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Revolutions in North Africa: AView from the South of the Continent
| Content Provider | Scilit |
|---|---|
| Copyright Year | 2014 |
| Abstract | The historic events in North Africa since December 2010 have affected, in multiple ways, the countries sharing common borders across the Sahara Desert and even countries further to the south. Among the countries of the Sahara and Sahel that have not directly had sustained uprisings but were and are influenced by the 'Arab Spring' are Mali and Sudan. The coup d'état in Mali in late March 2012 was led by middle-ranking officers critical of the government's inability to deal with an armed insurgency by the Tuaregs in the northern parts of the country. The Tuareg insurgents eventually declared independence for the country's entire north-eastern region known as the Azawad. The insurgents were apparently emboldened by well-equipped and trained Tuareg fighters who had fled Libya after the uprising and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) bombing of that country and the eventual killing of Colonel Gaddafi in October 2011. Malian soldiers in distant northern towns such as Kidal, Timbuktu and Gao simply fled from their posts when the rebels approached. The coup d'état, the subsequent withdrawal of the military and the installation of a caretaker president who was then attacked in his office, and the occupation of the key northern towns by different factions of the rebels – including a militant Wahhabi grouping called Ansar al-Din – represented a wholly unstable situation in Mali. This is the most outstanding case of the unintended consequences and external impact of the so-called Arab Spring on the continent. In January 2013 the French landed in Mali to recover Malian territory taken by the rebels. The Arab Spring was watched with great interest throughout the continent. Rulersand ruled alike kept an eye on the dramatic developments in Tunis and Maydan al-Tahrir, with rulers fearing similarly threatening events that could unseat them and various sections of the citizenry keenly interested to adapt some of the lessons of protest in their own countries. Thus, in Zimbabwe there was a ban on people communicating about the events in Egypt. There were protests from June 2011 in Senegal against the presidential re-election campaign of Abdullahi Wade. The 80-year-old had received a High Court judgement allowing him to run for a third term. He was eventually beaten in the run-off election by Macky Sall. |
| Related Links | https://api.taylorfrancis.com/content/chapters/edit/download?identifierName=doi&identifierValue=10.4324/9781315763026-64&type=chapterpdf |
| Ending Page | 596 |
| Page Count | 10 |
| Starting Page | 587 |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781315763026-64 |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited |
| Publisher Date | 2014-12-17 |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Subject Keyword | Book Name: Routledge Handbook of the Arab Spring Cultural Studies Wholly Unstable |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Chapter |
