshaping the significance of female bodily fatness and offering alternative beauty aesthetics includes the social consequences of increasing bureaucratic structures of control, which are beginning to measure and calibrate bodies and the self-conscious efforts of officials to promote locally defined ‘modernity’. In Kidal, not surprisingly, there is much more diversity and debate concerning beauty, the body and the fatness aesthetic. However, one cannot attribute this solely to sweeping ‘global’ influences, though these are present (indeed, some global forces are also present in the two rural communities). Most relevant to the fate of the beauty aesthetic of female fatness in Kidal are this town’s political contradictions and tensions. Although multi-ethnic, the Tamasheq linguistic and cultural elements are most prominent (for example, in oral/verbal arts, theatre, use of the written script tifinaŕ, and artisan works). Despite this town’s increasing diversity, its surrounding countryside is Tuareg, predominantly Imajeŕen. Tuareg political leaders in Kidal are officially prominent, albeit with modified powers: the amanukal of the Ifuŕas, named Intala, his council of elders and Islamic scholars/marabouts, and many town hall mayoral bureaucrats are closely related by kinship. The mayor, for example, is a son of Intala. These traditional chiefly leaders (from the precolonial aristocratic Imajeŕen descent group) compete, however, with other powerful forces in town. These include the staff at the local radio station, Radio Tisdas, who are predominantly bella (of servile iklan origins but among the first local Tamasheq speakers to be educated in secular schools), the massive military presence of the Malian army (predominantly southern Bambara and Songhay, despite the integration of some Tuareg into its ranks), and shopkeepers, market merchants and small restaurant owners who include Arabs, Songhay, Bambara, Dogon and other Africans such as Senegalese. I aim in this chapter neither to make a positivist comparison with rigidly controlled variables nor to search for some monocausal, universal explanation or prediction of female fatness. Rather, I wish to reveal, through interpretive/cultural analysis of juxtaposed data from several similar, yet distinctive settings, a range of meanings of female fatness, differences in degree of adherence to this aesthetic, and disputes and transformations surrounding it in different contexts. Two forces are important in challenging, though not completely overturning or replacing, this beauty aesthetic – sedentarization in the rural communities and bureaucratization in the urban setting.

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More broadly, two major theoretical and ethnographic concerns guide my analysis. First, global and ‘modern’ influences are indeed present in these communities, specifically in the media (mostly radio, but in Kidal also television and for a few affluent residents even the internet) and in travel memories (of labour migration, political exile and religious pilgrimages). However, globalization is a complex process10 that does not determine everything, and in my view this term should not be used as a gloss, for local cultural formulations reframe global processes. Equally complex and slippery is another concept, ‘modernity’; this process is not by any means always associated with so-called ‘Western’ or EuroAmerican influences. For example, I show how some local authorities define modernity in very culturally-specific terms, and how some local women show ambivalence, even resistance, to beauty ideals promoted on videos and television. My second broad concern is with the issue of social origins, identity and relations at the level of practice. In keeping with the goals of this volume and of other poststructural anthropological attempts to avoid totalizing and essentializing cultures, I agree that scholars need to replace colonial and ethnocentric terminology, in particular terms that tend to portray social categories as static and neatly-bounded. Sometimes, however, we do need to consider relevant power relations between social groups in history, albeit in a manner that conveys their fluidity in shifting contexts of personal agency. Despite transformations in social roles and relationships, many local residents remain conscious of their own and of others’ social origins, particularly in the countryside. This consciousness is revealed in judgements about personal character and health, and in explanations about bodily ideals and other values such as food preferences and more general lifestyle tastes – for example, some people of Imajeŕen origin favour nomadism, tents, indigo aleshu cloth and male observance of certain rules of etiquette such as reserve, and they explicitly identify these tastes with their social origins. Of course, as in any society, there is variation among the Tuareg concerning attitudes toward competing cultural influences. Some residents tend to oppose their own values to those of other ethnic groups in sedentarized and urban communities; others do not lament plural value systems, but place greater emphasis on becoming ‘modern’ and cosmopolitan in multi-ethnic settings. In the Tuareg case, social origins in the ‘precolonial’ system are relevant to the present analysis, despite their marked historical

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transformations. I make two arguments here: social origins do not determine all responses to female bodily beauty aesthetics, but they are powerful in shaping some people’s aesthetic preferences, but on the other hand, conversely, many people also actively shape new social identities through promoting or resisting female fatness. Thus, this analysis of the female fatness bodily aesthetic grapples with an important wider anthropological dilemma. In other words, how does one historicize social and cultural processes, yet minimize problematic and obsolete social and cultural identity terms that derive from a European feudal system, but whose social referents remain salient in some contexts of practice, such as bodily ‘beauty’. On the other hand, there is some variation among different Tuareg in adherence to this fatness aesthetic, which reveals the shifting, fluid and dynamic aspects of socio-cultural identity and relatedness, thereby underlining the importance of agency, as well as structure, in habitus of the body, and contributing insights into how individuals both follow and resist powerful cultural hegemonic practices. Hence, internal diversity and dynamic change, as well as common themes, are important within each community. The aesthetic ideal of fatness tends to be strongest today in the more nomadic rural Malian Tuareg community, where it conforms most closely to the classical pattern portrayed in much ethnohistory and ethnography of the Tuareg,11 and neighbouring Azawad Arab and Moorish patterns.12 This positive valuing of female fatness is also present in the semi-sedentarized Niger Kel Ewey oasis gardening community, but to a lesser degree. In this latter setting, I show how and why this ideal is beginning to decline somewhat; moreover, the meanings of female fatness are distinctive and changing there. Relevant differences between and within the two rural communities specifically have to do with the following fields of local relationships: first, the extent to which each community relied on slave labour in the past and the nature of contemporary relations between nobles and subordinates in each rural community; and second, marriage and husband–wife relationships, as influenced by the relative influence of Islamic scholar clans, on the one hand, and by sedentarized oasis gardening, on the other. In the town of Kidal I show that the decline in this bodily aesthetic is by no means universal; it occurs primarily among some more youthful (that is adolescent) Tuareg women in that age cohort popularly known as ishumar (masculine) or tishumar (feminine) young people in a generation widely experiencing dispersion and upheaval from unemployment, labour

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migration, political exile, droughts and wars. However, some members of the town’s new elites also express negative feelings about female fatness. In Kidal, influences upon this aesthetic thus include multi-ethnic and new elite (functionary and artistic) classes, media, NGO, national and global media influences, and the greater (though not complete) sedentarization of many residents there following their uprooting from home communities. These more powerful forces discourage, but do not entirely replace, the female fatness aesthetic. These powerful bureaucracies are creating a new form of symbolic (cultural) capital, interwoven with new forms of social prestige and economic independence, which increasingly challenge the older beauty ideal of female fatness. Yet, the alternative ideal, thinness, is not completely accepted either, and there are still many women in Kidal who are, or wish to be, fat. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Among Tuareg, as among many other Africans, powerful people are often represented as extraordinary beings who are ‘larger than life’, or at least larger than ordinary people.13 However, power is always vulnerable to dialectical reversals. Before French colonial policies interfered with the caravan trade, drew artificial state borders limiting nomadism and modified local leaders’ powers, Tuareg nomadic noble descent groups controlled the caravan trade, monopolized weapons and large livestock, and collected tribute and labour from people of varying client and servile statuses whom they also protected militarily and absorbed in fictive kinship relationships. Social relations were negotiable, and Tuareg chiefs were not supposed to rule by force, but rather by respect. Noble ideals of dignity (imojaŕ), generosity, restraint and reserve or ‘shame’ (takarakit), and pressures to give alms and redistribute were strong, yet also challenged by pressure to assert prestige and status in conspicuous consumption. This explains the analytical usefulness, in this ethnographic context, of several concepts – disciplined habitus and symbolic (cultural) capital;14 multiple power vectors with regard to sexuality;15 and cultural hegemony – power assertion through both pleasurable and coercive activities.16 I draw on these concepts to analyse both shared and disputed bodily dispositions within these three Tuareg settings. Also useful, though in need of refinement in my view, are some formulations of globalization and modernity,17 which tend to represent this process in totalizing, over generalized terms. In the context of Kidal, for example, habitus and hegemony can be

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fruitfully analysed in the proliferation of bureaucracies that convey, not solely material sources of power but also regimes of classification in efforts to frame modernity in local terms. One form they take is impressed on the body politic,18 though here there are not one but several body politics. The two rural contexts are not static or isolated: in those communities also there are changes and variations in the female bodily fatness aesthetic. These communities experience double binds that do not, however, result solely from globalization, but rather emerge from two key vectors – variations in social stratification and the semiotics of power and space on the one hand, and marriage, gender and sexuality on the other. ‘FAT/ANTI-FAT BATTLES’ IN TWO RURAL COMMUNITIES Many nomadic women in rural northern Mali of Imajeŕen origins are, despite recent hardships, rotund (that is ‘obese’ in the Euro-American biomedical system, itself a cultural system) in appearance, according to both local and Western definitions. They joke a great deal about body weight. In conversations, these women all hinted at limits to how thin one could acceptably become: for example, they considered the women in a European exercise video they had seen ‘much too thin’. I heard various slang terms for ‘thinness’, probably regional dialect variations and possibly loan terms from other neighbouring languages, but recurrent ones include sediden in Niger and sqomas in Mali. Others mistook female models for boys in a European magazine I showed them. While fat is valued positively, thin is not denigrated quite as viciously as is fat in the United States. Women indicated that they should all be proud of themselves, though the majority tended to praise fatness the most. The implications here are that these independent women’s bodily confidence corresponded to their security and self-confidence in other areas – where, for example, they enjoyed wealth and respect, fatness, though valued, was not everything in life. Also, one important meaning of female fatness is the ideal of complementary differences between the sexes. Some rural women actively resist certain globalization influences because these reach their rural community only sporadically and lack a reinforcing, rewarding social follow-up programme. There is a sexual aesthetic to fatness. Many hint that thin women are less sexually satisfying, a view Popenoe reported among Azawad Arabs.19 Not eating much is believed to dry up sexual fluids and eating a lot to increase them, on the part of both sexes, somewhat like salivating before

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appetizing food. In fact, a slang expression for some men who contract polygamous marriages or have many extramarital affairs is ‘great salivators’. Thus, food is a sort of aphrodisiac. There are symbolic analogies between saliva and sexual fluids, as in a Tamasheq proverb about the men’s turban/ veil: ‘the face veil and trousers are brothers’ (imadrayen tagelmust nten ekarbay) and in informal, conversational statements about some men having ‘a lot of saliva and sperm, and need to be polygynous’.20 Wedding songs contain tropes referring to the bride as, for example, a ‘fat cow’ (tas ta tisuwwurat, though this is often expressed through euphemistic tropes), and euphemisms for sexual intercourse, such as ‘eating meat’ (ekshu isan). There are thus analogies and ‘bundles of analogies’ linking sex to food, particularly meat, in flirting, conversation, jokes and smiths’ songs, which ultimately relate to marriage, gender and wealth. Women in rural northern Mali warned me that ‘the wind will blow a thin woman away’. Fatness is also associated with additional kinds of strength – in property ownership, control over (former) subordinates and resoluteness in guarding wealth, but also, importantly, in protecting and supporting subordinates. Symbolic capital consists of not solely material wealth, conspicuous consumption and leisure, but also of generosity. Unless supervising her herds (usually kept by slaves in the past), a woman should be seated inside her tent and not be too mobile, since mobility implies desperately seeking resources nobles are supposed already to possess and to redistribute. For example, in the past, Imajeŕen redistributed booty from battles to imŕad, supported inadan, and owners paid bride wealth for servile ‘fictive kin’ children’s marriages.21 Fatness iconically expresses freedom from heavy physical labour, manifested in daily ‘habitus’. Except while accompanying herds on transhumance, nomadic women of means do as little physical exertion as possible. They avoid climbing onto trucks, moving heavy objects, pounding millet, crushing corn and hoisting water from wells. Rural nomads in Mali explained to me, ‘We people here like to eat a lot of meat. We do not eat millet, since this grain is associated with slaves and household labour. Also, millet makes our flesh hard, like the flesh of slaves, whereas milk and meat keep the flesh soft’. Rites of passage, as well as everyday routines, vividly illustrate these idealized contrasts. At a name day held for a newborn child in a family of Imajeŕen origin, bella descendants of iklan performed the more menial and

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physically demanding domestic cooking tasks, such as hauling firewood and water. The Timajeŕen did only some light cooking, on a small gas burner in a lean-to near the mother’s tent. A bella woman who, in contrast to the noble women there, appeared very thin and muscular and was dressed in old, worn clothing, cooked most of the guests’ food over a fire and served us the meal (rice and goat meat). Although the bella woman ate with the others and was not mistreated, significantly she ate from a separate bowl and the others did not make much social conversation with her; she remained silent and retreated from our circle after she had finished eating. Yet, it should be emphasized that even though slaves were formerly owned, social hierarchies have never been completely rigid; even in the past, a slave could change owners if mistreated.22 Bella also perform songs, as griots do in southern Mali. Rural bella, griots and inadan still badger their former owners and patrons for gifts of food and clothing, in addition to their current cash labour income, reflecting the longstanding negotiability of these relationships. Giving to clients and former slaves is mandatory for more general benediction and good fortune, without which social prestige would be impossible to maintain. For example, almsgiving to bella is a ritual response to disaster: during a severe lightning storm in the rural Malian community of my field research, local residents took food to an impoverished elderly bella woman in order to bring their families albaraka blessing and protection from that storm and other dangers, such as thefts.23 This ‘traditional’ aesthetic of fatness therefore envelops and comforts these women in ‘layers’ of protection from, not solely literal hunger (also a danger), but also from diminution of prestige and self-respect. Women’s status as independent owners of tents and herds is embodied in the image of an ideally rotund woman seated inside her tent, a motif in jewellery forms and literacy pamphlet illustrations. But there are threats to this status in droughts, wars and, in some regions, sedentarization, in new forms of work and prestige. In northern Niger, more sedentarized Kel Ewey tend to express less disdain for gardening and manual labour.24 In this region, there is an increasing need for all family members to assist in oasis gardening. Although some Kel Ewey women still wish to gain weight, extreme rotundness is rarely seen there, and some male oasis gardeners, many of whom are also returning from labour migration in Europe, devalue it. A few young men there commented, ‘if a woman is too fat that is not good,

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for then she cannot do anything!’ On these oases, Kel Ewey women of all social origins devote approximately 90 per cent of their daily task routine to processing cereal grains, including pounding millet (the local staple obtained on caravan trade), hauling water from wells25 and, most recently, planting and harvesting in new women’s cooperative gardens.26 One must therefore be just fat enough to be strong, but not so fat that one is weakened and unable to perform these tasks. Yet, these tasks make gaining weight very difficult, thereby undermining an assumption that the bodily weight that is rare and difficult to attain is always what is valued. Most women own very small herds, and some have given up their tent. Mostly men own the ubiquitous adobe mud houses. Some men contract polygamous marriages (contrary to the traditionally prevalent Tuareg monogamy) since, they explain, ‘co-wives and more children provide additional household and garden help.’ But women fear that men will acquire another wife for a different reason: if the first wife becomes ‘too old’, signified by being too thin.27 Women in the oases therefore experience contradictions and ‘double binds’ between a lingering desire to be fat (to remain youthful and fertile), versus the need also to perform arduous domestic and, increasingly, gardening labour sufficiently well to appear in no need of a co-wife to assist, but this work tends to make women thin. Men also experience inner conflicts between the classical female beauty aesthetic of fatness with its former prestige and association with youth and fertility, and the increasing need to have assistants in garden work who are not encumbered by their fatness. Everyone is aware that thinness can impede fertility. Many young women, whom marabouts blame for their infertility because they tend to sympathize more with men, seek treatment from herbal medicine women and these older healers advise their patients to put on weight.28 Thus, there are several aspects to rural Tuareg women’s fatness: one is related to social status and conveys a memory of past Imajeŕen–iklan distinctions; another is related to a sexual aesthetic that conveys anxieties about changing husband–wife relationships over the domestic cycle. Pressures on sedentarized women to reproduce more children in some respects replicate the old fatness beauty ideal and its association with noble nomadic women’s prosperity in herds. Disagreements on the oases about fatness thus convey the double binds, contradictions and dilemmas confronting more sedentarized rural women and men. Older people’s memories of past nomadism and relationships between

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wives and husband yield further insights here. One elderly woman of mixed social origins, in recalling her youthful marriage, wistfully described herding and eating more in the past: My husband went to Hausa country [on caravan trade]. At first, he brought me [marriage] gifts of indigo cloth and black wooden bowls. As soon as these provisions were finished, he got me others. [As a girl] I liked to have [herd] my goats, to drink and drink [lots of] milk. All these things are good. Yes, I like being married! Marriage is to have a man work like a slave!29 Striking in this woman’s reminiscence are two key points. These are the centrality of food and eating to marriage, and her comparison, metaphorically, of the role of her husband with a ‘slave’, the social category argued in this chapter to be absolutely central to the symbolic meanings of Tuareg noble fattening traditionally and to its social reconstructions in changing circumstances. At her wedding, this woman wore indigo clothes, received silver jewellery and millet, and ‘filled up on milk’.30 Thus, she emphasized her own drinking of lots of milk, a major source of protein and calcium, now scarce, and a symbol of purity, happiness and abundance, and used in kinship expressions, such as milk relatives, those breastfed by the same woman who cannot marry, but are socially close.31 Most significantly, milk appears in the name of the important ‘living milk’ akh isudar (Aïr dialect) livestock property, which women have traditionally received matrilineally to counterbalance Qur’anic inheritance favouring males. Living milk property, the major source of Tuareg women’s wealth, is today under threat from droughts, wars and Qur’anic legal manoeuvres.32 Marabouts often rule in favour of men in marital disputes and divorces. This woman also alluded to the obligations of the husband in the early years of marriage to complete bride-wealth payments and groom service, which involves herding, gardening, caravanning and (nowadays) labour migration for his parents-in-law; in particular, he must please his motherin-law by providing her with grain and/or cash on demand for the family storehouse, and also must bring back gifts for his bride and her family from his travel. Until recently, if the mother-in-law disliked her daughter’s new husband, she had the power to break up marriages by delaying permission for the couple to move away and for her daughter to disengage

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livestock from her mother’s own herds. The mother of the bride is still respected: all Tuareg men practise a strict reserve relationship with their mother-in-law, but in more sedentarized communities the mother-in-law no longer wields such powers.33 Thus, for many rural Tuareg women, at one level eating well and fatness as a beauty aesthetic have to do not solely with women’s fertility but also with men’s role as a bridegroom and husband who, ideally, is productive and contributes to his affines’ household. Notwithstanding women’s traditional economic independence in herd and tent ownership, a woman’s body (its condition, care and fate) embodies a man’s economic failure or success: one woman commented, ‘The woman is the trousers of the man (tamtut ekarbay n ales)’ – she represents or ‘completes’ him to outsiders.34 Also, fatness conveys having a slave: in the past, noble women brought a slave to marriage as part of the dowry. Thinness conveys being a slave oneself, or having a husband who is not productive: ideally, he should in effect be a symbolic ‘slave’ to his wife. ‘FAT–ANTI-FAT BATTLES’ IN THE URBAN CONTEXT In Kidal, complex processes impinge on the beauty aesthetic of female fatness. Health agencies, outreach workshops, schools, aid agencies, the hospital, NGOs, job-training programmes, television and radio all advocate integrating ‘nomads’ and young people into the urban infrastructure by addressing health and work concerns. Plays and radio broadcasts stereotype rural people, for example, as naïve ‘peasants’, and youths as irresponsible and in need of re-education (or control).35 Reshaping the female body is part of this agenda. The mayor proudly described to me how his grandfather had earlier promoted secular education and how he himself now encouraged girls’ education, which is still not universally embraced by the Tuareg for fear that schooling would destroy local culture or that male teachers would harass the female students.36 Part of girls’ education is health education: some school and hospital programmes instruct on nutrition and diet, and encourage women of Kidal to give birth not at home, but at the Maternité. A number of recently-founded NGOs are encouraging youth employment for both sexes. Education and job training thus go hand in hand with new ideas concerning the body. Health education workshops and the media, such as television, promote the thinner ideal most directly and explicitly. Amina, a member of a local performing ensemble who often tours internationally, had attended

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several health education workshops in Kidal that encouraged weight loss; in particular, they discouraged the old fattening ritual for women, which is rare nowadays but still practised in some remote rural areas of Mauritania, Mali and Niger.37 Amina proudly showed me a photograph of herself before she lost weight: she remarked, ‘Now I am much thinner … this is more attractive and healthier also.’ When I visited her, she often had the television turned on to a popular soap opera from Brazil featuring glamorous, slender women who drove cars, wore beautiful clothes and lived in luxury high-rise apartments. Amina described her ‘diet’ to me: she did not starve herself, but ate smaller portions of a variety of foods. But she did express some confusion and doubt on this, and requested more information on foods and their vitamin content. When I asked her why she had undertaken this regimen, she replied that the hospital had instructed her and some other women on the dangers of obesity, using the French term. However, she complained of stomach problems and asked me for medicines to help digestion, thereby hinting that she had experienced some illness or discomfort. The recent modern ‘beauty contests’ called ‘Miss’, locally organized but modelled on international and regional contests aired on television, are also powerful. A Miss Kidal beauty contest was produced live in December 2006 on a stage at the new youth centre; called Maison de Luxembourg, it was built and funded by a European aid agency and staffed by European and local workers. The Maison de Luxembourg is also a centre for youth job-training programmes and theatrical and musical performances, notably by the famous ensemble Tinariwen when they are at home from their international tours.38 Many songs and comedies there address youth problems.39 In this ‘Miss’ contest, although being very fat was no longer considered desirable, additional bodily aesthetics besides thinness were promoted: a ‘red’ (that is neither pale nor dark) complexion and a ‘smooth’ (abundant rather than cropped) hairstyle. A woman I shall call Tana, an accomplished singer, served on the board of judges with several other prominent town residents, including a European man. She related how, at first, not everyone received this contest well. Some families, mostly nobles and the respected clan of Kel Essuq Islamic scholars cum marabouts had initially forbidden their daughters to display themselves in public for reasons of takarakit (reserve). However, they changed their minds, Tana insisted, ‘once they learned that winners of this contest

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received substantial monetary prizes that could benefit them and their families’. They were also placated by the dress of the contestants who in the first part wear ‘traditional’ Tuareg dress (that is long robes with a scarf or shawl that covers the woman’s hair but not her face) and in the second, ‘Western’ dress, but not, notably, bathing suits; thus local residents do not equate ‘modern’ dress with ‘Western’ dress in every respect. Tana also reminded others that, ‘even in traditional rural Tuareg society, there have always been beauty competitions for both men and women: for women, these involve physical appearance. For men, physical appearance is important, but so too is how they ride their camels and dress during their ilugan camel parade.’ Thus, in contrast to the prevalent Western feminist view of beauty contests as demeaning to women, some Kidal Tuareg women, particularly town elites, viewed them as actually liberating to women. They saw them as a means to economic mobility, as complementary to men’s contests and emphasized their continuity rather than rupture with rural ‘traditional’ Tuareg festivals. Also, the judges’ aesthetic beauty criteria included traits other than body weight. Another feature of ‘modernity’ in Kidal that is relevant to bodily aesthetics, at least indirectly, is Le Grotte (The Grotto or Cave), a night club that opened recently with permission from Intala and his council of elders and marabouts, on condition it was built on the edge of town across the road from the police station. Tuareg women and men have always enjoyed free social interaction and evening musical festivals, but this club was controversial, especially among some of the more conservative Islamist religious scholars, because it served alcohol, permitted women to wear tight, Western-style clothing and promoted Western-style ‘disco’ dancing. Changing attitudes towards food and eating are also relevant. Between 2002 and 2006 a number of restaurants were opened that introduced novel contexts to many Tuareg; they provided new public spaces in which it became acceptable to eat openly in front of anyone at any time. In other words, traditional Imajeŕen reserve (takarakit), which constrains particularly men from uncovering their mouths, is in principle being lifted. Indeed, a few urban inadan, who traditionally are in any case less constrained by it than Imajeŕen, told me that they had abandoned reserve. Most, however, remain ambivalent. Tuareg men eating in these establishments usually turn their backs to

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the other customers, face the wall and, with great embarrassment, hastily consume their meals underneath their face veils. I noticed very few Tuareg women eating in these restaurants. Although the restaurant owners are willing to receive them, many families disapprove of their daughters going there for fear that strange men, particularly soldiers, will harass them. Nonetheless, there is a general loosening of reserve or shame constraints, which is significant and relevant to female fatness. Normally, for people of Imajeŕen social origins, the women are encouraged to eat whereas, because of its association with shame and disrespect, eating is more restricted for the men. The point is that restaurants in Kidal are subtly introducing additional significance to eating in relation to gender and social origins, bringing men more into the public eating sphere and women more into the private domestic eating sphere. It may well become more shameful than it once was for women to eat in public and less shameful for men. There is, however, no consensus on these new eating, bodily and beauty related values. The anti-fat aesthetic is sometimes ignored, even resented by some older women in Kidal. Many newcomers settle in town reluctantly, to escape droughts and political violence, but hope to return to their rural and nomadic life. Some retain a few livestock, reside in tents they construct inside urban compounds, and attempt to continue to support themselves by stockbreeding and making and selling dairy products, but this is difficult. Several of these women expressed a wish to learn new skills at the Maison de Luxembourg, which trains women and men to become tailors, electricians and leatherworkers, but this building is in an outlying neighbourhood. I offered to walk several women, very rotund according to the older fatness ideal, to that centre, but they demurred when they discovered that I had no vehicle, protesting, ‘We cannot walk there … even 20 minutes is too far, too hard on the body!’ Thus, in Kidal there is resistance as well as accommodation to the global forces of the media and entertainment. Relocalization is also occurring here: a reshaping of the female ideal in local cultural conceptualizations of modernity competes with outside influences from the media, entertainment, aid programmes, NGOs and education, and not everyone is yielding to these pressures. CONCLUSION These data reveal, not neat models or mutually exclusive values and practices, but a range of them, and variations in meanings, within as well

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as between cultural settings, concerning the female fatness bodily aesthetic. These settings are not hermetically sealed and there is some ‘messiness’ as well as consistency within them. Furthermore, individuals do not act ‘robotically’ according to social origins, though social origins are significant in framing some responses to threats to female fatness. Local bodily aesthetics are shaped, and also actively shape, encounters with outside powerful forces; global and modern become redefined in local contexts of practice. Striking here is the generally close association between pastoral nomadism with female fatness ideals, and rural sedentarized oasis gardening and settled urban bureaucracies with their redefinition and decline, though not their total demise. Yet, there is no complete consensus within any community. More broadly, rigid local-to-global models cannot explain all aspects of cultural construction of the body. There is no monolithic or unitary ‘body politic’ within a single cultural setting. When the connections between ‘beauty’ ideals, productivity and prestige become ambiguous, their rewards are uncertain. There are powers and dangers, but also escape hatches. Bodily and sociopolitical turmoil coalesce, but are not mirror images of each other.

10 Libya, the ‘Europe of Ishumar’: Between Losing and Reinventing Tradition Ines Kohl1

We are poor (nekenni tilaqqawen). In Niger we don’t have a chance to continue our nomadic life, so we leave. But we don’t know how to reach Europe. It’s not that we don’t want to go to Europe, no, we want! We just don’t know how! Because unlike all these Igoran and Ibambaran [other West Africans] who cross the sea, we are afraid of death (tamattant). So we go to Libya. Libya is the Europe of the poor; Libya is the ‘Europe of ishumar!’2 In the 1980s the Imajeŕen regarded Libya as ‘paradise on earth’, an Eldorado, and Muammar Gaddafi as the saviour of the poor and suppressed.3 That positive view of Libya has hardly changed over the years. Despite General Seyni Kountché’s pronouncements that ‘Gaddafi’s promises are like the wind,’4 the Imajeŕen still look upon him as their friend and supporter. In the 1980s he attracted large numbers of Imajeŕen from Mali and Niger to Libya because, ‘according to him, the Tuareg were all originally from Tripolitania and, as such, are Libyan citizens.’5 This offered a flicker of hope to drought-stricken nomads and a lot of their young men decided to migrate to Libya. To regulate and manage these clandestine arrivals, Gaddafi recruited them into military service in the Libyan Islamic Legion with promises that it would enable them to save their people in Mali and Niger, but in reality envisaging that ‘they would provide good soldiers on the Libyan side for Father Gadaffi’s benefit.’6 So, instead of liberating the impoverished and politically marginalized nomads, they found themselves fighting to secure Libyan interests in the front line of the war with Chad. It was as this time that the ishumar movement was brought into being. The term ishumar,7 which came into use in the 1960s,8 derives from the

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French word chômage, meaning unemployment. It was originally applied to all Imajeŕen who gave up their nomadic life to migrate to surrounding states in search of employment. The political marginalization of Imajeŕen in Niger and Mali, coupled with recurring droughts in the Sahel, made it difficult to sustain a nomadic life based on pastoralism and livestock, which resulted in a slow drift of young nomads towards West African cities and the Maghreb countries. It was the absence of prospects or work for young people in Niger that forced so many Imajeŕen to leave their homes to try their luck in Algeria or Libya. The meaning of the term ishumar has changed since it first emerged 40 years ago. After undergoing several modifications, the term now refers primarily to the transregional mobility of former pastoralists inhabiting the borderland between Libya, Algeria, Mali and Niger. This mobility no longer refers exclusively to young men, but includes women, which has given the term an additional dimension. Over the last ten to fifteen years, lots of ishumar and tishumar have settled in Libya and Muammar Gaddafi encourages this development. His most recent9 political legislation allows the Imajeŕen to move and work freely within the country. In addition, he supports them by issuing identity cards. Nomadic people whose sense of belonging had depended on blood and kinship ties and whose members had grown up in the desert without birth certificates, citizenship or passports, have now acquired a new component of their identity, namely nationality. In terms of their political integration into Libya, the ishumar in Libya are entering a period of becoming sedentary. They marry, either in Libya or bring their wives from Niger, build small Niger-style houses covered with corrugated iron sheets, and reduce their transregional border crossings to an annual visit to their relatives in Niger. As a consequence, their status is changing. Indeed, they are still ishumar in the sense of transregional mobility, but they experience a different value than their unmarried colleagues. A sedentary life and marriage presuppose work, plans for the future and at least a little bit of money. This means breaking out of the ishumar cycle and entering a situation corresponding to the traditional world-view.10 HOT SPOT LIBYA If one is travelling through Libya, one can hardly escape the numerous placards posted on the roads and main squares. These are either pictures

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of the ‘Great Leader’ himself, or gleaming, green, blinking maps of Libya, the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, which eclipses Africa in every sense. Libya is the green star on the black African horizon. This self-styled Libyan image11 depicts Gaddafi’s revolutionary system and corresponds with the ishumar’s view of the controversial Maghreb state. Muammar Gaddafi’s revolution in 1969 changed Libya fundamentally. The ideological, political, economic and social changes it brought turned one of the poorest states of the Maghreb into one of the richest countries in Africa.12 From the proceeds of the oil production that started in the 1960s, Gaddafi was able to realize his dreams of reform and progress, which included (still largely) free health and education services, public housing and advanced communication technologies. Most Libyans were absorbed into specially created government and administrative positions, and foreign workers carried out the necessary construction work. The Libyan population has profited greatly from the oil income and the government’s social provision is unusually high compared with other Maghreb countries. Alhusseini, an ashamur from the Aïr Mountains, had travelled to and fro from Niger to Libya over a period of many years. He describes the differences between the two countries as follows: Of course, I like Niger much more. In Niger freedom prevails. You can say what ever you want. You can meet girls, every evening you will find tinde [a kind of drum] in the Sahara and nobody will ask you constantly ‘why do you do it like this, and not like that?’ But in Niger we don’t have work. Niger is poor. In most regions there is no electricity or water in the houses. Fuel is so expensive that even if you have a car you cannot drive it. Before I came to Libya I didn’t know the taste of cake. Even Coca or Fanta I have never drunk before. You can find it in Niger but it is so expensive that nobody can afford it. Here in Libya you have good water, enough to eat and you earn good money. Even though the Libyans do not like us, Gaddafi is our friend!13 The Libyan population is ambivalent about Gaddafi’s position on equality and justice, and his policy of integrating Imajeŕen into his state. Whereas Gaddafi continues to hold that ‘Libya is the country of the Tuareg, their base and their support’,14 and periodically welcomes Imajeŕen

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from Niger and Mali, in these respects the local population is much more reserved and sceptical. Libyan Arabs and Libyan Tuareg strongly distance themselves from their fellow citizens from Niger and Mali. Their lifestyles, norms and values are too different.15 Their relationship is characterized by a mutually noticeable negative attitude, which emphasizes and overemphasizes the differences between the two groups, while at the same time neglecting existing similarities. The complex relationship between Libyan Imajeŕen (Kel Azjer) and ishumar is a variation on the theme of ‘locals versus newcomers’ and can be interpreted as follows: each group predominantly employs a strategy of ‘belittling avoidance’ towards the other. … For the Kel Azjer this means above all a distancing from migrants, who in the present age of globalization are classified as ‘aliens to the nation state’, despite speaking the same language and having a similar culture. … By contrast, from the ishumars’ point of view, the ‘belittling avoidance’ is rather the inevitable result of the power relations that they have encountered. For them, the Kel Azjer are resident representatives of Libya. … Coming from a weaker, asymmetrically structured starting point, they need to deal with … [Libya] to secure supra-local opportunities for participation.16 Participation in Libya means better working opportunities than in their homeland. Since most Libyans hold specially-created government and administrative posts, foreign workers are employed to carry out whatever construction work is necessary.17 The majority of sub-Saharan migrants who are on their way to Europe earn their travel expenses in Libya while working on these construction jobs, which are never done by Libyans. However, since constant deportation campaigns threaten sub-Saharan Africans, their working capacity is subject to constant changes. As a young ashamur deridingly commented: But if all are deported, who will do all the work? The Libyans don’t work. They sit in their air-conditioned offices and wait until they can go home. And ishumar!? Ishumar don’t work in construction, dragging cement blocks. They sit around, beautifully dressed, drink tea and play cards. At most they are active in trading, but labour, no, no, ishumar don’t do that!18

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Ishumar work strategies are indeed different from those of other subSaharan migrants. Because of their nomadic background, many find opportunities to work in northern Libya taking care of huge goat and camel herds belonging to Arab Bedouins. Others join state- or privatelyrun wheat and pasture clover farms, which also offer comparatively good opportunities to earn money. One area in which ishumar have the edge over other potential job seekers is in occupations related to Sahara tourism. With their proficiency in French and expertise in all Saharan matters, local travel agencies gladly hire them as interpreters, guides or cooks. In connection with the development of tourism in Libya, many ishumar are active in trading silver jewellery and handicrafts.19 One niche the ishumar have managed to occupy exclusively for themselves is in the border traffic between Libya, Algeria, Mali and Niger.20 Between those countries a new form of mobility has developed and the ishumar have created an inner-Saharan space of agency, in which commerce and trade are mixed with smuggling and migration. The boundaries between them are always flowing. All three fields of action interface with one another: those who operate in trade move on illicit routes and those who smuggle goods also transport ishumar and other migrants through the Sahara. These activities have led to the establishment of an informal economy. These strategies, however, never exclude, disturb or undermine the national economies. On the contrary, they make remarkable contributions to the superordinate economies by smoothing out imbalances in the national systems. In this case, Niger gets foodstuffs from Algeria and Libya that are normally hardly available or expensive in the country (such as oil, tinned tomatoes and milk powder) and profits from smuggled diesel and petrol from Algeria and Niger. From Niger camels, sheep, clothes and tobacco are transported to Libya and Algeria.21 FOR THE ‘TUAREG SONS’ Since 2005 Gaddafi has encouraged Imajeŕen from Mali and Niger once more by issuing them with identity cards that allow them to enter Libya and move and work freely in the country. Thousands of ishumar really appreciate his positive attitude towards them and some of them have come to Libya for that reason alone. These identity cards are called ‘bitāqa dukhul wa-tanaqqal’ (a card to enter Libya and move freely within the country). The holder’s name, date and place of birth, even tribal affiliation, is recorded and on the back of

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the card it says ‘hāda l-bitāqa khasa bi-ibna’a at-tawāriq’ – this card is only for the sons of Tuareg. Libya regards all Tamasheq-speaking people as Tuareg. In this way, the national programme adopts the same code of belonging as the Tuareg themselves use. The ID cards mostly protect the ishumar from the deportations that are arranged every couple of weeks because of European pressure to control migration flows to Europe. Unlike the EU, which regards all border crossers without documents as potential EU migrants who have to be stopped, Libya is aware of the distinction between transregional moving ishumar and transnational border crossers seeking migration to Europe. The issue of identity cards raises another paradox that occurred in the context of migration and deportation and is clarified by Musa: In former times we had nothing, no documents and no papers. When we came to a Libyan military checkpoint we were always anxious about whether or not they would allow us to pass through. Although we Tuareg could not be deported like other Africans without documents, even we could never be certain of avoiding imprisonment. Now we have papers that not even Libyans possess!22 From blood to soil to destiny23 Let us focus on the phenomenon of national identity for a nomadic society whose affiliation is based on kinship relationships. The Imajeŕen are a tribal society whose sense of belonging, like that of all other Muslim societies, is based on blood (ezni). ‘Blood both links the people to the past and binds them in the present.’24 While blood refers primarily to a genetic relationship, it is much more often used metaphorically to refer to identity and group affiliation.25 Blood is the key element in defining kinship, creating genealogy and defining descent. As such, blood serves the Imajeŕen as a feature of identity and as a definitive distinction and delimitation from their neighbours, be they Arabs, Hausa or Bambara. Blood is also the decisive factor responsible for internal societal distinctions of class. Blood distinguishes Imajeŕen, imŕad, iklan and inadan from each other. Blood is the synonym for a bond with the tribe and as such it creates identity, which means belonging to equals and being separated from others. Biological relatedness can be recognized in the face and in similar looks. During the nation building process following the independence of the

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African states, nationalist ideas replaced blood relationships and people’s identities have since then been based on a territorial concept. The soil, land or territory became the new binding factor rather than blood.26 In the ishumar case an additional affiliation factor must be mentioned – unity through the same destiny. Ishumar are a heterogeneous and plural entity of different origins. Thus, a new group of Imajeŕen has evolved, whose social structure is grounded beyond kinship ties and tribal relationships.27 Since ishumar share the same history of recurrent droughts, political marginalization and rebellion, they have a strong sense of unity and mutual loyalty that is based on shared life experiences and that transcends traditional concepts of blood and kinship. Blood, soil and destiny are three different elements in the creation of identity. When the ishumar were issued Libyan identity cards, the three modes were mixed: an affiliation defined by destiny replaced the Tuareg concept of affiliation, which was originally tied to blood and kinship. In addition, they received a document allowing them to stay within a certain territory. However, for most ishumar this document has little value, for, given Gaddafi’s changing moods and caprices, they are convinced that their Libyan document will be useless or replaced by another piece of paper in just a few years. Ishumar often point out that nothing and no one – neither government restrictions nor issuing passports – could keep them from moving freely in the Sahara. The ishumar use governments’ increasing attempts to integrate pastoral nomads into their state systems to their own advantage. Most ishumar have several citizenships and a wide range of different identity documents. Let me clarify this point by an example. Hamidan was born in Niger, works in Libya and was married in Algeria. He has two Niger birth certificates with different names and dates of birth, a Niger passport, and proof of Libyan citizenship under another name. Depending on where he goes, he pulls the respective document out of his pocket. When he goes to Algeria, he leaves all his papers at home, for ‘if the police catch you, it is better that they catch you without documents and deport you to wherever you want to go,’ Hamidan laughs.28 In an age of states, borders and control, and in an era of globalization, for a nomadic society born into the desert without any exact sense of time and place, providing evidence of one’s birth and recording an identity based on nation-states and citizenship has become a necessity for people who are scattered across five nations and who

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move about these borderlands without documents. However, the ishumar move beyond this global system and transcend national loyalties without destroying or undermining them.29 The ishumar are not only those who circumvent national loyalties; they are also those who transcend traditional standards and values. REINVENTING TRADITION Gaddafi’s Tuareg-friendly policy and, compared with Niger and Mali, very good social conditions in Libya, explain the increase in immigration to Libya in recent years. Cities like Ghat, Ubari and Sebha have seen an influx of new residents, but most of them live in separate areas and avoid mixing with Libyan Tuareg or Arabs. Whereas at a supralocal level all Imajeŕen are a unit in that they have a language and history in common, at a local level they keep apart from one another because their socialization experiences have differed so greatly as they have been integrated into different nation-states. Libyans distance themselves from the ishumar and, in this era of globalization, look upon them as ‘national foreigners’. The ishumar’s detachment, however, is rather the result of an imbalance of power. Because they regard all Libyans as representatives of Gaddafi’s government, they are invariably in the weaker position in any dealings they need to have with them. Consequently, to live in peace in Libya ishumar are as accommodating as possible in public insofar as they conform to Libyan dress codes, religious practice and dialect. In the privacy of their own homes, however, Niger traditions prevail. With settlement in Libya a new development has become recognizable among the ishumar. A distinction has arisen between ishumar who still cross the borders between Niger, Mali, Algeria and Libya irregularly, situationally and temporarily, and those who settle down in family structures in Libya. The latter object to the designation ishumar because the term implies acting outside traditional norms and values, whereas they associate their status of being a family with respect, modesty and honour. In recent years the term ishumar has undergone some changes in its meaning.30 During the Tuareg rebellion in Niger and Mali in the early 1990s, the term was used to refer to the armed rebels who were perceived as an elite: First of all [it was] because they saw themselves as such. From the 1980s onwards, those ishumar involved in the preparation for

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armed rebellion perceived themselves as a revolutionary military vanguard which would lead their people to independence. Second, they can be seen as an intellectual elite among their fellow immigrant workers, as they put their thoughts on migration, modernity, and politics into words: the poems and songs of the teshumara movement. They were the ones who produced knowledge, even if part of this knowledge concerned experiences they had in common with their less articulate audience.31 In the decade since the rebellion a lot has changed. Some popular intellectuals from the teshumara movement still perform guitar and express their ideology,32 but most of the former rebels have lost the admiration and adoration they once commanded. Ishumar are much more commonly perceived of as irresponsible people without honour (iba n ashshak) or respect (iba n takarakit). As Musa puts it: Ishumar, those are the people who are moving permanently (tekle ŕas). If it occurs to them to go, they shoulder their bag and they are gone. And nobody knows where they go. Ishumar are of no use (wur elen faida), they don’t have any work (wur elen eshuŕl), always live alone (egawaren ŕas-nesen), forget their parents and siblings, and they are always chasing after women (eŕan tyaduden wullen). They are not included in the calculation of parents, marriage and their people; they scrounge their way through life, only sit around the whole day, drink tea and listen to tapes. The same applies to tishumar, the women. They spend a few days in Tripoli, then travel to Ghat, and eventually you will find them in Sebha, where they are staying with friends or relatives. Their parents don’t know anything about them, sometimes weddings between ishumar happen without their parents’ knowing and often without following Muslim customary law (tamerkest). The number of their illegitimate children increases and they don’t have any prospects for the future.33 The term ishumar/tishumar therefore designates first, all those immigrants who left their pastoral life behind to go to the Maghreb in search of alternative work. Second, the term also implies that, with nobody but themselves to care for, all these unmarried people absolve themselves of responsibility to their parents and families. A third characteristic is that

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they live beyond traditional norms and values.34 However, if they marry according to Muslim customary law (tamerkest), their status will change: indeed, they are still ishumar in terms of their transregional mobility, but their status alters. Marriage turns irresponsible ishumar into respectable people, comparable to Imajeŕen. Being married, having worth Having a family corresponds to original conceptions of norms and values. They equate marriage and bringing up children with leading a useful life. Unmarried people or those without children are called ‘people without value, without use’ (aŕalak n bennan). As Musa expresses it: Look at Moktar. He is now in his late thirties and works sometimes as a cook for several travel agencies. His salary is spent on karanbani [useless, worthless things, trash, junk]. He has nothing: no wife, no children, no family. A life without being married and without children has no value! For what do you live?35 To gain the status of a respectable, full member of society requires not only behaving with honour (ashshak) and showing respect (takarakit), but also founding a family. Marrying and having children are traditional values that turn ishumar into proper people like Imajeŕen. With marriage they break out of the ishumar loop and re-enter a state that conforms to the traditional world-view. An unmarried person is not considered to be a full member of society.36 Marriage is supposed to strengthen blood relations and kinship ties, and is at the centre of a person’s emotional, political and social life for the purposes of reproduction and extending the patrilineal or matrilineal lineage.37 For men, marriage provides an escape from the status of being an irresponsible ashamur. One evening I jokingly said to my husband: ‘Ashamur, sit down!’ Whereupon he replied, almost hurt: ‘I’m not an ashamur any more!’ Reacting to my astonished facial expression, he explained that he had a wife and family and therefore was no longer an ashamur who did not know where to go and had no place in the world. This means that by starting a family one’s outward affiliation changes. One is no longer an irresponsible ashamur who only takes care of himself, but rather a responsible Amajeŕ who has a family. Marriage and family are among the highest Imajeŕen principles, thus restoring the traditional order.

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For women, marriage alone is not enough. Only in combination with bearing children will she be accepted as a full member of society. Among nomads living in the Sahara, marriages still take place within the extended family. This means that marital relations are essentially blood relations, since Imajeŕen prefer to marry first cousins. For this reason, ‘marriage is in a sense the fulcrum on which society turns: it is the institution in which blood ties are reaffirmed and reproduced.’38 Marriage ties produce the offspring who will carry on the family and tribal line and ideally will overlap with blood ties. Two types of marriages are recognizable among ishumar. One is a marriage (ezelaf) between two ishumar during migration. Such marriages often take place without the knowledge of the parents and without going through the traditional Muslim marriage ceremony (tamerkest). Such an affiliation is based not on tribal or blood ties but on individual ‘taste’. Such relationships are often short-lived and ishumar frequently move from one love to another one, marrying and divorcing until in the end nobody quite knows to whom the children belong. Although these marriages are based entirely on personal ‘taste’ and seem to be random connections, they never disregard social strata. Marriages never cross the boundaries between Imajeŕen, inadan or iklan. That means isogamy is a fact that plays an essential role in intertribal marriages. The other form of marriage takes place within the family and, even among the ishumar, this plays an essential role. For the purposes of the marriage, ishumar return to their place of origin, marry a woman from their Saharan family,39 spend a couple of days, weeks or month with her and then leave the bride back in the Sahara to return to their place of work in Libya or Algeria. From there they will sometimes send their wife presents (usually clothes, blankets, soap or incense sticks) and nourishment (like macaroni, oil, sugar or milk powder) and provide material help to the whole family. After months or even years abroad, the husband will return to his wife, spend a couple of months with her and then again return to Libya or Algeria to follow the same life circle. If she bears a child during his absence, the whole family will react with delight and pride, even though the father is absent. Marriage to a woman from the Sahara is common among the ishumar in Libya, for girls from the Sahara grow up with honour and decency (ashshak, takarakit). Although ishumar often discard their codes of honour, morality and decency after migrating, in the case of a marriage this

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traditional notion becomes an essential feature. Musa addresses the point, when he says: As an ashamur, you don’t have anything. If you marry a woman from the city, maybe you can’t stand it with her for even one week. Every day she has new desires: today a radio, tomorrow a TV. But you don’t have any money and want to make your wife happy because she doesn’t have anything either. So you just struggle every day. But what for? Just so that tomorrow she has a new request. The life etakas (outside, Sahara) is simple. In the Sahara you can survive with five goats. The nomads go to the city, sell a goat, buy millet and return to the Sahara. There is water for free at the well, you just need to collect the wood; there is enough for the animals to eat. That’s why ishumar want girls from the Sahara. It’s their only chance: ezelaf n ishumar? Amagal-nesen tibararen n etakas! – ishumar marriages? Their cure are the girls from the Sahara!40

11 The Ishumar Guitar: Emergence, Circulation and Evolution from Diasporic Performances to the World Scene Nadia Belalimat

In 2004, with the album Amassakoul (Traveller), the Tinariwen band showed the world a contemporary image of Kel Tamasheq society. Its success sanctioned worldwide the cult music of the Tuareg rebellion of 1990, and propelled its cultural and political message into ‘world sound’, while the band joined the professional circuit of world music. While this success significantly widened its public, it also helped publicize the most critical aspects of contemporary Sahara. In recent years, many ishumar guitar bands joined the international scene, so that one can hear the words of the Kel Tamasheq about their own modernity. The style, poetry and recent developments in this music express the historical fractures and socio-economic upheavals that accompanied the advent of post-colonial states. The various migratory processes in which ishumar have been engaged shape the geography, music and politics of the Kel Tamasheq region of central Sahara. Independence deeply affected the Kel Tamasheq economic and political life in northern Mali and northern Niger, the places furthest from the new centralized political powers. In their vast territory, which now spans five states – Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Libya – the Kel Tamasheq have been turned into outlying minorities coming under different policies and different jurisdictions of their respective states. In Algeria and Libya, assimilation policies are in force in an attempt to integrate them into the national citizenry, while in Mali and Niger they are excluded from many post-decolonization policies and various national logics depending on the region concerned. Overlaying this

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territorial aspect of the states is a complex diasporic process, and Ishumar music bears testimony to these people’s migrations and their evolution on an intra-Saharan scale. The music takes on an original transnational cultural value when viewed in its current cross-border setup. In this chapter I shall show how the music reflects current Kel Tamasheq mobility and life experiences, and how its emergence during the region’s post-colonial phase relates directly to complex and many-sided migration patterns. The music arose out of very special conditions that were present in the Kel Adaŕ diasporic community in the 1970s and 1980s, namely a combination of social marginalization leading to the formation of various migratory social movements and a revitalization of poetic and musical forms. We shall see how it can be understood as a new formulation of various traditional musical and poetic genres set against specific social criticism and Kel Tamasheq political speeches. I emphasize how the music relates to the territory, both in the lyrics of the songs and in the local modes of distribution. I shall not deal with ishumar music as world music. In fact, I shall consider it as a social and artistic display that proceeds from an uninterrupted and multidimensional process. Its recent Western dimension becomes significant when comparing the multiple social meanings it embodies in diasporic communities, both in current national contexts and on the world scene. The Kel Tamasheq pop guitar is rising in popularity and various media are involved in its circulation, diffusion and commercialization. Yet the cyber network penetrating the Sahara and Sahel tends to make them telescope. I shall recall how the marginalization and pauperization of the Kel Adaŕ in northern Mali in the 1970s revitalized and transformed cultural and musical expression. Invented during a socially destabilizing diasporic experience, the Kel Tamasheq guitar, however, emerged at at the junction of closely related musical traditions of West Africa, in the Niger bend, which were redefined when the guitar was introduced into the region. In some respects, and despite its original features, this music is part of the West African modern guitar penetration into Mali at the end of the 1960s. The ishumar guitar can be seen as a hybrid that reshapes several musical styles or types, while producing a social critique and political discourse from the history of the Kel Tamasheq nationalist movement. I shall then look at the evolution and assimilation of this musical type into Mali and Niger. Last, I shall focus on some aspects of its worldwide distribution,

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namely its cyberspace music circulation, showing with a few examples how it illustrates and reproduces the different imaginary resources that emerge and circulate both in the world music of the Western world and in the transnational culture of the ishumar. THE EMERGENCE OF THE ISHUMAR GUITAR IN POST-INDEPENDENCE KEL TAMASHEQ DIASPORIC PROCESSES This music emerged in the mid-1970s from socially and politically marginalized Kel Adaŕ communities in central Sahara. The 1963 Kel Adaŕ revolt opposed Malian state sovereignty. It was brutally repressed and the army slaughtered hundreds of people and their livestock. Military rule was imposed on this region until the end of the 1980s.1 Many Kel Adaŕ groups fled to the Ahaggar in Algeria with numerous orphans. Family dispersal and social marginalization are some of the consequences of this diasporic movement. For the Kel Adaŕ, this historical fracture with the past during the postindependence period was at the start of their cultural and identity reconstructions. It forced on them a new form of mobility that until then had been unknown within their very ancient tradition of mobility. This was the time of the exodus, on foot, towards southern Algeria. In small groups, these nomads, fleeing the army after losing their livestock in the droughts of 1968–74, would walk to Tamanrasset with only a five-litre can of water to help them brave the 700-kilometre journey to the wilaya. This was what the first ishumar referred to at the time as the ‘can road’. Successive waves of young men would leave home to start a new and adventurous way of life. They faced hostile authorities and state borders that deprived them of any citizenship. Consequently, they would cross the borders illegally or, as they say in French, ‘en fraude’ (locally rendered into afrod). The word afrod has now come to refer to their various cross-border smuggling activities. They started smuggling on foot, operating a kind of subsistence economy during the droughts of the 1980s, under dangerous conditions.2 At the time, the word ashamur referred to various exclusionary forms of citizenry and education, which all Kel Tamasheq shared, in Mali as well as in Niger, as mentioned in the following verse: Wur leŕ elkad faw iktaben, kunta weddeŕ i ishraden: ‘[On the road to exile] We have no [identity] papers, no education [literally books] other than our amulets.’ A mix of economic and political factors in the context of a difficult and protracted post-colonial transition, which affected migration patterns

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in general, sparked off this particular diasporic movement of southern Kel Tamasheq people living on the peripheries of the newly independent states. During the 1970s and 1980s, when severe droughts exacerbated already difficult political and economic conditions, new migration waves originated from the Azawaŕ valley and Tamesna (in Niger and Mali respectively), from Aïr (in Niger) and from Adaŕ (in Mali). At one time or another political exile, seasonal labour migration and droughts affected most Kel Tamasheq people. When two extreme droughts (the first from 1968 to 1974 and the second from 1984 to 1986) shattered the pastoral economy, most nomad families took refuge in urban centres. Shantytowns sprang up and became de facto ghettos for destitute refugees around Arlit, Niamey, Gao, Agadez and Tamanrasset, and on the borders between Algeria, Mali and Niger. Young men, mostly Kel Adaŕ from Mali, or Kel Aïr and Kel Azawad from Niger, migrated to the main cities (Tamanrasset, Ghat, Sebha and Ubari) of the Kel Tamasheq regions in southern Algeria and southern Libya where they formed informal diasporic communities and from which the Kel Tamasheq political movement emerged in the late 1970s.3 The ishumar worked as seasonal labourers in Fezzan towns. Some migrants took on Libyan nationality and were integrated into the local economy, while many others were relegated, without rights to own land or to open a shop, bank or business, to the informal Libyan economy, which the official public economic system dominated. Even though Kel Tamasheq were, in theory, welcome in Libya, many did not want to adopt Libyan nationality, or could not because they were unable to prove their previous national origin, so their personal status remains uncertain.4 It kept them on the margins of the social system in Libya, though they did have access to medical and educational services. Sebha is Libya’s entrance point for migrants from the southern Sahara. Where migrants live depends on their national origins.5 Tuareg refugees and seasonal workers usually live in El Cambo (the camp), a huge ghetto close to the airport track. Kel Tamasheq diasporic groups in Ubari live in a district called Tilaqqin, close to an outlying area where state farms were created in the 1970s and 1980s. Because they needed each other’s support to secure housing, job opportunities and access to financial aid, and wished to share the information they gleaned during their many trips between the various localities in their range, the ishumar started to develop new solidarities outside their lineage affiliations. Cross-border travel in four-wheel drives and risk

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control typify their mobility and connect them to several identities. In this context, cars take on a particular significance and are vital in their new cross-Sahara and cross-border geographical mobility.6 The ishumar provide a link between the various diasporic groups by keeping in touch with their original groups and generating a wide transnational network. More generally, these groups of migrants joined forces with other Saharan migrants involved in the recent increase in central Saharan urbanization,7 and this proved decisive for the dissemination of their music. THE EMERGENCE OF THE PROTEST SONG BETWEEN TAMANRASSET AND SOUTHERN LIBYA The Kel Adaŕ took with them their festive spirit (ezuhu) and their music. The vitality of Kel Adaŕ vocal and poetic traditions that used to celebrate nature, bravery and above all love, now serves other realities, even though its poetry is still used for critical and educational ends. Throughout the region, the ancient and living tradition of the art of flowery language, following the example of other Tuareg groups, is renowned for the high quality of both its tinde and iswat, namely songs mixing women soloists with a male chorus that are sung at evening gatherings and are very popular in the nomad community. Massive mobility generates major changes in musical culture. Far from reducing their creativity, the general pauperization of the Kel Adaŕ and the fact that they are excluded from the new Malian entity, stimulate this creativity, opening it to new musical practices and new formulations of traditional genres. In the 1970s, the plastic can that saved migrants from thirst on their journeys became the drum for musical evenings in the shantytowns, while the children of Malian Tuareg refugees in Algeria, mainly in Tamanrasset, turned it into the ‘guitare-bidon’ (can-guitar).8 There, the Kel Adaŕ form both the oldest and most important Tuareg community in what was then a rapidly growing district ghetto called Tahaggart-shumera, which is separate from the city’s local Kel Ahaggar suburb. Bellil and Badi9 describe how the Kel Adaŕ turned this stigma into cultural dynamism, protest and conscious vitality to address the crisis through which they were going. The authors describe the festive practices called zahuten (singular ezuhu) (entertainment) as very remote in their social and political expression from the formalism of the local performances on the increase in the 1970s with the development of Western tourism in the Ahaggar.

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In Tahaggart, they organized around a series of tinde festivals, led by women singers whose talent and strong personality made them leading figures among the ishumar. Mortar-drum and vocal tinde performances are one of the most popular Tuareg musical traditions. Some sources10 place its origin in the Adaŕ, among the vassal tribes, and assume that it spread from there into the Ahaggar and Niger. As a reformulation of traditional rural tinde, it has a cultural reproduction value in the context of this social crisis. These parties (zahuten) gave mobile and flexible youths a strong anchor in their travels and activities. They also provided a forum for free speech and debate on the Tuareg situation in their countries or among exile communities. The resources to finance the series came from the informal economy of the ishumar, whose incomes effectively alleviated the effects of the impoverishment the drought had brought.11 In Tahaggart tinde the songs talk about the sore ishumar walking to Libya: Oh mother! Since I left for Libya persevering, I finally arrived! But I cannot settle in no way I search for the necessary money through all means But it desperately refuses to accumulate.12 In the 1970s, the neo-tinde of Tahaggart-shumera ushered in the musical alguitara genre’s poetic forms and stylistics of social protest and political mobilization. By the end of the 1970s, it had simultaneously made an appearance in the Kel Adaŕ diaspora around two main figures, Ibrahim ag Alhabib and Inteyeden ag Ablal, founders of the group Tinariwen. They had both grown up in a musical and cultural environment containing a mixture of urban tinde, ‘guitar-bidon’ and women’s refugee poetry. One should note that the Kel Adaŕ have no lute tradition (teherdent), a war genre specific to a group on the Niger bend in Mali. That specific musical genre would, however, undergo some developments when the ishumar became the first musicians to criticize and then ‘compete’ with it at the beginning of the 1980s. To understand the source of this criticism, it is necessary to recreate the Sahelo-Saharan musical scene of the time with its many status changes and migratory-linked reformulations. This applies specifically to the dissemination of teherdent music. According to Card Wendt,13 in its native region between Timbuktu and Gao, the teherdent three-stringed lute tradition constituted one of the most remarkable characteristics of the musical patrimony. Songhay,

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Hausa, Moorish and Kel Tamasheq used to perform it, though the latter are the only ones with a former lute musical tradition. Instrument practice is hereditary and restricted to specific social groups among which status and social roles are similar in all these neighbouring groups. The Kel Tamasheq word for instrumentalists and professional dancers who in a group perform a poetic critique or panegyric accompanied by teherdent is aggiwen. At such traditional performances money is collected and distributed to the panegyric singers whose musical role is closely linked to the promotion and values of the notability of social groups. Praise singing and money are intimately linked to performing social music. Terhedent music spread to other Kel Tamasheq areas when the first major migrations of drought-stricken Malian Kel Tamasheq occurred in the late 1960s: Many musician-artisans started performing outside their own lineage affiliations in order to provide for themselves, since their former employers could no longer support them. This is when musicians changed style to perform in Niamey and then in other towns in Niger up to Agadez where teherdent was first heard in 1971. Teherdent has become the urban dance music for a cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic public. It provides entertainment that connects several cultures [and] many people can relate to its public performances because of the similarities in their modern forms between Hausa, Djerma, Fulani, Songhay, Tuareg and other West African repertoires.14 Malian teherdent players were active in most urban centres across Sahelo-Saharan borders from 1976 onwards. Teherdent music reached Tamanrasset in 1974, to the delight of Tuareg exiles who found it relieved their homesickness, when the takemba rhythm became the new fashionable style. The introduction of modern technology used for recording and reproducing sound in Africa diversified the social uses of music and made it more widely available. Tapes were exchanged and the circulation of local cultures generated an informal market for music recordings. Ishumar were also captivated and virtually impoverished themselves paying musicians to liven up their evening parties.15 With female and male musicians travelling with their cassettes, various musical genres competed and crossed with

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one another. Whereas tape recordings were largely responsible for making aggiwen popular, ishumar used them to promote their political poetry or discourse. At the end of the 1970s, tape-recorded speeches from Libya reached Tahaggart referring disparagingly to teherdent music, criticizing its mollifying effect on the minds of young people, and calling upon them to react and to raise awareness among the youth of their situation and of their political rights.16 TINARIWEN, THE VOICE OF ISHUMAR CULTURE The Tinariwen band joined the Tuareg organization that was created in Libya between 1978 and 1980. The leaders encouraged them and supplied them with guitars and equipment. Militant poets offered them several compositions that they turned into songs: Friends hear and understand me You know, there is one country One goal, one religion And unity, hand in hand Friends, you know there is only one stake to which you fettered are And only unity can break it.17 They started to experiment with the instrument’s acoustics by adapting melodies from the traditional vocal repertoire and inventing a set of guitar rhythms inspired by some of the syncopated rhythms of the tinde. The basic form is a responsory song between the singer-guitarist soloist and the male or female chorus, interrupted with interludes of variable length, improvised on the melodic line. The music is testimony to a major stylistic novelty produced by crossing a melodic and polyrhythmic (guitar and tinde) instrument and a responsory song between the soloist and the choir. The hybrid creative process, in an urban context, of combining the modern instrumental tone of the guitar with the female vocal melodic repertoire of the rural tinde constituted the point of musical innovation and appeared as a musical revolution for the Kel Tamasheq youth: Youth of Sahara, we warn you Do not believe that we are unable To reverse the procedure This new world, we are crushed there Because it woke up first

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I tell you, courage, courage, courage! Let us rise, do not to let the time escape us Together, let us rise and let us join up Please my brothers; let us unite in order to up rise.18 The performance was uneven and focused on social and historical events. When the women joined the group, the feminine musicality of the camps mixed splendidly with the sound of the guitar, the tense responsory song by the female chorus, the strike of the tambourine player and the rhythm of yeqqes (syncopated hand-clapping, which is close to the Moorish style but also part of the Kel Adaŕ musical tradition). The group worked more as a flexible association serving the needs of the political movement than as a professional musical band, which, before the ishumar guitar came out, Kel Tamasheq looked down on because of the low regard with which teherdent music was held. Tinariwen tunes immediately became the musical cult of the rebellion and of all youth in exile both in Algeria and Libya. It spread to the migrants’ native regions (Mali and Niger) thanks to tape recorders, cassettes and the underground strategies of mobility and diffusion. There were many repeat performances and exchanges of recordings among the ishumar, but the interpreters were careful to separate the text from its sung performance to ensure that the message was clear. The oldest recorded cassettes contain, by way of an introduction, a recitation of the entire text of the song in the form of a mobilizing discourse. This practice characterizes performances during the first decade and underlines the strong proximity of the music, at its beginnings, with the intention to spread the social and political discourse it conveyed. The song aghregh shatma n-etilla aghrem19 is an illustration of this dialectic even in the text: I call to my sisters in all towns Goose pimples on my skin because this is the time for the return of my brothers Who were trained long ago The last instructions were given out of town If the BBC is standing by, it will call Mali and broadcast: ‘Beware! You will soon burn! They have spent years sleeping with this anger Because of those elders you killed Those animals you burnt.20

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Cassettes were as much a medium for politics in the ishumar environment as they were an efficient way of disseminating a nationalist discourse beyond the borders of the diaspora. The group linked its performances to the history of the Tuareg movement from the beginning of the 1980s to the middle of the 1990s.21 Its protest songs produced national and regional mobilization for the rebellion as much as they justified it. The power of the ashamur song at the time relied on several mechanisms – an emphasis on the historic country (imidiwan win akal-in/nak ezaŕaŕ el-ŕurba), an allegory of the reinvested homeland (as-sawt el wahush), constant reaffirmation of social ties and family links transcending the absence, the construction of political solidarities, and a call to action.22 All these themes are performed through the subjectivity of a narrator. The image of the historic home as a fatherland is a recurring theme in the songs suggested by the word tenere, which has two meanings in the Tuareg language – wasteland and solitude. In this last meaning it can be synonymous with esuf, which has several meanings – nostalgic solitude, melancholy, deserted and non-domesticated space. Esuf, a symbolic notion of traditional poetry, is reinvested in the idioms of ishumar wanderings and of the barren places they have to cross each time they have to move.23 Writing on the relationship between music, four-wheel drives, crossroads and confinement, Ines Kohl24 described its identical joint articulation for the ishumar of Niger. In many respects, ishumar music is burning melancholic road music. Both meanings of the word tenere merge in their experience of exile, illustrated by one of the most famous and oldest songs. The name of the band recalls this ambiguity of a territory, or rather territories (tinariwen: countrysides, deserts), travelled through and imagined as being both the cross-border territory of exile, and the imagined one of the homeland (akal). I live in deserts [tinariwen] Where there are no trees and no shade Veiled friends, leave indigo [turban] and veil You should be in the desert Where the blood of kindred has been spilled That desert is our country [akal] and it is our future Kel Tamasheq, how are you? Where ever I am, I think about you.25 The close links between state borders and relegated national citizen-

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ships appear in the texts as metaphors where roads are described both literally and figuratively as economic and cultural dead ends. Nearly fifteen years after the peace agreements, the returns of the rebellion in 2006 and 2007 in both northern Mali and northern Niger are not a sign of successful integration in those Saharan areas in both countries. Hindered walking represents the current political dead ends.26 Walking alone in the black night, afrod, leads to the maquis and to war, as this song seems to tell us: Roads are cut, borders closed With no mount, walking is painful We walk in the black night My heart illuminated by the obvious My friend with whom I shared so many ordeals Our shared words entered obscurity Our grief is sour, we endure, we are relegated far behind Because I drank many times the water of secrecy Today I am in the mountains and each one of us is on one’s guard.27 ISHUMAR MUSIC IN ITS NATIONAL CONTEXTS In the 1980s, the genre gained widespread acceptance, especially among the ishumar from Niger living in Libya. A troop of ishumar guitarists from Aïr (Niger) called Takrist-n-Akal, ‘the land building’, appeared in 1988 around Abdallah ag Oumbadougou. At the end of the 1980s, the young Hasso, the future guitarist leader of the group Tidawt from Agadez, joined his band and did his basic training with Takrist-n-Akal. Hamid Ekawel, an excellent singer-interpreter from Nigeria also learnt music in Libya. The group named Toumast assembled student musicians from the Tamesna region (in Niger). In the mid-1990s, once the rebellion in Niger and Mali had died down, the alguitara performers adjusted to the new context of peace negotiations and the concerts lost their clandestine and subversive character. Young people in the urban areas took to it immediately; new groups were formed and the ishumar guitar became the most popular musical genre among the Kel Tamasheq youth. The 1990s marked the transition from highly politicized underground music to a popular music with which the youth could identify and make their own. Thus, in the post-rebellion period (from 1995 onwards), most performances ‘promote transformation from

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protest to dialogue, although composers, performers and audiences express ambivalence about this process’.28 In 1995 the Takrist-n-Akal band, which Abdallah ag Oumbadougou formed in 1988, was asked to perform in Agadez and Niamey for the first time. It accompanied various evening performances officially depicting the dissident Tuareg movement’s reinstatement in the country. These included one at the French cultural centre in Niamey and another at the UDPS29 gala performance to commemorate the signing of the peace agreements. As in Mali, in next to no time the genre became the music of the Tuareg youth of the north as well as of the capital, where it is as much an expression of culture and identity as a form of entertainment at cosmopolitan gatherings. The bands blossomed and opportunities to perform expanded. The music, openly based on mixing the sexes and close to the former takemba teherdent style the previous generation had so enjoyed, became the mainstay of young people’s dances and festive practices. The music virtually took over in the private sphere (such as at marriages and naming ceremonies) and the performances assumed several roles and functions. In Libya, several amateur groups of the generation that was born in the 1980s, such as the Tilaqqin-based Akori band (Shout of Alert), still play in Tilaqqin, Sebha and Ghat. The musical vitality of the diasporic groups in Libya is, albeit to a lesser measure, comparable in its effects to those of the Kel Adaŕ in the Algerian south during the 1980s. For example, it is especially the young guitarists of Niger who perform in the refugee quarter of the city of Ubari. They are the musical representatives of the cultural and identity discourses to the Libyan Tuareg youth of Fezzan, whose linguistic assimilation into Arabic culture is well advanced. The ishumar guitar songs may have a linguistic and cultural value for the young Libyan Tuareg (Kel Azjer) bathed in a Middle-Eastern television culture. GUITAR TUNES BETWEEN SEVERAL WORLDS In 1999, a project for a CD was born in Mali following a meeting between the French band Lo’Jo and Tinariwen.30 They launched the Festival in the Desert at Essakane (near Timbuktu), conceived of as an occasion for global exchanges and meetings between local, Malian and Western musicians and devoted to the Malian peace process. Within a few years Essakane had become the place for cultural and musical tourism in

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northern Mali and a cultural mechanism through which to promote reconciliation and a discourse on development in the northern region. It is also a place for intercultural connections with multiple dimensions, which we cannot start to approach here in detail. In 2003, the punk rock Navaro band Blackfire and Tinariwen met there again after having fraternized at a German festival. In 2004, two different groups met at the festival, Tuareg guitar and traditional Woodabe of Niger, who merged into Etran Finatawa (Stars of the Tradition) and performed on the stages of the international circuits of contemporary world music. The festival brought together many different trends in teherdent music. It not only welcomed Ali Farka Touré in 2003, but also became the main venue for local bands in search of Western producers. The increase in the number of cultural festivals31 over the last few years is evidence of a strong desire to integrate national development policies through culture, allowing rural communities or peripheral and enclaved areas such as the Adaŕ to promote their region on the national scene. In 2004, Tinariwen’s second album came out in the Western world and became a worldwide success. Honoured by awards, hailed by dithyrambic critics in the rock and blues press all over the world and welcomed by some big names in the pop and rock guitar world, the melancholic and rural Tinariwen style has become a source of inspiration and a fascinating new horizon for some rock and blues32 stars, well beyond the world music category where it was conventionally classified at its onset. Musically, the Western production of the group’s music, even if it was given a more rockish tone than its original style, presents a large variety of musical forms. Today it ranges from fragments of tinde scoring (Ahimana; Tinariwen 2004, track 4) to borrowings from rap music (Agadez In Gall from Aman Iman; Tinariwen 2007); Aratane’n Tinariwen (Tamikrest) or to reggae (Rasta man aridal).33 In Niger, the Western production of the music Takrist-n-Akal inhumere has the added advantage of funding a project to develop Abdallah ag Oumbadougou’s local school of music in Arlit at which guitarists are taught and can rehearse. The Desert Rebel project brings together several different musicians from the French musical scene, all stemming from various rap styles (Imotep of the Marseilles rap band, IAM) or from the French– Maghreb fusion, with the participation of Amazigh Kateb from the Gnawa Diffusion group (a major band on the French scene of the 1990s and 2000s that revisited some popular and learned repertoires from the

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Maghreb while being very influenced by the musical raga culture of the French suburbs). The Tidawt, a band taken on by Hasso, performs regularly in the United States and Europe, thanks to the support of the Nomad Foundation,34 dedicated to the preservation of cultural and artistic traditions in Africa. In 2006, Tidawt recorded with the Rolling Stones, the forthcoming ‘Stones World’ Album. Beneath this glittery image, the very same band sings in Niger to persuade the youth to be patient (Song Tazedert, Tidawt) or to speak of their resentment (‘In this world that frightens, there are more people who destroy than people who build’), even of their impotence: ‘My friends, this life is difficult, that you say the truth or that you lie, you always have twists’ (Tidawt). Since the new uprising in Aïr (in Niger) in 2007, war songs are again resounding. The important recently discovered uranium resources of the region weigh heavily on the conflict and on the future of the breeders in the north of the country. The musicians of Takrist-n-Akal express their anxieties in the face of this situation: ‘We are only breeders and our basement attracts the world and take back part on it as musicians.’35 Since the beginning of this century, in fact since joining Western music marketing networks, there have been many changes in how the currently most popular musical genre is being produced and distributed to Tuareg country. These include changes in public performances, production and distribution, as well as in its own characteristics. Today there are more than 15 guitar bands of various levels of professionalism, experience and repertoire, of which at least ten are listened to in the West through circuits that are more or less linked to the world music production system. Paradoxically, despite their success on Western airwaves between 2004 and 2007, Kel Tamasheq guitar bands have no national reputation in Mali or Niger and theirs remain a music characterized by its distribution within the community. The peculiarity of international diffusion is such that, contrary to other genres of West African music on the international circuit, Kel Tamasheq guitars suffer from a shortage of production frameworks in West African music publishing; it remains very much on the outside of the national markets of publishing and production. Though CDs do exist, artists still record on cassettes to advertise their music to the local market. Recordings in Bamako studios are an impossible luxury for northern Malian musicians who are not

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integrated into the professional networks of rich southern Malian musical production, the jewel of world music catalogues. Their breakthrough on that market is due very much to Tinariwen and its role in developing the Essakane festival in Mali at the beginning of the 2000s. Through a somewhat anachronistic process of media exposure, the world success of Tinariwen and the group’s tour not only drew attention to the struggle in the 1990s, but also made far more people aware of the plight of Kel Tamasheq youth today. With the development of cyber communication technologies in the Sahara and Sahel, Kel Tamasheq guitar bands are played on the internet and exchanged as digital formats, thus generating a new system of North– South/South–North free exchange. Nevertheless, for the ishumar of transSaharan space, tapes are still the best option. They are more appropriate for desert travelling conditions and are especially compatible with the tape player in four-wheel drives, a valued mode of transport endowed with important symbolic value in ishumar mobile culture. CDs produced in the West are thus reintroduced to transnational musical networks of exchange in social circulation. On the other hand, copies of CDs produced in Europe are resold on the informal urban music market. This dematerialization of the music and the exchange practices underlying it, mostly affect Kel Tamasheq urban and student communities. On the internet they become spaces for exchanging and sharing digitized musical files on websites, for they have been turned into big suppliers and media generators of identification through distant cultural or like processes. And going as far as the ring tones of mobile phones and Bluetooth exchanges, Kel Tamasheq pop guitars have entered the era of digitalization. The web offers several examples of the worlds these songs cross. In Morocco and in Europe, the websites of the Berber cultural movement advertise current Kel Tamasheq musical events. Since the events in Niger, these now include war songs, or songs dedicated to the deaths of civilians the army has massacred, or about fighters who have ‘died as martyrs’.36 In Libya, networks among the Mali and Niger diaspora are actively creating websites dedicated to valorizing – in Arabic – the transnational culture, identity and speech of Kel Tamasheq people. Today, ishumar guitar tunes can be understood as music performed in between national integration processes and Saharan transnational political Kel Tamasheq agencies. This process implies a fundamental questioning of the socio-economic development of the regional states’ Saharan

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suburbs. The ishumar’s transnational mobility, such as I have tried to sketch it in this chapter, questions whether there is in fact a need to integrate these cross-border societies into national economic projects. The history of the circulation of Tuareg music since independence shows that mobility is not an empty word insofar as the social and economic strategies of Saharan peoples are concerned. The movement of global broadcasting shines more than it informs. Nevertheless, it accommodates a common imaginary background and provides a cultural reality potentially shared with a global audience. It indirectly casts light on the political and cultural stakes of the past and future struggles of a youth in search of the political and economic means to build a future. Today, the ishumar participate, through this music, in the dissemination of their desert culture of migration to the diasporic groups, to Kel Tamasheq nationals and to the world scene, in representations and evolutions that represent some of the stakes in the globalization of cultural exchanges.

12 Between the Worlds: Tuareg as Entrepreneurs in Tourism Marko Scholze

In the field of social anthropology in general and in studies on Tuareg in particular, tourism has been a long neglected topic.1 This fact is astonishing since the globally spread business of travel constitutes an important source of income to an ever growing number of Tuareg, especially in Algeria, Libya and Niger. Also, it represents a suitable field for investigation of how local populations incorporate foreign cultural elements and come to terms with processes of globalization. Consequently, the focus of my chapter is on Tuareg who work in the tourist business in the north of Niger.2 They have abandoned their former lives as camel herders, caravan traders and gardeners in the Aïr Mountains. Instead, they are employed as guides, drivers, cooks and camel drivers by one of the 62 travel agencies located in the town of Agadez. These agencies are run with few exceptions by Tuareg. They work together with European tour operators or find their clients among individual travellers, who reach Agadez by public transport or with their own vehicles. The travel agencies offer journeys from one to three weeks with four-wheel drive cars or camels in the Tenere desert or the Aïr Mountains. This form of tourism is characterized by a high degree of mobility, covering huge areas, and by taking the Sahara desert and the culture of the Tuareg as its focal points of interest. The clients are about 4000 rugged tourists mostly from Europe who seek the simple adventurous life of the outdoors and want to discover how to become a nomad themselves for a short period of time. Taking into account the longstanding negative perception of tourism by many anthropologists, who have described the influence of tourists and the tourism industry on host societies as instigating processes of accul-

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turation,3 commodification of cultures4 or as a new form of imperialism,5 the active engagement of Tuareg as entrepreneurs and their prominent role in tourism seems to come as a surprise. Recent case studies of authors like Picard,6 Boissevain,7 Silverman,8 van Beek9 and others highlight the active agency of local actors in tourism and even trace positive effects of this business, for example the revitalization of endangered cultural traditions. Nevertheless, empirical descriptions of indigenous actors dominating the national tourist market in a developing country like in the case of Tuareg in Niger are rather scarce. In this way, the Tuareg fulfil a crucial criterion for ethnic tourism defined by Hinch and Butler,10 that is they not only represent a major tourist attraction but also control the local infrastructure. Having said that, the following questions arise: does the engagement of Tuareg in tourism mean that they have abandoned their nomadic traditions? Have they become ‘Westernized’ through their contact with tourists and the modern world? Or has their cultural identity been reinforced through its valuation in tourism? The answers to these questions are more complex than a simple yes or no. Instead, I shall show that in the process of their engagement in tourism, these actors have created their own subculture within the society of the Tuareg. I will argue that this subculture is marked by various degrees and forms of integrating traditional (kel uru)11 and modern (Western) elements (kel ezzaman) like technical skills, various forms of knowledge and cultural conceptions in different spheres of the actors’ lifeworlds. The capacity for the continuous balancing of these elements and switching back and forth between different cultural codes are at the heart of the success of some actors not only in professional and economic terms but also in social ones. The activities and experiences of these Tuareg people differ to a great extent from those of their friends and relatives who still live as camel herders or caravan traders. Nevertheless, actors in tourism do not see themselves as outsiders. Quite the contrary, they feel a strong attachment to their cultural identity and place of origin. They call themselves ‘modern nomads’, meaning that they perpetuate a nomadic tradition by modern means, like for example the use of a Toyota Land Cruiser instead of camels. To exemplify these introductory remarks, I shall focus in the following on the staff and owners of the travel agencies in Agadez, who play a most

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important role in this business. But before dealing with the agency of these actors in tourism, it is essential to highlight some of the structural and political conditions in which tourism in Niger takes place, since they define the opportunities and limits of agency of the Tuareg and influence the constitution of the new subculture. STRUCTURAL AND POLITICAL CONDITIONS FOR TOURISM IN NIGER Two reasons mainly account for the importance of Tuareg in the business. First, the marginalization of the country as a worldwide tourist destination strengthens rather than diminishes their position as local entrepreneurs. And second, the mythical images of the Sahara desert and nomadic culture of the Tuareg, which developed in Europe in the nineteenth century, demand their participation in the business to meet the expectations of the tourists. Like most African countries south of the Sahara, Niger faces the typical structural constraints of developing countries in gaining access to the global tourism business.12 The town of Agadez is the only point of departure for tourism in the area, served by a weekly charter flight from Paris during the limited tourist season in the dry and cold months from October to April. Regular air companies fly exclusively to the capital, Niamey, 1000 kilometres away. An infrastructure of hotels, restaurants and travel agencies to cater for tourists hardly exists outside Agadez. Furthermore, lacking internal tourism, Niger depends heavily on French tourists, who make up about 70 per cent of all visitors. Other tourists come primarily from Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland and the United States. The region offers no attractions other than the desert and Tuareg culture. Finally, the Tenere desert and the Aïr Mountains are only accessible by four-wheel drive cars or camels, and orientation in the desert requires skilled and experienced guides and special technical equipment. Consequently, journeys to Niger are expensive without offering any comfort.13 Hence, this kind of adventure tourism caters for affluent Europeans who seek the silence of the desert and the simplicity of life in this rugged and hostile environment. The marginalization of tourism in Niger on the global scale is further accentuated by political constraints. Although the state recognizes the importance of tourism as a tool for economic development, following a policy of disengagement, it does not invest in this sector. The difficult relationship between the Tuareg in the north and the political leaders in

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the south, who are mainly of Djerma-Songhay and Hausa origin, exacerbate the absence of state agency. The latter accuse the actors in Agadez of monopolizing tourism in Niger, leaving nothing for the inhabitants of the south. Such accusations by government officials reflect some jealousy of the economic benefits they derive from tourism, but also a negative perception of Tuareg in general based on historical memories of when in precolonial times these pastoralists enslaved people from the south and of the recent experience of the Tuareg rebellion against the state in the 1990s. The Tuareg in their turn accuse the state of sabotaging their economic activities wherever they can.14 These structural, natural and political conditions hinder the development of tourism in Niger. At the same time, this marginalization fosters the Tuareg’s prominent role in the business, due mainly to the absence of any major multinational tourist enterprises in the region. Instead, European and American tour operators specialize in small-scale or family enterprises, which resemble in structure the agencies of the Tuareg. Their relationship is still an asymmetrical patron–client one in which local actors depend on their foreign counterparts to gain access to the European market and to promote their services. But the dependency is mutual. The foreign tour operators do not have their own infrastructure in Niger. Hence, they rely on local agencies, guides, drivers, cooks, cars and camels to execute their journeys. This asymmetrical but mutual dependency is vested in discourses of equality from both sides about friendship and attachment, neglecting their patron-client relationship (see also below). But the foreign tour operators are not only obliged to cooperate with Tuareg due to a lack of resources. They are also making use of the myth of the ‘blue veiled men’ and ‘knights of the desert’ to stimulate the demand for tourism in Niger. The stereotyped images of the Tuareg developed during the nineteenth century with the description of European travellers like Henri Duveyrier. They became the dominant perception after French colonial conquest and through the advent of the popular and romanticizing Sahara novels of authors like Pierre Benoît.15 Following this perception, Tuareg are idealized as archaic nomads roaming the hostile desert, as being full of courage and honour, thus resembling the knights of medieval Europe. Descriptions of Tuareg men in novels also play with images of the ‘noble savage’ type, highlighting their strong aura of masculinity. These romantic images still linger on in recent novels, movies,

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documentaries and of course travel guides16 and advertisements for tourism in the region. These images strengthen the participation of Tuareg in the business, since tourists expect not only to see nomads or the famous salt caravan to Bilma but also to interact with them and to learn for example how to deal with camels. Consequently, foreign tour operators promote their journeys in Europe by highlighting the participation of ‘real’ Tuareg as their local personnel. Having described the conditions for tourism in Niger, I shall now turn to the agency of the actors. LOCAL AGENCY IN A GLOBAL BUSINESS The rise of tourism in Niger Tourist journeys were already undertaken during French colonial rule, which lasted until the independence of the Republic of Niger in 1960.17 The present shape of desert and ethnic tourism, however, only started in the 1970s when French and Italian entrepreneurs began to organize round trips in the Tenere desert and Aïr Mountains. From the beginning, they employed local Tuareg as guides and cooks and later on as drivers, mechanics and accountants. In addition, with the boom of the exploitation of uranium in the north from the 1970s onwards, foreign workers of mainly French origin started to settle in the towns of Arlit and Akouta from where they ventured out into the desert for weekend trips and holidays.18 As early as the beginning of the 1980s Tuareg began to set up their own travel agencies in Agadez. The most prominent actor of these early days of the ‘era of the Tuareg’19 was Mano Dayak, who monopolized tourism in the north with his agency called Temet Voyage. Dayak was a fine example of a ‘cultural broker’. He gained an academic education in Paris and New York, was married to a French woman and maintained close relations with foreign journalists, photographers, politicians and tour operators. He was not only eloquent in various European languages, but he also exploited images that people in the West had of the Tuareg by cultivating his cultural strangeness. This is apparent from his autobiography,20 in which he repeatedly asserts his love of the desert and of the Tuareg nomadic tradition. Temet Voyage expanded fast and by 1988 was catering for more than 2000 tourists each season and working alongside tour operators from France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. With the breakout of the Tuareg rebellion in Mali and Niger in 1991,

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the development of tourism in the region, which had reached an overall 3000 tourists a year, came to a sudden halt.21 Mano Dayak again played a prominent role as a political leader of the movement and, after the peace treaty of 1995, tourism slowly began to recover. Mano Dayak’s death in an air crash the same year, however, led to the restructuring of this economic sector in Agadez. Instead of one dominant player, more and more Tuareg started to set up their own agencies and this process is still continuing. During my research between 2000 and 2003, the ministry of tourism and handicrafts issued licences to 40 travel agencies. By 2007 this number had risen to 62, revealing the dynamism of this economic activity and the importance of tourism as a source of income in the region. According to recent figures issued by the regional tourism office and my own observations, an estimated 1200 inhabitants of Agadez and the Aïr Mountains work in tourism as agency directors and personnel, staff in hotels and restaurants in Agadez, and in producing handicrafts for tourists. The latter is dominated by the smiths (inadan), who form a distinct endogamous group within the hierarchically organized society of the Tuareg.22 Conversely, the directors and staff of travel agencies belong almost exclusively to the social layers of the Imajeŕen or imŕad.23 Only two inadan and a few Hausa work as guides or cooks for one of the travel agencies. The Tuareg who became the pioneers of the new profession did not consciously attempt to find work in tourism. For them, tourism was a foreign idea and practice. Rather, their engagement was in most cases the unintentional result of casual interactions with foreigners. Tuareg got to know European tour operators or foreign employees of the mining companies in Arlit because they would ask them to serve as guides for their journeys or weekend trips into the desert. The following quote of a Targi, who owns a travel agency in Agadez, illustrates this process and the importance of interaction with foreigners: I was born in Timia (a village in the Aïr Mountains), where I went to primary school and learnt the French language. Later, I quit the village and moved to Arlit, where I attended secondary school. This change represented for me a leap, a great leap, because I came from a remote village and life in the town of Arlit was completely different. I left school after two years in 1982. But the Catholic mission in Arlit considered me an intelligent boy and one priest

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offered to pay for me to go to a private school. I agreed. Until then I had not proved myself to be an adult and all my friends, who worked as caravan traders, had already acquired their own camels. And I was still [poring] over my school books. The mission offered me work. And work was not a problem. I started working as a gardener. At the same time, I consulted the library of the mission. Through my work, I met some expatriate workers of the uranium mines. They came to enjoy the mission’s garden. Their wives exclaimed: ‘Oh, how wonderful, they have planted some flowers.’ After a while, I had learnt the name of the trees I did not know before. They told me that I was a good gardener. I became acquainted with the families of the expatriates. One day, one of them asked me if I was able to guide somebody from Arlit to my village of Timia. I said yes. So we went once, twice and a third time as well. Although I had my work in the mission’s garden, they allowed me to travel with the French workers of the mining companies with whom I created close friendships after a while. Every weekend we went into the desert. There were beautiful sites and places to discover. We visited the [prehistoric] rock carvings, sat in the shadow of the acacia trees, drank tea and eventually started to organize astronomical nights in the desert. We watched the Southern Cross and other constellations of the stars like the lion. I educated myself and later on all the expatriates came to me to guide them on every weekend.24 What most of these Tuareg had in common was openness to contact with and curiosity about non-Muslim Westerners and a desire to find economic alternatives to their traditional ways of earning a livelihood. For some, this search was sparked by natural catastrophes. Many families lost their camels and goats during the severe droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. The steady growth of the population further accentuated their impoverishment, for they had insufficient resources for all the children to engage in traditional economic activities. Tourism offered them another alternative apart from labour migration to neighbouring countries like Nigeria, Algeria or Libya, which started to amplify in the course of the droughts. Others, and interestingly most of them, were not actually forced to break consciously with their traditions. They had worked as camel herders, caravan traders or gardeners in their childhood and youth. But they soon

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considered these professions physically too hard and out of date. This kind of work did not fit their personal needs and aspirations. Even if these Tuareg came into tourism accidentally, they soon had to build up a commitment to their new profession, which the rest of the society did not actually welcome. Since work in tourism seemed physically less demanding than the traditional professions, someone who engaged in it was seen as lazy (amalŕon), especially by the older generations who valued the hardship of their work as an integral part of their life as herders or caravan traders. In addition, they were accused of ‘following the whites’. This criticism contained two implications – first, fear that habitual contact with Europeans would lead to these Tuareg being Christianized and second that the work itself, especially as mechanics, was unsuitable for nobles and the sense of honour (ashshak) in Tuareg society, which rejects manual labour as disgracefully greasy and dirty. Appropriation of new skills, practices and knowledge Tuareg who want to earn their money in tourism have to appropriate new techniques, practices and forms of modern knowledge, which differ to various degrees from the traditional work of herders or caravan traders. The closest resemblances are to be found in the duties of a camel driver, accompanying a camel tour for tourists called meharee. During these trips in the Aïr Mountains and to the northeastern fringes bordering the Tenere desert, a camel driver follows a daily routine. He binds and unbinds the baggage of the camel, leads the animals to the pasture while the group is resting and searches for the camels in the morning. One major difference from traditional work is the interaction with tourists. The Tuareg have to show their clients how to mount and ride a camel and have constantly to observe them to avoid accidents during travelling. Furthermore, not every riding camel is suitable for a meharee with tourists. They have to be of a gentle disposition and easy to lead, attributes that are most likely to be found in older camels. Apart from ensuring the suitability of the animals’ character, the herders then subject the camels to special training procedures to minimize the danger of a tourist getting bitten or hurt in an accident. For example, the camels are regularly brought to a lively village like Iferouane in the Aïr Mountains to familiarize them with the noise of cars to prevent them from being frightened. For the guides, drivers and cooks, the wellbeing of the clients is of

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paramount importance and their work entails acquiring a number of new skills and knowledge that a camel driver would not have. The cooks have to learn how to prepare European dishes, for tourists are not eager to eat the traditional food. Likewise, these dishes should not include teeth crushing sand – easier said than done given the strong winds in the desert. The drivers have to master the techniques of driving a four-wheel drive car in the Aïr Mountains and Tenere desert. They have to learn how and where to cross a sand dune, which gear and speed is suitable for a given surface to avoid getting stuck and to reduce fuel consumption. Likewise, the right distribution of the luggage in the car is crucial to avoid punctures of the tyres, as is the adjustment of the driving to the needs of the tourists, who do not want to bump around in the car or get covered in dust. The mechanics not only have to know the workings of the engine by heart, but they also have to learn to improvise in case of need, for example to cover a hole in the radiator with cooked and dried semolina. The guides, who usually double as drivers, have to learn new techniques of orientation in the desert, for example with the aid of a compass or maps, but also have to know the tourist sites and suitable places to take the tourists to spend the night or for a midday break, which need to provide shade, protection from the wind and an aesthetic backdrop. He also has to be capable of explaining natural and cultural features along the way and to observe the fixed programme and distance for each day of the tour. In fact, the guide is the key figure of the local staff, since he is not only responsible for the orientation and security of the group but is also the primary mediator between the clients and the rest of the personnel as well as between the tourists and the local population they encounter. Consequently, he has to be tactful and able to move between cultures; at the very least this means being able to speak French fluently. All the above-mentioned local actors have to adopt a new more leisurely approach to travel. This is not to say that their work is easy or restful. For the guides and drivers, for example, driving in the desert without getting lost is physically and mentally demanding. However, technical advancements, exemplified by the use of four-wheel drives, have made travel faster and more comfortable. The salt caravan from the Aïr Mountains to Bilma takes between ten and fifteen days of solid walking to cover around 500 kilometres, whereas the journey by car takes only two or three days and offers many more hours of rest. Furthermore, the interior

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of the car provides some protection from the sun and sandy winds. Apart from the greater amount of leisure, travel for tourism has a different purpose and feel. Caravan traders look upon the Tenere as a feared obstacle they have to overcome to reach the salt works of Bilma. For the tourists, however, it is quite the contrary; to see and experience the desert landscape is their main reason for travelling. Of all the local people working in travel agencies, Tuareg who run their own businesses in Agadez need to acquire the highest amount of new skills and modern forms of knowledge. All the directors started off in the business as guides, drivers or cooks. Most of them had been employed by the first European tour operators in the 1970s or had later worked for Mano Dayak. Recently, however, since the rebellion, newcomers from a younger generation have started to set up their own businesses. Managing a travel agency requires basic knowledge of accountancy, knowing how to promote one’s services and organizational skills. The managers have to learn how to negotiate with European tour operators and, most importantly, need to acquire an intimate understanding of the global and regional tourist market and the needs of tourists. Part of this understanding entails making use of their identity as Tuareg. Like Mano Dayak, they live up to their Western clients’ expectations by stressing their cultural exoticism, exemplified by wearing the veil. Also, the language these actors use to describe the desert and their nomadic culture reinforces European stereotypes of them. While this holds true for all the staff, it is particularly crucial to the economic success of the business that at least the manager manifest these skills. The main problems facing any Tuareg wanting to run an agency is how to raise the necessary finances, for no Tuareg would be able to access sufficient funds by themselves, and how to gain access to the foreign tourist market. In most cases, interaction with Europeans has been at the heart of the process of becoming an agency director. Some started off with the help of foreign expatriate workers with whom they had become friends. Theses expatriates supplied them with cars, money and often facilitated first contacts to potential clients and business partners in Europe. Other Tuareg had already worked for Mano Dayak, so after the end of the rebellion they renewed his longstanding relations with foreign tour operators that they had inherited from him. A third option for some arose when they married a European woman

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who either worked for a development project in Niger or had travelled in the region as a tourist. Apart from their shared love, these women brought money and contacts to the relationship and served as important consultants to their husbands when starting up and running a travel agency. The visible success of many Tuareg married to European women, irrespective of how much support they have given their husbands, arouses jealousy among other Tuareg in the business who tend to equate business success with finding a European wife. Consequently, intercultural marriage has become a strategy for those who want to become the director of an agency or to build up an existing enterprise.25 This is reflected in a popular saying in Tamasheq, circulating among the actors, which can be translated as, ‘when Allah listens to your prayers, he will send you a wife from Switzerland.’26 Of course, financial and material support as well as advice is also given by Tuareg relatives working in tourism. However, given the overall scarcity of resources and the intense competition between the actors, this support is limited. As I have shown, working for a travel agency – whether as a camel driver, cook, driver, guide or director – entails the acquisition of new skills that are not required for traditional ways of earning a livelihood. Also constitutional for this group of actors are new shared values concerning their work, which are reflected in the visible pride guides show in knowing all the important sites and resting places for tourists, in handling a map, or the high esteem in which mechanics are held for being able to dismantle the engine of a car and put it together again piece by piece. This pride reflects a particular ‘work ethic’, which emphasizes the mastery of particular competences in tourism. In addition, these people have their own professional heroes like Mano Dayak, or other acclaimed guides or drivers who are remembered for their skills, character, generosity and even wisdom. They share a repertoire of stories told, which often highlight dangerous situations, like tourist groups getting lost in the desert. The changes in these actors’ lifewords go beyond the realm of their actual work; they are bound up with the professionalism they bring to their work and with their personal aspirations. Most camel drivers only want to acquire extra money to reinvest in their herds and to secure the wellbeing of their family. They do not want to buy cars or other modern things considered to be luxury goods (tenaflit). They hold to the traditional

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conception of wealth, lying in the number of camels and goats one owns (ehare). After the camel drivers have finished their journeys with the tourists, they return to their lives as pastoralists in the Aïr Mountains. The guides, drivers and cooks see a major change in their lives because most of them move temporarily to Agadez during the season to look for work in the agencies.27 They typically share a house with others while their wives and children stay behind in the Aïr Mountains. At the end of the season they return to their villages or nomad camps. Some of them, and certainly all the directors, move to the town permanently, where they buy or rent houses with modern facilities like Western-style kitchens and bathrooms, and modern furniture in the living room. For them, moving to the city brings a major change for good and bad. They enjoy a modern lifestyle and far more personal freedom, which would not be possible with the social controls that operate in the villages. But they also have disadvantages like the noise and smell of the city, not to mention their status as a minority among other ethnic groups, where, for example, Hausa is the main spoken language. At least among the matrilineal Tuareg, life for wives and children who follow their husbands to Agadez changes dramatically once they get there because it is now the man and not the woman who owns the house. In fact, many Tuareg women feel uneasy in Agadez. Often, they do not speak Hausa and desperately miss their familiar surroundings. In fact, many choose to return to their villages. Tuareg running their own travel agencies also confront modern life from another angle. When the tourist season is over, all those who can afford to do so travel to Europe for several weeks or even months each year.28 The main purpose of these journeys is to foster existing partnerships with European tour operators, establish new contacts, promote their services at tourism fairs and buy new cars and spare parts. Tuareg who are married to German, French or Italian women use their houses and flats as a base and starting point for their business travels on the continent, sometimes covering huge distances in several European countries. Business is not, however, the only reason to leave Niger. During such stays, these Tuareg attend foreign language courses, visit friends, go on holiday with their wives to hike, ski, or even learn how to dance the waltz in Vienna. Some show a high degree of intercultural competence and can easily switch between different cultural codes. The process I have described suggests a continuous widening of

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physical movement, economic activities and experiences. At the same time, it entails a physical and experiential distancing from their former life as caravan traders, camel herders and gardeners and of the lifeworlds of friends and relatives still living that way. The latter will eagerly listen to their often exaggerated stories about strange Western habits and stressful life in overcrowded cities, but the average inhabitants of a village in the Aïr Mountains will find it difficult to relate to these experiences because they will not believe what they hear. Such experiences are more likely to be shared with others of the same subculture. The physical and experiential distance is also at the heart of modernizing their lifestyles. Back in the villages in the Aïr Mountains, strong social controls limit the space for innovation. This process does not lead to a one-way path of acculturation, privileging elements commonly judged as belonging to the modern world (kel ezzaman), leading to a growing alienation of their culture of origin.29 Instead, I shall show in the following that the lifeworlds of modern nomads are constructed around a combination of modern and traditional elements (kel eru), but not through what Hannerz termed ‘creolization’30 in that something completely new arises. Rather, new objects, techniques, practices, knowledge and experiences are integrated into the old culture. Furthermore, the confrontation with life and different cultures in the city of Agadez and in Europe leads to growing cultural conservatism among the actors. INTEGRATING KEL EZZAMAN AND KEL ERU ELEMENTS Again, the extent and actual contents of this process depend on the type of work and the observed changes in different spheres of life. One type of integration is the modification of traditional techniques to modern circumstances, shown in the altered methods of training camels. Another type of combining traditional and modern techniques is exemplified by the orientation of a tourist guide in the desert. Apart from the use of modern instruments like a compass, a guide usually also applies traditional techniques like the observation of different sand colours, the course of the sun and other features of the landscape just like a guide of the caravan would do. A different aspect of the process of integration is the appropriation of new goods and practices into one’s own cultural logic. Foreign elements thus acquire a new meaning,31 with the Toyota Land Cruiser

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being a good example.32 Four-wheel drive cars are basic to entrepreneurship in tourism in Niger, for without these vehicles the business simply would not exist. Not only do tours using four-wheel drive cars account for 75 per cent of all journeys, but they are also needed to transport the clients to the starting points of the camel tours on the northeastern fringes or in the central Aïr Mountains. Today, the Japanese Toyota Land Cruiser HJ60 is the most utilized car in tourism. This is a deliberate choice by those who argue that this 1980s’ model is not only more affordable than more recent models but that it also has a more reliable engine that can cope best with the severe conditions of the Sahara. Also, apart from these technical aspects of the appropriation process, the Toyota Land Cruiser is integrated into the cultural logic prevailing in the perspective of the actors. The Toyota Land Cruiser is the most important economic resource for a driver, guide and especially owner of an agency. In that it is what generates their wealth, it has become the substitute for a camel herd. The analogy is also expressed in the term akh n mota, meaning the milk of the car, referring to the money a car brings when transporting tourists. The Toyota Land Cruiser is also called ‘Japanese camel’ (alam n japon) or is given names usually accorded to camels. Furthermore, the cars are often decorated like camels with colourful woven blankets called isilis. Of course the actors are well aware of the differences between a car and a camel. Most importantly, cars cannot reproduce themselves. These examples show how a foreign good can be integrated into a person’s culture or logic and attain an importance that goes beyond their daily work. As van Dijk, Foeken and van Til say of these modern nomads, the Toyota Land Cruiser has come to depict enhanced ‘mobility as a way of life’.33 Mastery of the machine raises personal self-esteem and to cruise aimlessly through the streets of Agadez in one’s own car is part of that lifestyle. New travel practices are also part of this integration of foreign elements into the cultural logic. Journeys for the purposes of tourism have, for these Tuareg, been absorbed into the notion of awezlu, a term referring traditionally to the caravans for trade. Whereas authors like Spittler34 interpret the word purely in terms of business travel, ClaudotHawad35 sees other connotations of the term as well, which fit quite well into the interpretation of tourism as awezlu. Claudot-Hawad refers to the term not only as a practice but also as going beyond a threshold to

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discover the unknown, thus providing an opportunity to prove oneself. Travel is generally seen as useful, a means by which men can contribute to the wellbeing of their families and the society. Accordingly, the money earned in tourism and the exigencies of the new profession can be interpreted in this way. Also, tales of dangerous ventures into the Tenere, or of escaping from bandits roaming the Aïr Mountains, heightens their personal esteem in the eyes of their peer group and the inhabitants of their villages. In this way, through conceptualizing tourism as awezlu, the actors construct a certain continuity of their work with traditional activities. A third example does not deal with elements of kel ezzaman as such, but with the integration of their primary bearers, like the tourists or European tour operators, into local categories of strangers, guests and friends. Tuareg usually look upon tourists and other foreign actors as akafar, meaning ‘infidel’.36 Once particular tourists become the clients of a certain agency, guide or driver, however, they undergo a change in status and become the ‘guests’ (imagaren) of these Tuareg. The latter in turn become ‘hosts’ of their clients and take over the responsibility for their wellbeing. This perception serves to guide the interaction with foreigners from a different religious and cultural background, since the locals can act according to the rules of hospitality. If conflicts arise on the journey, the actors employ the basic values of ‘honour’ (ashshak) and ‘shame’ (takarakit), which guide behaviour in Tuareg society, in their interactions with the tourists. For example, if a guest criticizes a guide, the latter will swallow his anger or look ashamedly to the ground so as not to lose his honour. Apart from their interactions with tourists, the directors of travel agencies often speak of their business partners in Europe as friends (imidiwen). Although real friendships are formed, the integration of a foreigner into the category of a friend can also be interpreted as an attempt to tighten the relationship because of the crucial importance of partnerships with Western entrepreneurs and the fierce local competition. Also, again led by the principle of honour, Tuareg are uneasy about admitting to their dependency on European tour operators, even if they are well aware of it, as most of them are. Interestingly, foreign entrepreneurs are all too eager to accept this role as a friend, for it counters the purely capitalist image of the multinational travel agencies. Furthermore, friendship with a Tuareg heightens their self-esteem at home. Finally, a European woman who marries a Tuareg is integrated into

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the family of her husband through becoming his wife (tamtut). For both, friends and wives, their status entails not only rights, but also obligations like material support and fidelity. Following this logic, if for example a European tour operator changes the local agency, he often will be regarded by his former partner as betraying their friendship. The process of integrating modern elements into traditional practices and conceptions can also be reversed. One example can be seen in the way agencies are run. The core staff is always composed of the owner’s close relatives and friends. This holds true even if there are other Tuareg available who are better qualified for the job. The presence of this traditional element in the management of a modern enterprise is not voluntary, but forced on the owners by their relatives who insist on being employed. Directors who resist this pressure risk acquiring a negative reputation at home for being unfaithful to their own kind. In sum, while new goods and the modernization of travel and lifestyle are easily integrated into this subculture, traditional conceptions and values seem to be much more resistant to change. In fact, they represent the prime vehicle of the appropriation of innovations. The confrontation with modern urban life in the city of Agadez, or during trips to Europe, reinforces cultural values. Whereas in Europe Tuareg experience an overall positive valuation of their culture (albeit in a stereotyped way), they are more ambiguous about urban life in Agadez because, though it gives them more personal freedom, the multi-ethnic environment represents a threat to their cultural traditions. Either way, these experiences rouse feelings of nostalgia and solitude (esuf) among the Tuareg and make them more conscious of their cultural identity and the value of their traditions. Modern nomads develop a strong conservatism as they widen their horizons. On the one hand, this translates into a romanticized view of nomadic life as a herder and of the desert as a place of silence and tranquillity compared with life in the city. On the other hand, at least some Tuareg in the business try to counter the danger of losing their cultural traditions through forcing their children in Agadez to learn their language or to take them to relatives in the Aïr Mountains on holiday to experience the ‘real’ life of nomads. This does not mean that they want to return to their villages and start again as camel herders. It means that their identity as modern nomads is bound up with the renewed feeling of belonging to their society, their cultural values and their traditional habitat.

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TUAREG MOVING GLOBAL? That Tuareg work in tourism in Niger is evidence of their capacity to engage in a global business. They combine the new techniques and knowledge they have acquired with traditional practices and accord a new meaning to these modern elements as they integrate them into their own system of values and beliefs. Like other peripatetic peoples,37 they create an economic niche of their own that relies on specialized spatial mobility and their cultural exoticism as their main assets in the tourism business.38 As a result, they constitute a new subculture within Tuareg society. This subculture is based less on a homogenous group consciousness – affiliation to their confederation and lineage is still paramount for the construction of identity – than on shared modern work practices, a distinct work ethic, new consumption patterns, certain experiences and a revitalized cultural conservatism born from the confrontation with modernity and urban life. Some of them, having established economic partnerships in different European countries, have managed to set up flourishing businesses that cater for hundreds of tourists each season. Furthermore, they have acquired an intercultural competence, allowing them to switch between different cultural code. They are cultural innovators, while sustaining their identity. Through the agency of these Tuareg, the economic system of their society has been differentiated. But there are not only stories of success. There are those, and actually most of them, who struggle unsuccessfully to gain access to the global tourism market.39 They either fail to raise the financial or material capital needed to make contacts with foreign tour operators, or they simply do not know how to run a modern business. Furthermore, some have lost contact with their traditions through their exposure to modern urban life. From this perspective, the balancing and integration of modern and traditional elements appears crucial not only to economic success but also to avoid losing touch with their cultural background. If, for example, the owner of an agency would act only on the grounds of modern market principles, neglecting the local moral economy, which demands for the employment of relatives and the share of economic benefits, he would have to endure the local critique and submit a social isolation which for most actors is too hard to bear.40 On the other hand, relying too strongly on traditional practices and perceptions to the disadvantage of market rationalities will lead to economic failure.41

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In every case, the power of Tuareg in worldwide tourism is limited. The owners of a local travel agency have not become global players. They always depend on foreign tour operators to send them their clients. The influence of these Tuareg is directed more towards their own society. Through their brokerage, tourism has become an accepted economic activity and their representatives are no longer accused of ‘following the whites’. Instead, most of the inhabitants of the Aïr Mountains welcome the utility (tenfa) of tourism in generating economic benefits. For a growing number of young men in the villages and nomad camps, the guides, drivers and agency owners have become examples to follow. Today, Tuareg try consciously to get work in tourism, instead of entering the business accidentally like the pioneers of the profession. In tapping a global resource, at least some of the actors have become both rich and politically influential, which was already evident during the rebellion when many people working in tourism actively participated. Today, this influence lies more in the area of local politics, in which some members of this sector have become deputy mayors or in one case even the mayor himself. Whether or not these Tuareg constitute a new urban bourgeoisie, as Decoudras42 has argued, remains an open question for the future, since at present, this term would only apply to a handful of people.

13 Ambiguous Meanings of Ikufar and their Role in Development Projects Sarah Lunacek

In my research1 in northern Niger I focused on Tuareg perceptions of Europeans and other Westerners. As theoretical starting points I used the notions of Orientalism and Occidentalism. One of the most influential revelations of Said’s Orientalism2 is that scientific and literary knowledge are not produced independently of the contemporary historical settings or clusters of political interests of the social environment to which the scientists or authors belong. It is not particular to Orientalism that the positive identity of ‘us’ requires the negative image of the ‘other’. The superiority of the West was (and is) constructed by its practices of domination. Therefore, as a system of knowledge about the ‘Orient’, it is possible to treat Orientalism as a dominant discourse of imperialism. As such, representations of the Orient tend to have more to do with ‘the West’ than with the ‘real Orient’. A consequence of colonization was that it enabled perceptions of the colonized ‘other’ to gain a stranglehold, though not without the participation of the locals.3 My initial question is, what sorts of processes in terms of representations and identity take place ‘on the other side’ among people who live in the ‘real Orient’? And here I focus more on representations in predominantly oral cultures than on post-colonial writings. In anthropology, Carrier4 made an important contribution to our knowledge of how images of the West are constructed by outlining the scope of Occidentalism in colonial and post-colonial encounters as well as in the West and by Western authors. He saw the processes of dichotomization and essentialization as crucial for

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shaping Orientalist and Occidentalist representations of the ‘other’. Attention should be focused on the dialectical way in which Orientalisms and Occidentalisms are constructed against one another and the process of essentialization itself. Why certain essentializations are more influential than others depends on political contingencies, social stratification and power relations within and between the societies in question. In French and other European travelogues, novels and ethnographies, Tuareg5 were and often sometimes still are one of the privileged subjects of Orientalist representations. Here I shall not pursue the analysis of these representations, let me just mention that they range from Duveyrier’s description of their ‘attributes as heroic, hospitable, faithful, militant, patient, tolerant, hardworking, freedom-loving, veiled, light skinned, beautiful, sexually open, good and proud princes of the Sahara’6 to ‘cruel and rapacious savages’,7 as they were described after the defeat of the Flatters expedition. Did such a rich corpus of representations have any effect on them? Did they themselves create any more or less importunate and changing images of what might be called ‘the West’? What was the role of their changing political status? Did the inner stratification of Kel Tamasheq society play any important role here? What about the different channels of communication? My hypothesis is that individual experiences in encounters with different ‘Westerners’ can play a crucial part in trying to answer these questions. As the topic of research was rather widely defined and it seemed interesting to talk with everybody, I found myself adopting a dispersed approach of combining different locations.8 The semi-nomadic Illbakan with their wells in the valley of Shikolani (Azawad) had known only a few projects and a researcher named Edmond Bernus. In the region near Tagdoufat they had not before encountered a project and saw tourists only from afar, while Kel Ewey in Timia are used to projects, tourists and researchers. Numerous projects have been set up in the rapidly-expanding regional urban centre of Agadez, which also boasts tourist agencies, government offices and the like. This is also where Tuareg of different origins confront the challenges of urban life (where they adapt their identity while looking for new occupations, and where they live cheek by jowl on a daily basis with Tuareg from other tawsatin and social classes, as well as with Hausa and increasing numbers of Nigerians and other Africans en route to Europe). Meanwhile, in the very remote town of In Gall, cut off since the main road was tracked elsewhere, I focused on the

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sub-base of a project and its links. Bearing in mind that people migrate and move, it is easy to meet someone from any of the other locations in Agadez, it is possible to meet someone from Shikolani working as a chauffeur in Timia, but one is highly unlikely to meet someone from Timia in Shikolani. Some individuals can occasionally be met in Europe. I should make it clear that the terms West and Westerners are in themselves problematic. Wolf9 reminds us that misleading conceptions of the West have shaped an imaginary line from the time of ancient Greece through to the industrial revolution and political democracy. They continue with the dichotomy of developed West versus communist East, with the rest of the world relegated to the category of underdeveloped Third World. Consequently, it is necessary to define the term ‘West’ for each particular case. The encounters of Tuareg were obviously marked by the presence of France as the colonial power, but they had previously had contacts with British and German explorers and nowadays encounter other Europeans, Americans and sometimes Asians who come as tourists, development workers, researchers and journalists; products are coming into the country from Asia and Europe, not to mention the significant amount of interest that French, Canadian, Chinese and other (multinational) companies are showing in the mineral resources of northern Niger. In this chapter I shall first discuss certain continuities and changes in the connotations of the word akafar. As an illustration of how perceptions of ‘Westerners’ have changed since Niger’s independence I shall take a closer look at how two middle-aged men from Timia experienced ikufar through personal life histories in one particular context. I shall then look at some other possible categorizations of ‘Westerners’ in different contexts. In the second part of the chapter I shall focus on how Tuareg from different regions and social positions experienced development projects and the ‘Westerners’ they encountered through them. I shall argue that such encounters made an important difference to how some among Imajeŕen perceived ‘Westerners’ as well as to the connotations of the word akafar. I shall try, with the help of the concept Occidentalism, to explain the dynamics of imagining the ‘other’ among the Tuareg and among ‘Westerners’ involved in development projects. CHANGES AND CONTINUITIES IN THE CONNOTATIONS OF THE WORD AKAFAR In Tamasheq the phrase that corresponds rather well to the notion of the

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West is imedlan n ikufar, ‘lands of the whites’. It means the countries from which ikufar (sing. masc. akafar, sing. fem. takafart) come. The word akafar is most commonly used to designate ‘un blanc’ a white person of nonTuareg origin, Japanese and Asians included. Tuareg familiar with the notion Occidentaux (Westerners), translate it in Tamasheq as ikufar. From the conversations I had with Tuareg in different places in northern Niger a range of rather ambiguous meanings of the word akafar emerged.10 Aŕali, one of the middle-aged men in Timia who had had a lot of experience working with ‘whites’, said the word is connected to the colour of the skin. But originally, it meant ‘someone who does not believe in God, who does not do what would please God; it is a pagan’. An akafar was therefore someone who did not follow religious precepts: ‘it is not only a white person. It is possible to say it even of a Tuareg, and normally it should not be said of someone who is just white by the skin.’ In his opinion a distinction should be made between someone without a religion and a white person, but he went on to say that people often fail to make the distinction between an akafar and a nasara.11 Mahmud, a young man from Agadez, also considered akafar an inappropriate term on the grounds that ‘whites’ do have a religion of their own. Aŕali had even come across a Japanese man who had converted to Islam and yet was still called akafar. Now that he was following the Islamic religion there was apparently no reason to continue to call him akafar, but people kept on doing so just because he was ‘white’, even though fair-skinned Tuareg are no darker than a Japanese or European with a suntan. The term also refers to someone who is considered different because he or she comes from a place with a different religion and culture and so cannot be classified under any category used for ethnicities inside Niger, not even as Arab. Such people are coming from imedlan n ikufar. Akafar therefore is also someone from an economically and technologically privileged part of the world. As Aŕali’s statement showed, the term akafar can be used even among Kel Tamasheq to designate someone who fails to conform to religious teachings, or, as Alŕabid explained, someone who behaves really badly: ‘even between us, sometimes we say it, if someone is really bad, he can be called akafar.’ According to Aŕali, Imajeŕen will not be called ikufar if they follow cultural norms, dress codes and behaviour or if they socialize mostly with ikufar: ‘He is abandoning his own culture and wants to take another culture. So, we say, they are mostly ancient people that say it, they say Imajeŕen yankawan (lost Tuareg),’ which means his Imajeŕen culture is

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getting lost. A person who drinks a lot of alcohol might be called akafar ikwal (a black white or black infidel), which is clearly negative and again only used to refer to someone who adopts unacceptable religious and cultural habits, such as the whites have. The boundary between an Amajeŕ and akafar identity is sometimes perceived as permeable. Answers to my question about what one had to do to become (T)amashaŕ(q) stressed different endeavours, which included sharing life, worries and festivities with other people; adopting an acceptable profession, preferably taking care of herds; speaking the language; wearing traditional clothes; and, usually, learning to pray. On rare occasions someone would say that religion was not so crucial because not all Imajeŕen practise it very strictly. People who are in contact with ikufar can observe that some of their habits and manners do not adhere to notions of ashshak and takarakit, which Spittler12 translated as honour and shame and which are important for regulating social relations in everyday interaction. Some of the younger men in Agadez saw ashshak as a crucial attribute of Tuareg identity. Suley, a gardener from Timia was able to observe on his visit to Europe that young couples kiss in front of their parents, a gesture of iba n takarakit (shamelessness) he found hard to understand. At the same time he would not deny ashshak to all Europeans, particularly those who care for the less privileged. People working in tourism have come across unusual behaviour, such as speaking about personal matters during a communal meal. Tourists and whites in general are also seen as lacking physical endurance. These (and other) differences are tolerated, but not appreciated. They have a moral connotation and allow the Imajeŕen to harbour certain feelings of superiority. Nobody would tell or directly force ikufar to adapt, but if akafar or takafart stay longer, which they may for example do as development workers, they are expected to find out for themselves and to observe what is considered proper behaviour. Only a close friend would be ready to give any direct advice. It seems that the word akafar is rarely freed of its religious connotations, or of certain cultural ones that are more negative than positive, particularly when they acquire a moral value. At the same time, the word is also used to designate a fellow human of different origins. Jima started her answer on the differences between Imajeŕen and ikufar by saying that ‘people are all the same’, but went on to ascribe to the ‘white’ person coming from the West certain more positive qualities like

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knowledge of technology and medicine, as well as being rich and helpful. Before we turn to those more attractive aspects of ikufar and their countries, particularly in relation to the development projects they fund, let us take a look into the more distant past. Similar ambiguities were evident as early as the mid-nineteenth century. Klute,13 taking Barth as his source, argues that Tuareg and other African political and commercial elites were well informed about Europeans and their ambitions in Africa. In fact, important political groups in the Sahel acquired modern arms and made preparations to confront colonial armies. At that time Europeans were perceived of as barbarians, but admired for their technology and medical knowledge. Barth encountered exaggeration of his medical capacities and already by the time of his first encounter with Al-Bakka-i in Timbuktu the latter was able to speak about big European cities. Although their terrible habits, such as eating raw eggs, partly explained the Europeans’ reputation as barbarians, it was probably more because the Tuareg of the south had never forgotten Mungo Park’s brutality. Also, in Barth’s conversations with Annur, the most important Kel Ewey man at the time, Annur openly criticized Europeans for their use of heavy arms that killed large numbers of people and thus transgressed the rules of honour in an armed confrontation. Spittler14 argues that the ability to refuse or prohibit communication with Europeans characterized Tuareg–European encounters in those precolonial times when the Tuareg were still the stronger opponents in encounters with the European missions. Europeans were already under suspicion for being Christians and for ‘writing up the country’ before conquering it. Once a colonial administration had been installed, their strategic choices were either to submit and try to ensure the most favourable terms for themselves and their tribe, or to rebel. A particularly traumatic image of colonizers must have arisen from the suppression of Kawsen’s rebellion against the French invasion, which resulted in the de facto imposition of colonial domination over Niger Tuareg. Even those people from Aïr who did not participate in the rebellion were subjected to violence from the colonial army. For the purposes of conducting a census, the French colonizers forced the entire Aïr population to move near Agadez, which in the absence of provisions resulted in an outbreak of disease. The colonial forces gradually stopped raiding, but at the same time practised confiscation of the camels.15 The colonial period was also a time when certain young Tuareg started to

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seek jobs with the French Saharan units. French military personnel and civil servants married Tuareg women and compulsory schooling was started. After independence the nature of relations between Tuareg and French obviously changed. The Kel Tamasheq were split between five different states and, in each one of them, they came to form a marginalized minority. The subsequent rebellions in Niger and Mali were direct responses to the position in which they had been placed, as they and European public opinion (especially French, Swiss and German) clearly recognized. After independence, French and other Europeans therefore became potential allies, as personal encounters with them increased through tourism, development initiatives and marriages, more opporunities arose for closer contacts and changing perceptions. DIVERSIFICATION OF IKUFAR Over a lifetime one’s perceptions of others may change significantly and this seems particularly true of the generation born around independence. In Timia, the grandparents of people like Aŕali and Alŕabid16 had lived at the time of Kawsen and would flee into the mountains when infidels burnt their date palm orchards. They also remembered forced labour on the roads to today’s Libya and Algeria. They therefore presented ikufar to their grandchildren as malicious and dangerous and warned them not to go near them. ‘For my grandmother akafar was simply an infidel’17 said Alŕabid. In their own childhoods they, like many other children, at first feared these scary pale people with a strange habit of wearing shorts. Aŕali described feeling a mixture of curiosity and fear as a very small child on first approaching the camp of a geological expedition near some waterfalls. He and his friend wanted to see what they kept in all those boxes. When akafar noticed them and offered them food Aŕali distrusted its ingredients. Unless the akafar gave him money, he would never dare tell his older brother where he had been. Later, as more tourists started to visit Timia, children gradually lost their fear and started to appreciate the sweets they were given. They would imitate the cars in their play and, by the time they were school children, were already allowing tourists to take their hands to guide them around the village. Occasionally, tourists who visited regularly might invite an especially communicative child to study in Europe. Such children were usually

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extremely eager to do so, to see with their own eyes the wonders they had learnt about at school, but their parents would never let them go, partly through fear that they would lose their religion and become as ikufar. Religious people would try to stop their children having contact with ikufar. Alhousseini’s father, an important marabout in the region of Tchirozerin, did not allow his children to take anything from ikufar. Although he had good relations with the missionaries and even offered them his garden on which to build a school, his own children were never allowed to attend it. In Timia, marabouts would chase children away from the camp sites of tourists or of passing scientific or military expeditions. A local teacher might well forbid them to disturb them at night out of respect for the guests, but a marabout would have quite different reasons for doing so. Children who had completed their primary schooling or had got more education rarely wished to pursue the traditional occupations of camel breeding, caravanning and gardening. Also, some families had insufficient resources to equip all their children with the means to do so. They therefore sought other opportunities. Alŕabid started off his career as an interpreter for a Catholic project on the outskirts of Agadez. Aŕali, who was looking for a job in Arlit, charmed a team of Belgians on their way to distribute food during the 1974 hunger crisis into realizing that they needed a guide. Later, Alŕabid also came to Arlit and got a job as a construction supervisor of the gardens being prepared for employees of the uranium mines. He continued his employment as the keeper of the warehouse and when that ended he engaged in some commerce. Then he worked on a project to introduce gardens into nomadic zones followed by posts in different development projects. Aŕali continued his career with a climatic research team and as a supervisor of a construction site for another project. Later he cooperated with researchers, journalists and projects. All in all, they both gained a lot of experience with Westerners. They got to know about the places from where they had come, who they were and what they were like. Many became friends, some even close friends, and there were only a few whom they would rather forget. Apart from the increased personal contacts, working for and with ikufar provided educated people with important opportunities for paid employment, in the scope of their extended family. They participated in a mix of traditional and modern activities. Jobs with ikufar, particularly in

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development, also allowed educated women to keep their independence. As encounters with ikufar widen, the category of Westerners is subivided into categories, namely people who work on projects (Kel Froje, aŕalak n froje), tourists (turisen), journalists (jurnalisen) and researchers.18 Quite a few people from Timia make a distinction between these categories and those with more experience can elaborate on them even further. This applies particularly to tourists: some come only to take photographs and observe the scenery, while others are interested in the lives of the people and also want to do something for them. The second are often qualified as better. In Suley’s opinion, this latter kind of tourist is even more effective than the projects. European and Canadian tourists have done so much to improve people’s living conditions that, as Suleyman put it, ‘if calculated all together they form a huge project’. Suleyman commutes between his family in Agadez and Azawad and in the cold season works as a tourist driver and guide. It is important to inadan19 that tourists buy their jewellery, so they differentiate according to nationality. Germans are particularly popular in Timia where local people have had good experiences with them, both working on projects and as researchers. The French are appreciated as tourists because communication is easier with them and they usually know more about conditions in the country than others, but inadan are slightly wary of them because they too often want to haggle over the price of their jewellery. Adamou from Timia found it hard to say who was better because someone could benefit from any kind of ikufar. It seems as if an important transformation has taken place in the orientation towards ikufar. From the category of dangerous and best avoided they have moved to useful to contact because of the opportunities they might present, though it is not necessarily clear from the start what these are likely to be. Also, the opportunity need not necessarily be seen in economic terms; it could be in terms of an exchange of ideas. Since in Azawad, the Illbakan have fewer contacts with different ikufar, their categories of usefulness are less clearly demarcated. An akafar or takafart is almost always accompanied by someone from the family, so he or she is immediately classified as amagar or tamagart (guest), as any stranger would be when coming into somebody’s home. Over time, as Marko Scholze has pointed out,20 he or she has every chance of becoming amidi or tamidit (a friend).

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EXPERIENCES WITH DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS It is difficult to isolate what role development projects play in changing perceptions, for tourism, schools, radio, television and trips to Europe also play a large part in increasing exposure to the West. Development projects focus on particular sets of relationships and convey particular ideas about development, needs and poverty. Western countries sent relief aid during the drought in 1974, which both the state and Westerners distributed. The residents of Timia saw food aid as government help and paid little attention to its source.21 Belgians distributing food in Azawad (or more precisely the village of Tillia) were not called ikufar on that occasion but Belges (Kel Belgique). Assistance to the Sahelian countries, as well as to Niger and Aïr, became continuous in the years after the drought.22 The ‘year of help’ might well have been an important turning point in seeing ‘whites’ in a rather supportive role. Then, with the increase in development projects, it became possible so see ikufar as motivated by the impulse to improve conditions of life for other people. Let us first take a brief look at the wide range of development projects operating in Niger at present. Some are administered by the state, with ‘generous’ loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), particularly after the debt relief in 2005. Significant sums in gifts and loans from the French Development Agency, West African and African development banks, the European Union, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and UNICEF flow into the Niger government budget. On the demand of the IMF the Niger government formulated a National Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), including participation of certain local NGOs. However, since it is known that NGOs do not necessarily represent all layers of a local population, the grassrootedness of PRS is questionable. Some big projects, however, no longer need to pass through the Niger government’s ministries. Large organizations like the German Development Service (DED) and the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), along with its Fight against Poverty project, LUCOP, or the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) are funded directly by their respective ministries and their agencies. Their programmes now consist of a range of micro projects rather than the big infrastructural development projects of earlier days. Their discourse is emphasizing participation, but often more in bureaucratic discourses than in the field. In place of direct supervision, local staff is now being put in charge of running the

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projects, though not always with the expected results. The number of local NGOs is growing rapidly and they launch their projects in cooperation with a wide range of organizations in Europe and America. Some are based on friendships with Europeans, and many NGOs and associations created in Europe and Canada are founded on friendships with people in Niger. While these latter projects are less well funded than the big state ones, they nonetheless relate more directly to the people concerned, if only through the mediation of one friend. The Tuareg in northern Niger engage in development projects in various ways. Projects employ Tuareg mostly as so-called animateurs, whose role it is to encourage the local population to participate in the project. Tuareg might be in charge of setting up a local project, have a job in its office, supervise works, or work as a mechanic, driver or manual worker. On the other hand, in some regions, like Tagdoufat, many nomads still have no direct contact with projects. The project primarily meant a paid job for its employees, Tuareg and European alike. Certain individuals engaged in it more enthusiastically than others. Mussa, for example, was grateful that he was able to work on the JEMED (Youth with a Mission) project in his home region because he believed that he was contributing to a real improvement in living conditions for his family and other nomads. The approach of this particular project, characterized by tent-to-tent discussions to define future actions, was one of the rare attempts to adapt to nomadic conditions. Sabit, though enthusiastic about his job on the project, felt that young European volunteers were so enthusiastic about the project that they failed to notice that more gradual and reserved approaches could sometimes be more effective. Others would look upon it only as a job, whereas others still would seek extra profits for themselves. Earlier projects, which involved creating an infrastructure, tended to consist of activities such as building roads or reinforcing the banks of a dry river bed to protect gardens and orchards from soil erosion. These were undoubtedly evaluated as efficient and in Timia local people were employed to carry out the work. They were paid in food and money and afterwards organized themselves to maintain the facilities. ‘Those projects were good. They did the things that lasted,’ Aŕali explained, and nobody seemed to mind that they did not consult people about what they wanted to have. On the other hand, almost everybody – apart from those sitting in offices – was rather critical of the so-called participatory approach. Its

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weakest feature was that people did not define their own priorities but instead had to choose from a range of possibilities on offer. At the time they were offering cereal banks, rural shops and micro credit facilities, the latter two clearly designed with the educational purpose in mind of developing a market-economy mentality. There were also rural radio stations, women’s groups, small-scale stockbreeding, demi-lunes (crescentshaped ditches designed to capture rainwater and thus re-establish vegetation on hardpacked earth) and projects on AIDS awareness. Fatima, working as an animateur in In Gall, explained how participation was organized. People make demands and then facilitators visit them for discussion. According to her, their demands usually went in the following order: water (in the form of pastoral wells), food (represented in the cereal banks), health and schools with dormitories and meals for pupils. At the time the GTZ was occasionally restoring old wells, but schools and health were not among its priorities. Basically, the users of the projects had to choose from the list of activities offered by the project. Their participation consisted either of donating a percentage of the money required or providing a little house for the project to use. Applications were then accepted or rejected at the regional centre in Agadez. Alŕabid felt that the percentage system was too rigid because larger works would need greater sums than people would manage to collect. A retired Allabak (sing. of Illbakan) state functionary, Akany, was particularly keen on a former Italian project in Azawad that was doing what people suggested and had realistic expectations of what they could give. Suleyman’s criticism was two-sided: not enough research was going into what people really needed and the projects were not being carried out efficiently enough. For example, the popular demi-lunes are failing to re-establish vegetation because (a) no seeds have been planted in them and (b) they are not being protected from animals. As Rossi23 found out in the case of a project further to the south in the region of Tahoua, the changed dominant discourse in development emphasized participation. When put into practice it led to the paradoxical situation of imposing so-called participation. The advantage of small interpersonal projects, whether through associations and NGOs created in Europe, through NGOs in Niger, or on an individual basis, is that they are in direct contact with the people who ‘need’ a project. They are mounted by people who visit the region on a regular basis and get attached to it. In this respect retired French people

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are not uncommon as, for example, ‘Les amis de Timia’, which Michel Bellevin runs. The money is collected in France and the people in Timia choose their priorities. These are sometimes pastoral wells or providing oxen for work in gardens. They have also established a nutrition centre for children and a common fund to help people buy prescribed medicines. There are other similar small projects with minimal amortization costs and high efficiency. Any projects, large or small, that are managed through local NGOs are sometimes criticized for favouring a particular family or region. This is not surprising given that people are expected to take care of their relatives before others. However, when a leading member of such an NGO follows a personal agenda to gain local political influence, it can have shattering effects on the rest of the community. In such cases, an individual intermediary uses development projects and their resources to gain prestige and power. They represent a particular kind of mediator between the development business and the local population, what Olivier de Sardin classified as a development broker.24 Among selfish or even altruistic Kel Tamasheq development brokers in northern Niger it is possible to find people who are skilful enough to use the development language to mount their own projects. It is more likely, however, that they would look for another intermediary in the form of a European friend or partner to place between themselves and the development funds. THE EXPECTED ROLE OF IKUFAR ON THE PROJECTS Encounters with Europeans are relatively rare in large development projects among the rural population. An Allabak man spoke of his experience as a labourer digging demi-lunes and was surprised by the lowness of his pay, which he ascribed to the local animateur and the intermediator from the office in Tahoua helping themselves to some of the funds. He suggested that the akafar in charge of the project in Niamey should come more often to survey the situation and should have a person on the spot report to him on how things were going. To prevent literate facilitators tricking illiterate workers, he should also read out the pay scales to the hired labourers. We further discussed the topic with Suleyman, who was translating, and came to the conclusion that the akafar in charge is primarily interested in getting the project completed and he is unaware of how important the actual salaries were to the workers. Here, three

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different logics collide on the same project – intermediators who in this case (though not all) are looking for extra benefits for themselves; local semi-nomads trying to supplement their incomes by working as labourers; and ikufar looking for the visible results of a project presumably designed to further the interests of the ‘target’ population. In Timia, Adamou preferred the ‘old’ projects because their funders personally organized and supervised the work. Alŕabid felt that good cooperation depended on the personality of the technical assistant implementing the project and spoke of his very good experience working with a young AFVP volunteer to reintroduce a gardening project to pastoralists in Eŕazer. He adapted easily to local habits and did not impose a work schedule; the work would be done whenever possible and when needed. In looking for solutions he also always consulted the whole team of the project. Adamou told me about the dedicated work of Pitt Weingärtner who spent several years working on projects in Timia. ‘He worked hard with people and there was no problem. He was here eight years, satisfied, he worked with elders, marabouts, traditional chiefs, the poor, women and children, everybody.’ But there were also bad experiences with kel froje. For example, one of the local strategic groups instrumentalized an incoming European in charge of a section of the project. He became judgemental of others outside this group and refused to cooperate with them. It seems that Kel Tamasheq in northern Niger greatly appreciate people who are engaged in their work, cooperate with everybody involved on the project and treat local people respectfully without paternalism. From the Illbakan and Timia cases it is clear that a lot is expected of Westerners. They should be in close contact with people involved in the project, yet at the same time rise above local divisions. THE DYNAMIC OF DICHOTOMIES Let us now return to another hidden aspect of the word akafar, which arose in conversations on Europe and on differences between Imajeŕen and ikufar and that comes up rather regularly in encounters with Europeans, namely their richness. As we have seen, ikufar have long been associated with the mastery of medicine and technology, both of which are very often regarded as important aspects of development. Homeland (akal-nener, akal wa, our country, this country) is often seen in opposition to imedlan n ikufar: ‘here

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are only goats, sheep, camels, desert and some herbs’, as Fatima said of the plains near Tagdoufat. She went on to say that Europeans have many more opportunities, for example to earn money. Somewhat more proudly, Aŕali from Timia said: ‘we have gardens and animals, but that is not enough’ to sustain a growing population. People who went to school did learn about such things as hospitals, highways, skyscrapers, the Eiffel Tower, ports, factories, planned agriculture and laboratories. There are other channels of communication, though not necessarily available in the countryside. Quite a few people have visited Europe and reported back about life there to relatives. Researchers, visitors and tourists from Europe are occasionally open for questions. While people from the countryside can watch television if they visit relatives in town, they can also make their own observations. They see aircraft flying past and have sometimes heard how big they are; they see cars that make travel so fast and, as Fatima from Tagdoufat said, ‘all the good things are coming from there’. Although they rarely see ikufar, they are sure they come from somewhere where conditions are good and with such pale skin they must have enough opportunity to rest. After all, as Seidimo from Shikolani remarked, ‘akafar has found a way to work when seated,’ while he has to work hard to maintain his family’s herds of camels, cows and sheep. Another Allabak described Europe as a place where ‘there is not much sun and a lot of water, something like Paradise’. The belief that ikufar are rich was sometimes stated outright, but often Europe’s abundance would be observed from the things Europeans bring and their knowledge of technology. One woman in Timia said half jokingly that she would marry an akafar because he would buy her everything for the house and drive her around. For the same reason, she would like her son to marry a takafart. Another man confirmed that, in his opinion, if there are marriages outside Imajeŕen, he would rather they were with Europeans than with Hausas because the children would not have to worry about their future. A woman in Tagdoufat with whose small child I was playing, jokingly made a similar point by suggesting that I take her baby with me so that he would get everything he needs. Here we pray, there people do not pray. They have all the material goods there [France]. Here, we are the poor (tilaqqawen). We are the poor, we don’t have things. Here, sometimes you have things and

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food, sometimes not. The real difference is that in France everybody is working, here only some people are working. The women are working, men are working. In France all the women are working also. … With education of girls, they will get work here as well. With this statement, a non-schooled woman from Timia who had already visited Europe, contrasts an abundance of material goods with being poor and links it to the availability of paid work and education for women. Again we see the difference in religion being exposed. After briefly looking over some typical contrasts made between imedlan u ikufar and akal nana and between ikufar and Imajeŕen, one can confirm that Imajeŕen respond with a rather consistent list of essentialized dichotomies when asked to do so. One persistent dichotomy is that the ikufar have knowledge, technology and access to education and money, whereas here all those things are lacking. This is translated in conversations with schooled people as ‘we need development’. This dichotomy fits surprisingly well into the main developmentalist aim of reducing poverty. It seems that a dialectical process is at work here: when people recognize the other as rich and themselves as poor they are ready to accept help; and, vice versa, those who recognize themselves as rich and the other as poor feel ready to offer help. It seems that many Europeans, particularly French visitors to Niger, feel propelled by their wealth to set up the sort of project about which I spoke above. There is another side to the rich–poor dichotomy. According to Imajeŕen, another reason why ikufar visit their country, apart from seeing the landscape and helping their people, is to observe Tuareg culture, to acquire things they cannot find at home (such as certain traditional artefacts like arrows), to take a break from their over-organized lives or even to profit from selling photographs or getting jobs. Also, ikufar feel a need to do something not only because they are struck by the poverty of the people, but also because they are fascinated by the Imajeŕen way of life in ‘the desert’ and because they get close to some individuals. This, however, seems truer for those who come in the first place because of their interest in the Sahara and its people, like certain tourists, than for those who work in development for whom professional advancement is usually their primary reason for going to Africa. The Oriental–Occidental dichotomy is perhaps less symmetrical than

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it looks and cannot be confined to the instrumentalization of ‘noble but poor’ Orientalist assumptions. First, as I mentioned earlier, observation and experience are crucial in shaping perceptions of Imajeŕen on ikufar. Second, they are accorded several meanings and practices depending on the cultural context. For example, to ask for help directly would transgress codes of honour (ashshak). Most individuals, men and women, are willing to speak about their problems but prefer to wait for the akafar or takafart in question to come up with a suggestion about how he or she might help. Many people with whom I spoke considered that development projects belong to them, which might explain why they were highly critical of what they saw as any unnecessary expenditure. In a similar way, Spittler observed that people in Timia spoke of ‘taking’ rather than ‘accepting’ provisions during a hunger crisis, which also allowed them to retain their pride.25 In Timia in 1985 they had not yet been informed that it is a state’s obligation to support its citizens, though after the rebellion in the 1990s, however, more people seemed aware of it. Since the state also fails to fulfil its role in providing an infrastructure, jobs and education, development projects serve to fill the gap – as is very commonly the case in Africa. Because they come from rich places, projects and ikufar in general are expected to share part of their wealth and, if they do so, they are respected for showing ashshak. In their daily lives nomads do not seem to be preoccupied with thinking about the West; they are far more concerned about the well-being of their herds and families. People in Agadez are highly conscious of those attributes of their identity that are no longer very self evident (such as following their herds, practising ashshak and wearing the tagelmust). While they might recognize themselves as poor, they counterbalance this in their minds with their superior culture (manners and traditions) and better social relations. It is also within their scope, depending on the context, to negotiate how to acquire certain features of modernization yet retain their identity. Individuals have diverse and changing perspectives on a nomadic way of life. While I heard one nomadic woman say that ‘here are only goats, sheep, camels, desert and some herbs’, comparing it with Europe, the same woman recognized the advantages of living in the countryside because there are no costs and more solidarity compared with life in a town. Another nomadic woman praised the rainy season by saying that ‘here is water, here is pasture; everything is here’. Some nomads said they continued their life with herds because they knew no other; some of those

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returning from Libya use their earnings to buy animals and then lead a nomadic existence with them. Other young people have no wish to return to the hardships of traditional life so seek new economic opportunities or adapt old ones. Some people, including those who live in town but leave their animals with their relatives, those who were unable to restock their herds after the droughts, as well as older people, nostalgically recall the times when herds were large enough to provide them with good life conditions – in fact good enough to make most Imajeŕen refuse to send their children to school for fear of falling under the influence of ikufar. Why did their situation as well as their perspectives on it change so dramatically? Ecological (desertification and droughts), demographic (increase of population) and political factors (marginalization) must surely have all played a part. The good old days tend to look better than the present, particularly in marginalized societies.26 Imajeŕen in Niger and Mali felt this in the context of the post-colonial state27 and resorted to rebellions to achieve change. Contrary to the previous rebellion in Niger in the 1990s, where the Tuareg imaginary was mobilized to sway French public opinion, the MNJ changed its discourse to include all citizens of Niger. Since an important aim in their struggle is to force the state to regulate its relations with international uranium exploiting companies in order to ensure proper revenues and at the same time prevent exploitation without taking ecological factors and the effects on the population inhabiting the territory into account, it is possible to see it also in the light of so-called anti-globalization movements. The Orientalism–Occidentalism dynamic is not the only option in encounters between ikufar and the Tuareg. Similarities and understandings can be recognized in other ways as well, including a shared interest in fairer globalization. Another is already enacted in interpersonal relations where prevailing images of one another may be at work during the initial contact, but once friendship is established the possibility arises that they give way to personal resemblances, differences and affinities in which culture and the economy can be seen in terms of the personal constraints and possibilities on offer.

14 Resisting Imperialism: Tuareg Threaten US, Chinese and Other Foreign Interests* Jeremy Keenan

Eid al-Fitr, the festival that marks the end of Ramadan, is an occasion of celebration and religious significance throughout the Islamic world. For the Tuareg of northern Niger, however, in 2007 the end of Ramadan1 brought with it a strong sense of foreboding and fear, as talk of civilian massacres and rumours of an imminent government genocide policy muted the sense of religious and social festivity. With this situation still unfolding, one could only speculate on whether Niger’s president, Mamadou Tandja, would turn his armed forces on the civilian population once Ramadan was over to crush the eight-month long Tuareg rebellion in northern Niger,2 or even adopt a more widespread policy of genocide, as many Tuareg feared.3 Rather than engage in such speculation, in this article I shall address three questions. These are: • What led to the outbreak and escalation of this latest Tuareg rebellion,4 which has taken the central Sahara to the brink of a desert-wide conflagration? • What has been the role of external forces in both the causation and escalation of this rebellion? And, • What are the implications of the rebellion both internationally and more especially for the local people of Niger’s northern department of Agadez? *

I wrote this chapter in 2007. More than two years later, the Tuareg rebellion had still not ended. For updated accounts see my two books The Dark Sahara (London: Pluto, 2009) and The Dying Sahara (London: Pluto, 2010).

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THE UNFOLDING OF THE REBELLION The incident that precipitated the rebellion was an attack on the village of Iferouane in northern Aïr on 8 February 2007 by three heavily armed Tuareg and a handful of followers. Over the next three months, the emergence of a new rebel movement, the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ), followed by a number of small military engagements, including an attack by the MNJ on a base of the French uranium company, Areva, led the Niger parliament to approve more than $60 million in extra budget funds to confront the attacks.5 By the end of June the rebellion had escalated. A devastating and humiliating attack by the MNJ on the Niger Armed Forces (FAN) close to their temporary base at Tazerzait in northern Aïr resulted in at least 15 soldiers being killed, 43 wounded and 72 taken hostage. Despite the deployment of 4000 government troops to the region, the MNJ attacks continued with further significant actions on the coal mine at Tchirozerin,6 which provides power for the uranium mines at Arlit, strategic installations in and around the regional capital of Agadez, including the town’s airport, as well as more humiliating attacks on FAN convoys and emplacements.7 The government was further embarrassed by the MNJ’s hostage-taking (and subsequent release) of an executive of the Chinese uranium company, SinoU,8 and the defection to the MNJ of a significant number of men from both the FAN and the National Forces for Intervention and Security (FNIS).9 By the end of July, the rebellion had spread to northeast Mali, where Tuareg undertook several attacks against military personnel and positions in the Tin Zaouatene region.10 On 24 August the government declared a state of alert, effectively placing the region under martial law and sealing it off from the outside world, especially journalists, potential Tuareg reinforcements and other sympathizers. A local Agadez resident contacted by telephone shortly afterwards described the hitherto bustling regional capital as a ‘ghost town’. Despite these draconian measures, government forces fared badly: at least 45 of its troops were killed,11 dozens wounded and many more taken hostage. Indeed, the rebels’ fighting ability, knowledge of the region and strategic use of landmines effectively confined government forces to the immediate vicinities of their barracks and a number of temporary base camps around the region. Pinned down and unable to deal any telling blows to the rebels,

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government forces used the cover of the ‘state of alert’ to reek their vengeance and frustration on the civilian population.12 In fact, FAN harassment of the civilian population had caused widespread grievance and complaints even before the outbreak of the rebellion. However, as the rebellion escalated, the number of authoritative and mostly verifiable reports of civilian harassment and abuse by government forces increased. These included the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians, including elderly men and even a cripple, detention without trial, torture and disappearances.13 While international bodies such as Amnesty International accused Niger’s security forces of using the state of alert to arrest and torture civilians arbitrarily, two massacres of Tuareg civilians by government forces were reported in the first week of October (with accompanying eyewitness accounts), which led the local population to fear that President Tandja might have been about to embark on a policy of genocide.14 THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION AND ITS ESCALATION In an Althusserian sense, the rebellion might seem to have been ‘overdetermined’: there having being more than enough ‘sufficient’ causes to determine the outcome. Put another way, the rebellion, as we might now say, was ‘multilayered’. And yet, when we look at each ‘cause’ or ‘layer’, as I shall do below, we are left with a perturbing question. This is that while each single ‘cause’ was the basis of justifiable widespread grievance and, as at Areva’s uranium mines, even resistance, were any of them on their own actually sufficient to precipitate such a rebellion? I believe that the answer to this question is probably negative, especially when we consider it in the context of two further facts. First, with the memories of the 1990s rebellion and the way it was crushed still fresh in their minds, the vast majority of the local population had no desire for another rebellion. Second, and as I shall explain shortly, none of the three Tuareg responsible for the Iferouane attack had any credibility as either a popular or legitimate rebel or political leader. All three had known criminal records, and many who knew their ringleader, Aboubacar ag Alambo, regarded him as a psychopath who had already brought shame on his people. Indeed, it was because of his dastardly and shameful behaviour that senior Tuareg, with the blessing of the government, had unsuccessfully arranged his ‘elimination’ four years earlier.15 In other words, while the Tuareg of Niger had many legitimate grievances, we have

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to face up to the disturbing and sinister possibility that the rebellion, like those of 2004 in Aïr and 2006 in Mali, may have been both initiated and orchestrated by external forces. But first, before we consider either what those external forces might have been, or analyse how and why the rebellion came to take on a momentum and dynamic of its own, we need to understand the grievances that built up among Niger’s Tuareg in recent years. At least three major and one lesser issue can be identified. Fabrication of a Sahara–Sahel front in the US global ‘war on terror’ Niger’s latest Tuareg rebellion is the product of the increasing destabilization of the entire southern Sahara–Sahel region since 2003. The underlying cause of this destabilization has been the Bush administration’s fabrication of a Saharan–Sahelian front in its global ‘war on terror’, the epicentre of which has been the Tuareg desert regions of northern Niger and northern Mali. The primary purpose of this deception, which has now been widely documented and publicized in both academic journals and the general media,16 was to create the ideological conditions for America’s militarization of Africa.17 While Washington’s main ally in this strategy has been Algeria, Niger’s government, especially its president, has played a significant role. The most widely publicized incident in this deception was the abduction of 32 European tourists in the Algerian Sahara in 2003 by Algeria’s Islamist (‘terrorist’) Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) under the leadership of Saifi Amari, known as El Para.18 The hostages were held for six months before finally being released in northeast Mali after the reported payment of a €5 million ransom. El Para and his 60 or more accomplices were then allegedly chased by a combined military operation of US Special Forces and forces from Mali, Algeria and Niger forces across Mali and Niger to Chad, where 43 of them were reportedly killed during an engagement with Chad regular forces in March 2004. Subsequent investigative research has revealed that El Para was almost certainly an agent of Algeria’s secret military intelligence services, the Algerian Security Services (DRS), and even trained in the USA as a ‘green beret’ in the 1990s, and that the alleged pursuit across the Sahel simply did not happen as the US administration would have us believe. The result of this fabrication is that the USA has been able to label the northern parts of Mali and Niger as a ‘terrorist zone’, the domain of Al-

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Qaeda training bases lurking deep in the Sahara and threatening both Europe and the oil-rich regions of Africa. Indeed, the main ideological prop of the USA’s subsequent imperialist counter-terrorism strategies and militarization of the rest of the continent has been the threat presented by this false, over-hyped, US-constructed narrative of ‘terrorism in the Sahel’. The fabrication of the El Para incident and the USA’s subsequent labelling of their region as a ‘terror zone’ has, not surprisingly, angered local people. Not only has this done immense damage to local tourism and associated livelihoods, but the Tuareg also resent their region being labelled globally as a terror zone.19 Local people in the Sahara are acutely aware, and not surprising angered, at how their region has been manipulated over the last four to five years to fit the US-authored global picture of terrorism. The result has been a rising level of anger among those people whom the ‘war on terror’ has most affected. These are mostly the Tuareg populations of southern Algeria, northern Mali and northern Niger, with their anger directed as much at their own governments as the USA. The main reason for this is because the governments of all these countries have used the ‘war on terror’ in varying degrees to brand legitimate opposition, minorities and other recalcitrant elements in their own countries as ‘terrorists’ or, to use Washington-speak, ‘putative’ terrorists. Such moves have served not only to legitimize the strengthening of their own repressive apparatuses but also to secure more military and financial largesse from the United States. Niger’s government is no exception. President Tandja, realizing that he now had Washington’s blessing, attempted to provoke the Tuareg into actions he could portray to the Americans as ‘former rebels turning to terrorism’. In February 2004 the government arrested and took into detention the Tuareg’s most prominent political figure, Rhissa ag Boula, in connection with the murder of a young party worker in the president’s Nassara party. Rhissa was the former leader of the rebel Aïr and Azawad Liberation Front (FLAA) and its signatory to the 1995 peace accord that marked the formal end of the Tuareg rebellion in Niger. He had also been incorporated into the government as a minister as part of the peace accord.20 Rhissa was finally released after 13 months without being charged. However, the move succeeded in its widely believed aim of provoking at least some Tuareg to take up arms, thus enabling the government to send 150 troops into the Tuareg stronghold of the Aïr Mountains in September 2004. It was widely believed that such a pro-

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vocative action would incite a new Tuareg rebellion. However, the troops, recently trained by the USA as part of its Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI), were ambushed by the Tuareg with at least one soldier killed, four wounded and four taken hostage. RFI (Radio France Internationale) subsequently carried an interview with Rhissa’s brother, Mohamed ag Boula, who said he was leading a 200-strong group that was fighting to defend the rights of the Tuareg, Tubu and Semori nomadic populations of northern Niger, and that he was personally responsible for the ambush. Mohamed ag Boula and his fighters subsequently sought refuge in Libya, where Mohamed is now a colonel in the Libyan army. Estimates from Libya and Aïr put the number of Tuareg who have since moved from Niger to Libya at between 3000 and 10,000. Their return to Niger could make a significant difference to the direction of the current rebellion. THE EXPLOITATIVE PRACTICES OF FOREIGN (URANIUM) MINING AND OIL COMPANIES The MNJ’s major area of grievance and demands, over and above its general and not wholly justifiable claims regarding the government’s nonimplementation of the 1995 peace accord, discussed below, relates to the current huge expansion of both uranium mining and oil exploration in the Tuareg regions of northern Niger. The MNJ’s concerns relate to three main issues: the exploitative nature of these enterprises, the threat of an impending ecological disaster and the abuse by both the government and foreign companies of the Tuareg’s indigenous rights. To take each of these in turn: The nature of uranium mining and oil exploration Niger has long been a major source of uranium and is currently the world’s third-ranking exporter after Australia and Canada.21 Current annual production of 3300 metric tonnes accounts for around 72 per cent of Niger’s total export revenue and comprises approximately 10 per cent of the global uranium supply.22 The French Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières first discovered uranium in 1957 near the current mining town of Arlit in the Tamesna region of northern Niger, 200 kilometres south of the Algerian border. Further discoveries were made at numerous sites in the Tamesna region during the late 1950s and 1960s. The Société des Mines de l’Air

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(Somair), set up in 1968, began open caste mining near Arlit in 1971. The Compagnie Minière d’Akouta (Cominak), set up in 1974, began underground mining at the nearby Akouta deposit in 1974. Today, a consortium led by the giant French corporation, Areva, controls the two mines at Arlit and Akokan.23 The uranium concentrates, known as yellow-cake, are transported overland to Cotonou and then taken by ship for conversion, mostly to Comurhex in France. With the world energy crisis giving nuclear energy a new lease of life, the price of uranium rose from scarcely $10 a pound (543 grammes) at the beginning of 2003 to $45 by mid-June 2006 and to $135 by June 2007. Not surprisingly, there was a veritable scramble by foreign corporates to acquire exploration rights and to expand uranium production in Niger. Areva (then called Cogema Niger) was the first to get in on the act and signed an agreement with the government in 2004 to expand its exploration. This was followed in 2006 by an agreement to develop the large Imouraren deposit about 80 kilometres south of Arlit.24 France, however, no longer has a monopoly on Niger’s uranium. In 2006 Niger awarded licences to a group of Chinese companies led by the China International Uranium Corporation (SinoU), a unit of China National Nuclear Corporation, to explore for uranium at a number of sites in the Agadez–Tamesna region.25 With the Niger government now targeting a threefold increase of uranium production to 10,500 tons of uranium per year ‘in the next few years’, by mid-2007 the Niger government had granted around 70 mining exploration permits for the northern desert region. By October 2007, this number had risen to almost 90 with a further 90 or so under consideration. Northern Niger has become the focus of a global scramble for uranium as companies from France, China, Canada, Australia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, India and elsewhere hope to strike it rich. But this scramble comes against a background of increasingly widespread and organized opposition and resistance to both foreign political interventions, notably that of the USA, as outlined above, and the exploitative behaviour of foreign mining and oil corporations. Prior to this year’s rebellion, resistance to foreign corporate exploitation had been directed almost exclusively at Areva, with the Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC) also becoming the object of opprobrium since it began operations in the Tenere region some years ago. Working conditions at Areva’s two mines were so bad that the mines’

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employees, with the backing of fellow workers and communities, set up a local NGO, Aŕirin man,26 to draw attention to a number of health issues associated with environmental degradation and the company’s disregard of health and safety measures. It requested the Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRad) to undertake long overdue scientific investigations. However, CRIIRad’s attempts in 2004 to undertake the research were forcibly blocked by the Niger authorities on behalf of Areva and the French government. Aŕirin man did, however, succeed in having samples of Arlit’s drinking water analysed by Sherpa and the CRIIRad.27 The analysis revealed that the indices of both alpha and beta radioactivity in the water samples were above the limits set by the World Health Organization, meeting neither EU directive standards nor French regulations. This proved that Areva’s press statement in February 2004 that its water analyses ‘showed an absence of contamination’, was untrue. Public demonstrations against Areva in May and November 2006 so rattled the company that its president, Madame Anne Lauvergeon, actually went to Niger for two days (30 November–1 December) in an attempt to calm the situation and stabilize Areva’s position in the country.28 This appalling episode in corporate irresponsibility was not only well documented and publicized,29 but it also underpinned the current resistance to foreign corporate exploitation in the region. Not surprisingly, it fuelled local anger towards both Areva and the French government. Indeed, shortly after the Iferouane attack, the French ambassador visited the region only to be given an exceptionally strong rebuke by a spokesperson for the local community and to be told that France had lost all respect and credibility in the region and that he was to leave.30 The CNPC’s lack of respect for local people and their cultural practices caused widespread anger and hostility, with strikes and labour absenteeism commonplace.31 It is consequently not surprising that both the CNPC and SinoU received threats from the rebels.32 There was also growing awareness among local people, especially the rebels, of what they regarded as ‘corrupt’ relations between the Chinese companies and the Niger government in the form of, for example, financial contributions to President Tandja’s election campaign. More serious from Beijing’s perspective was the growing belief among the rebels that China was giving military support to President Tandja to help crush the

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rebellion. The rebels warned Chinese companies operating in the region that they faced severe repercussions if evidence of such support materialized. Fear of an impending ecological disaster Aŕirin man sees the current expansion of uranium mining as a continuation and acceleration of what it calls ‘Niger’s economic, social and environmental tragedy’.33 The particular environmental tragedy to which it refers is the impending ecological catastrophe facing the Tamesna region. Those who understand the issues, and they are rapidly increasing in number, are extremely anxious that the expansion of uranium mining across Tamesna will lead to an extension of the pollution, disease and illhealth that has come with uranium mining at Arlit. They see the expansion of the present system of unregulated uranium mining around Imouraren, Sekiret, In Gall, the Iŕazer valley and elsewhere in the Tamesna region as a major and extremely serious threat to the region’s unique and complex ecosystem, which plays a pivotal and very complex socio-ecological role in the livelihoods of tens of thousands of pastoralists. The people threatened by this impending ecological disaster are not just the 100,000 or so Tuareg who inhabit the Aïr and adjoining plains of Tamesna, but Tuareg and other nomadic peoples, such as numerous Fulani nomads to the south, as well as Tuareg from as far north as the Ahaggar and Tassili n Azjer regions in Algeria.34 The abuse of indigenous rights US intervention in the Sahara–Sahel has done much to politicize local people, especially among their more educated and politically aware elites. This increased awareness of the international political scene is nowhere more acute than in the complex international politics of ‘indigenous rights’ issues. For example, in July 2006, within days of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Tuareg of Niger lodged a formal complaint to the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (UNWGIP) about the US presence and its activities in Niger. Unfortunately for the international mining companies now bent on exploiting Niger’s uranium resources, Tuareg notions of and concerns about indigenity are probably nowhere more pronounced than over their region of Tamesna. Of the vast traditional territory of the Tuareg, few

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places are perceived as being more indigenous, almost ‘sacred’, by the Tuareg than Tamesna. The reasons for these sentiments are deeply rooted in their history and go beyond the bounds of this chapter.35 Suffice it to say that with Niger’s independence in 1960, Tamesna became a sort of noman’s-land, a ‘Tuareg reserve’. Although legally part of Niger, it was effectively beyond the reach of any administration, either that of Niger or Algeria. It became a uniquely Tuareg area in which traditional pastoral rights and practices were largely retained. It was the region to which Tuareg went, both from Algeria and Niger, when they ‘wanted to get away from government’.36 International mining companies (perhaps more than other organizations), their home governments and the Niger government, along with Tuareg political leaders, are all fully aware of attempts to recognize and protect indigenous rights and of the current legal status of the UN Declaration of Indigenous Rights.37 They know that the US government, through President Bush’s former ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, used duplicitous means to block the adoption of the Declaration by the UN General Assembly on 28 November 2006.38 Thus, although the declaration that would internationally sanction Tuareg attempts to protect their domain from such rapacious exploitation was still awaiting adoption by the UN, its moral weight was indisputable. GOVERNMENT FAILURE TO ADHERE TO THE 1995 PEACE ACCORD The extent to which the government has adhered to or fulfilled the conditions and agreements of the 1995 peace accord is debatable. In the government’s defence, many Tuareg rebels were integrated into the FAN and FNIS. There has also been some devolution of government, especially at local and regional levels. It can also be said in the government’s defence that it has not had the resources to undertake as many of the 1995 development proposals as it might have desired. However, the MNJ’s claims that the government has not delivered on what Tuareg regard as the biggest issue, namely a say in the management of the region’s resources, notably uranium, hydrocarbons and other minerals, and an equitable share in their development are quite justified. As already mentioned, there has been growing resentment among the Tuareg population as a whole at what they see as the rapacious exploitation of the region, especially through the expansion of uranium mining and oil exploration by

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foreign companies, without any discussion, negotiation or managerial involvement of the local population. The financial terms and operating practices of these companies, sanctioned by the Niger government, are in complete contravention of the 1995 peace accord as well as the many global declarations and conventions on the exploitation of indigenous land rights. Indeed, local people see the way in which the region’s mineral and hydrocarbon resources have been and still are being exploited as bringing no benefit to themselves or their communities. The rebels’ targeting of foreign companies, especially in the uranium and hydrocarbons fields, is unlikely to stop until equitable settlements have been negotiated over mineral and oil exploration and development rights. QUESTIONING THE LEGITIMACY OF STATES AND STATE BORDERS A further issue emanating from the conflict is that many Tuareg, especially the younger generation, in both Niger and Mali (less so in Algeria and Libya), are questioning the legitimacy of their states’ borders. They argue that the borders of the states that encompass Tuareg lands, and presumably on the basis of this argument most other states in Africa as well, are a product of a colonial era. But, as colonialism is now ‘dead’, so too should be its borders. The more the conflict escalates or just drags on, the more likely younger Tuareg are to challenge not merely state borders but also the legitimacy and relevance of the states themselves. Indeed, it is perhaps significant that a website, believed to be run by young Tuareg rebels, emerged on 19 September 2007 proclaiming the founding of the Tuareg state of temujaŕa.39 Temujaŕa comprises most of the northern half of Niger and all northeast Mali, with its northern limit being the border with Algeria.40 The idea of a Tuareg state has been aired, though never very seriously, on several occasions in the past. The first is believed to have been in 1957 within the context of the Common Organization of Saharan Regions (OCRS), which was France’s futile last-gasp attempt to control the Sahara’s recently discovered oil resources.41 The most recent has been Muammar Gaddafi’s advocacy of such an entity on several occasions over the last few years.42 The role of external interests in the causation and escalation of the rebellion I suggested at the beginning of this chapter that the rebellion, like those of 2004 in Aïr and 2006 in Mali (see below), may have been initiated and to some extent even orchestrated by external forces. The external parties that

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might be seen as having interests at stake in this rebellion are the USA, Algeria, France, Libya, Mali, international oil and mining companies, Islamists, drug traffickers and, of course, the Niger government itself. China and its various companies in Niger, although now sucked into the conflict, were totally unaware of and had no part in what was happening in the early stages of the rebellion.43 In the early stages of the rebellion, any attempt to rank these parties in order of likely involvement would probably have put the governments of France, Algeria and Niger at the head of the list, followed by the USA, with the remainder all being involved in one way or another. However, as the rebellion dragged on, so a more complexly interwoven picture of their involvement emerged. Let me look first at the respective interests of each of these parties in turn. The Niger government The involvement of the Niger government in promoting these events cannot be ruled out. Since the US launch of its global war on terror in the Sahara-Sahel in 2003, almost every country in the region (Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Algeria) has provoked unrest among sections of its own population (usually minority, marginal groups) to attract further military and financial largesse from the USA. Indeed, as we have already seen, this is precisely what the Niger government did in 2004.44 Local Tuareg people believe that the government’s use of what they call ‘the list’ was another such provocative action. The government drew up the ‘list’ immediately after the Iferouane attack. It was believed to have contained the names of several dozens, perhaps hundreds, of former rebels whom the government was allegedly planning to detain. Whether local Tuareg were correct in seeing the ‘list’ and the alleged planned detention of former rebels as an act of retribution or provocation by the Niger government is something we shall probably never know. Nevertheless, it was enough to make many former rebels, many of whom are now responsible local community and political leaders, take to the mountains with their weapons (which had remained hidden). It is estimated that as many as 200 former rebel fighters, provoked by the government’s ‘list’, and having sent their wives and families into hiding, converged on the Tamgak massif,45 well-known and well-used by former rebels as a near-impregnable redoubt a few miles to the east-northeast of Iferouane.46

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There is no clear or immediate answer as to why the Niger government should want to promote this rebellion. Further provocation of the Tuareg, as in 2004, to help legitimize the USA’s Saharan-Sahelian front in the war on terror and to gain more US military and financial aid, now makes little sense insofar as the rebellion, for reasons explained below, is a considerable embarrassment to Washington. Other suggestions relate to Niger’s attempts to break the French (Areva) monopoly on uranium production, expand production through other international companies and thus generate a greater revenue stream for itself. While the Niger government appears to have been successful in using Areva’s alleged involvement (see below) in the rebellion to achieve these ends, such reasoning smacks rather too much of ‘conspiracy theory’ in that the government could surely have accomplished such ends by more straightforward means.47 Indeed, there is a very real risk of prolonged conflict in the region deterring international investment. While the rebellion and the attention it has drawn to the marginalization of Niger’s northern regions has been instrumental in achieving further international aid, notably in the form of a $3 billion EU aid package, it is far fetched to suggest that the Niger government provoked the rebellion to such an end. Looking at the Niger government’s motivations from the rebels’ perspective, the rebels have maintained, almost from the outset, that President Tandja is hell-bent on a racist policy of exclusion against them, which they refer to as ‘ivoirianization’.48 They believe that he has longstanding personal grievances against them, stemming from his time as minister of the interior when he was responsible for the Tchin Tabaradene massacres, which precipitated the 1990s rebellion, and that he is now using the pretext of their rebellion to pursue a policy of ‘ivoirianization’. Quite how he might be planning to exclude them, other than by some sort of disenfranchisement or genocide (as many believe), which would be likely to invoke international intervention, is not at all clear. Algeria There is evidence to suggest that Algeria, almost certainly through its counter-intelligence service, the DRS, was involved in the instigation of the rebellion. The evidence for this is as follows: • The three Tuareg who carried out the attack on Iferouane –

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Aboubacar ag Alambo, Kalakoua49 and Al Charif (Acheriff Mohamed)50 – were known to the DRS. Aboubacar (reported killed on 22 June 2007) and Kalakoua both have criminal records, while Al Charif was a former rebel who had subsequently deserted the Niger army. The leader of the attack, Aboubacar ag Alambo, came onto the political scene in 2002 after deserting the Niger army and killing two policemen in a series of bandit acts in northern Niger. Since then he has been responsible for numerous such acts, including a savage attack on French tourists near Djado and countless attacks on ‘illegal’ migrants trying to make their way across the Sahara. A number of Aboubacar’s former comrades in the 1990s’ Tuareg rebellion have described him as a ‘psychopath’ who enjoys ‘violence’ and is always entrusted to do the ‘dirty work’. These actions brought ‘shame’ on his people and family, who in 2003 failed in an attempt to assassinate him. Aboubacar, however, was well connected through a complex network of kinship relations to influential members of the regional governments on both sides of the Niger–Algeria border, including the director of security for Algeria’s Tamanrasset wilaya.51 Not only has he been given protection by Algeria’s security forces, notably the DRS, since 2002, but there is evidence that the DRS used him in the fabrication of terrorist incidents in southern Algeria in 2003 and in Niger in 2004.52 There is also evidence, from informants who came across Aboubacar’s group shortly before it attacked Iferouane, that their vehicles and arms came from northern Mali (Kidal Région) and may have been provided by Algerian connections believed to be associated with the DRS. This is particularly significant as the DRS was instrumental in promoting the short-lived Tuareg rebellion at Kidal and Menaka on 23 May 2006 (see below).53 • Algeria has been the main agent in assisting the USA in its policy of creating a ‘zone of terror’ across the Sahel since 2003.54 This has involved the fabrication of numerous ‘terrorist’ incidents in the region; countless media disinformation reports; the provocation of unrest in the region55 and exaggerated (or fabricated) reports of armed engagements between Tuareg rebels (supported by the DRS) and GSPC elements (now renamed Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) in northern Mali in the period between September and November 2006. • Algeria has political and economic hegemonic designs on the Sahel, most notably in northeast Mali (the Kidal Région) and northern Niger,

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a zone of potential mineral and hydrocarbon wealth. It is unclear precisely how the MNJ rebellion might further these interests. However, some local people believe that Algeria sees the ongoing destabilization of the Sahel (Mali and Niger) as playing into its own long-term interests, perhaps by making the region less attractive to foreign (Western and Chinese) exploitation, or by enabling it to play the role of ‘peacemaker’ and thus strengthen its political influence in the region. • Over the last few years Libya has more or less continuously challenged Algeria’s hegemonic interests in the Sahel. Algeria’s anxiety about a strong Libyan presence in the region reached paranoiac dimensions in early 2006, leading Algeria to engineer the Kidal (Mali) revolt on 23 May 2006, for which Libya got much of the blame. Libya’s involvement in northern Niger, especially the Agadez region, has been far more invasive than in northern Mali. It is therefore conceivable that we are seeing a replay of Algeria’s Malian strategy, namely one that engineers a Tuareg ‘rebellion’ and blames it on the Libyans! However, if Algeria was harbouring thoughts along those lines at the time of the Iferouane attack, such a scenario has looked increasingly less likely as the rebellion has progressed and taken on a dynamic of its own. • Local Tuareg informants in the Tamesna region of northern Niger have been reporting ‘Algerians [believed to be military, that is DRS agents] swarming all over the place’. While Algeria’s military intelligence services have always kept a close eye on northern Niger, especially the Tamesna and Azawad regions, and are known to have more than a passing interest in cigarette, drug and arms trafficking, local Tuareg informants have reported a marked increase in their presence since the onset of the rebellion. The increased activity of ‘Algerians’ (presumably DRS) in Tamesna, as explained below, is now thought by many local people and commentators alike to be related as much to French as Algerian interests in the region. France France jealously guards its economic and political ties with la francophonie, especially Niger, whose substantial uranium deposits have supplied France, via Areva, with a secured source of energy and guaranteeing it 100 per cent nuclear independence. Not only does France need Niger’s uranium to run its own reactors, but Areva is also currently the world’s leading constructor of nuclear reactors, a position that is helped in no

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small measure by being a leading marketer of uranium. France was assured this position until Niger decided to place its own self-interest ahead of that of France/Areva by opening its mineral rich north to international competition. France/Areva was not prepared to allow international companies from China, South Africa, Canada, Australia, India, Nigeria, Algeria, the United Kingdom and elsewhere to help themselves to what it had hitherto taken for granted as it own national energy supply.56 It is therefore not surprising that there have been rumours and suspicion from the outset that France/Areva instigated and financed the rebellion to frighten off foreign, especially Chinese, competition. The Niger government actually accused Areva of financing the rebels. Although both Areva and the MNJ denied it, and with no solid evidence provided by the Niger government, Niger expelled Areva’s head of operations on 26 July 2007 in a move that provoked the direct intervention of President Sarkozy and high level Franco–Niger talks in Niamey between Jean-Marie Bockel, France’s cooperation minister, and President Tandja.57 However, other than the announcement of the broad terms of a new contract between Niger and Areva, with France talking diplomatically of certain ‘misunderstandings’, the talks appears to have done little to further a peaceful resolution of the conflict.58 France certainly has the means to initiate Tuareg unrest in Niger. Its own security agents, for instance, have long maintained close surveillance of the region, while Areva management has close ties to both the MNJ leadership and other parties in the region. For example, the MNJ president, Aŕali ag Alambo (brother of Aboubacar ag Alambo), was previously the sous-préfet at Arlit where his business was as much to meet the needs of the uranium producer as to administer the mining town and its environs. However, if France/Areva was behind the rebellion, as many people still suspect,59 two points should be made. The first is that if France did intend to create a bushfire in the region, it appears to have got dangerously out of control. The second is that if this was France’s intent, it would be more likely to operate through the more covert channels of its own foreign intelligence service, the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), or, more likely, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST). The DST has especially close ties with Algeria’s DRS which, more than anyone, has the means to trigger off such a chain of events.

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The USA The USA has been heavily involved in the Sahara-Sahel region since 2002. Its fabrication of a ‘second front’ in the war on terror along with its associated Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI) and Trans-Saharan CounterTerrorism Initiative (TSCTI) have strongly contributed to the region’s progressive instability over the last four years. Given this background, the current Tuareg conflicts in both Niger and Mali might be seen as further instances of provocative actions by US-supported governments in the region to enhance the US portrayal of the Sahara-Sahel as a ‘terror zone’ (as on recent US military maps) and thus lending justification and legitimacy to its new African Command (AFRICOM). However, although there is no evidence of special forces (or other US elements) being directly involved in the Iferouane attacks and the emergence of the MNJ, as was the case with the Kidal revolt in May 2006 where 100 US Special Forces were in the region, the current conflicts (Niger and Mali) are likely to become extremely embarrassing for the US administration. The reason for this is not simply because they are manifestations of the destabilization that the USA has brought to the region, but because they are absolutely nothing to do with the Islamist ‘terrorism’ that the USA has claimed to have proliferated in the region. With the USA’s own ‘co-conspirator’, Algeria, now accusing it of exaggerating the terrorist threat60 and detailed field research showing that it even fabricated terrorist incidents in the region, the Tuareg rebellions have done much to expose the entire US enterprise in the region as a deception. The rebellions have further embarrassed Washington by coinciding with the anniversary of ‘Operation Flintlock’, the much-publicized military operation through which the USA launched the TSCTI. The international media virtually ignored the event, except for the fact that a US Hercules transporter, made available to the Mali army to help relieve its besieged troops, came under fire from the rebels who saw the US action as highly provocative.61 One can only wonder why the USA has not exercised more pressure on the Niger government to work towards a peaceful resolution of the conflict, given the embarrassment it has caused the USA and that Washington’s stated reason for being in the region is to further its development and security.

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Mali Mali’s TSCTI connection to the Niger rebellion is broadly two dimensional. The first, as already mentioned, is that the Niger rebellion had links to the Tuareg Kidal revolt in May 2006. Those already mentioned relate to the involvement of Algeria’s DRS in the Kidal revolt and that the vehicles and armaments used in the Iferouane attack may have originated in the Kidal Région, possibly through the auspices of the DRS. In addition, some of the protagonists in the Iferouane attack, notably Kalakoua, either came from Mali or had Malian connections. Although living in Aïr, Kalakoua is of Iforas (Mali) origin and has kinship ties in the Kidal area. He was gaoled in Tillabery (Niger) for having taken three senior Malian officers hostage in 2006. After his escape, he sought refuge in Mali, where it seems he may have received the same sort of ‘protection’ or ‘grooming’ by the DRS as Aboubacar ag Alambo. The second dimension was that the Niger rebellion had spread into Mali. In mid-summer, a faction of local Tuareg broke away from the leadership of the May 2006 Kidal rebellion in the belief that the Mali government was moving in the same direction as that of Niger. Although both Malian and MNJ rebels denied it, it is generally known that they met on 20–22 July to discuss a common strategy and formed what they called the Mali–Niger Tuareg Alliance (ATNM). At the same time, there were disturbing indications that the Mali authorities were encouraging the resuscitation of the Ganda Koy, a Songhay-based militia that was responsible for many of the attacks on Tuareg civilian populations in the 1990s’ Tuareg rebellion. The violation of Tuareg women by Mali soldiers seemed to have triggered the first attack on a Malian police post in May. More sustained attacks on the Malian army at the end of August and through September and the mining of many of the routes around Tin Zaouatene resulted in a handful of rebels being killed, the deaths of more than a dozen civilians and dozens of Malian soldiers taken hostage. After something of a truce through Ramadan, it appeared that a peace agreement, albeit perhaps only temporary, was in the making. Libya Libya’s designs on the Sahel have been reflected in Muammar Gaddafi’s many pronouncements on some sort of ‘Tuareg political entity’. These have intensified since April 2005, ranging from a ‘Tuareg Federation’ to a new ‘Saharan state from Mauritania to Iraq’. Few people paid attention to

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them until Algeria became almost paranoid in early 2006 about being outflanked by Libya along its southern borders, especially in northeast Mali, which it has always considered as falling within its own sphere of interest. Accordingly, it engineered the May 2006 Tuareg revolt, put the blame on Libya, and then negotiated an unsatisfactory peace! Gaddafi has far stronger personal links with Niger, especially the Aïr region. Subsequent to his central role in resolving the 2004 conflict between the Niger Tuareg and President Tandja’s government, in which the Tuareg humiliated 150 US-trained FAN troops sent into Aïr, taking several hostage, Gaddafi has invested substantial sums in the Agadez region, financing and building much of its infrastructure and giving a home (and Libyan citizenship) to what may be as many as 10,000 Aïr Tuareg.62 Many of these former Niger rebels now comprise a potent force within Gaddafi’s own armed forces. While there is no evidence of Libyan backing for the Iferouane attack or the MNJ rebellion (although Aboubacar, like many other Tuareg, has reportedly received funds from Libya), the existence of such a sizeable ‘army in exile’, could play a major, and perhaps determining, role should President Tandja decide to use FAN troops to overcome the MNJ. Libya, however, will be mindful of the way in which Algeria reacted in 2006 (promoted a revolt) to similar Libyan incursions into Mali. Drug traffickers President Tandja has continually asserted that the rebels are simply criminals and drug traffickers fighting to get more control over the trans-Saharan lucrative drug trafficking business. While this claim goes down well in Washington, where drug trafficking and terrorism tend to be seen as two sides of the same coin, it is nothing more than President Tandja’s attempt to divert international attention from the real political problem associated with the Tuareg in Niger. This is not to deny that drug trafficking across the Sahara is widespread, but it has little to do with the MNJ rebellion, being run largely by international organizations, associated predominantly with corrupt elements in the political-military establishments of the North African and West African states. A few Tuareg act as drivers and low-level operatives for traffickers. Indeed, Aboubacar ag Alambo himself has had associations with various forms of smuggling activity and it is possible that he may have received

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the backing of drug traffickers in their attempts to replace cigarette smuggling with drug trafficking. However, there is no logical reason why the drug traffickers might want to promote the MNJ. On the contrary, the current events merely attract more security forces into the region and pose a threat to the drug-trafficking business. THE GLOBAL AND LOCAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE CONFLICT Although it is difficult to talk about the implications of the conflict while it is still continuing, the implications are nevertheless likely to be profound and long lasting. This is a rebellion that was not of the Tuareg’s own making, but which was, in a sense, thrust upon them. It is predicated on a base of political instability, caused primarily by US involvement in the region, and anger at the way in which Tuareg people as a whole have been manipulated and directly affected by the US global war on terror and the way their own governments have been willing parties to it. On the international front, the conflict will have significant implications for the uranium industry and for the mining industry in general. This rebellion is giving a clear message to all international mining companies, which is that the days when they could ride roughshod over indigenous and local rights are drawing to a close. Or, if they wish to continue with their rampant exploitation of indigenous lands, their security is going to become an increasing element of their cost base. It is too early to say whether the conflict will act as a lasting deterrent to foreign investment. That was certainly the case in the 1990s, but then there were not so many potential foreign investors in the country. What is certain is that future mining and other extractive operations in the region will have to come to satisfactory agreements with the local and predominantly Tuareg population. There are wider regional implications should the conflict develop into a wider conflagration. If a peaceful solution is not found soon, the conflict is likely to spread into southern Algeria, and may well draw in parties from further afield, notably Nigeria and Libya. There is also the likelihood of the continuation or expansion of the conflict causing a greater displacement of the population and an associated refugee crisis as was the case during the 1990s rebellions. Locally, the conflict has already brought considerable hardship and suffering to the populations of Agadez and the wider regions of Aïr and Tamesna. This could become critical if the conflict intensifies and

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President Tandja steps up his targeting of the civilian populations. As it is, both Iferouane and Agadez have been described by local people as ghost towns. The economic impacts on the region are already severe and are likely to be profound. The major impact is through the decimation of the tourist industry. Since the onset of the war on terror in the central Sahara and Sahel in 2003, tourism, the most important element of the local cash economy, and the Tuareg’s point of insertion into the global economy, has been under pressure. In Aïr, tourism has held up better than in neighbouring regions, possibly because of its predominantly French base. However, the current conflict has brought tourism in northern Niger to a complete close. More serious is that tourism is unlikely to recover quickly even if there is a peace settlement. This is because both sides have relied on extensive mining. But while the rebels have used only anti-vehicle mines, and know their location, the Niger military have been using antipersonnel mines with seemingly little or no knowledge of their location. Moreover, heavy rains in the region will certainly have displaced many of them. The loss of income from tourism is likely to put pressure on outmigration from the region, probably to Libya, but also to encourage more desperate means of survival, as we have already seen over the last few years with people working as drivers and suppliers in the various trafficking industries and through common banditry. Even if there is an immediate resolution of the conflict, the region is unlikely to revert to the status quo ante. Quite apart from the human and economic implications of the conflict, it is having profound ideological implications, especially among the younger generation of Tuareg fighters. The Tuareg have never been a politically homogeneous group. However, the current conflict, especially the background of external intervention and destabilization associated with the war on terror, has brought the various Tuareg groups closer together and acted as a catalyst for a new wave of Tuareg nationalism. It is still too early to say whether the creation in September (2007) of a website launching the new ‘Republic of Toumoujagha’ is an act of provocation by a group of young Tuareg intellectuals and fighters, or an expression of the emergence of a more deep-seated nationalism.63 Either way, it finds a resonance among the younger generation of Tuareg in both Niger and Mali (less so at this stage in Algeria and Libya) who no longer

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recognize the legitimacy of their state borders. As mentioned earlier, they see their borders as being as ‘dead’ and irrelevant as the colonialism that created them. The continuation or escalation of the Niger conflict will merely fuel this ideology and the declining recognition of and identification with existing states. If President Tandja does not seek the path towards a peaceful and sustainable settlement soon, it is conceivable that his ‘ivoirianization’ will meet its nemesis in temujaŕa.

Glossary

This glossary consists of all the Tamasheq terms used in the text in their singular and plural male forms. The female denotations are added with a slash. The words are ordered alphabetically. The transcription follows the spelling of Karl-Gottfried Prasse, Ghubeïd Alojaly and Ghabdouane Mohamed, Asaggalalaf: Tamazeq–Tafransist: Lexique: Touareg–Français, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1998. In certain cases we have used the transcription of Charles de Foucauld, Dictionnaire Touareg–Français: Dialecte de l’Ahaggar, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale de France, 1951–52. Unlike these dictionaries, we use an upper and lower case and, to facilitate the legibility, do not distinguish between long and short vowels. Singular (m/f)

Plural (m/f)

abbetul aduban afazo Agori aggu akafar/ takafart akal

ibtal idubanan ifezwan Igoran agguten, aggiwen ikufar/ tikufar ikallan akh iklan/tiklan illaman, umnas

akli/taklit alam, amis albaraka, baraka ales aleshu amadal amadray amagal amagar Amahaŕ/Tamahaq Amajeŕ/ Tamajeq

Translation

hollow, cavern, Abbetul also used as a name wedding persistent grass (panicum turgidum) Tamasheq for West African(s) instrumentalists, professional dancer from Arabic: pagan, non-Muslim, white person, European country, territory, land, region milk former slaves dromedary, camel from Arabic: divine blessing power meddan man ileshan headscarf, indigo cloth in strips imedlan land, soil imadrayen younger brother imeglan medicine imagaren guest Imuhaŕ/Timuhaŕ emic term for Tuareg in Algeria and Libya Imajeŕen/ emic term for Tuareg in Niger Timajeŕen

232 amalŕon amanukal Amasheŕ/ Tamasheq amassakul amidi amŕar amŕid/tamŕid aneslim/ taneslimt aŕan ashamur/ tashamurt ashshak attanfa awadem n bennan awezlu azzaman baki n zaki buzay/buzaya egef ehen Eid al-Fitr elelli elem enad/tenad eŕawel eru esabar eshuŕl esuf etakas ezelaf ezni faida filfil griot guitar, alguitara hajj hijra

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

imellŕan aman imanukalen Imushaŕ/ Timushaŕ imessukal imidiwen imŕaren imŕad/timŕad ineslemen/ tineslimen aŕalak iŕunan ishumar/ tishumar ashshakan

iwazlan azzamanan bella buzu igefan ihanan/yenan illelan ilemawen inadan/tinadan iŕawelen isebran eshuŕlen isaffan iteksan izelfan eznitan

griots

lazy person water chief, leader emic term for Tuareg in Mali traveller, voyager friend old man, chief, leader, respectful term former so-called ‘vassals’, immigrant groups, today used for people who behave with disrespect Muslim scholar, religious group, marabouts people string, cord, rope from French chômage: unemployment, unemployed, exiles, migrants, dissidents, rebels honour, pride colourful printed cotton fabric, in Hausa: zane useless person journey, trip, travel time, period, season Hausa: green caps among Kel Ewey and Hausa (lit. mouth of the lion) slaves Hausa: slaves dune Tent, fig. house/family Arabic: festival to mark end of Ramadan groups of command, the ‘free’ skin, body, colour craftsman, smith liberated slaves old mat made of afazo from Arabic: work, labour loneliness, solitude, desert countryside, rural area (lit. outside) marriage blood Arabic: benefit, use, value Arabic: pepper West African singer, poet from French: guitar, new music style Arabic: one who has done the hijra, term of respect Arabic: pilgrimage to Mecca

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GLOSSARY

iba Ibambara Ifulan ikarbay ikwal ilug imojaŕ isilis isen, isem isudar karanbani

leshi mota nasara riga n zaki ŕas sediden semmerkes sqomas tabarart tafineq tagelmust taggalt taylelt taitte takarakit talaqqe Tamahaq tamangad tamattant Tamasheq tamerkest tamet, tamtut tamidit

without, absence of Tamasheq for Bambara Tamasheq for Fulbe, Fulani, Peul, Woodabee trousers black camel parade ideal of dignity, musician isan meat islas colourful woven blanket for camels isnawen name, name giving, naming ceremony, ‘baptism’ isuduren food, nourishment Hausa: junk, nonsense, knick-knack kel people, people of Kel Adaŕ people of the Ifuŕas, Mali Kel Aïr people of the Aïr, Niger Kel Ahaggar people of the Ahaggar, Algeria Kel Azawad people of the Azawad, Niger, Mali Kel Azjer people of the Tassili n Azjer, Libya, Algeria Kel Ewey people in the Aïr, Niger Kel Gress group of people in south Niger Kel Tamasheq Tamasheq-speaking people kel ulli lit. people of the goats, imŕad Hausa: synthetic fabric motaten car nasari Hausa: white, Christian Hausa: guinea fowl gown, in Tamasheq: tekatkat taylelt only thin betrothal slang for ‘too thin’ (Mali) tibararen girl tifinaŕ Character, script tigulmas men’s headdress, Chéch tiggalin bride price, bride wealth, marriage payment guinea fowl tiettewin brain, intelligence tekerukad shame, reserve, respect tilaqqawen poor language of the Imuhaŕ ritual that transforms girls into women timattanen death language of the Imajaŕen/Imushaŕ timerkesen tying the knot, Muslim marriage tididin, tyaduden woman timidiwen female friend Ibambaran Ifulanen ikerbayan ikawelan ilugan

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taŕara taŕarabosht Targi/Targia

tiŕerwen

tas tasachteft

titan

tawsit, tawshit

tawsatin, tawshatin

techekwat teherdent tekatkat tekle temennast temujaŕa temus, tumast tenaflit tenere teshumara tesirnest tinde wilaya wullen yankaw yenfa/tenfa yeqqes zehu

Tuareg

tikatkaden teklawen timennasin temusen tinefleyen tinariwen tisirnes tandiwin yankawen yenfawen/ tenfawen

zahuten

character, condition, situation Koranic school foreign designation for Imuhaŕ, Imajeŕen and Imushaŕ cow custom at betrothal among iklan in Burkina Faso tribe, clan luggage bag musical style in south Niger top for women going traditional bowl being Imajeŕen ‘identity’, imagined stateless nation luxury, comfort, fortune, felicity desert ishumar movement wraparound garment wooden mortar, musical tradition Arabic: administrative district lot of, much lost useful, needful, profitable hand clapping from Arabic: entertainment

Notes on the Contributors

Dida Badi is senior researcher at the Centre National de Recherches Préhistoriques, Anthropologiques et Historiques (CNRPAH), Algiers. He also teaches the Tamasheq language at the University of MouloudMammeri (Tizi-Ouzou). He is interested in sociopolitical changes in Kel Tamasheq society and is currently carrying out Ph.D. research at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. Nadia Belalimat is a Ph.D. student in social anthropology (at EHESS Paris and Bayreuth University), and research fellow at the International Centre for Research on the Environment and Development (CIRED). Her main interests are focused on Kel Tamasheq music, poetry, and cultural and political discourses, especially in situations of transnational mobility, diasporic groups and national contexts between Algeria, Mali, Niger and Libya. Annemarie Bouman studied cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam and received a Ph.D. from the University of Utrecht in 2003. She has done fieldwork in Niger, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast within Kel Tamasheq society. She is currently working for the Amsterdam police force where she is doing research on victim-related police work in the migrant community, with a focus on honour-related violence. Alessandra Giuffrida undertook independent anthropological research between 1986 and 1996 in the Sudan, Algeria, Niger and Morocco. Since 2000 she has worked with the Kel Antessar and neighbouring Kel Tamasheq in the region of Timbuktu. Her research focuses on mobility and its cultural, socio-economic and political implications with particular emphasis on networks. She received a Ph.D. in social anthropology at University College, London.

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Jeremy Keenan is Professorial Research Associate in the Department of Social Anthropology and Sociology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London University. He has written six books on the Sahara and its peoples. His two latest, The Dark Sahara (Pluto, 2009) and The Dying Sahara (Pluto, 2010) update the events described in his chapter in this volume. Baz Lecocq is a historian of the central Sahara and Sahel. He received a Ph.D. in social sciences from the University of Amsterdam. Currently he conducts research on cultural and social change in Kel Tamasheq society in the twentieth century, brought about by their migration to the cities of West Africa, the Maghreb and the Arab Peninsula. He lectures in African history at Ghent University, Belgium. Sarah Lunacek has an attachment as a teaching fellow in the anthropology of Africa and visual anthropology at the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Ljubljana. Susan Rasmussen is professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Houston. Her field research experience can be summarized by approximately seven years’ residence and field research over nearly a thirty-year period between 1974 and 2002, in Niger, West Africa, most intensively among the Kel Tamasheq, and more recently in Mali as well as on topics of religion, gender, ageing, healing and verbal art. Benedetta Rossi is RCUK fellow in international slavery at the School of History of the University of Liverpool. Her work focuses primarily on aid, migration, and social hierarchy among Hausa and Kel Tamasheq societies in the Tahoua region of Niger. Marko Scholze has worked as research assistant in the project ‘Ethnic tourism: Europeans meeting Berber and Tuareg’ of the Humanities Collaborative Research Centre (SFB-FK 560) of the University of Bayreuth, dealing with ‘Local action in Africa in the context of global influences’. He is currently scientific assistant at the Institute of Ethnology at the Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main. His anthropological fields of interest are tourism, cultural heritage and multi-sited fieldwork.

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Gerd Spittler was professor of sociology at Freiburg University (1980–88) and professor of social anthropology at Bayreuth University (1988–2004). He has done extensive fieldwork among the Hausa in Gobir and among the Kel Ewey in the Aïr. His main research interests are in economic anthropology, political anthropology, and research methodology.

Notes

Terminology and Transcription 1. Charles de Foucauld, Dictionnaire Touareg–Français: Dialecte de l’Ahaggar, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale de France, 4 vols, 1951–52. 2. Karl-Gottfried Prasse, Ghubeïd Alojaly and Ghabdouane Mohamed, Asaggalalaf: Tamazeq-Tafransist: Lexique: Touareg–Français, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 1998. 3. David Sudlow, The Tamasheq of north-east Burkina Faso: notes on grammar and syntax including a key vocabulary, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2001.

1. Tuareg Moving Global: An Introduction 1. Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo (eds) The Anthropology of globalisation: a reader, Blackwell: Oxford, 2002, p. 2. 2. Arjun Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, in Mike Featherston (ed.) Global culture: nationalism, globalisation and modernity, London: Sage, 1992, pp. 295–310. 3. Ulf Hannerz, Cultural complexity: studies in social organization of meaning, New York: Columbia University Press, 1992. 4. Arjun Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, in Mike Featherston (ed.) Global culture: nationalism, globalisation and modernity, London: Sage, 1992, p. 301; Arjun Appadurai, ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, in Jonathan Xavier Inda and Renato Rosaldo (eds) The Anthropology of globalisation: a reader, Blackwell: Oxford, 2002, pp. 46–64. 5. ‘The anthropological term borderliner (border crosser) designates something entirely different from the borderliner syndrome in psychiatry. In anthropology it designates groups of people, who live on state borders and who specialize in benefiting from crossing [them] on a regular basis’ (Ines Kohl, Beautiful modern nomads: bordercrossing Tuareg between Niger, Algeria and Libya, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2009, p. 11). 6. Laurence Marfaing and Steffen Wippel (eds) Les Relations transsahariennes à l´époque contemporaine: un espace en constante mutation, Paris: Karthala, ZMO, 2004. 7. David Harvey, The Condition of postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. 8. Ines Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen: Identitäten zwischen Grenzen, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2007.

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9. Ines Kohl, ‘Going off-road: with Toyota, Chech and E-Guitar through a Saharian borderland’, in Hans P. Hahn and Georg Klute (eds) Cultures of migration: African perspectives, Berlin: LIT, 2007, p. 92. 10. Hélène Claudot-Hawad, ‘A nomadic fight against immobility: the Tuareg in the modern state’, in Dawn Chatty (ed.) Nomadic societies in the Middle-East and North Africa: entering the 21st century, Leiden: Brill, 2006, p. 655. 11. Ibid.

2. Research and Nomads in the Age of Globalization 1. This chapter is based on anthropological fieldwork carried out among the Kel Ahaggar in the south of Algeria. In this chapter, the foreign designation ‘Tuareg’ is abandoned in favour of the Algerian self-designation ‘Imuhaŕ’ (sing. m. Amahaŕ /sing. f. Tamahaq). 2. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson (eds) Shorter Oxford English dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 1933. 3. Vilém Flusser, ‘Nomaden’, in Horst G. Haberl and Peter Strasser (eds) Nomadologie der Neunziger, Ostfildern: Cantz, 1995, p. 39. 4. Henry Mayhew, London labour and the London poor, London: Penguin, 1985. 5. John G. Galaty and Douglas L. Johnson (eds) The World of pastoralism, New York: Guilford Press, 1990; Philip C. Salzman, Pastoralists: equality, hierarchy and the state, Oxford: Westview Press, 2004, p. 17. 6. Salzman, Pastoralists, p. 18. 7. Ibid. 8. Christian F. Feest and Karl-Heinz Kohl (eds) Wörterbuch der Völkerkunde, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 1999. 9. Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the outside world, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 16. 10. Salzman, Pastoralists, p. vii. 11. Fred Scholz (ed.) Nomade: mobile Tierhaltung, Berlin: Verlag Hans Schiller, 1991, p. 13. 12. Fred Scholz (ed.) Nomadismus: Theorie und Wandel einer sozio-ökologischen Kulturweise, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1995, p. 248. 13. See Bernhard Streck, ‘Systematisierungsansätze aus dem Bereich der ethnologischen Forschung’, in Stefan Leder and Bernhard Streck (eds) Mitteilungen des SFB ‘Differenz und Integration’, vol. 1, Nomadismus aus der Perspektive der Begrifflichkeit, Halle/Saale: Orientalisches Zentrum, 2002, p. 7. 14. Streck, ‘Systematisierungsansätze aus dem Bereich’; Dawn Chatty (ed.) Nomadic societies in the Middle East and North Africa: entering the 21st century, Leiden: Brill, 2006; Anja Fischer, Nomaden der Sahara: Handeln in Extremen, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2008. 15. Streck ‘Systematisierungsansätze aus dem Bereich’, p. 6. 16. A tent unit corresponds to one nuclear family. 17. Jeremy Keenan, The Lesser gods of the Sahara: social change and contested terrain among the Tuareg of Algeria, London: Frank Cass, 2004.

NOTES

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35. 36.

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Stefan Leder, ‘Nomaden und nomadische Lebensformen in arabischer Begrifflichkeit-Eine Annäherung’, in Stefan Leder and Bernhard Streck (eds) Mitteilungen des SFB ‘Differenz und Integration’, vol. 1, Nomadismus aus der Perspektive der Begrifflichkeit, Halle/Saale: Orientalisches Zentrum, 2002, p. 11. Georg Klute, Die schwerste Arbeit der Welt: Alltag von Tuareg-Nomaden, Hamburg: Trickster Verlag, 1996; Johannes Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture of the pastoral Tuareg: with particular reference to the Tuareg of Ahaggar and Ayr, Copenhagen: National Museum of Copenhagen, 1963. Gerd Spittler, Hirtenarbeit: Die Welt der Kamelhirten und Ziegenhirtinnen von Timia, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 1998. Fischer, Nomaden der Sahara. Kurt Beck, ‘Islam, Arbeitsethik, Lebensgefühl’, in Kurt Beck and Gerd Spittler (eds) Arbeit in Afrika, Hamburg: LIT, 1996, p. 171. Hélène Claudot-Hawad, ‘A Nomadic fight against immobility: the Tuareg in the modern state’, in Dawn Chatty (ed.) Nomadic societies in the Middle-East and North Africa: entering the 21st century, Leiden: Brill, 2006, p. 658. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Tausend Plateaus: Kapitalismus und Schizophrenie, Berlin: Merve, 2005. Tim Cresswell, ‘Imagining the nomad: mobility and the postmodern primitive’, in Georges Benko and Ulf Strohmayer (eds) Space and social theory: interpreting modernity and postmodernity, Oxford: Blackwell, 1997, pp. 360–82. Iain Chambers, Migration, Kultur, Identität, Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1996, p. 58. Anja Fischer, ‘NomadInnen (Nomadologie)’, in Fernand Kreff, Eva-Maria Knoll and Andre Gingrich (eds) Handbuch Globalisierung: Anthropologische und sozialwissenschaftliche Zugänge zur Praxis, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, forthcoming. James Clifford, ‘Traveling Cultures’, in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (eds) Cultural Studies, London: Routledge, 1992, pp. 96– 112. Elisabeth Boesen, ‘Hirtenkultur und Weltkultur’, in Kurt Beck, Till Förster and Hans Peter Hahn (eds) Blick nach vorn: Festgabe für Gerd Spittler zum 65. Geburtstag, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2004, p. 210. Claudot-Hawad, ‘A Nomadic fight against immobility’, p. 662. See Kohl’s chapter in this volume. Hélène Claudot-Hawad, Éperonner le monde: nomadism, cosmos et politique chez le Tuaregs, Aix-en-Provence: Édisud, 2001. Jörg Gertel, ‘Globalisierung, Entankerung und Mobilität’, in Stefan Leder and Bernhard Streck (eds) Mitteilungen des SFB ‘Differenz und Integration’, vol. 1, Nomadismus aus der Perspektive der Begrifflichkeit, Halle/Saale: Orientalisches Zentrum, 2002, p. 58. See Kohl’s chapter in this volume. See Gertel, ‘Globalisierung, Entankerung und Mobilität’. In the course of the ‘Tuareg Moving Global’ conference in 2007 an article entitled ‘Tuareg in the Third Millennium’ was published in the online journal

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37. 38.

39.

40. 41. 42.

43.

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

of the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. After seeing the title, one reader commented that he had thought it would be a report on the Volkswagen model Touareg. See Lunacek’s chapter in this volume. See Anja Fischer, ‘Imuhar-Nomadinnen: Momentaufnahmen einer pastoralen Ökonomie in der Sahara’, in OEKU-Online: Eine interdisziplinärer Content Pool zu Ökonomie, Kultur und Umwelt, 2005. Available: http:// www.lai.at/web/oeku/cp/imuhar/imuhar-titel.html (accessed August 2009). Gerd Spittler, ‘Globale Waren – Lokale Aneignungen’, in Brigitta HauserSchäublin and Ulrich Braukämper (eds) Ethnologie der Globalisierung, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2002, p. 16. Ibid. Ibid p. 25. Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and Ulrich Braukämper, ‘Zu einer Ethnologie der weltweiten Verflechtung’, in Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin and Ulrich Braukämper (eds) Ethnologie der Globalisierung, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2002, p. 9. Fischer, Nomaden der Sahara.

3. Tuareg Networks: An Integrated Approach to Mobility and Stasis 1. Mirjam de Bruijn, Rijk van Dijk and Dick Foeken (eds) Mobile Africa: changing patterns of movement in Africa and beyond, Leiden: Brill, 2001; Sylvie Bredeloup and Olivier Pliez (eds) Migrations entre les deux rives du Sahara, Autrepart no. 32, Paris: IRD, 2006. 2. Data were collected during an intensive study in the Municipality of Essakan, District of Goundam, Region of Timbuktu. The study was carried out in conjunction with a demographic survey funded by the ESRC (Award number R000238184) which focused on the demographic consequences of becoming refugees for Kel Tamasheq pastoralists. (Sara Randall, Fertility of Malian Tamasheq repatriated refugees: the impact of forced migration, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2004.) 3. Elliot Fratkin, Eric A. Roth and Kathleen A. Galvin (eds) African pastoralist systems: an integrated approach, Boulder: Rienner Publishers, 1994. 4. Jeremy Keenan, ‘Social change among the Tuareg of Ahaggar’, in Ernest Gellner and Charles Micaud (eds) Arabs and Berbers, London: Duckworth, 1972; Paul Pandolfi, Les Touregs de l’Ahaggar: Sahara algérien. Parenté et résidence chez les Dag-Ghâli, 1998. 5. Pierre Bonte, ‘Esclavage et relations de dépendance chez les Touareg Kel Gress’, in Claude Meillassoux (ed.) L’Esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, Paris: Maspero, 1978, pp. 49–76; André Bourgeot, Les sociétés touarègues: nomadisme, identité, résistances, Paris: Karthala, 1995. 6. Jeremy Swift, ‘Sahelian pastoralists: underdevelopment, desertification, and famine’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 6, 1977, pp. 457–78. 7. Johannes Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture of the pastoral Tuareg: with particular reference to the Tuareg of Ahaggar and Ayr, Copenhagen: National Museum of

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Copenhagen, 1963; Johannes Nicolaisen and Ida Nicolaisen, The pastoral Tuareg: ecology, culture and society, London: Thames & Hudson, 1997. 8. Steven Vertovec, ‘Three meanings of “diaspora”, exemplified among South Asian religions’, Diaspora, vol. 6, 1997, p. 287. 9. For a more detailed analysis of how this affected the Kel Antessar and other Tuareg groups in the district of Goundam and further details on land administration in the area of the study, see Alessandra Giuffrida, ‘Métamorphoses des relations de dépendance chez les Kel Antessar du cercle de Goundam’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, vol. 45, nos 179–80, 2005, pp. 805–30. 10. Alessandra Giuffrida, ‘Clerics, rebels and refugees: mobility strategies and networks among the Kel Antessar’, in Jeremy Keenan (ed.) The Sahara: past, present and future, New York: Routledge, 2007, pp. 270–84. 11. The large number of men who stayed home during the conflict in the study area contrasts with Spittler’s analysis of men’s mobility and women’s sedentism during the drought among the Kel Ewey in Niger. See Gerd Spittler, Les Touaregs face aux sécheresse et aux famines: les Kel Ewey de l’Aïr (Niger) (1900–1985), Paris: Karthala, 1993, p. 217. 12. These included a majority of pastoralists and agro-pastoralists, comprising former tributaries (imŕad) of the Kel Antessar and liberated slaves (iŕawelen); intellectuals and civil servants of maraboutic status who belonged to rebel movements; former slaves (iklan) who could blend in with the Songhay and Bambara population; and, finally, blacksmiths (inadan) who had fled to cities and refugee camps. 13. This is not a new phenomenon. ‘A second idea which has led to confusion in the past was that herders, farmers and townspeople were separate kinds of communities that, apart from the exchange of goods and services, had few points of social contact and little economic organization. This we now recognize as false, thanks to the evidence from varied sources; in Mali, Niger and Senegal salaried civil servants invest in animals and livestock rearing, with traditional herdsmen acting as paid shepherds rather than as subsistence-oriented, stock owning pastoralists’ (Allan G. Hill and Sara Randall, ‘Issues in the study of the demography of Sahelian pastoralists and agro-pastoralists’, in Allan G. Hill (ed.) Population, health and nutrition in the Sahel: issues on the welfare of selected West African communities, London: Kegan Paul, 1985, p. 23). 14. See Jeremy Keenan, ‘Sedentarisation and changing patterns of social organisation amongst the Tuareg of Algeria’, in Dawn Chatty (ed.) Nomadic societies in the Middle-East and North Africa: entering the 21st century, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 916–39. 15. See Thomas Bierschenk, Jean-Pierre Chauveau and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (eds) Courtiers en développement: les villages africains en quête de projets, Paris: Karthala, 2000; André Bourgeot (ed.) Horizons nomades en Afrique sahélienne: sociétés, développement et démocratie, Paris: Karthala, 1999. 16. Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Touaregs: voix solitaires sous l’horizon confisqué, Paris: Editions Ethnies, Collection Documents, nos 20–21, 1996; Baz Lecocq,

244

17.

18.

19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

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‘Unemployed intellectuals in the Sahara: the Teshumara nationalist movement and the revolutions in Tuareg society’, International Review of Social History, vol. 12, no. 49, 2004, pp. 87–109. Florence Boyer, ‘L’Esclavage chez les Touaregs de Bankilaré au miroir des migrations circulaires’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, vol. 45, nos 3–4, 2005, pp. 771–803; Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Touaregs et autres Sahariens entre plusieures mondes: définitions et redéfinitions de soi et des autres, Les Cahiers de l’IREMAM 7– 8, Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1996. Jacques Hureiki, ‘Enjeux sanitaires en milieu touareg et mercantilisme occidental’, in André Bourgeot (ed.) Horizons nomades en Afrique sahélienne: société, développement et démocratie, Paris: Karthala, 1999, pp. 183–99; Sarah Randall and Alessandra Giuffrida, ‘Forced migration, sedentarisation and social change: Malian Kel Tamasheq’, in Dawn Chatty (ed.) Nomadic societies in the Middle East and North Africa: entering the 21st century, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 431–63. Following decentralization, the larger the registered resident population in rural settlements the higher the chances of the municipality, where the settlement is located, of receiving aid for rehabilitation and development projects. Furthermore, the larger the registered resident population in settlements and villages of the municipalities the higher their political representation vis-à-vis their Songhay neighbours during administrative and political elections. Thus, to stay put and register one’s residence in settlements can be advantageous. Liisa H. Malkki, Purity and exile: violence, memory, and national cosmology among Hutu refugees in Tanzania, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 7. For an example of such policy oriented discursive practice see the study about Tuareg refugees in the region of Timbuktu by Stephen Sperl, ‘International refugee aid and social change in northern Mali’, New Issues in Refugee Research, vol. 22, 2000, pp. 1–22. Suzanne Bernus, Pierre Bonte, Lina Brock and Hélène Claudot (eds) Le Fils et le neveu: jeux et enjeux de la parenté touaregue, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Brian L. Foster and Stephen B. Seidman, ‘Network structure and the kinship perspective’, American Ethnologist, vol. 2, no. 8, 1981, p. 329. Claudot-Hawad, 2006, p. 663. André Marty, ‘La division sédentaires-nomades: la boucle du Niger au début de la période coloniale’, in Lisbet Holtedahl, Siri Gerrard, Martin Z. Njeuma and Jean Boutrais (eds) Le pouvoir du savoir de l’Arctique aux tropiques, Paris: Karthala, 1999, pp. 289–306. Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Voyager d’un point de vue nomade, Paris: IREMAM, Editions Paris-Mediterranée, 2002, p. 13. Meyer Fortes, The web of kinship among the Tallensi, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949. James Clifford, Routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century, Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1997. Claudot-Hawad, Voyager d’un point de vue nomade.

NOTES

30.

31.

32.

33. 34.

35.

36.

37. 38.

39.

245

In the ideal and romanticized past, women and cows were fat, cow herds were large, agricultural land abounded and Kel Antessar chiefs headed powerful armies of warriors, issued from tributary tawsatin. Women of high status had valuables and these included domestic slaves and jewels. Their taggalt consisted of four cows and three bulls plus a camel and a taklit. Kel Antessar men who married Sheriphian women had to give their parents 15 cows, a camel and a Taklit. Returnees call their relatives kel ajama, kel ehanin or nomads even though they no longer practise transhumance or extensive pastoralism. Because their herds are too small, most of them lack transport animals (camels and donkeys) and manpower to help with milking, tying up the cows and watering. Stayees among the kel ajama associate returned refugees (Kel Elmuhayen) to the same category of village and city dwellers, even though a large number of refugees lived with their herds in the bush before fleeing to refugee camps. Malkki, Purity and exile. The kel ajama, particularly men from maraboutic lineages, associate contact with people and food in cities with the appearance of sexually transmitted diseases. During my research, a letter was being circulated among women. Its first paragraph described the dream of a marabout and it read: ‘The Prophet told Cheikh Amadou that last Friday 6000 people died. None of them went to paradise because women no longer obey their husbands, no longer hide their body as they should, and the wealthy no longer help the poor and those in need.’ Paul Pandolfi, ‘Les Touaregs et nous: une relation triangulaire?’ Ethnologies Comparées 2, http://recherche.univ-montp3.fr/mambo/cerce/r2/p.p.htm, 2001; Paul Pandolfi, ‘La construction du mythe touareg: quelques remarques et hypotheses’, Ethnologies Comparées 7, http://recherche.univmontp3.fr/ mambo/cerce/r7/pl.p.htm, 2004. Claudot-Hawad, Voyager d’un point de vue nomade. Susan Rasmussen, ‘When the field space comes to the home space: new constructions of ethnographic knowledge in a new African diaspora’, Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 76, 2003, pp. 7–32. More specifically I am referring to the international music festival in Essakan (Festival du Desert in the region of Timbuktu) and the international performances of Tuareg music groups such as Tinariwen and Tartit, as well as the yearly international fair of African Crafts in Paris and the 2006 event ‘Terra Madre’ organized by Slow Food (Turin, Italy).

4. Tuareg City Blues: Cultural Capital in a Global Cosmopole 1. Sheldon Pollock, Homi Bhabha, Carol Breckenridge and Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Cosmopolitanisms’, Public Culture, vol. 12, no. 3, 2000, p. 582. 2. Ulf Hannerz, ‘Cosmopolitans and locals in world culture’, in M. Featherstone (ed.) Global culture: nationalism, globalization and modernity, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990, pp. 237–51, cited in Steven Vertovec and Robin

246

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

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Cohen, ‘Introduction: conceiving cosmpolitanism’, in Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (eds) Conceiving cosmopolitanism, theory, context and practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 13. Achille Mbembe, ‘At the edge of the world: boundaries, territoriality, and sovereignty in Africa’, Public Culture, vol. 1, no. 12, 2000, pp. 259–84. Richard Sennett, The culture of the new capitalism, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006, p. 132. With secularization is here meant the decline in active or formal adherence to a traditional church denomination. The rise of evangelical media churches, with their unidirectional interaction between preacher and spectator, does not replace the traditional parish as a primary network of support. Vertovec and Cohen, ‘Introduction: conceiving cosmopolitanism’, p. 7. John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge, A Future perfect: the challenge and hidden promise of globalization, London: Heinemann, 2000. Linda Polman, 'K zag twee beren: de achterkant van de VN-vredesmissies, Amsterdam: Atlas, 1997. Walter Mignolo, ‘The many faces of cosmo-polis: border thinking and critical cosmopolitanism’, Public Culture, vol. 3, no. 12, pp. 721–48, 2000. Baz Lecocq and Paul Schrijver, ‘The War on terror in a haze of dust: potholes and pitfalls on the Saharan front’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 1, no. 25, 2007, pp. 141–66. For an overview of the literature on this migration history, see Veronika Bilger and Albert Kraler, ‘Introduction: African migrations, historical perspectives and contemporary dynamics’, Stichproben: Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien, vol. 5, 2005, p. 8. Umar al-Naqar, The Pilgrimage tradition in West Africa, an historical study with special reference to the nineteenth century, Khartoum: Khartoum University Press, 1972. Florence Boyer, ‘Le Projet migratoire des migrants touaregs de la zone de Bankilare: la pauvreté désavouée’, Stichproben: Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien, vol. 8, 2005, pp. 47–67. Mirjam de Bruijn, ‘The itinerant Koranic school: contested practice in the history of religion and society in central Chad’, African Affairs, forthcoming. Charles Piot, Remotely global: village modernity in West Africa, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999; Marilyn Strathern, The gender of the gift: problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Georg Simmel, ‘Der Raum und die Räumlichen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft’, in Georg Simmel (ed.) Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung, Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1968, pp. 460–526. Charles de Foucauld and Dominique Casajus, Chants Touaregs, Paris: Albin Michel, 1997. Dominique Casajus, La tente dans la solitude: la société et les morts chez les Touaregs Kel Ferwan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Elisabeth Boesen, Scham und Schönheit: Über Identität und Selbstvergewisserung bei den Fulbe Nordbenins, Hamburg: LIT Verlag, 1999.

NOTES

20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

247

Vertovec and Cohen, ‘Introduction: conceiving cosmpolitanism’. See, for instance, Mohamed Ag Acherif, ‘Les possibilités agricoles dans le cercle de Kidal’, Mémoire, Ecole Normale Supérieure, 1977, p. 37; and Spittler, Les Touaregs face aux sécheresse et aux famines: les Kel Ewey de l’Aïr (Niger) (1900– 1985), Paris: Karthala, 1993. See John Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay empire: Al-Sa’adīs Ta’rīkh al-Sūdān down to 1613 and other contemporary documents, Leiden: Brill, 2003; and Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias, Arabic medieval inscriptions from the republic of Mali: epigraphy, chronicles and Songhay-Tuareg history, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Ibn Hauqal, Configuration de la terre (Kitab Surat Al-Ard), translated by J. H Kramers and G. Wiet, Collection Unesco d’œuvres représentatives série arabe, Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 1964. Abu Abdallah Mohamed bin Abdallah Ibn Battuta, C, Defremey and B. R. Sanguinetti, Voyages, Inde, Extrême-Orient, Espagne et Soudan, 2nd edition, 3 vols, vol. 3, Paris: Editions La Découverte, 1990, p. 403. Baz Lecocq, ‘Unemployed intellectuals in the Sahara: the Teshumara nationalist movement and the revolutions in Tuareg society’, International Review of Social History, vol. 12, no. 49, 2004, pp. 87–109. Simmel, ‘Der Raum und die Räumlichen Ordnungen der Gesellschaft’. It should be noted that I here use the concept of alterity not in its classical form of unilateral alterity. Simmel conceived of alterity as an external indication used on urban newcomers. In Kel Tamasheq discourse, it becomes clear that they themselves experienced this alterity, making it a bilateral experience. We are here still removed from the concept of institutional alterity, that Boesen (Scham und Schönheit, pp. 210–11) developed to deal explicitly with nomad urbanites working in particular professions in which they use their alterity in their relations with other urbanites. Baz Lecocq, ‘That desert is our country: Tuareg rebellions and competing nationalisms in contemporary Mali (1946–1996)’, Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2002. Based on blogged communications by the MNJ itself on. http://www.m-nj.blogspot.com/ and articles in the Niger newspaper Le Republicain Niger at http://www.planeteafrique.com/republicain-niger/ Johannes Nicolaisen and Ida Nicolaisen, The pastoral Tuareg: ecology, culture and society, London: Thames & Hudson, 1997, p. 410. Poem by Khaffi ag Hanni, late 1970s, in Rachid Bellil and Dida Badi, ‘Evolution de la relation entre Kel Ahaggar et Kel Adagh’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Le politique dans l’histoire touarègue, Aix-en-Provence: Les Cahiers de l’IREMAM, 1993, p. 108. Translated from original Tamasheq and French by the author. Baz Lecocq, ‘This country is your country: territory, borders and decentralisation in Tuareg politics’, Itinerario: European Journal of Overseas History, vol. 1, no. 27, 2003, pp. 58–78.

248 33.

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Part of a song by Mohamed ag Itlal ‘Japonais’, 1994, in Georg Klute, ‘Die Rebellionen der Tuareg in Mali und Niger’, professorial dissertation, Universität Siegen, 2001, Annex, p. 39. English translation from original Tamasheq and German by the author.

5. Foreign Cloth and Kel Ewey Identity 1. Friedrich Hornemann, ‘The journal of Friedrich Hornemann’s travels’, in E. M. Bovill (ed.) Missions to the Niger, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964, p. 114. 2. Ibid. 3. In the preface to that edition we read: ‘Wherever copper engravings or maps are required, they will be supplied.’ 4. George Francis Lyon, A narrative of travels in Northern Africa in the years 1818– 1820, London: John Murray, 1821, p. 111. 5. Ibid., p. 109. 6. Charles de Foucauld, Dictionnaire Touareg–Français: Dialecte de l’Ahaggar, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale de France, 1951, p. 112. 7. Heinrich Barth, Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa: being a journal of an expedition undertaken under the auspices of H.B.M’s government, in the years 1849–1855, 3 vols, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857, p. 269. 8. Heinrich Barth, Reisen und Entdeckungen in Nord- und Central-Afrika in den Jahren 1849 bis 1855, Gotha: Justus Perthes, p. 361, translated from the original German by the author. 9. James Richardson, Narrative of a mission to central Africa performed in the years 1850–51, 2 vols, London: Chapman & Hall, 1853, p. 317. 10. Barth, Travels and discoveries, p. 338. 11. Ibid. 12. Barth, Reisen und Entdeckungen, p. 464. 13. Barth, Travels and discoveries, p. 345. 14. Brigitte Menzel, Textilien aus Westafrika, Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde, 1972, picture 593. 15. Erwin von Bary, Sahara-Tagebuch 1876–1877, Heusenstamm: Orion– Heimreiter, 1977, p. 213. 16. Ibid., p. 215. 17. Fernand Foureau, Documents scientifiques de la mission saharienne, Paris: Masson, 1905. 18. Ibid., p. 860. 19. Ibid., p. 861. 20. Fernand Foureau, D’Alger au Congo par le Tchad, Paris: Masson, 1902, p. 365. 21. C. Jean, Les Touareg du sud-est: l’Aïr, Paris: Émile Larose, 1909, pp. 235ff. 22. The photographs, however, do not always confirm this (for instance, a photograph on page 66 of his book shows several Kel Ferwan in white trousers). 23. Angus Buchanan, Exploration of Aïr: out of the world north of Nigeria, London: John Murray, 1921, p. 235.

NOTES

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

33.

34. 35.

249

Francis R. Rodd, People of the veil: being an account of habits, organisation and history of the wandering Tuareg tribes which inhabit the mountains of Air or Asben in the central Sahara, London: MacMillan & Company, 1926, p. 166. Richardson, Narrative of a mission, p. 317. The sheen comes from beating the cloth, and not from its being treated with gum, as Richardson writes. Richardson, Narrative of a mission, p. 322. Bary, Sahara-Tagebuch, p. 215. Here as in most other cases mentioned ‘black’ means dark indigo. Old and washed indigo cloth becomes nearly black. Foureau, Documents scientifiques, p. 865. Johannes Nicolaisen shows a similar blouse with red embroidery and writes that this is the clothing of the Hausa-speaking women of Agadez. See Johannes Nicolaisen. Ecology and culture of the pastoral Tuareg: with particular reference to the Tuareg of Ahaggar and Ayr, Copenhagen: National Museum of Copenhagen, 1963, p. 295. Rodd, People of the veil, p. 167. This excursus is based on Gerd Spittler, ‘What is meant by local vitality’, Newsletter of African Studies at Bayreuth University, vol. 1, no. 2, 2002, pp. 1–3. It would be interesting to compare this typology with Ines Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen: Identitäten zwischen Grenzen, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2007; and Hélène Claudot-Hawad, ‘Identité et altérité d’un point de vue touareg: eléments pour un débat’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Touaregs et autres Sahariens entre plusieures mondes: définitions et redéfinitions de soi et des autres, Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1996, pp. 7–18. There are some exceptions. When the French imitated the classical Tuareg sandals in Agadez, they made a slight change in the shape. Some Tuareg adopted this model and referred to it as yan komandan (‘the commander’s children’). The Kel Ewey, however, rejected it. Richardson, 1853, vol. 2, p. 77. Barth, Travels and discoveries, p. 454.

6. Genesis and Change in the Socio-political Structure of the Tuareg 1. Henri Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du nord, Paris: Challamel Aine, 1864. 2. Mouloud Mammeri, L’Ahellil de Gourara, Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1984. 3. There is some sense in connecting the name of the Kel Timemmelin ancestor with the term abbetul, meaning the hollow. 4. Johannes Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture of the pastoral Tuareg: with particular reference to the Tuareg of Ahaggar and Ayr, Copenhagen: National Museum of Copenhagen, 1963, p. 435. 5. Ibid., pp. 394, 435, 439. 6. Dominique Casajus, Henri Duveyrier: un Saint-simonien au desert, Paris: Ibis Press, 2007. 7. Ernest Gellner, Muslim society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 117.

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture, p. 435. Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du nord, p. 331. Henri Lhote, Les Touaregs du Hoggar, Paris: Armand Colin, 1984, p. 189. Claude Blanguernon, Le Hoggar, Paris: B. Arthaud, 1955, p. 47. Charles de Foucauld, Dictionnaire Touareg–Français: Dialecte de l’Ahaggar, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale de France, 4 vols, 1951, p. 1213. Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture, p. 394. Karl-Gottfried Prasse, Manuel de grammaire touaregue (tahaggart: IV–V nom), Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1974, p. 296. Salem Chaker, ‘Amenukal’, Encyclopédie berbère no. IV, Aix-en-Provence: EDISUD, 1987, p. 588. Jean Delheure, Dictionnaire mozabite-français, Paris: SELAF, 1984, p. 114. Jean-Pierre Magnant, ‘Gens de la terre et gens de l’eau au Tchad’, in H. Jungraithmayr, D. Barreteau and U. Seibert (eds) L’homme et l’eau dans le bassin du lac Tchad, Paris: ORSTOM, 1997, p. 403. Bates Oric, The eastern Libyans, London: Macmillian & Company, 1974, p. 114. The patronym of Takammat comes from the verb kamet meaning to gather or collect. Indeed, finding seeds in an anthill is proof that Takamat is equipped with the necessary knowledge to practise gathering. This patronym could refer to a pre-existing population of hunter-gatherers in Ahaggar called the Houwwara, nomads and camel drivers to whom the patronym of Ti n Hinan refers, which means the travelling one. The etymology of this patronym was proposed in an earlier study. See Dida Badi, ‘Ta-n-Ihinan/Tin-Hinan: un modèle structural de la société touarègue’, Dossiers et recherches sur l’Afrique, no. 02, 1994, pp. 55–63. Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture. Dida Badi, ‘Les Touaregs de l’Adagh des Ifoughas: étude des traditions orales’, Ph.D. thesis, Université Mouloud Mammeri de Tizi-Ouzou, 2002; Georg Klute, ‘De la chefferie administrative à la parasouverainté régionale’, in André Bourgeot (ed.) Horizons nomades en Afrique sahélosaharienne: société, dévéloppement et démocratie, Paris: Karthala, 2000, pp. 167–81.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

7. Tuareg Trajectories of Slavery: Preliminary Reflections on a Changing Field 1. Research for this chapter was made possible by a three-year ESRC Fellowship. 2. Cf. Edmond Bernus, ‘L’Evolution des relations de dépendance depuis la période pre-coloniale jusqu’a nos jours chez les Iullemeden Kel Dinnik’, Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, vol. 21, 1976, p. 85. 3. Jan-Georg Deutsch, Emancipation without abolition, Oxford: James Currey, 2006, p. 5. 4. Cf. Edmond Bernus and Suzanne Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile chez les Touaregs sahéliens’, in Claude Meillassoux (ed.) L’Esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, Paris: Maspero, 1975, p. 27. 5. Tuareg precolonial autonomous slave settlements reproduced biologically as

NOTES

6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

251

well as by violent capture. The existence of rules governing the inheritance of rights over a taklit’s offspring on the part of a taklit’s mistress or master signifies that the domestic slave population also reproduced biologically. Slave status was and is inherited across generations. Hence, contra Meillassoux, biological reproduction seems to have played an important role in the maintenance of slave constituencies (Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of slavery, London: Athlone Press, 1991, pp. 78 ff., and Claude Meillassoux, L’Esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, Paris: Maspero, 1975, p. 18, ‘Le groupe des esclaves se reproduit presque exclusivement par apport extérieur’. Cf. Johannes and Ida Nicolaisen’s critique of Meillassoux, in The pastoral Tuareg: ecology, culture and society, London: Thames & Hudson, 1997, p. 611). Slave families were more ephemeral than the families of free people, and they had no legal autonomy, as slave adults were considered legal minors. However, they existed de facto, and tended to be arranged in matrifocal clusters (cf. Claire Oxby, ‘Women and the allocation of herding labour in a pastoral society (southern Kel Ferwan Twareg, Niger)’, in Suzanne Bernus, Pierre Bonte, Lina Brock and Hélène Claudot (eds) Le Fils et le neveu: jeux et enjeux de la parente touaregue, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, p. 116). ‘Slave kinship’ is not an oxymoron, and should be analysed as a function of hegemonic conditions. Sally Falk Moore, ‘Law and social change: the semi-autonomous social field as an appropriate subject of study’, in Sally Falk Moore (ed.) Law as process, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, pp. 58–81. For this distinction I follow Martin Klein, Slavery and colonial rule in French West Africa, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, p. 68. Oxby, ‘Women and the allocation of herding’, p. 105; Rossi 2005 fieldnotes. Ole Martin Gaasholt, ‘Renegotiating slave identity or hanging on to it? Strategies of social mobility (or immobility) in Gossi, Mali’, paper presented at conference entitled African Trajectories of Slavery: Perceptions, Experiences, Practice, London, 2007. I use the term ‘elite’ to avoid the confusion generated by terminological discrepancies across Tuareg groups over the categories used to designate the upper strata of society. For a discussion of the distinct meanings of the term Imuhaŕ in different Tuareg groups, see Jeremy Keenan, The Tuareg: people of Ahaggar, London: Allen Lane, 1977, pp. 104–6. Cf. Edmond Bernus, Touaregs nigériens: unité culturelle et diversité régionale d’un peuple pasteur, Paris: Editions de l’Office de la Recherche Scientifique et Technique Outre-Mer, 1981, p. 92; Johannes Nicolaisen, Structures politiques et sociales des Touareg de l’Air et de l’Ahaggar, Niamey: IFAN, 1962; Michael Winter, ‘Slavery and the pastoral Tuareg of Mali’, Cambridge Anthropology, vol. 9, no. 2, 1984, pp. 9–10. However, André Bourgeot’s ‘Rapports esclavagistes et conditions d’affranchissement chez les Imuhag (Tuareg Kel Ahaggar)’, in Claude Meillassoux (ed.) L’Esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, Paris: Maspero, 1975, p. 83, focusing on the Ahaggar, and Hélène Claudot-Hawad’s ‘Captif sauvage, esclave enfant, affranchi cousin: la mobilité statutaire chez les

252

12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Touaregs (Imajeghen)’, in Mariella Villasante de Beauvais (ed.) Groupes serviles au Sahara: approche comparative à partir du cas des arabophones de Mauritanie, Paris: CNRS, 2000, p. 241 on the Kel Air, suggest that the sexual division of labour was not stringent for slaves. Stephen Baier and Paul Lovejoy, ‘The desert-side economy of the central Sudan’, Journal of African History, vol. 14, 1975, pp. 551–81; Stephen Baier and Paul Lovejoy, ‘The Tuareg of the central Sudan: gradations in servility at the desert’s edge (Niger and Nigeria)’, in Igor Kopytoff and Suzanne Miers (eds) Slavery in Africa: historical and anthropological perspectives, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977, pp. 391–411. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 33; Francis Nicolas, ‘Notes sur la société et l’etat chez les Twareg du Dinnik (Iullemmeden de l’Est)’, Bulletin IFAN, vol. 15, 1939, pp. 579–86; Francis Nicolas, Tamesna: les Ioullemeden de l’est ou Tuareg Kel Dinnik, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1950. Cf. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 34; Bernus, ‘L’Evolution des relations de dépendance’, 1976, p. 92. Charles de Foucauld, Dictionnaire Touareg–Français: Dialecte de l’Ahaggar, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale de France, 4 vols, 1951, p. 1747. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 35. Nicolaisen and Nicolaisen, The pastoral Tuareg, p. 55. Jean Clauzel, ‘Les hierarchies sociales en pays Touareg’, Traveaux de l’Institut de Recherche Saharienne, vol. 21, 1962, p. 143. Claudot-Hawad, ‘Captif sauvage’, p. 246. Elsewhere, Bernus (Touaregs nigériens: unité, p. 87) casually refers to both Iklan n egef and iŕawelen as ‘groupes affranchis’. For example by Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 27. For example by H. T. Norris, The Tuaregs: their Islamic legacy and its diffusion in the Sahel, Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1975, p. 6. Nicolas (Tamesna, p. 190), commenting on the Iwellemmeden, identifies three groups of ‘freed slaves’: iklan n egef, iŕawelen and iderfan, and categorizes the first two as buzu or bella. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 33. Compare Nicolaisen, Structures politiques, p. 100 on the Kel Ahaggar with Winter, ‘Slavery and the pastoral Tuareg’, p. 12 on the Malian Kel Aŕeris. Henri Guillaume, ‘Les liens de dépendance, á l’époque précoloniale, chez les Touaregs de l’Imannen (Niger)’, Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, vol. 21, 1976, p. 124. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 32. Rossi, 2005 fieldnotes. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, pp. 31–2. ClaudotHawad (cf. ‘Captif sauvage’, p. 246) argues that manumission was the arrival point in a process of becoming through which slaves were integrated in the masters’ ‘humanities’. This interpretation seems more relevant in the case of

NOTES

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36.

37. 38.

39. 40.

253

domestic slaves, who, living with their masters, could assimilate their values. However, available studies suggest that spontaneous manumission of slaves through social integration was not the norm. Masters tried to keep their slaves enslaved and resorted to manumission only if it was economically expedient to do so. See Bourgeot, ‘Rapports esclavagistes’, p. 81. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 38. Bourgeot, ‘Rapports esclavagistes’, p. 85; Henri Lhote, Les Touaregs du Hoggar, Paris: Armand Colin, 1984, p. 53; Johannes Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture of the pastoral Tuareg: with particular reference to the Tuareg of Ahaggar and Ayr, Copenhagen: National Museum of Copenhagen, 1963, p. 441. Some interpretations should be assessed in the light of the researchers’ loyalty to the elite groups that hosted and supported them. For example, a few paragraphs after having stated that the iklan are ‘well treated’ by their masters, Lhote (Les Touaregs du Hoggar, p. 54, my translation) notes that ‘The Iklan have highly corrupt habits; they indulge in pederasty and other vices. To steal and to lie is instinctive to them. Hence, they have a habit of suckling the goats they are herding. In some camps, they do not receive milk, because it is supposed that they already helped themselves. To guard themselves against theft, some masters did not hesitate to chain the mouths of their herders by perforating their lips. Around forty years ago in Ahaggar lived a woman who had been thus mutilated.’ See Galy Kadir Abdelkader (ed.) L’Esclavage au Niger, London: Anti-Slavery International, 2004. Bourgeot, ‘Rapports esclavagistes’, p. 89; Lhote, Les Touaregs du Hoggar, p. 53. Bernus, ‘L’Evolution des relations de dépendance’, p. 93. Bourgeot, ‘Rapports esclavagistes’, p. 85 quoting Nicolaisen; Claudot-Hawad, ‘Captif sauvage’, p. 241; Lhote, Les Touaregs du Hoggar, p. 54; Nicolaisen, Structures politiques, p. 101–2. Lhote, Les Touaregs du Hoggar, p. 53; Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture, p. 442. For instance, different parts of a killed animal were distributed to slaves and masters, the former receiving lesser quality meat (Nicolaisen, Structures politiques, p. 103). The clothes and hairstyles of slaves also differed from those of masters, making it possible to ‘read’ status on a person’s appearance (cf. William Joseph Harding-King, A Search for the masked Tawareks, London: Smith & Company, 1903, p. 295; with Komlavi-Hahonou, ‘Stigmates sociaux, décentralisation et représentation politique’, paper delivered at conference entitled African Trajectories of Slavery: Perceptions, Experiences, Practice, London, 2007). Feasts used to be celebrated separately, and Iklan would sometimes wear ‘good clothes’ given or lent to them by their masters (Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 39). Nicolaisen, Structures politiques, p. 102. Henri Guillaume, Les nomades interrompus: introduction à l’étude du Canton Twareg de l’Imanan, Niamey: Centre Nigerien des Recherches en Sciences Humaines, 1974.

254 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64.

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Claudot-Hawad, ‘Captif sauvage’, p. 240. Bourgeot, ‘Rapports esclavagistes’, p. 89; Nicolaisen, Structures politiques, p. 103. Nicolaisen, Structures politiques, p. 104; Nicolaisen and Nicolaisen, The pastoral Tuareg, p. 609. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 37. Nicolaisen, Structures politiques et sociales, p. 105. See Lhote, Les Touaregs du Hoggar, p. 53. Guillaume, ‘Les liens de dépendance’, p. 118. See Pierre Bonte, ‘Esclavage et relations de dépendance chez les Touareg Kel Gress’, in Claude Meillassoux (ed.) L’Esclavage en Afrique précoloniale, Paris: Maspero, 1975, p. 53 on the Kel Gress. Bonte, ‘Esclavage et relations de dépendance’, p. 69; Pierre Bonte, ‘Structure de classe et structures sociales chez les Kel Gress’, Revue de l’Occident Musulman et de la Méditerranée, vol. 21, 1976, p. 149. Bonte, ‘Structure de classe’, p. 145; Nicolaisen, Structures politiques, p. 102–3. The early importance of farming in the south is attested by Heinrich Barth (Travels and discoveries in North and Central Africa: being a journal of an expedition undertaken under the auspices of H.B.M’s government, in the years 1849–1855, 3 vols, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857, p. 367) who describes buzu farmers working for their itesan masters. Baier and Lovejoy, ‘The desert-side economy’. Bourgeot, ‘Rapports esclavagistes’, p. 95; cf. Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture, p. 198. Bourgeot, ‘Rapports esclavagistes’, p. 96. Alessandra Giuffrida, ‘Métamorphoses des relations de dépendance chez les Kel Antessar du cercle de Goundam’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, vol. 45, nos 179–80, 2005, pp. 805–30; Alessandra Giuffrida, ‘Clerics, rebels and refugees: mobility strategies and networks among the Kel Antessar’, The Journal of North African Studies, vol. 10, nos. 3–4, 2005, pp. 529–43. Guillaume, ‘Les liens de dépendance’, p. 126–8. Bonte, ‘Structure de classe’, p. 145. In the Gourma, herding was by far the most important economic activity and locally the adoption of farming was not an option (Winter, ‘Slavery and the pastoral Tuareg’). Winter suggests that in these circumstances, and lacking a herd of their own, Kel Aŕeris slaves were able to detach themselves from their masters much later than in contexts where farming represented a more viable option. Bernus, Touaregs nigériens: unité culturelle, p. 108. Klein, Slavery and colonial rule, p. 134. Bernus, L’Evolution des relations de dépendance’, p. 95. Annemarie Bouman, Benefits of belonging: dynamics of Iklan identity, Burkina Faso, Rotterdam: Optima 2003, p. 57. Ibid., p. 86. Ibid., pp. 51–3.

NOTES

65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72.

73. 74.

75. 76. 77. 78.

79. 80. 81.

82. 83.

255

Giuffrida, ‘Métamorphoses des relations’, p. 805. Translated from the original French: ‘Bien que les hiérarchies statutaires traditionnelles continuent a se manifester dans les relations quotidiennes, l’esclavage de tente a totalement disparu tandis que les ex-esclaves ou Bellah ont connu une mobilité économique remarquable. Il serait donc erroné d’interpréter les discours a la base d’une idéologie statutaire comme une survivance de l’esclavage.’ Oxby, ‘Women and the allocation’, p. 100. Gaasholt, ‘Renegotiating slave identity’. Ibid, p. 3. Nicolaisen, Ecology and culture, p. 100. Craig McDonough, ‘Slavery in production and trade: the case of the modern Tuareg’, Peasant Studies, vol. 8, no. 3, 1979, p. 47; cf. Bourgeot, ‘Rapports esclavagistes’, p. 83. Winter, ‘Slavery and the pastoral Tuareg’, p. 12. I recorded cases of ransom paid in the 1990s of FCFA 20,000–25,000 for men and FCFA 40,000–50,000 for women. On some occasions, ransom is paid in kind. In the mid-1980s a man of Buzu status ransomed his bride by giving a cow to the traditional masters. Elders who manumitted themselves in the 1950s or 1960s had to pay more expensive fees. Today these practices are carried out in extreme secrecy, and the masters’ fear of being discovered is reflected in a drop in ransom prices. Klein, Slavery and colonial rule, p. 241. Baz Lecocq, ‘The Bellah question: slave emancipation, race, and social categories in late twentieth-century northern Mali’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, vol. 39, no.1, 2005, p. 49. Bernus, Touaregs nigériens: unité culturelle, pp. 62–3. Guy Nicolas, ‘Un village bouzou du Niger: étude d’un terroir’, Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer, vol. 58, 1962, p. 153. Klein, Slavery and colonial rule, p. 234. Cf. Edmond Bernus, ‘Histoires parallèles et croisées: nobles et religieux chez les Touaregs Kel Denneg’, L’Homme, vol. 115, 1990, p. 41; Norris, The Tuaregs, p. 148. Yves Urvoy, Histoire des populations du Soudan central, Paris: Larose, 1936, p. 205. Cf. Giuffrida, ‘Clerics, rebels and refugees’, pp. 534–5. Cf. Claudot-Hawad, ‘Captif sauvage’; Giuffrida, ‘Clerics, rebels and refugees’; Georg Klute, ‘Hostilités et alliances: archéologie de la dissidence des Touaregs au Mali’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, vol. 35/1, no. 137, 1995, pp. 55–71. Claudot-Hawad, ‘Captif sauvage’, pp. 256–66. Even in the 1916–17 resistance, the French military crushed groups of armed Iklan in the Tahoua region who had remained loyal to their old masters (see Finn Fuglestad, ‘Les révoltes des Touareg du Niger 1916–1917’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, vol. 13/1, no. 49, 1973, p. 96).

256 84.

85. 86. 87.

88.

89.

90. 91. 92.

93.

94.

95. 96. 97. 98. 99.

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Sarah Randall and Alessandra Giuffrida, ‘Forced migration, sedentarisation and social change: Malian Kel Tamasheq’, in Dawn Chatty (ed.) Nomadic societies in the Middle East and North Africa: entering the 21st century, Leiden: Brill, 2006, p. 454. Lecocq, ‘The Bellah question’, p. 63. Giuffrida, ‘Clerics, rebels and refugees’. Florence Boyer, ‘Initiatives captives: développement local ou invisibilité migratoire? La migration des descendants de captifs Touareg de la zone de Bankilare (Niger) vers Abidjan’, Revues Passerelles, vol. 28, 2004, p. 27. Thomas Bierschenk, Jean-Pierre Chauveau and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan (eds) (2000) Courtiers en développement: les villages africains en quête de projets, Paris: Karthala, 2000. Stephen Baier, ‘Economic history and development: drought and the Sahelian economies of Niger’, African Economic History, vol. 1, 1976, pp. 1–17; Edmond Bernus, ‘L’Evolution recente des relations entre eleveurs et agriculteurs en Afrique tropicale: l’example du Sahel nigerien’, Cahiers ORSTOM, vol. 11 no. 2, 1974, pp. 138, 142; Bonte, ‘Structure de classe’, p. 31. Bernus and Bernus, ‘L’Evolution de la condition servile’, p. 43. Boyer, ‘Initiatives captives’, p. 30. Florence Boyer, ‘L’Esclavage chez les Touaregs de Bankilaré au miroir des migrations circulaires’, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, vol. 45, nos 3–4, 2005, pp. 771–803. Benedetta Rossi, ‘Slavery and migration: social and physical mobility in Ader’, in B. Rossi (ed.) Reconfiguring slavery: West African trajectories, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009, p. 182. Florence Boyer, ‘Le Projet migratoire des migrants touaregs de la zone de Bankilare: la pauvreté désavouée’, Stichproben: Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien, vol. 8, 2005, pp. 47–67. Komlavi-Hahonou, ‘Stigmates sociaux’. Giuffrida, ‘Métamorphoses des relations’. Komlavi-Hahonou, ‘Stigmates sociaux’. Komlavi-Hahonou, personal communication (cf. Boyer, ‘L’Esclavage chez les Touaregs, p. 782). This coincides with my own observations in Tahoua. André Bourgeot, ‘Une rupture du couple ecologie-economie: la crise du pastoralisme Touareg’, in C. Blanc-Pamard and J. Boutrais (eds) Dynamique des systèmes agraires: a la croisée des parcours: pasteurs, eleveurs, cultivateurs, Paris: ORSTOM, 1994, pp. 63–78.

8. The Price of Marriage: Shifting Boundaries, Compromised Agency and the Effects of Globalization on Iklan Marriages 1. Hélène Claudot-Hawad, ‘Le lait nourricier de la société ou la prolongation de soi’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Les Touaregs, portrait en fragments, Aix-enProvence: Edisud, 1993, pp. 66–95. 2. Annemarie Bouman, Benefits of belonging: dynamics of Iklan identity, Burkina Faso, Rotterdam: Optima, 2003. 3. George A. de Vos, ‘Ethnic pluralism: conflict and accommodation’, in Lola

NOTES

4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

257

Romanucci-Ross and George A. de Vos (eds) Ethnic identity: creation, conflict and accommodation, Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 1995, pp. 42–3. George A. de Vos and Lola Romanucci-Ross, ‘Ethnic identity: a psychocultural perspective’, in Lola Romanucci-Ross and George A. de Vos (eds) Ethnic identity: creation, conflict and accommodation, Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, 1995, p. 366. De Vos and Romanucci-Ross, ‘Ethnic identity’, p. 357. For a detailed explanation of the term acquired outsider I refer to the work of Suzanne Miers and Igor Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa, Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977; and my thesis (Bouman, Benefits of belonging). Eric Guignard, Faits et modèles de parenté chez les Touareg Udalen de Haute Volta, Paris: L’Harmattan, 1984. Henrietta L. Moore, Feminism and anthropology, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988, p. 70. Ladislav Holy, Anthropological perspectives on kinship, London: Pluto Press, 1996, p. 128. When a widow remarries, her children are seen as the children of her new husband, that is, if she waited three months before remarrying. Yaa P. A. Oppong. Moving through and passing on: Fulani mobility, survival and identity in Ghana, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2002, p. 87 goes one step further and describes marriage as ‘the single most important site for the construction, development and maintenance of ethnic identity’. This practice is not performed among the Kel Tamasheq of Niger, but it used to be common among wealthy Kel Tamasheq families in Mali, as well as among the Moors of Mauritania. Miers and Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa, p. 7. Claire Oxby, ‘Sexual division and slavery in a Twareg community: a study of dependence’, Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, London 1978, p. 191. Bouman, Benefits of belonging. Miers and Kopytoff, Slavery in Africa.

9. Debating Beauties: Contested and Changed Female Bodily Aesthetics of Fatness among the Tuareg 1. Edmond Bernus, Touaregs nigeriens: diversité dans l’unité culturelle, Paris: l’OSTOM, 1981; Suzanne Bernus, Pierre Bonte, Lina Brock and Hélène Claudot (eds) Le Fils et le neveu: jeux et enjeux de la parente touaregue, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; Annemarie Bouman, Benefits of belonging: dynamics of iklan identity, Burkina Faso, Rotterdam: Optima, 2003; Hélène Claudot-Hawad, Les Touareg: portrait en fragments, Aix-en-Provence: Edisud 1993; Jeremy Keenan, ‘Contested terrain: tourism, environment and security in Algeria’s extreme south’, The Journal of North African Studies, vols 3–4, 2003, pp. 226–65; H. T. Norris, The Tuaregs: their Islamic legacy and its diffusion in the Sahel, Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1975; H. T. Norris, Sufi mystics of the Niger desert: Sidi Mahmud and the hermits of Air, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

258

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2. Claudot-Hawad, Les Touareg; Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Touaregs et autres Sahariens entre plusieures mondes: définitions et redéfinitions de soi et des autres, Les Cahiers de l’IREMAM 7–8, Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1996; Hélène ClaudotHawad (ed.) Voyager d’un point de vue nomade, Paris: IREMAM, Editions ParisMediterranée, 2002; Susan Rasmussen, Spirit possession and personhood among the Kel Ewey Tuareg, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995; Susan Rasmussen, The poetics and politics of Tuareg aging: life course and personal destiny in Niger, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997; Susan Rasmussen, Those who touch: Tuareg medicine women in anthropological perspective, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006; Barbara Worley, ‘Women’s war drum, women’s wealth’, Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University, 1991; Barbara Worley, ‘Where all the women are strong’, Natural History, vol. 101, no. 2, 1992, pp. 55–63. 3. Jean-François Bayart, The state in Africa: the poetics of the belly, London: Longman, 1993; Maurice Godelier, The making of great men (sic): male domination and power among the New Guinea Baruya, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986; Robert Price, ‘Politics and culture in contemporary Ghana: the big-man small-boy syndrome’, Journal of African Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, 1979, pp. 173–204; Marshall Sahlins, ‘Poor man, rich man, big man, chief: political types in Polynesia and Melanesia’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 5, no. 3, 1963, pp. 285–303. 4. See Bouman and Rossi in this volume. The history and politics of the 1990– 96 Tuareg nationalist/separatist armed rebellion against the central state governments of Niger and Mali are beyond the scope of the present chapter; the causes are complex. They include uneven ‘development’ of the different regions of these countries and some bias against nomads, initiated by French colonial policies and, until recently, post-colonial aid policies detrimental to northern regions. For further background, see Pierre Boilley, Les Touaregs Kel Adagh: dépendances et révoltes: du Soudan français au Mali contemporain: hommes et sociétés, Paris: Karthala, 1999; Claudot-Hawad, Voyager d’un point de vue nomade; and Samuel Decalo, Dictionary of Niger, London: Scarecrow, 1996. 5. Data for this chapter are based on many visits and long-term residence, first in Niger beginning in the 1970s and more recently in Mali in 2002 and 2006, and my social/cultural anthropological field research projects in the rural and urban Tamasheq-speaking communities of these countries between approximately 1983 and 2007, on the following topics: spirit possession (1982–83); divination, herbalism, and other healing specialties and rituals (summer of 1995); ageing and the life course (summer of 1991); rural and urban Inadan (summer of 1998); changing gender constructs (December–February 2001 and June–September 2002); and theatrical performance, including classical verbal art and modern plays (September 2006–January 2007). In these projects, I am grateful for support from Fulbright Hays; Wenner-Gren Foundation; Social Science Research Council; National Geographic; Indiana University; and the University of Houston. 6. Rasmussen, Spirit possession; Gerd Spittler, ‘International refugee aid and

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social change in northern Mali’, New Issues in Refugee Research, vol. 22, 1993, pp. 1–22. 7. Susan Rasmussen, ‘Gendered discourses and mediated modernities: urban and rural performances of Tuareg smith women’, Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 59, 2003, pp. 487–510. 8. Bernus, Touaregs nigeriens: diversité dans l’unité culturelle; Bouman, Benefits of belonging; Johannes Nicolaisen and Ida Nicolaisen, The pastoral Tuareg: ecology, culture and society, London: Thames & Hudson, 1997; Claire Oxby, ‘The “living milk” runs dry: the decline of a form of joint ownership and matrilineal inheritance among the Twareg (Niger)’, in P. T. W. Baxter and R. Hogg (eds) Property, poverty, and people: changing rights in property and problems of pastoral development, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990, pp. 222–8. 9. Susan Rasmussen, ‘From childbearers to culture-bearers: transition to postchildbearing among Tuareg women’, Medical Anthropology, vol. 19, 2000, pp. 91–116; Rasmussen, Those who touch. 10. Arjun Appadurai, ‘Discussion: fieldwork in the era of globalization’, Anthropology and Humanism, vol. 22, no. 1, 1997, pp. 15–18; Mike Featherstone (ed.) Global cultures, London: Sage, 1992; Kirsten Hastrup and Karen Fog Olwig (eds) Siting culture: the shifting anthropological object, London: Routledge, 1997. 11. Edmond Bernus, ‘Le nomadisme pastoral en question’, Etudes Rurales, no. 120, 1990, pp. 41–52; Henri Duveyrier, Les Touaregs du nord, Paris: Challamel Aine, 1864. 12. Rebecca Popenoe, Feeding desire: fatness, beauty, and sexuality among a Saharan people, London: Routledge, 2004. 13. Mariane C. Ferme, The underneath of things: violence, history, and the everyday in Sierra Leone, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, p. 159. 14. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a theory of practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. 15. Michel Foucault, The history of sexuality, vol. 1, New York: Pantheon, 1978. 16. Antonio Gramsci, ‘Popular literature’, in David Forgacs (ed.) A Gramsci reader: selected writings 1916–1935, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1988, pp. 342–85. 17. Appadurai, ‘Discussion’; Featherstone, Global cultures; Hastrup and Fog Olwig, Siting culture. 18. Emily Martin, The woman in the body, Boston: Beacon Books, 1994; Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Margaret Lock, ‘The mindful body: a prolegomenon to future work in medical anthropology’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, vol. 1, 1987, pp. 6–41. 19. Popenoe, Feeding desire. 20. Rasmussen, ‘From childbearers to culture-bearers’. 21. Dominique Casajus, La tente dans la solitude: la société et les morts chez les Touaregs Kel Farwan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; Nicolaisen and Nicolaisen, The pastoral Tuareg. 22. Nicolaisen and Nicolaisen, The pastoral Tuareg.

260 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

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Susan Rasmussen, ‘These are dirty times! Transformations of gendered spaces and Islamic ritual protection’, Journal of Ritual Studies, vol. 18, no. 2, 2004, pp. 43–60. Spittler, Les Touaregs face aux sécheresse. Oxby, The “living milk” runs dry’; Rasmussen, Spirit possession. Rasmussen, Those who touch. Rasmussen, ‘From childbearers to culture-bearers’; Rasmussen, Those who touch. Rasmussen, Those who touch. Rasmussen The poetics and politics of Tuareg aging, p. 32–3. Ibid., p. 33. Alhassane Ag Solimane, Bons et mauvais presages, Paris: l’Harmattan, 1999. Jeremy Keenan, ‘The end of the matriline? The changing roles of women and descent amongst the Algerian Tuareg’, Journal of North African Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, 2003, pp. 121–62; Oxby, ‘The “living milk” runs dry’; Rasmussen, Spirit possession. Rasmussen, ‘Gendered discourses’. Ibid. Susan Rasmussen, A very long intermission: the performance of politics and the politics of performance in urban Tamajaq Theater, forthcoming. Rasmussen, The poetics and politics of Tuareg aging. Popenoe, Feeding desire. See Belalimat in this volume. Rasmussen A very long intermission.

10. Libya, the ‘Europe of Ishumar’: Between Losing and Reinventing Tradition 1. The OMV funded the research for this chapter. All interviews with locals took place between May 2005 and April 2007 and all names are fictitious. 2. Interview with Akidima Effad in Ghat, 2006. 3. Issouf Ag Maha, Touareg du XXIe siècle, Brinon-sur-Sauldre: Grandvaux, 2006, p. 121. 4. Translation by author from Emmanuel Gregoire, ‘Les relations politiques et économiques mouvementées du Niger et de la Libye’, in Olivier Pliez (ed.) La nouvelle Libye: sociétés, espaces et géopolitique au lendemain de l’embargo, Paris: Karthala-Iremam, 2004, p. 101. 5. Translated by author from Ag Maha, Touareg du XXIe siècle, p. 121. 6. Ibid. 7. Sg. masc. ashamur, sg. fem. tashamurt, pl. fem tishumar. 8. Cf. André Bourgeot, Les sociétés touarègues: nomadisme, identité, résistances, Paris: Karthala, 1995, p. 437; Hawad, ‘La Teshumara antidote de l´etat’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Touaregs: exil et résistance, Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1990, p. 126. 9. Recent here means the years between 2005 and 2007. 10. Ines Kohl, Beautiful modern nomads: bordercrossing Tuareg between Niger, Algeria and Libya, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2009.

NOTES

11.

12.

13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29. 30.

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Ines Kohl, ‘Nationale Identität, tribale Zugehörigkeit und lokale Konzeptionen im Fezzan, Libyen: Eine Farbenlehre’, in Johann Heiss (ed.) Veränderung und Stabilität: Normen und Werte in islamischen Gesellschaften, Wien: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2005, pp. 137–67. Lisa Anderson, ‘Tribe and state: Libyan anomalies’, in Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (eds) Tribes and state formation in the Middle East, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, pp. 288–302; Lisa Anderson, ‘A last resort, an expedient and an experiment: statehood and sovereignty in Libya’, The Journal of Libyan Studies, vol. 2, no.2, 2001; Mattes, 2001, pp. 14–25. Ines Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen: Identitäten zwischen Grenzen, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2007, p. 132, translated from original German by the author. Speech by Gaddafi, Panapress, 25 April 2005; Jeune Afrique l’Intelligent, 26 April 2005. Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen. Ibid., pp. 132 et seq., translated from original German by the author. Hanspeter Mattes, ‘Bilanz der libyschen Revolution: Drei Dekaden politischer Herrschaft Muʿammar al-Qaddafis’, Wuquf Kurzanalysen, nos 11– 12, 2001, pp. 60–2. Interview in Ghat, 2006. Ines Kohl, ‘The lure of the Sahara: implications of Libya’s desert tourism’, The Journal of Libyan Studies, vol. 3, no. 2, 2002, pp. 65–69; Ines Kohl, Wüstentourismus in Libyen: Folgen, Auswirkungen und lokale Wahrnehmungen: Eine anthropologische Fallstudie aus der Oase Ghat, Berlin: DKP no. 94, 2003; Ines Kohl, ‘Von Tuareg, Toyotas und Wüsten Geschichten: Sahara-Tourismus in Libyen’, Integra, Zeitschrift für Integrativen Tourismus und Entwicklung, vol. 2, 2006, pp. 14–17; Kohl, Beautiful modern nomads. Gregoire, ‘Les relations politiques; Ines Kohl, ‘Going off-road: with Toyota, Chech and E-Guitar through a Saharian borderland’, in Hans P. Hahn and Georg Klute (eds) Cultures of migration: African perspectives, Berlin: LIT, 2007, pp. 89–106; Kohl, Beautiful modern nomads. Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen, pp. 168 et seq. Interview with Musa in Ghat, 2006. This section is based on Kohl, Beautiful modern nomads. Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled sentiments: honor and poetry in a Bedouin society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, p. 41. Abu-Lughod, Veiled sentiments; Rebecca Popenoe, Feeding desire: fatness, beauty, and sexuality among a Saharan people, London: Routledge, 2004. Baz Lecocq, ‘Unemployed intellectuals in the Sahara: the Teshumara nationalist movement and the revolutions in Tuareg society’, International Review of Social History, vol. 12, no. 49, 2004, p. 104. Bourgeot, Les sociétés touarègues: 437 et seq.; Hélène Claudot-Hawad, Touaregs: apprivoiser le désert, Paris: Gallimard, 2002, p. 98. Interview with Hamidan in Ghat, 2006. Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen. Hawad, ‘La Teshumara antidote de l´etat’.

262 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

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Lecocq ‘Unemployed intellectuals in the Sahara’, p. 93. Nadia Belalimat, ‘Qui sait danser sur cette chanson, nous lui donnerons la cadence: musique, poésie et politique chez les Tuareg’, Terrain, no. 41, 2003; and her chapter in this book. Interview with Musa in Ghat, 2007. Kohl, ‘Going off-road’; Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen; Kohl, Beautiful modern nomads. Interview with Musa in Ghat, 2007. Annemarie Bouman, Benefits of belonging: dynamics of Iklan identity, Burkina Faso, Rotterdam: Optima, 2003, p. 156. Popenoe, Feeding desire, p. 83. Ibid., p. 76. Kohl, Beautiful modern nomads. Interview with Musa in Ghat, 2007.

11. The Ishumar Guitar: Emergence, Circulation and Evolution from Diasporic Performances to the World Scene 1. Pierre Boilley, ‘Les Kel Adagh, un siècle de dépendances, de la prise de Tombouctou (1893) au pacte national (1992)’, Ph.D. thesis, Université Paris VII, 1994; Baz Lecocq, ‘That desert is our country: Tuareg rebellions and competing nationalisms in contemporary Mali (1946–1996)’, Ph.D. thesis, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 2002. 2. Elelli Ag Ahar, ‘L’initiation d’un ashamur’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Touaregs: exil et résistance, Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 1990, pp. 141–52. 3. Pierre Boilley, Les Touaregs Kel Adagh: dépendances et révoltes: du Soudan français au Mali contemporain: hommes et sociétés, Paris: Karthala, 1999; Lecocq, ‘That desert is our country’. 4. See Kohl’s chapter in this volume. 5. Olivier Pliez, Villes du Sahara, urbanisation et urbanite dans le Fezzan libyen, Paris: CNRS Editions (Espaces et Milieux), 2003. 6. Ines Kohl, ‘Going off-road: with Toyota, Chech and E-Guitar through a Saharian borderland’, in Hans P. Hahn and Georg Klute (eds) Cultures of migration: African perspectives, Berlin: LIT, 2007, pp. 89–106; Ines Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen: Identitäten zwischen Grenzen, Berlin: Reimer Verlag, 2007. 7. Pliez, Villes du Sahara. 8. The ‘guitare-bidon’ is a five- or ten-litre can fitted with a wooden neck and metal strings or cables. 9. Rachid Bellil and Dida Badi, ‘Evolution de la relation entre Kel Ahaggar et Kel Adagh’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Le politique dans l’histoire touarègue, Aix-en-Provence: Les Cahiers de l’IREMAM, 1993, pp. 95–110. 10. François Borel, ‘Rythmes de passages chez les Tuareg de l’Azawagh’, Cahiers de musiques traditionnelles, no. 1, 1988, pp. 28–38; Carolyn Card Wendt, ‘Tuareg music’, in Ruth M. Stone (ed.) Africa: The Garland Encyclopedia of world music, New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1998, pp. 574–94. 11. Bellil and Dida, ‘Evolution de la relation’, p. 106.

NOTES

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32

33. 34. 35.

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Tinariwen, Ahimana (track 4), 2008. Card Wendt, ‘Tuareg music’. Ibid., p. 588. Bellil and Badi, Evolution de la relation’. Ibid. ‘Imidiwen segdet teslem’, 1978, Libyan period. This is one of the Tinariwen band’s first tunes adapted from a poem by Intakhmuda Ag Sidi Mohamed and translated by Lecocq in ‘That desert is our country’. Tinariwen, Credit, 1981. Tinariwen (track 3), 2004. This is a reference to the Arabic BBC, which was one of the most listened to radios stations in Libya and Algeria. Nadia Belalimat, ‘Le chant des fauves: poésies chantées de la résistance touarègue contemporaine du groupe Tinariwen’, MA thesis, Université Paris X-Nanterre, 1996; Nadia Belalimat, ‘Qui sait danser sur cette chanson, nous lui donnerons la cadence: musique, poésie et politique chez les Tuareg’, Terrain, no. 41, 2003, pp. 103–20. Belalimat, ‘Qui sait danser’. Esuf is one of the privileged themes in Ibrahim ag Alhabib’s songs: alkhar desuf on CD Tinariwen (2004); ekler ashel and esuf on CD Tinariwen (2007). Ines Kohl, Tuareg in Libyen. Song from Tinariwen (1979). Translated by Lecocq, ‘That desert is our country’. Hélène Claudot-Hawad, ‘A nomadic fight against immobility: the Tuareg in the modern state’, in Dawn Chatty (ed.) Nomadic societies in the Middle-East and North Africa: entering the 21st century, Leiden: Brill, 2006, pp. 654–81. Terakaft (track 9), 2008. Translated by the author. Susan Rasmussen, ‘Moving beyond protest in Tuareg ishumar musical performance’, Ethnohistory, vol. 53, no. 4, 2006a, p. 634. Union for Democracy and Social Progress. On this particular aspect of alguitara music being brought into this political party’s mobilization process in Niger, see also Rasmussen, ‘Moving beyond protest’. Tinariwen, Radio Tisdas Session, 2000. Essakane and the Essouk festival, or traditional gatherings like Tamadasht (Menaka), the Ségou festival and the Tessalit camel fair. Tinariwen went to the renowned Montreux Jazz Festival in 2006 where Carlos Santana invited them to share the spotlight with him on stage. In August 2007, in Ireland, they experienced their first mass media show as guest stars for the Rolling Stones before an audience of thousands. Carlos Santana, Robert Plant, singer for Led Zeppelin, the group that invented Heavy Metal, and Thom Yorke (Radiohead) all said how much they liked Tinariwen’s guitar style. Terakaft, 2007. http://www.nomadfoundation.org/tidawt.html Rissa Wanaghli, MNJ, 2008.

264 36.

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http://Tuaregcultureandnews.blogspot.com/

12. Between the Worlds: Tuareg as Entrepreneurs in Tourism 1. For the study of Tuareg society, exceptions to this rule are the works of authors like Jeremy Keenan, ‘Contested terrain: tourism, environment and security in Algeria’s extreme south’, The Journal of North African Studies, vols 3–4, 2003, pp. 226–65; Georg Klute, ‘Die Faszination des Fremden und der einheimische Blick’, SOWI, vol. 32, no. 1, 2003, pp. 13–23; Ines Kohl, Wüstentourismus in Libyen: Folgen, Auswirkungen und lokale Wahrnehmungen: Eine anthropologische Fallstudie aus der Oase Ghat, Berlin: DKP No. 94, 2003; Marko Scholze, ‘Wir sind moderne Nomaden: Tuareg als Akteure im Tourismus’, in Kurt Beck, Till Förster and Hans Peter Hahn (eds) Blick nach vorn: Festgabe für Gerd Spittler zum 65. Geburtstag, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2004, pp. 200–9; Marko Scholze and Ingo Bartha, ‘Trading cultures: Berbers and Tuareg as souvenir vendors’, in Peter Probst and Gerd Spittler (eds) Between resistance and expansion: dimensions of local vitality in Africa, Münster: LIT, 2004, pp. 71–92; and Heike Uhl, ‘Die Ritter der Wüste und die Touristen: Zur Bedeutung der Gastfreundschaft bei den algerischen Tuareg’, Sozialanthropologische Arbeitspapiere, no. 28, Berlin, 1990. 2. I want to thank the German Research Foundation for financing my research on tourism in Niger from the year 2000 to 2003. The case study is part of the project ‘Ethnic tourism: Europeans meeting Berber and Tuareg’ of the Humanities Collaborative Research Centre (SFB–FK 560) of the University of Bayreuth in Germany, dealing with ‘Local Action in Africa in the Context of Global Influences’. 3. Theron Nunez, ‘Tourism, tradition, and acculturation: weekendismo in a Mexican village’, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, vol. 21, 1963, pp. 347– 52. 4. Davydd J. Greenwood, ‘Culture by the pound: an anthropological perspective on tourism as cultural commoditization’, in Valene L. Smith (ed.) Hosts and guests: the anthropology of tourism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989, pp. 172–85. 5. Dennison Nash, ‘Tourism as a form of imperialism’, in Valene L. Smith (ed.) Hosts and guests: the anthropology of tourism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989, pp. 37–52. 6. Michel Picard, ‘Cultural tourism in Bali: cultural performances as tourist attraction’, Indonesia, vol. 49, 1990. 7. Jeremy Boissevain, Coping with tourists, Providence: Berghahn, 1996. 8. Eric Kline Silverman, ‘Tourist art as the crafting of identity in the Sepik River (Papua New Guinea)’, in Ruth B. Phillips and Christopher B. Steiner (eds) Unpacking culture: art and commodity in colonial and postcolonial worlds, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, pp. 51–66. 9. Walter E. A. van Beek, ‘African tourist encounters: effects of tourism on two West African societies’, Africa, vol. 73, 2003, pp. 251–89. 10. Thomas Hinch and Richard Butler, ‘Indigenous tourism: a common ground

NOTES

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

265

for discussion’, in Richard Butler and Thomas Hinch, Tourism and indigenous people, London: International Thompson Business Press, 1999, pp. 3–19. All terms in italics in the text are expressions in Tamasheq. The term kel eru means ‘the people of the past’. Kel ezzaman stands for ‘the people of today’, hence, expressing the dichotomy of the ‘traditional’ and the ‘modern’. Karl Vorlaufer, Tourismus in Entwicklungsländern: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung durch Fremdenverkehr, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996. A package tour for three weeks booked in Germany with a regular flight to Niamey costs around €3000. The overall fare drops considerably with the charter flight from Paris, but it is still generally more expensive than a comparable tour in neighbouring countries like Algeria. Although the Targi Rhissa ag Boula, one of the most prominent leaders of the rebellion, was appointed head of the Ministry of Tourism and Handicrafts in 1997, the mutual negative perceptions did not change for most actors. Furthermore, Rhissa ag Boula was dismissed as minister for tourism in 2004. Robert Henry, ‘Les Touaregs des Français’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Touaregs et autres Sahariens entre plusiers mondes: définitions et redéfinitions de soi et des autres, Aix en Provence: IREMAM, 1996, pp. 249–68. For the history and the contents of the French perception of the Sahara see also Michel Roux, Le désert de sable: le Sahara dans l’imaginaire des Français (1900–1994), Paris: Harmattan, 1996. Pierre Boilley, ‘Sahara et Sahariens: les Touaregs dans le regard des guides de voyage’, in G. Chabaud (ed.) Les guides imprimés du XVIe au XXe siècle: villes, paysages, voyages, Paris: Mappemonde, 2000, pp. 619–41. Werner Nöther, Die Erschließung der Sahara durch Motorfahrzeuge 1901–1936, München: Belleville, 2003. In the 1980s, the mining companies SOMAIR and COMINAK hired more than 1500 European employees. Emmanuel Gregoire, Touaregs du Niger: le destin d’un mythe, Paris: Karthala, 1999. Mano Dayak, Touareg, la tragédie, Paris: Lattès, 1992. Apart from these package tourists, an additional 5000 travellers came to Niger with their own vehicles from Algeria. Their aim was to sell their cars in Arlit or Agadez. This so-called ‘scrap tourism’, referring to the lamentable state of the cars, collapsed during the Tuareg rebellion and civil war in Algeria and has never recovered since. Elizabeth A. Davis, ‘Metamorphosis in the culture market of Niger’, American Anthropologist, vol. 101, no. 3, 1999, pp. 485–501; Susan Rasmussen, ‘Art as process and product: patronage and the problem of change in Tuareg blacksmith/artisan roles’, Africa, vol. 65, 1995, pp. 592–609. If one considers, for example, the affiliation of 28 Tuareg directors of travel agencies to different political entities and/or lineages, we find that ten belong to the confederation of the Kel Ferwan, six to the Kel Tadele, five to the Kel Ewey and four to the Ifoghas. Two directors belong to the Ikazkazan and one to the Kel Faday. Taking into account the dominance

266

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32.

33.

34. 35.

36. 37.

38.

39.

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of the Ifuŕas through Mano Dayak, this more even representation is a major change. Aha Issoufa, Agadez, December 2000. During my research, 11 of 38 travel agency directors in Agadez were married to European women from Germany, France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. The reason why the saying relates especially to women from Switzerland stems from the local image of this country as being particularly wealthy. This is because most guides, drivers and cooks are not employed for the whole season; they are paid for each journey they make and not on a regular basis. See also Susan Rasmussen, ‘De l’Aïr au Texas: les voyages récents des artisans touaregs’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Voyager d’un point de vue nomade, Paris: Méditerranée, 2002, pp. 89–99, for the journeys of Tuareg Inadan to Europe and the United States. This alienation from their own cultural roots is expressed in Tamasheq with the term yankaw, meaning ‘somebody who is lost’. Ulf Hannerz, ‘The world in creolization’, Africa, vol. 57, 1987, pp. 546–59. This sense of appropriation is highlighted in the works among others of Kurt Beck, ‘Die Aneignung der Maschine’, in Karl-Heinz Kohl and Nicolaus Schafhausen (eds), New Heimat, New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2001, pp. 66– 77; and Hans Peter Hahn, ‘Global goods and the process of appropriation’, in Peter Probst and Gerd Spittler (eds) Between resistance and expansion: explorations of local vitality in Africa, Münster: LIT, 2004, pp. 211–29. Different aspects of the appropriation of cars have received considerable attention from anthropologists in recent years, documented for example in the articles in Daniel Miller (ed.) Car cultures, Oxford: Berg, 2001. Han van Dijk, Dick Foeken and Kiky van Til, ‘Population mobility in Africa: an overview’, in Mirjam de Bruijn, Rijk van Dijk and Dick Foeken (eds) Mobile Africa: changing patterns of movement in Africa and beyond, Leiden: Brill, 2001, pp. 9–26. Gerd Spittler, Hirtenarbeit: Die Welt der Kamelhirten und Ziegenhirtinnen von Timia, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 1998, p. 231. Hélène Claudot-Hawad, ‘Noces de vent: épouser le vide ou l’art nomade de voyager’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Voyager d’un point de vue nomade, Paris: IREMAM, Editions Paris-Méditerranée, 2002, pp. 12 et seq. See Lunacek in this volume. Joseph C. Berland and Aparna Rao, ‘Unveiling the stranger: a new look at peripatetic peoples’, in Joseph C. Berland and Aparna Rao (eds) Customary stranger, Westport: Praeger, 2004, pp. 1–29. Berland and Rao (ibid.) deviate from seeing the Tuareg’s positively evaluated exoticism in the West as one of the main advantages for locals who engage in the business, for they view low social status in the clients’ society as an essential feature of all peripatetic peoples. This is exemplified by the fact that only nine travel agencies cater for twothirds of all tourists. Most of the other businesses have fewer than 40 clients a

NOTES

40. 41.

42.

267

season. The same applies to the personnel. Whereas some guides accompany ten or more journeys, others might not find more than one or two tours. See Rasmussen (‘Art as process’) for similar findings among the smiths in Agadez. This is judging economic failure by Western standards of a market economy on which not all Tuareg working in the business will agree. Some guides or directors regard a season as successful if they have accomplished two or three journeys. Such reasoning is only affordable, however, because of the state’s lax enforcement of tax payments. Pierre Marie Decoudras, ‘Utilisation et limite des images dans la “question” Touaregue’, in Heidi Willer, Till Förster and Claudia Ortner-Buchberger (eds) Macht der Identität: Identität der Macht, Münster: LIT, 1995, pp. 209–19.

13. Ambigous Meanings of Ikufar and their Role in Development Projects 1. Research was carried out in 2003/2004 with the support of the Department of Asian and African Studies of the University of Ljubljana and financial support from the Research Agency of the Republic of Slovenia. 2. Edward Said, Orientalizem: Zahodnjaški pogledi na Orient, Ljubljana: Studia Humanitatis, 1996. 3. The strategy of local political elites in influencing the new political reality in the case of Aïr is argued by Gerd Spittler, ‘Conquest and communication: Europeans and Tuareg’, in Heidi Willer, Till Föster and Claudia OrtnerBuchberger (eds) Macht der Identität-Identität der Macht: Politische Prozesse und kultureller Wandel in Afrika, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2003, p. 31. 4. James G. Carrier, ‘Introduction’, in James G. Carrier (ed.) Occidentalism: images of the West, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996, pp. 1–33. 5. In this chapter the word Tuareg and Imajeŕen are used interchangeably. It is true that in this presentation Imajeŕen are mostly represented in the narrower sense of the word, meaning those who consider themselves nobles and it covers some Illbakan who are imŕad, and inadan mostly from Kel Ewey. 6. Borut Brumen, ‘How to use Orientalism: good, dirty and evil Tuaregs’, Asian and African Studies, vol. 5, nos 1–2, 2001, p. 10. 7. Jean Robert Henry, ‘Les Touaregs des Français’, in Hélène Claudot-Hawad (ed.) Touaregs et autres Sahariens entre plusiers mondes: définitions et redéfinitions de soi et des autres, Aix en Provence: IREMAM, 1996, p. 266. 8. The benefit of these diverse locations might be precisely their diversity, which means also different ranges of opportunities of encounters with ‘the Westerners’ of people who lived there at the time as well as different diachronic perspectives and moving trajectories of their present inhabitants. The weak side of this dispersed way of gathering data was loss of important insights of complexities of relations on micro locations that demand a more profound study on one location and its networks. 9. Eric R. Wolf, Evropa in ljudstva brez zgodovine, Ljubljana: Studia Humanitatis, 1998, pp. 25–9.

268 10.

11. 12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23.

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I would like to thank Gerd Spittler, Benedetta Rossi and Baz Lecocq for their comments that motivated me to look further at the negative connotations that the word akafar has today. Nasara is a Hausa term for a ‘white’. In Aŕali’s opinion it was neutral, though that might be questionable, particularly since it originally meant Christian. Gerd Spittler, Les Touaregs face aux sécheresse et aux famines: les Kel Ewey de l’Aïr (Niger) (1900–1985), Paris: Karthala, 1993, p. 233. See also Marko Scholze and Ingo Bartha, ‘Trading cultures: Berbers and Tuareg as souvenir vendors’, in Peter Probst and Gerd Spittler (eds) Between resistance and expansion: dimensions of local vitality in Africa, Münster: LIT, 2004, p. 85. Georg Klute, ‘Le continent noir: le savoir des Africains sur l’Europe et les Européens dans le recit de voyage de Heinrich Barth’, in Mamadou Diawara, Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias and Gerd Spittler (eds) Heinrich Barth et l’Afrique, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2006, pp. 167–70. Spittler, ‘Conquest and communication’, p. 33. Spittler, Les Touaregs face aux sécheresse, p. 72–85. The interviews with Aŕali and Alŕabid were conducted separately, but their life stories are remarkably similar. Although they both agreed that their identity did not need to be concealed, I decided, as for the others with whom I spoke, to use their first names only so as not to disclose their identity completely. Ineslemen, in the past and now, saw it as important that ikufar were Christians because they saw Christianity as a bona fide religion. It seems that for others it often meant they had no religion and were therefore not bound by any religious rules and thus able to do as they pleased. Research could be translated in Tamasheq as agamay, but sometimes it was described as teŕare (reading, learning) or ikatab (writing); in Timia and Shikolani, people drew on their previous experience to understand the work of the next white person to come along. Consequently, they compared the work of their next researcher with a previous better-known one; in Timia the comparison was with Gerd Spittler and in Shikolani with Edmond Bernus. Inadan are traditional jewellery makers. The jewellery is sold by the producers themselves, their relatives and also some nobles and iŕawelen who work as shassturis (Scholze and Bartha, ‘Trading cultures’, p. 82). Marko Scholze, ‘Wir sind moderne Nomaden: Tuareg als Akteure im Tourismus’, in Kurt Beck, Till Förster and Hans Peter Hahn (eds) Blick nach vorn: Festgabe für Gerd Spittler zum 65. Geburtstag, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2004, p. 206. Spittler, Les Touaregs face aux sécheresse, pp. 115, 249–52. Emmanuel Grégoire, Touaregs du Niger: le destin d’un mythe, Paris: Karthala, 1999, p. 42; Spittler, Les Touaregs face aux sécheresse, p. 117. Benedetta Rossi, ‘Revisiting Foucauldian approaches: power dynamics in development projects’, The Journal of Development Studies, vol. 40, no. 6, 2004, p. 15.

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Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardin, Anthropology and development: understanding contemporary social change, London: Zed Books, 2005, pp. 177–85. Spittler, Les Touaregs face aux sécheresse, pp. 235, 249–52. Borut Brumen, ‘Transmission of the “good old times” and the power of imagined tradition’, Human Affairs, vol. 12, no. 3, 2002, pp. 177–85. Baz Lecocq ‘Unemployed intellectuals in the Sahara: the Teshumara nationalist movement and the revolutions in Tuareg society’, International Review of Social History, vol. 12, no. 49, 2004, pp. 92–3.

14. Resisting Imperialism: Tuareg Threaten US, Chinese and Other Foreign Interests 1. This date was 12 October 2007. 2. Many Tuareg fear and hate Niger’s president, Mamadou Tandja, for his role, as minister of the interior, in the Tchin Tabaradene massacres of 1990, which precipitated the subsequent Tuareg rebellion in Niger when Tuareg attacked Tchin Tarabadene on the night of 7 May 1990. The Tuareg version of events is that unarmed Tuareg occupied the police station as a protest against the arrest of some of their fellows. The official version is that three Tuareg groups attacked the prison, sous-préfecture, police station and post office, resulting in six deaths. What happened in the army’s follow-up operation is still open to dispute. According to Tuareg accounts, the army, after pulverizing Tchin Tabaradene, went on the rampage throughout the region wiping out every nomadic camp it could find. Occupants were buried or burnt alive, or hacked to pieces. At Tasara, 24 people were hanged; at Tillia adolescents were publicly executed; a dozen Tuareg were killed at Maradi and hundreds more wiped out at Tahoua. While the government admits to 70 such deaths, international organizations placed the figure at around 600. The Tuareg claim that around 1700 of their numbers were butchered. 3. In the week following Eid, a government television station twice broadcast comments from a civil society leader who said ethnic Tuareg rebels could be exterminated in 48 hours (Voice of America, 20 October 2007). 4. Tuareg rebellions broke out almost simultaneously in Niger and Mali in 1990 and continued throughout much of the decade, especially in Niger. In 2004, the Niger government attempted to provoke a further Tuareg uprising (see text). In 2006 the Algerian counter-terrorism intelligence services played a key role, along with US Special Forces, in orchestrating a rebellion of Tuareg in Mali on 23 May. For details, see Jeremy Keenan, ‘Turning the Sahel on its head: the “truth” behind the headlines’, Review of African Political Economy, vol. 33, no. 110, 2006, pp. 761–9. 5. This figure was $18 million more than the amount the government and donors spent on food security during Niger’s 2006 food crisis and accompanying famine. 6. Some 40 kilometres northwest of Agadez. The coal mine is run by the national coal company, SONICHAR.

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7. Notably at Abardokh and Gougaram, in southern and northwestern Aïr respectively. 8. The Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC), which also operates in the region, received threats. 9. The FNIS, comprised almost exclusively of local Tuareg, falls under the command of the ministry of interior. 10. These were under the leadership of Ibrahim ag Bahanga. His first attack was on a police post near Tin Zaouatene on 11 May 2007. In late August he kidnapped 50 soldiers in a series of attacks on military convoys and positions, before the Malian army, with US assistance, recaptured the Tin Zaouatene positions in late September. Landmines killed at least 16 civilians and a handful of soldiers died in the skirmishes. According to the Malian military authorities, Bahanga fled to Algeria. 11. Reports suggest that the number could be as high as 60. 12. The MNJ, by contrast, has suffered only minimal causalities. 13. On 2 June, FAN soldiers killed three civilians, Sidi Mohamed Imolan (Aka Kalakoua), Abtchaw Kounfi and Aoussouk Kounfi, one of whom was a cripple and the other two aged over 80. A further nine pilgrims were subsequently reported murdered by FAN soldiers. The MNJ claimed that at least 250 people had ‘disappeared’, while Amnesty International claimed that the government was detaining and torturing civilians. Amnesty International’s bulletins were widely reported in the media. See for example, Reuters, 2 October 2007 and Voice of America, 8 October 2007. 14. According to eyewitnesses, FAN stopped five vehicles in the Toussasset area near the Algerian border east of Assamakka and north of Arlit, then reportedly separated 12 Tuareg from the other travellers and shot them. The next day soldiers rampaged through nomadic camps near the road between Arlit and Assamakka killing 20 Tuareg in their tents. (GfbV, Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker (Society for Threatened Peoples), Göttingen, 9 October 2007). 15. Jeremy Keenan, The dark Sahara: America’s war on terror in Africa, London: Pluto, 2009. 16. The story of how the war on terror was brought to the Sahara–Sahel, as well as its implications for the peoples of the region, have been reported on by Jeremy Keenan in more than 30 papers and reports. See, for example: Jeremy Keenan, ‘Waging war on terror: the implications of America’s “new imperialism” for Saharan peoples’, Journal of North African Studies, vol. 10, nos 3–4, 2005, pp. 610–38; Jeremy Keenan, ‘Security and insecurity in North Africa’, Review of African Political Economy, vol. 33, no. 108, 2006, pp. 269–96; Jeremy Keenan, ‘The banana theory of terrorism: alternative truths and the collapse of the “second” (Saharan) front in the war on terror’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, 2007, pp. 31–58; Keenan, The dark Sahara and The dying Sahara.. 17. This has been manifest in the Bush administration’s Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI), then its Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) and more recently in the creation of a new US military command for Africa, AFRICOM.

NOTES

18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

271

Keenan, ‘The banana theory of terrorism’. Many of the maps EUCOM produced on Africa since 2003, as well as numerous subsequent maps in the general media, such as Le Monde Diplomatique and The Economist, refer to this region as a ‘terror’ or ‘Salafiste’ zone or a similar designation. Minister of tourism and crafts. At the end of 2005 Niger’s Reasonably Assured Resources were 173,000 tonnes of uranium oxide at less than $40 per kilogram, and a further 7000 tonnes (tU) at up to $80 per kilogram. Inferred resources are 45,000 tU at up to $80 per kilogram. Exported mainly to France, Japan and Spain. Somair is owned 63.4 per cent by Areva NC and 36.6 per cent by Office National des Ressources Minières du Niger (Onarem). Cominak is owned 34 per cent by Areva NC, 31 per cent by Onarem, 25 per cent by Japan’s Overseas Uranium Resources Development Company (Ourd) and 10 per cent by Enusa SA, Spain. Imouraren contains 146,000 tonnes of measured and indicated uranium resources at 0.11 per cent. Open pit production is expected by 2011 at a capital cost of more than $700 million. Notably at Madaouela and Teguidda. [email protected] See Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité, SHERPA, la CRIIRad et Médecins du Monde dénoncent les conditions d’extraction de l’uranium en Afrique par les filiales du groupe AREVA, April 2007, and other documents on the CRIIRad website, http://www.criirad.org/ [accessed August 2007] AREVA’s response, following the payment of 300 million FCFA to the communes of the Arlit department in May, was to sign another cheque (on 1 December) to cover two agreements: one of 11.4 million FCFA for several projects including the 5000-hectare extension of irrigated farming in the Iŕazer valley in Tamesna; the other was in the form of bursaries for training programmes. See, for example: www.dissident-media.org/infonucleaire/niger2.html; www.sortirdunucleaire.org/acctualites/presse/affiche.php?aff=1660; and the film Arlit, deuxième Paris on www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0180 Author’s personal communication with the spokesperson. Although labour conditions at CNPC have improved marginally, wages are still the lowest in the region with monthly salaries of around US$ 60 being commonplace. (Source: company and local labour bureau employment records; interviews with employees.) CNPC was warned in a radio broadcast to leave the country. SinoU had a senior executive taken hostage, but subsequently released. CNPC supply vehicles have also been destroyed by landmines with the death of guards. On 6 December 2006, it requested a meeting with the country’s prime minister to present its own sustainable development plans for the region and country.

272 34.

35.

36.

37. 38.

39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45.

46. 47.

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Each zone of Tamesna has specific and often unique pastoral resources. For example, the area in and around the Iŕazer valley, where uranium exploration began in the spring of 2007, is an ecological zone of crucial importance: its salty pastures are vital for many Tuareg and Fulani nomads who migrate there during the rainy season. They go back to at least the second decade of the last century when the leader of the Ahaggar Tuareg, Mousa ag Amastane, was rewarded for helping the French quell the rebellion of the Aïr Tuareg by being allowed to keep all the Kel Aïr camels he had captured. However, as there was insufficient grazing in Ahaggar, the French allowed the Ahaggar Tuareg effectively to annex Tamesna – the richest of pastoral areas. The region, in practice, was removed from the Niger administration and effectively administered from Tamanrasset (Algeria). Indeed, most of the wells in Tamesna, such as those at In Abangerit, were dug by Ahaggar Tuareg (and their slaves!). Tuareg jokingly refer to Tamesna as ‘The Camel Restaurant’: where they send their camels to fatten up, breed and give birth, and where Tuareg drivers today make detours on the trans-Sahara routes merely to escape into the nomadic environment for a day or two and fill a few bidons with camel milk. Several other international conventions and declarations recognize and give some protection to indigenous land rights, utilization and practices. A paper on this subject by the author, entitled ‘Voting alone. Why the US opposes human rights, indigenous rights and an arms trade treaty for Africa: an explanation from the Sahara-Sahel’, was submitted to the annual conference of the US African Studies Association (ASA) in New York on 18 October 2007, but rejected for what is believed to have been ‘political reasons’ (namely censorship). http://toumoujagha.blogspot.com/ (last accessed 20 October 2007. Several more statements and declarations appeared on the site after 19 September). More recent modifications to the website show Toumoujagha incorporating the traditional Tuareg lands of southern Algeria and southwest Libya. The law establishing the OCRS was promulgated on 10 January 1957. Gaddafi first mooted such an entity in a speech to a predominantly Tuareg audience at Ubari (Fezzan, Libya) in April 2005. Personal communications and interviews with Chinese operatives in region. There was further provocation of the population, especially in Tuareg areas, in 2005 when elements within the Niger government embezzled aid funds intended for famine relief. See Jeremy Keenan, ‘Famine in Niger is not all that it appears’, Review of African Political Economy, vol. 32, nos 104/5, 2005, pp. 405–7. Tamgak is approximately 150 kilometres in perimeter and over 2000 metres high, providing a near impregnable position, which is well-known to former Tuareg rebels. Personal communications and contacts with Iferouane residents and local community leaders. Niger expelled AREVA’s top executive from the country on the grounds

NOTES

48.

49. 50. 51.

52. 53.

54. 55. 56.

57.

58.

59.

60. 61.

273

that AREVA was supporting the rebels. It then demanded a renegotiation of its contracts, which were far more favourable to Niger than beforehand. There is still no evidence to back the Niger government’s claim that AREVA supported the MNJ. The term ‘ivoirité’ – ‘Ivoirian-ness’ – was coined in 1994 by President Henri Konan Bédié of Côte d’Ivoire in his campaign to exclude and disenfranchize politicians and potential voters from the north of the country, in particular presidential candidate Alassane Oattara and his supporters, on the grounds of parentage in neighbouring countries, especially Burkina Faso. The term – and the policy of exclusion – has continued under President Laurent Gbagbo. Kalakoua recently escaped from prison in Tillabery where he was serving sentence for having kidnapped three senior Malian military officers in 2006. Al Charif is also a former rebel and army deserter. His brother Aŕali ag Alambo, the president of the MNJ, was formerly the sous-préfet at Arlit (the capital of Niger’s uranium-mining region), while other relations include the commandant of Niger’s FNIS, which, among other things, is responsible for the protection of foreign companies, such as AREVA and the Chinese oil and uranium companies, in the region. Keenan, The dark Sahara. This clandestine operation was supported by 100 US Special Forces who flew to Tamanrasset (Algeria) from Stuttgart on 15–16 February 2006 and progressed overland into northern Mali via Silet. Jeremy Keenan has reported on the creation of this ‘terror zone’ since 2003 and its implications in more than 30 papers and reports. See note 16. For example, the Tamanrasset riots 2005; the unrest in Aïr in the winter of 2004–05; and the Kidal revolt of May 2006. Ironically, it was AREVA’s appallingly exploitative labour practices, notably its abuse of health and safety at its Arlit and Akokan mines, that encouraged the Niger government to break the French monopoly. ‘Bisbilles entre Niamey et Areva’, L’Humanité [Paris], 3 August 2007, http://www.humanite.fr/2007–08–03_International_Bisbilles-entre-Niameyet-Areva [accessed August 2007] Little more came out of the talks other than a bland statement regarding Franco–Nigerien cooperation and the offer by France of demining aid. See Reuters, ‘France sees Areva progress, offers Niger mine aid’, Niamey, 4 August 2007, http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L04331253.htm [accessed August 2007]) Ele B. Smith, ‘France’s destabilisation of Africa continues: the case of the Republic of Niger’, 2007 [online] available: http://www.africanpath.com/ p_blogEntry.cfm?blogEntryID=2586 [August 2008]. L’Expression, 18 November 2006 and 4 December 2006; L’Express, 17 November 2006; Liberté, 18 November 2006. In a feeble attempt at face-saving, the USA, with the help of a German diplomat or ‘press attaché’ at the Bamako embassy, who claimed evidence of 150 Al-Qaeda terrorists in the region, and the Algerian military authorities

274

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who gave conflicting reports of an alleged attack on the airport at the remote desert oasis of Djanet, once again referred to the threat of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (as the GSPC is now known) and their ‘mobile terrorist training bases’ (reminiscent of Iraq’s mobile chemical factories) in the region. In spite of the seven-year presence of US Special Forces in the region, supported by high-tec aerial and satellite surveillance, no such bases, mobile or static, have been found. While in Libya in 2006, I estimated this number at about 3000. However, in 2007 informants in Aïr told me that they believe as many as 10,000 young men may have left the region for Libya in the last few years. http://toumoujagha.blogspot.com

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Strathern, Marilyn (1988) The gender of the gift: problems with women and problems with society in Melanesia, Berkeley: University of California Press Streck, Bernhard (2002) ‘Systematisierungsansätze aus dem Bereich der ethnologischen Forschung’, in Stefan Leder and Bernhard Streck (eds) Mitteilungen des SFB ‘Differenz und Integration’, vol. 1, Nomadismus aus der Perspektive der Begrifflichkeit, Halle/Saale: Orientalisches Zentrum, pp. 1–10 Sudlow, David (2001) The Tamasheq of north-east Burkina Faso: notes on grammar and syntax including a key vocabulary, Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag Swift, Jeremy (1977) ‘Sahelian pastoralists: underdevelopment, desertification, and famine’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 6, pp. 457–78 Trumble, William R. et al. (eds) (2002) Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press Uhl, Heike (1990) ‘Die Ritter der Wüste und die Touristen: Zur Bedeutung der Gastfreundschaft bei den algerischen Tuareg’, Sozialanthropologische Arbeitspapiere, no. 28, Berlin Urvoy, Yves (1936) Histoire des populations du Soudan central, Paris: Larose van Beek, Walter E. A. (2003) ‘African tourist encounters: effects of tourism on two West African societies’, Africa, vol. 73, pp. 251–89 van Dijk, Han, Dick Foeken and Kiky van Til (2001) ‘Population mobility in Africa: an overview’, in Mirjam de Bruijn, Rijk van Dijk and Dick Foeken (eds) Mobile Africa: changing patterns of movement in Africa and beyond, Leiden: Brill, pp. 9–26 Vertovec, Steven (1997) ‘Three meanings of “diaspora”, exemplified among South Asian religions’, Diaspora, vol. 6, pp. 277–99 Vertovec, Steven and Robin Cohen (2002) ‘Introduction: conceiving cosmpolitanism’, in Steven Vertovec and Robin Cohen (eds) Conceiving cosmopolitanism, theory, context and practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–22 Vorlaufer, Karl (1996) Tourismus in Entwicklungsländern: Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung durch Fremdenverkehr, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft Vos, George A. de (1995) ‘Ethnic pluralism: conflict and accommodation’, in Lola Romanucci-Ross and George A. de Vos (eds) Ethnic identity: creation, conflict and accommodation, Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, pp. 15–47

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Vos, George A. de and Lola Romanucci-Ross (1995) ‘Ethnic identity: a psychocultural perspective’, in Lola Romanucci-Ross and George A. de Vos (eds) Ethnic identity: creation, conflict and accommodation, Walnut Creek: Alta Mira Press, pp. 349–79 Winter, Michael (1984) ‘Slavery and the pastoral Tuareg of Mali’, Cambridge Anthropology, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 4–29 Wolf, Eric R. (1998) Evropa in ljudstva brez zgodovine, Ljubljana: Studia Humanitatis Worley, Barbara (1991) ‘Women’s war drum, women’s wealth’, Ph.D. thesis, Columbia University (1992) ‘Where all the women are strong’, Natural History, vol. 101, no. 2, pp. 55–63

Index

Abbetul, 76 Abidjan, 109, 116 Ablal, Inteyeden ag, 160 accommodation, 2, 45, 56, 141 Adaŕ, 3, 53, 84, 86, 127, 158, 160, 167 Ader, 95–6, 101, 105, 256, 291 aesthetic, 125–9, 131, 133, 135–6, 138, 140–2, 179 affiliation, 148–9, 152–3, 187 Africa, 6, 19, 23–4, 30, 35, 37, 39, 43, 47, 49, 52, 62, 90, 119, 145, 161, 168, 196, 206–7, 212–13, 219 afrod, 157, 165 Agadez, 20, 52, 55, 61–2, 65, 67–9, 158, 161, 165–7, 171–6, 180, 182–4, 186, 192, 194–5, 198–9, 202, 207, 209–10, 215, 223, 227–8 agency, 2–3, 7, 42, 54, 111, 119–20, 122, 130–1, 139, 147, 172–6, 180–1, 184–8 Aggag Alemin, 84 agriculture, 97, 205 Ahaggar, 3, 11, 62, 64, 77, 84, 94– 5, 100, 157, 159, 217 Ahl Arawane, 52–3 Ahnet, 3 Aïr, 3, 55, 61–2, 64, 66–9, 127, 137, 158, 165, 168, 200, 210, 212, 214, 217, 219, 226–9 Aïr and Azawad Liberation Front (FLAA), 213 Ajirou, 61, 66 akafar, 17, 185, 193–5, 197, 199, 203–5, 207

akal, 25, 30, 54–5, 76–7, 80–2, 164, 204, 206 akli, 90, 121 Akokan, 215 Akouta, 175, 215 Al Charif, 222 al guitara, 7 Alambo, Aboubacar ag, 211, 222, 224, 226–7 Alambo, Aŕali ag, 224 Al-Bakka-i, 196 Al-Barkat, 85 aleshu, 18, 68–70, 72, 130, 231 Algeria, 3, 5–6, 18, 25, 47, 86, 144, 147, 149–50, 153, 155, 157–9, 163, 171, 177, 197, 212–13, 217–29 Algerian Security Services (DRS), 212, 221–4, 226 Algiers, 5 Alhabib, Ibrahim ag, 160 Aliou, 55 Al-Jilani, Muhammad, 102 Al-Mizan, 76 Al-Qaeda, 213, 222 alterity, 50, 54 Amajeŕ, 152, 195 aman, 81, 82 Aman Iman, 167 Amassakoul, 155 amenukal, 80 America, 22, 30, 201, 212; see also United States Amnesty International, 211 Anestefidet, 86 Annur, 72, 196

296

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

appropriation, 18, 43, 56, 71, 73–4, 183–4, 186 Arabian Peninsula, 47 Arabs, 17, 61, 68, 72–3, 127, 129, 133, 146, 148, 150; Arabization, 117 Areva, 224 Aŕirin man, 216–17 Arlit, 158, 167, 175–6, 198, 210, 214–17, 224 army, 25–6, 28, 34, 54, 129, 157, 169, 196, 214, 222, 225–7 ashamur, 145–6, 152, 154, 157, 164 ashshak, 151–3, 178, 185, 195, 207 Asia, 18, 22, 47, 68, 193 Assalam, Ghabdu, 84 Atlantic, 24, 35, 44, 122 Australia, 22, 44, 214–15, 224 Austria, 173 authority, 32, 78, 105 awezlu, 184 Azawad, 103, 131, 133, 192, 199–200, 202, 223 Azjer, 75 Badi, Dida, 6, 52, 159 Bakai, 19–20 Bamako, 5, 36, 56, 168 Bambara, 5, 30, 128–9, 148 Bankilare, 104–5 Barth, Heinrich, 53, 61, 64–5, 67–8, 72–3, 196 Bary, Erwin von, 61, 66, 69, 72 beauty, 7, 33, 125, 127–32, 136, 138–42 Bedouin, 147 Beijing, 216 Bekaye, Cheick, 53 Belalimat, Nadia, 7 Belcho, 66 Beldiabé, 117 bella, 90–1, 93, 99, 101–2, 110, 126, 129, 134–5 Bellevin, Michel, 203

Bellil, Rachid, 159 belonging, 5, 7, 42, 48, 56, 76, 110–11, 116, 121–3, 144, 147–8, 183, 186 Benoît, Pierre, 174 Berber, 5, 20, 52, 78–9, 81, 83, 169 Berlin, 66 Bernus, Edmond, 93, 192 betrothal, 111 Bilma, 52, 175, 179 binary structure, 7, 77, 83, 86 birth, 111, 114, 138 Blackfire, 167 blacksmith, 20, 36 Blanguernon, Claude, 80 blood, 27, 31, 33, 65, 148–9, 164; blood ties, 144, 152–3 Bockel, Jean-Marie, 224 body, 7, 15–16, 49, 57, 101, 129, 131, 133, 138, 140–2 Boissevain, Jeremy, 172 Bolton, John, 218 Bonte, Pierre, 86, 97 border(s), 1, 5, 24, 26, 32, 56, 132, 149–50, 157–8, 161, 164–5, 214, 219, 222, 227, 230; border crossing, 1, 144, 148, 156–8, 164, 170; border traffic, 147 borderland, 150; borderliners, 2 Bouda, 84 Boula, Mohamed ag, 214 Boula, Rhissa ag, 213 Bouman, Annemarie, 7, 98, 99, 106 boundary, 32, 111, 195 Bourgeot, André, 96 Boyer, Florence, 104–5 Brazil, 139 bride price, 114–16 bride wealth, 101, 109, 114–16, 134, 137 Buchanan, Angus, 61, 68 Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières, 214 Burkina Faso, 5, 7, 25, 98, 109–10, 155

297

INDEX

Bush, George, 212, 218 business, 12, 16, 35, 45, 158, 171–5, 180–2, 184–8, 203, 224, 227–8 Butler, Richard, 172 buzu, 30, 90–1, 93, 101–3, 110, 126 Cairo, 62 camel (dromedary), 36, 48, 52, 55, 84, 86, 94–5, 140, 147, 171–5, 177–9, 181–4, 186, 196, 198, 205, 207 Canada, 45, 201, 214–15, 224 capital, 24, 43–4, 48, 53, 57, 69, 100, 109, 166, 187; cultural, 132; social, 6, 44–5; symbolic, 27, 134 caravan trade, 51–2, 55, 95–6, 132, 136–7; caravanning, 127, 137 Card Wendt, Carolyn, 160 Carrier, James G., 191 Casajus, Dominique, 78 Cercle de Goundam, 99 Chad, 49, 82, 143, 212 Chaker, Salem, 80 change, 6, 13, 23–6, 29–32, 34–9, 89, 92, 97, 102, 104, 109, 131, 185–6, 208 Chaoui, 81 chieftaincy, 83 China, 5, 11, 18, 47, 215–16, 220, 224 China International Uranium Corporation (SinoU), 210, 215–16 China National Nuclear Corporation, 215 Chinese National Petroleum Company (CNPC), 215–16 choice, 25, 34–6, 90, 105, 184 citizenship, 1, 144, 149, 157, 165, 227 clan, 26, 30, 76, 77, 131, 139 Claudot-Hawad, Hélène, 29, 93, 184 Clauzel, Jean, 93

clientelism, 29 Clifford, James, 30 cloth, 6, 62–4, 67–70, 72–3, 87, 130, 137 Cogema Niger, 215 colonial, 2–5, 18, 23–4, 29, 35, 43, 47, 52–3, 56, 67, 71–3, 75, 97, 101, 110, 126, 130, 132, 155–7, 174–5, 191, 193, 196, 208, 219 Cominak, 215 Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRIIRad), 216 Common Organization of Saharan Regions (OCRS), 219 Comurhex, 215 confederation, 78, 83–4, 187 contamination, 216 continuity, 15, 30, 39, 71, 110, 140, 185 control, 96–8, 101, 111, 116, 118, 121, 129, 134, 138, 149, 159 cosmopole, 58 cosmopolitanism, 41–3, 45–6, 54, 57 costume, 37, 63, 65, 68 Cotonou, 215 cotton, 63, 68–9, 72 craftsmen, 95 creativity, 71, 159 creolization, 35, 183 culture, 13, 21, 32, 45, 48, 51–5, 57, 73–4, 79, 121, 138, 146, 157, 159, 166–71, 173, 180, 183–4, 186, 194, 206–8; cultural code, 172, 182, 187 Da’wa, 47 Dabakar, 53 Dakoro, 99 Dallol Bosso, 93, 95 Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), 200 Dayak, Mano, 175–6, 180–1

298

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

decentralization, 25, 27, 56, 103–5 decolonization, 5, 155 Decoudras, Pierre Marie, 188 Deleuze, Gilles, 15–16 dependence, 92, 95, 97, 101–3, 106 descent, 79, 85, 90, 99, 101–3, 105, 109–10, 125, 129, 132, 148 desert, 5, 14, 17, 20, 27, 32–3, 36–7, 51–2, 55, 79, 84, 86, 96, 144, 149, 164, 169–71, 173–81, 183, 186, 205–7, 209, 212, 215; desertification, 208 Desert Rebel, 167 destiny, 149 development, 8, 26–7, 32, 37, 46, 98, 104–5, 144, 167, 170, 173, 193, 195, 197, 199, 202–4, 206, 218, 225; projects, 8, 27, 29, 181, 193, 196, 198, 200–1, 203, 207 diaspora, 24, 42, 158, 164, 166 dichotomization, 191 Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), 224 discourse, 11, 13, 15–16, 21, 45–6, 53–4, 122, 126, 156, 162–4, 167, 191, 200, 202, 208 displacement, 25–6, 28, 228 divorce, 49, 109, 113–15, 118, 121, 126 Djado, 222 Djanet, 76, 85 Djerma, 161 Djerma-Songhay, 174 Dogon, 129 domestic, 7, 33, 92–4, 99–100, 115, 126, 135–6, 141; domestic labour, 7; domestication, 43, 71 Douglas, Mary, 31 dress, 34, 52, 63–5, 68, 72, 140, 150, 194 droughts, 23, 25, 52, 98, 125, 132, 135, 137, 141, 144, 149, 157–8, 177, 208 Duveyrier, Henri, 75, 80, 174, 192

dwelling, 52, 55 ecology, 24 economy, 11, 13–14, 17, 26, 44, 52, 96, 106, 109, 128, 157–8, 187, 202, 208, 229; informal, 147, 160 education, 33, 47, 49, 58, 126, 138, 141, 145, 157, 175, 198, 206–7 Eid al-Fitr, 209 Ekawel, Hamid, 165 El Cambo, 158 El Para, 212–13 elem, 15 elite, 16, 45, 49, 73, 89, 95–7, 105–6, 132, 150–1 Eŕazer, 204 Eŕless ag Foni, 53 Essakane, 37, 166, 169 essentialization, 127, 191 esuf, 15, 50–1, 54–5, 57–8, 164, 186 Etambar, 55 Ethiopians, 78 ethnography, 15, 131; ethnographer, 12 Etran Finatawa, 167 Eurocentrism, 6, 22 Europe, 17–20, 30, 43, 45, 47–8, 68, 72, 135, 143, 146, 148, 168–9, 171, 173–5, 180, 182–3, 185–6, 192–3, 195, 197, 200–2, 204–7, 213 European Union (EU), 1, 44–5, 148, 200, 216, 221 evolution, 82–3, 105, 156, 170 exiles, 23–5, 27, 32, 38, 42, 161 family, 14, 20, 27, 37, 44, 48, 53, 77–8, 92, 99, 115–20, 123, 134–5, 137, 150, 152–3, 164, 174, 181, 186, 198–9, 201, 203, 205, 222; extended, 47, 49, 104, 153 farming, 52, 82, 92, 96–7, 102, 104 fashion, 63, 69

INDEX

fatness, 126–7, 133, 135–6, 138, 141; female, 7, 125–9, 131–3, 136, 138, 141–2 fertility, 7, 116, 119, 123, 128, 136, 138 festival, 20, 36–7, 65, 140, 160, 167, 169, 209 feudalism, 79 Fezzan, 61, 63, 73, 158, 166 fieldwork, 75, 98, 100, 119 Fischer, Anja, 6 Flatters expedition, 192 flexibility, 13, 15 flow, 1, 23, 25, 31, 148, 200 fluidity, 6, 23, 26, 29, 130 Flusser, Vilém, 12 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 200 foraging, 92 forced marriages, 118–23 foreigner, 150, 176, 185 fortress Europe, 43 Foucauld, Charles de, 80, 93, 231 Foureau, Fernand, 61, 66, 67, 69 France, 5, 47, 67, 98, 175, 193, 203, 205, 214–16, 219–20, 223–4 freedom, 50, 97, 111, 122, 134, 145, 182, 186, 192 French Development Agency, 200 Fulani, 30, 73, 161, 217 Fulbe, 5, 73 Gaasholt, Ole Martin, 100 Gaddafi, Muammar, 7, 143–5, 147, 149, 219, 226–7 Ganda Koy, 28, 226 Gao, 52, 158, 160 Garamantes, 78, 82 gardening, 125–8, 131, 135–7, 142, 198, 204 Gellner, Ernest, 78 General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), 224

299 German Development Service (DED), 200 German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), 200 Germany, 173, 175 Ghaïcha, 76 Ghat, 52, 62, 150–1, 158, 166 Giuffrida, Alessandra, 6, 99, 103 global, 1–2, 6–8, 11, 17–21, 23–5, 29, 32, 35–6, 38–9, 41, 43, 45–7, 49, 51, 53, 55, 57–8, 89, 126, 129–30, 132, 141–2, 150, 166, 170, 173, 180, 187–8, 212–15, 219–20, 228–9 globalization, 2, 6–7, 11, 16–17, 21–2, 30, 35, 38, 41–3, 45–6, 50–1, 57–8, 71, 76, 83, 85–6, 109–10, 117–18, 130, 132–3, 146, 150, 170–1 Gnawa, 167 goods, 2, 7, 18–19, 24–5, 29, 32, 37, 43, 71, 73, 85, 94–5, 114, 116, 119, 123, 147, 181, 183, 186, 205–6 Google, 41 Gorom-Gorom, 117 Gourara, 75 government, 32, 83, 103, 145–6, 149–50, 174, 192, 200, 209–16, 218, 220–1, 224–7 Greece, 193 griot, 135 Guattari, Félix, 15–16 Guignard, Eric, 114 Guillaume, Henri, 93–5 guitar, 151, 155–6, 159–60, 162–3, 165–9 hajj, 47 Hannerz, Ulf, 43, 183 Hasso, 165, 168 Hausa, 5, 18, 61, 64–5, 68–9, 72–3, 101–3, 128, 137, 148, 161, 174, 176, 182, 192, 205 hegemony, 1, 46, 54, 96–7, 132

300

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

herder, 26, 29, 171–2, 177–8, 183, 186; herding, 51, 56, 92, 96, 125–6, 137 heritage, 24, 27, 32–3, 35–6, 38, 77 hijra, 47 Hinch, Thomas, 172 Hornemann, Friedrich, 61–2, 64, 68, 72 hospitality, 185 household, 12, 56, 91, 104, 109, 112, 114, 116, 120, 126, 134, 136, 138 Hutu, 31 Ibn Battuta, 52 Ibn Hauqal, 52 iborelliten, 95 idealization, 33, 35, 105 identity, 6, 15, 24–5, 32, 35, 49, 52–3, 73, 77, 85, 91, 98, 100, 102, 105, 109–11, 119, 122, 130–1, 144, 147–9, 157, 166, 169, 172, 180, 186–7, 191–2, 195, 207 Idnan, 55 Iferouane, 61, 67, 178, 210–11, 216, 220–3, 225–7, 229 Ifuŕas, 54–5, 84–5, 127, 129 iklan, 7, 52, 90–5, 98–106, 109–11, 115–17, 119–20, 126, 128–9, 134, 136, 148, 153 ikufar, 8, 17, 193–5, 197–200, 203–8 ilellan, 83, 86, 94 Illbakan, 192, 199, 202, 204 image, 17, 135, 155, 164, 168, 185, 191, 196 Imajeŕen, 7, 102, 117, 125–30, 133–4, 136, 140–1, 143–50, 152–3, 176, 193–5, 204–8 Imanan, 80–1, 93, 95, 97 imbalance, 3, 43, 92, 150 Imedidaŕan, 26 imedlan n ikufar, 204 imitation, 71, 74

Imotep, 167 Imouraren, 215, 217 imperialism, 46, 172, 191 imŕad, 48, 55, 81, 86, 100, 117, 126, 134, 148, 176 Imuhaŕ, 14, 17–18, 20–1, 79, 83, 96 In Gall, 192, 202, 217 In Salah, 13, 52 inadan, 126, 128, 134–5, 140, 148, 153, 176, 199 incorporation, 71 independence, 5, 23, 25, 86, 89, 99, 128, 132, 138, 148, 151, 157, 170, 175, 193, 197, 199, 218, 223 India, 18, 215, 224 indigenization, 71 indigo, 65–6, 68–70, 72, 87, 130, 137, 164 individualization, 50–1, 57 industrial revolution, 193 influences, 2–3, 6, 8, 32, 128–30, 132–3, 141 infrastructure, 109, 138, 172–4, 201, 207, 227 inheritance, 53, 85, 100, 125, 137 Intala, 129, 140 integration, 71, 87, 129, 144, 165, 169, 183–5, 187 Intekoua, 55 interaction, 1, 14, 18, 41, 43, 57, 100, 110, 126, 140, 176, 178, 180, 185, 195 internet, 2, 20, 36–8, 130, 169 Iraq, 226 iŕawelen, 86, 93 Iŕazer valley, 217 Iregenaten, 84–5 irrigation, 77 Isabeten, 84 isaha, 94 ishumar, 7, 16–18, 25, 54, 131, 143–7, 149–58, 160–6, 169 Islam, 24, 31–2, 49, 83, 85, 125, 194 Islamic Legion, 143

INDEX

Italy, 11, 18, 173, 175 Ivory Coast, 25 Iwellemmeden, 92–3, 95–6, 127 Japan, 11, 18, 44 Jean, C., 61, 67 jewellery, 20–1, 36–7, 69, 126, 135, 137, 147, 199 job (labour), 48, 138–9, 147, 158, 186, 198, 201 Kabyle, 81 Kaka, 76 Kalakoua, 222, 226 Kano, 52, 66, 68, 72 Kanuri, 61 Kateb, Amazigh, 167 Katsina, 62, 73 Kawsen, 196–7 Keenan, Jeremy, 8, 14 Keita, 104 Kel Adaŕ, 3, 54, 84–6, 156–60, 163, 166 Kel Ahaggar, 3, 13, 62–3, 84, 86, 94, 96, 159 Kel Ahnet, 3 Kel Aïr, 3, 158 kel ajama, 31, 32 Kel Antessar, 23, 26, 30–2, 37, 97, 99 Kel Arawane, 53 Kel Aŕeris, 101 kel aŕrum, 31 Kel Azawad, 158 Kel Azjer, 3, 94, 146, 166 Kel Denneg, 3, 93, 97 Kel Djanet, 76 Kel Edawra, 99, 117 Kel Essuq, 53, 109, 117, 139 Kel Ewey, 6, 52, 61–2, 64–70, 72–3, 87, 127–8, 131, 135, 192, 196 Kel Ferwan, 52, 67, 99–100 Kel Gossi, 100 Kel Gress, 86, 92, 95–7

301 Kel Mali, 5 Kel Niger, 48 Kel Ŕazzaf, 26 Kel Taborak, 26 Kel Tamasheq, 1–8, 41–3, 47–8, 50–7, 100, 110, 114, 155–8, 161–5, 168–70, 192, 194, 197, 203–4, 206 Kel Tichŕayen, 26 Kel Timemmelin, 76 Kel Tit, 26 kel ulli, 48, 78 Khazanov, Anatoly, 12 Kidal, 53, 55, 127, 129–32, 138–41, 222–3, 225–6 kin, 24–7, 30–2, 37, 55, 111, 122, 134; kinship, 23, 27–31, 34, 94, 100, 110–11, 116, 122, 129, 132, 137, 144, 148–9, 152, 222, 226 Klute, Georg, 86, 196 knowledge, 25, 47, 49, 55, 75, 79, 151, 172, 178–80, 183, 187, 191, 196, 205–6, 210 Kohl, Ines, 7, 54, 164 Komlavi-Hahonou, Eric, 105 Kopytoff, Igor, 119, 123 Korea, 18 Kountché, General Seyni, 143 Kunta Cheick Bay, 53 Kunta Moor, 53 Kura, 18, 72 labour (job), 15, 45, 48, 54, 78, 90–2, 95–7, 99–101, 104, 106, 115, 119–20, 125–8, 130–2, 134–7, 146, 158, 177–8, 197, 216 Lagos, 72 Lamy, Amédée-François, 66 language, 5, 21, 33, 62, 99, 101–2, 126–7, 146, 150, 159, 164, 176, 180, 182, 186, 195, 203 Lauvergeon, Anne, 216 leather, 19, 33–4, 56, 63 Lecocq, Baz, 6, 101 Les amis de Timia, 203

302

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Lhote, Henri, 80, 94 liberalization, 104 Libya, 3, 5–7, 25, 47, 143–7, 149–50, 153, 155, 158–60, 162–3, 165–6, 169, 171, 177, 197, 208, 214, 219–20, 223, 226–9 lifestyle, 11–12, 15–16, 33, 46–7, 54–5, 57, 130, 182, 184, 186 lifeworlds, 172, 183 lineage, 28, 53, 80, 84, 109, 152, 158, 161, 187 Lo’Jo, 166 local, 1–2, 5, 7–8, 18–21, 23–31, 36, 38–9, 46, 57, 80, 85, 89, 94, 100–1, 104–5, 130–3, 135–6, 138–42, 146–7, 150, 156, 158–9, 161, 166–8, 171–5, 179–80, 185–8, 198–201, 203–4, 209–11, 213, 216–18, 220, 223, 226, 228–9 loneliness, 15, 50–1, 58 loyalty, 149 Lunacek, Sarah, 7 Lyon, George Francis, 61–4, 68, 73 McDonough, Craig, 100 Maghreb, 48, 144–5, 151, 167, 222 Magnant, Jean-Pierre, 82 Maison de Luxembourg, 139, 141 Malaysia, 44 Mali, 3, 5, 7, 25–7, 53, 56, 92, 99–101, 103, 110, 117, 126–7, 133–5, 139, 143–4, 147, 150, 155–8, 160, 163, 165–6, 168–9, 175, 197, 208, 210, 212–13, 219–20, 222–3, 225–7, 229 Mali–Niger Tuareg Alliance (ATNM), 226 Malkki, Liisa H., 27, 31 Mammeri, Mouloud, 75 Mandara, 20 marabout, 32, 49, 112, 117, 126–7, 129, 136, 139–40, 198, 204

marginalization, 5, 35, 38, 144, 149, 156–7, 173–4, 208, 221 market, 19–21, 37, 46, 129, 161, 168–9, 172, 174, 180, 187, 202 marriage, 7, 33–5, 77, 94, 96, 109, 111–17, 120, 122, 131, 133–4, 137–8, 144, 151–3, 181; ceremony, 112–14; forced, 111, 113, 118, 122; payment, 7, 112–14, 116, 123; status, 112 Marseilles, 167 Marxism, 24 master, 92, 94, 96, 99, 101–2, 120, 179 Masufa Sanhaja, 52 matrilineal system, 53, 76, 80, 83–5, 125, 152, 182 Mauritania, 25, 117, 139, 220, 226 Mayhew, Henry, 12 Mbembe, Achille, 43 Mecca, 37, 116–17 media, 28, 36, 130, 132, 138, 141, 156, 169, 212, 222, 225 Mediterranean, 20, 24, 35 membership, 5, 29, 81 Menaka, 102, 222 micro credit, 202 Middle East, 24–5, 30, 47 Miers, Suzanne, 119, 123 migrants, 11, 14, 23–7, 29, 31–4, 38–9, 42–3, 54, 104–5, 116–17, 146–8, 158, 163, 222 migration, 24, 26–8, 37, 44–5, 47–8, 54, 104–6, 109, 113, 117–18, 125, 130, 132, 135, 137, 143, 147–8, 151, 153, 156, 158, 170, 177, 229 minority, 37–8, 96, 182, 197, 220 mobility, 2, 6, 12–16, 21, 23–31, 35–9, 42–3, 46–9, 57, 82, 86, 91, 101, 104–6, 134, 140, 144, 147, 157, 159, 163, 170–1, 184, 187 modernity, 42, 129–30, 132, 140–1, 151, 155, 187

INDEX

money, 7, 36–7, 65–6, 104, 109, 113–14, 117, 144–5, 147, 154, 160–1, 178, 180–1, 184–5, 197, 201–3, 205–6 monogamy, 136 Moorish, 53, 131, 161, 163 morality, 15, 153 Morocco, 25, 62, 84, 169 Mouridiyya, 48 Mouvement Populaire Ganda Koy (MPGK), 103 movement, 1, 7, 12, 15, 21, 23, 25, 29, 45, 49, 57, 157–8, 164, 166, 183; seasonal, 26 Mozabites, 81 Mulathamin, 62 multiculturalism, 42 multi-ethnic, 127, 129–30, 132, 161, 186 Murzuq, 52, 61–3, 68 music, 7, 37, 156–7, 159–70; pop, 165; world, 36, 155–6, 167–8 musicians, 36, 126, 160–1, 165–8 Muslim, 47, 53, 85, 148, 151–3, 177 nasara, 194 Nassara party, 213 nation, 5, 18, 24–5, 42, 45, 54, 62, 126, 146, 148–50 National Forces for Intervention and Security (FNIS), 210, 218 National Poverty Reduction Strategy, 200 nationalism, 46, 229 nationality, 144, 158, 199 Navaro, 167 network, 20–1, 29, 44, 46, 48–50, 58, 156, 159, 222 New York, 175 New Zealand, 44 Niamey, 5, 48, 109, 158, 161, 166, 173, 203, 224 Nicolaisen, Ida, 55, 93 Nicolaisen, Johannes, 55, 61, 77–80, 83, 85–6, 93–4, 100

303 Niger, 2, 5–8, 15, 19, 25, 27, 54, 56, 73, 92, 94, 99, 101–3, 110, 126, 128, 131, 133, 135, 139, 143–5, 147, 149–50, 155, 157–8, 160, 163–9, 171–5, 181–2, 184, 187, 191, 193–4, 196–7, 200–4, 206, 208–27, 229 Niger Armed Forces (FAN), 210–11, 218, 227 Niger bend, 48, 156, 160 Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ), 54, 208, 210, 214, 218, 223–8 Nigeria, 18, 165, 177, 224, 228; Nigerians, 192 nobles, 7, 77–9, 83, 85–6, 93, 131, 134, 139, 178 nomad, 11–12, 14–21, 32, 41, 50–2, 55, 158–9, 171, 182, 188; nomadic, 1, 4, 12–17, 20–1, 24, 33–4, 48, 52, 55, 57–8, 74–5, 77, 79–80, 82–3, 127–8, 131–4, 136, 141, 143–4, 147–9, 172–3, 175, 180, 186, 198, 201, 207, 214, 217; nomadism, 6, 8, 11–15, 21–2, 24–7, 29–33, 35–8, 75, 82, 86, 130, 132, 136, 142 norms, 7, 71, 121, 146, 150, 152, 194 North Africa, 127 nostalgia, 31–2, 186 Nupe, 65 Occidentalism, 191, 193, 208 occupation, 52, 110, 121, 125, 147, 192, 198 offspring, 80, 90, 94, 100–1, 111, 113–16, 118, 120, 123, 153 oil, 6, 8, 145, 213–15, 218–20 Olivier de Sardin, Jean-Pierre, 203 Operation Flintlock, 225 organization, 21, 28, 46, 48, 54, 56, 78–9, 89, 92, 95, 105, 162 Oric, Bates, 83 Orient, 191; Orientalism, 191, 208

304

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

origin, 7, 11, 14, 48, 53, 55, 61, 63, 78–9, 83, 86, 91, 103, 127, 130, 134, 153, 158, 160, 172, 174–5, 183, 194, 226 Ottoman, 4 Ouagadougou, 5 Oumbadougou, Abdallah ag, 165–7 ownership, 27, 53, 79, 90, 100, 134, 138 Oxby, Claire, 99–100 Pandolfi, Paul, 35 Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI), 214, 225 Paris, 18, 37, 173, 175 Park, Mungo, 196 participation, 6, 13, 43, 46, 146, 167, 173, 175, 191, 200, 202 passports, 54, 144, 149 pastoralism, 6, 11–12, 15, 23, 26–7, 38, 144; pastoralists, 23–8, 38–9, 127, 144, 174, 182, 217 patrilineal system, 83, 85, 96, 125, 152 patronage, 29 peace, 150, 165–6, 176, 227, 229; accord, 213–14, 218; agreement, 165–6, 226 perception, 21, 49–50, 171, 174, 185 performance, 37, 45, 47, 163, 166 periphery, 1, 5, 16, 46, 49 Peul, 5 philosophy, 15–16 Picard, Michel, 172 pollution, 31, 217 polygamy, 32, 34 Popenoe, Rebecca, 133 population, 1, 13, 23–5, 55, 75, 99, 104, 145–6, 177, 179, 196, 200–1, 203, 205, 208–9, 211, 218, 220, 228 postmodern, 6, 12, 16, 20–2, 38 power, 5, 8, 45, 77, 79, 82, 84, 97, 99, 101–2, 111, 116, 119–20,

130, 132, 137, 146, 150, 192–3, 203, 210 Prasse, Karl-Gottfried, 80 precolonial, 63, 72, 92–3, 97, 129–30, 174, 196 production, 13, 48, 91, 95, 97, 101, 104, 106, 145, 214–15, 221 project, 54, 104, 106, 166–7, 192, 198–204, 206; research, 41 property, 76, 79, 85, 90–1, 95, 109, 111, 114–16, 119, 123, 126, 134, 137; rights, 119–20, 122–3 purity, 31, 32–3, 35, 137 Radio Tisdas, 129 radioactivity, 216 Ramadan, 209, 226 Rasmussen, Susan, 7 rebel/rebels, 2, 25–6, 28, 36, 150–1, 196, 210–11, 213, 216, 218–22, 224–7, 229 rebellion, 6, 8, 30, 54, 102–3, 126, 149–51, 155, 163–5, 174, 175, 180, 188, 196, 207–15, 217, 219–24, 226–8 refugees, 23–7, 29, 31–2, 34, 38–9, 126, 158–9, 166; refugee camps, 26, 28–9, 31–2, 34 religion, 17, 48, 119, 162, 194–5, 198, 206 relocation, 45 representation, 27, 29, 36, 170, 191–2 repression, 103 reproduction, 82, 91, 95, 152, 160 research, 6, 11–12, 15, 21–2, 27–31, 41, 79, 84, 86, 90, 92–3, 98–100, 103, 105, 109, 122, 126, 135, 176, 192, 202, 212, 216, 225; research team, 198 reserve, 41, 125, 128, 130, 132, 138–40, 146, 218 resistance, 2, 36, 71–3, 75, 85, 102, 119, 130, 141, 211, 215–16 resources, 3, 6–8, 15, 25–6, 28–9,

INDEX

31, 33, 38–9, 43, 92, 95–6, 134, 157, 160, 168, 174, 177, 181, 193, 198, 203, 217–19 revolutionary system, 145 rhizome, 16 Richardson, James, 61, 64, 68–9, 72 ritual, 113, 127, 135, 139; rituals, 112, 125–6 Rodd, Francis A., 61, 68–9 Rolling Stones, 168 Romanucci-Ross, Lola, 110 Rossi, Benedetta, 7, 202 Sahara, 1–3, 5, 7, 11, 13–14, 16–22, 36, 52–3, 58, 62, 72, 83–4, 125, 145, 147, 149, 153–9, 162, 169–71, 173–4, 184, 192, 206, 209, 212–13, 217, 219–20, 222, 225, 227, 229 Sahel, 1, 3, 5, 7, 49, 52–3, 92, 104, 144, 156, 169, 196, 212, 217, 220, 222–3, 225–6, 229 Said, Edward, 191 Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), 212, 222 Salzman, Philip C., 12–13 Sanhaja, 52 Sarakole, 48 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 224 Saudi Arabia, 48 Scholze, Marko, 7, 199 school/schooling, 5, 20, 36, 42, 78–9, 117, 138, 167, 176, 197–8, 205, 208 Sebha, 150–1, 158, 166 Second World War, 98 secularization, 44 sedentarization, 1, 25, 29, 31, 52, 128–9, 132, 135 Sekiret, 217 self-assurance, 71 semi-nomadic, 125, 192 Semori, 214 Senegalese, 48, 129

305 Sennett, Richard, 44 sexuality, 7, 101, 116–17, 119, 132 Sherpa, 216 silk, 63, 65 Silverman, Eric Kline, 172 Simmel, Georg, 50, 54 Singapore, 44 Siwa, 62 slaves, 7, 33, 86, 89–91, 93–101, 105–6, 110, 119–22, 126–7, 134–5; slavery, 6–7, 89–92, 97–9, 101, 105–6, 111, 119, 122–3, 126–8 smuggling, 147, 157, 227 social stratification, 6, 133, 192 solidarity, 15, 47, 49, 207 Somair, 215 Songhay, 30, 92, 100–1, 103, 128–9, 160–1, 226 South Africa, 215, 224 spirit possession, 118 Spittler, Gerd, 6, 15, 52, 61, 86, 184, 195–6, 207 stasis, 6, 23–31, 38–9 state, 5, 8, 18, 31, 45, 54, 85–6, 91, 126, 132, 145–7, 149, 157–8, 164, 173, 200, 202, 207–8, 219, 226, 230 status, 7, 25, 28–9, 33–4, 44, 50, 80, 89, –91, 93–4, 96–105, 109, 112, 116–17, 122, 128, 132, 135–6, 144, 150, 152, 158, 160–1, 182, 185–6, 192, 218, 229 stereotype, 35, 45, 138, 180 stigmatization, 31, 35, 91–2, 119, 122 stockbreeding, 13–15, 127, 141, 202 stratification, 6, 71, 192 subculture, 7, 172–3, 183, 186–7 succession, 83, 125 Sudan, 63, 66 Switzerland, 173, 175, 181 syncretization, 71

306

TUAREG SOCIETY WITHIN A GLOBALIZED WORLD

Tabliŕi Jama’at, 47 Tademekkat, 52–3 Tafilalet, 84 Tagdoufat, 192, 201, 205 tagelmust, 70, 72, 87, 134, 207 taggalt, 33, 112–18, 120, 123 Tahaggart, 159–60, 162 Tahoua, 93, 101–2, 202–3 Taiwan, 18 Takammat, 84–5 takarakit, 128, 132, 139–40, 152–3, 185, 195 Takemmat, 83 Takrist-n-Akal, 165–8 tamangad, 113 Tamanrasset, 13, 157–9, 161, 222 Tamasheq, 1, 5, 50–1, 53, 55–7, 81, 84, 91, 99, 101, 127, 129, 134, 148, 181, 193 Tamentit, 52 tamerkest, 151–3 Tamesna, 158, 165, 214–15, 217, 223, 228 Tamgak, 220 Tanamak, 52 Tandja, Mamadou, 209, 211, 213, 216, 221, 224, 227, 229–30 Taoudennit, 52, 56 Targi, 176 Tarki, 65 Tassili, 75–6, 82 Tassili n Azjer, 3, 75, 100, 217 Tawarek, 65, 73 tawsit, 32, 95, 127 Taytoq, 3 Tazerzait, 210 Tchin Tabaradene, 221 Tchirozerin, 198, 210 Teguida n Tesimt, 52 teherdent, 160–3, 166–7 television, 55–6, 110, 130, 138–9, 154, 166, 200, 205 Temet Voyage, 175 temujaŕa, 219

Tenere, 171, 173, 175, 178–80, 185, 215 Tengueregif, 48 terminology, 7, 42, 92–3, 99, 102, 130 terror, 222; terror zone, 213, 225; terrorism, 213, 225, 227; terrorist, 212, 222, 225; see also war on terror teshumara, 54, 151 tesirnest, 18 Tessalit, 53 Tibesti, 62 Tidawt, 165, 168 tifinaŕ, 129 Tilaqqin, 158, 166 Tillabery, 226 Tillia, 200 Timajeŕen, 128, 135 Timbuktu, 52–3, 100, 160, 166, 196 Timia, 6, 61, 69, 176, 192–5, 197–201, 204–7, 292 Timidria, 94 Tin Hinan, 83–5 Tin Zaouatene, 210, 226 Tinariwen, 36, 139, 155, 160, 162–3, 166–7, 169 tinde, 55, 145, 159–60, 162, 167 Tintellust, 61, 69 tishumar, 131, 144, 151 Toumast, 165 Touraine, Alain, 44 Touré, Ali Farka, 167 tourism, 7, 17, 20, 26, 37, 46, 57, 147, 159, 166, 171–6, 178, 180–2, 184, 187–8, 195, 197, 200, 213, 229; tourist industry, 171; tourist market, 187; tourist office, 176 Touro, 117 Toyota Land Cruiser, 172, 184 trade, 17, 23–4, 26, 28–30, 37, 45, 51–3, 95–6, 132, 147, 184 tradition, 6, 24, 32–3, 38, 51–2, 71,

307

INDEX

79, 157, 159–60, 163, 172, 175 trafficking, 223, 227–9 transformation, 2, 54, 91, 97, 165, 199 transhumance, 34, 56, 95, 127, 134 transition, 2, 6, 66, 157, 165 transnational, 1–2, 8, 24, 29–31, 43, 45, 54, 148, 156–7, 159, 169 transport, 44, 57, 147, 169, 171, 184 Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI), 225–6 travel, 20, 30, 37, 48, 67, 117, 130, 137, 146, 151, 158, 171, 175, 177, 179, 184, 186, 205 travel agencies, 20, 46–7, 147, 152, 171, 172–3, 175–6, 180–2, 185, 188 tribe, 55–6, 78, 148, 196; tribal, 48, 78, 148–9, 153; tribal affiliation, 8, 47, 55, 147 Tripoli, 5, 52, 72, 151 Tripolitania, 63 Tubu, 82, 214 tumast, 25, 30 turban, 64, 67, 134, 164 Twat, 81, 84 Twat-Tdidkelt, 86 Ubari, 150, 158, 166 Udalan, 98, 109, 114, 117 UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples (UNWGIP), 217 unemployment, 13, 104, 131, 144 UNICEF, 200 Union for Democracy and Social Progress (UDPS), 166 United Kingdom, 215, 224 United Nations Human Rights Council, 217 United States, 5, 8, 45, 47, 133, 168, 173, 212–13, 215, 220–1, 225 United States African Command

(AFRICOM), 225 uranium, 6, 8, 168, 175, 177, 198, 208, 210–11, 214–15, 217–18, 221, 223–4, 228 urban, 1, 5–7, 11–14, 16, 19–22, 24–5, 29–30, 33–4, 43, 51–7, 104, 118, 126–30, 138, 140–2, 158, 160–2, 165, 169, 186–8, 192 values, 7, 21, 31–2, 35, 89, 121, 125, 130, 141, 146, 150, 152, 161, 181, 185–6 vassals, 7, 77, 79, 81, 85–6 veil, 61, 63, 67, 73, 134, 164, 180; veiled men, 36, 70, 72, 87, 174 Vertovec, Steven, 24 victims, 17, 42, 46, 123 Vienna, 182 virginity, 113 vitality, 13–14, 71, 159, 166 voice, 94, 102 Vos, George de, 110 Walata, 52 war, 8, 27, 64, 90, 143, 160, 165, 168–9 war on terror, 8, 212–13, 220–1, 225, 228–9; see also terror; war Washington, 212–13, 221, 225, 227 Weingärtner, Pitt, 204 West Africa, 48, 69, 97, 156 Westernized, 172 wilaya, 157, 222 Winter, Michael, 101 Wodaabe Fulbe, 74 Woodabe, 167 World Health Organization, 216 youth, 136, 138–9, 162–3, 165–6, 168–70, 177 zahuten, 159, 160 Zénètes, 75