Mali’s Accord on Peace and Reconciliation, reached on 1 March 2015 after eight months and five negotiating rounds, is fragile. International mediation efforts steered by Algeria involved the UN, the EU, the African Union, ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States), the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. But initially the only signatories were the Malian government and the Northern Mali Platform Movement, an umbrella group of pro-government movements. It was not signed by the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), the organisation that brings together the rebel movements pressing for autonomy for Azawad — a territory in northern Mali which is almost entirely desert — until 15 May, and additional negotiations were needed to get the CMA to sign the Algiers accord in Bamako on 20 June. This year, jihadist terrorist attacks in the city of Gao, and in Diabaly in central Mali, have killed around 40 civilians and Malian soldiers. French forces in Operation Barkhane back the Malian military.

The problem is that the crisis is multi-dimensional: it is about the challenges faced by the people in the north, as well as redefining the balance between north and south, made worse by inter-communal violence in 2012-3.

In the past, regular uprisings led by Tuareg chiefs ended with peace agreements that skated over the problem, and risked maintaining or even aggravating the grievances: Tuareg groups were co-opted or integrated into national bodies, and subsidies and alternative employment for demobbed soldiers were offered.

But the emergence of a lucrative drugs trade and the arrival of jihadism have changed socioeconomic power relations through hostage-taking and ransoms. Because of greater contact with the Gulf states through trade and migration, charitable institutions are now spreading radical Islamist ideology, which is gradually gaining a foothold in Sahelian societies. There has been a convergence of interests and (...)