Why no thread on the French military intervention in Mali?

[PLATO]

Hey, here's this unsupported link that agrees with my world view!

Facts just bother some people, don't they?

[Sava]

No, they're waiting to see if Italy swaps sides first.

[Fake Boris]

Facts just bother some people, don't they?

OK, so a study from a no-name group that considers Buenos Aires and Caracas to be in the same "region" finds that criminality is highest in Caracas, thus Chavez' regime must be a failure.

[Dinner]

Chavas's regime is a failure but not for that reason. Oh, and it most certainly did rig the districts with gerrymandering to hell and back yet still just barely held on to Congress. If you're trying to thwart the actual voters then you're not being very democratic and you know you're not as popular as you're claiming.

In any event Chavas's policies read like a road book on how to not run a country or how to run an economy into the ground.

[regexcellent]

As I understand he didn't just gerrymander the districts. The districts are of unequal size by population. It's like how state senates used to be, over-representing rural areas.

[molly bloom]

The collapse in 1940 was quite unexpected and has coloured perceptions of the French military ever since.

That and the Simpsons. From Niall Ferguson and the 2nd Q.I. Book, which I read between Christmas and New Year:

Which country is the most successful military power in European history?

France. According to the historian Niall Ferguson, of the 125 major European wars fought since 1495, the French have participated in 50 – more than Austria (47) and England (43). Out of 168 battles fought since 387BC, they have won 109, lost 49 and drawn 10.

The British tend to be rather selective about the battles they remember. Every English schoolboy was once able to recite the roll call of our glorious wins at Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356) and Agincourt (1415), but no one’s ever heard of the French victories at Patay (1429) and (especially) at Castillon (1453), where French cannons tore the English apart, winning the Hundred Years War and confirming France as the most powerful military nation in Europe.

And what about the Duke of Enghien thrashing the Spanish at Rocroi late on in the Thirty Years War in 1643, ending a century of Spanish dominance? Or the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, when General Comte de Rochambeau and American forces prevailed? The British always prided themselves on superiority at sea, but knew they could never win a land war on the Continent.

France’s achievements help to explain another French “military victory”. Whether it is ranks (general, captain, corporal, lieutenant); equipment (lance, mine, bayonet, epaulette, trench); organisation (volunteer, regiment, soldier, barracks) or strategy (army, camouflage, combat, esprit de corps, reconnaissance), the language of warfare is French.

'The Second Book of General Ignorance' by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson

This site is quite interesting too: http://xenophongroup.com/mcjoynt/suffren.htm

Imagine a country being indebted to France for its independence...

[molly bloom]

More winning hearts and minds by the rebels/terrorists in Mali:

The reported destruction of two important manuscript collections by Islamist rebels as they fled Timbuktu is an offence to the whole of Africa and its universally important cultural heritage. Like their systematic destruction of 300 Sufi saints' shrines while they held Timbuktu at their mercy, it is an assault on world heritage comparable with the demolition of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001.

The literary heritage of Timbuktu dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries when the gold-rich kingdoms of Mali and Songhai traded across the Sahara with the Mediterranean world. It took two months for merchant caravans to cross the desert, and while gold and slaves went north, books were going south.

In his Description of Africa, published in 1550, the traveller Leo Africanus marvels that in the bustling markets of Timbuktu, under the towers of its majestic mosques, the richest traders were booksellers.

They were selling manuscripts by Arab scholars on everything from astronomy and arithmetic to Islamic law, as well as mystical texts on Sufism, the otherworldly, saintly style of faith that the al-Qaida-affiliated Ansar Dine finds so offensive.

This legacy of Arab learning that goes back to the great scientists and mathematicians who preserved the classical Greek heritage in the early middle ages is richly represented in the manuscripts of Timbuktu – but not necessarily in its original form. For scribes copied and recopied books in this city that loved leaning, creating a legacy of works transcribed in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as earlier.

They also wrote down their own history and laws, chronicling the families of Timbuktu and preserving the poetry and stories of north Africa – at least, that is what seems to have lain in the many manuscripts of Timbuktu's lost legacy that were just starting to be properly conserved when this terrible religious vandalism plagued the city.

When European empires scrambled for Africa in the 19th century the continent was seen as illiterate and lacking in history, memory, or literature. Its art was seen as "primitive", partly because it lacked a written art history.

Timbuktu is a palimpsest in the sand that proves otherwise. Libraries like the Ahmed Baba institute were rescuing Africa's history from oblivion. Timbuktu is Africa's city of books and learning that disproved racist myths about the continent. That luminous inheritance is what the Islamists have destroyed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/28/destruction-timbuktu-manuscripts-offence-africa

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/gallery/2013/jan/28/ahmed-baba-library-torched-islamist-pictures#/?picture=403139870&index=2

[Dinner]

Religion once again proves how destructive it is in the world.

[The Mad Monk]

Timbuktu Update

30 January 2013

13.00, Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Tombouctou Manuscripts Project
(http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org)
Huma (Institute for humanities in Africa)
University of Cape Town

Since the start of this week there are reports about the destruction of library buildings and book collections in Timbuktu. It sounds as if the written heritage of the town went up in flames. According to our information this is not the case at all. The custodians of the libraries worked quietly throughout the rebel occupation of Timbuktu to ensure the safety of their materials. A limited number of items have been damaged or stolen, the infrastructure neglected and furnishings in the Ahmad Baba Institute library looted but from all our local sources – all intimately connected with the public and private collections in the town - there was no malicious destruction of any library or collection.

By Sunday January 27 the Ansar Dine rebels had fled Timbuktu. The French army and its Malian partners entered the town on that day.

One of the first reports on Monday morning out of the town was that a library and books had been set alight. A Sky News journalist, Alex Crawford, embedded with the French forces, reported in the evening from inside the new Ahmad Baba building, which is opposite the Sankore mosque. This building was officially opened in 2009 and is the product of a partnership between South Africa and Mali. It is meant to be a state-of-the-art archival, conservation, and research facility. Images showed empty manuscript enclosures strewn on the floor, some burnt leather pouches, and a small pile of ashes. She reported that over 25,000 mss had been burned or disappeared. Additional images showed her going down to the vault of the archives and looking at empty display cabinets. No signs of fire could be seen.

The mayor of Timbuktu, Hallè Ousmane, based around 800 km away, in Bamako, was quoted in various media reports that a library building and manuscripts were torched by fleeing rebels. There is no other evidence but the word of the mayor. News spread to international media and the mayor’s words were reported as hard fact.

We tried all of Monday, since these reports appeared, to contact colleagues in Timbuktu but without success. The town was in a communications and electricity blackout since around January 20, we were told by Malian colleagues; no eyewitness reports had been coming out of the town for more than a week at this point.

Sources from Bamako in the evening reported that Mohamed Ibrahim Cissé, President of the Chairman of the Board of the Cercle of Timbuktu still confirmed, on France 24, that the new Ahmed Baba Institute building had been burned by the Ansar Dine before fleeing.

By Monday night we finally managed to contact our colleague, Dr Mohamed Diagayeté, senior researcher at the Ahmad Baba Institue, now based in Bamako. He heard much the same reports that we heard. However, he added that the majority of the mss. of the Institute was still stored in the old building – opened in 1974 and on the other side of the town, from the new building. He told us that the latest news about the new building, as of eight days before the flight of the Ansar Dine, was that the building had not been destroyed. He said that around 10,000 mss had been stored in the new building since there was no more space for the mss in the old building. They were placed in trunks in the vaults of the new building. Upstairs, where the restoration was taking place and boxes were made there were only a few mss. After seeing Sky News footage, he says that the images were of the few mss upstairs waiting to be worked on by the conservators.

However, by Tuesday morning, Dr. Mahmoud Zouber, Mali’s presidential aide on Islamic affairs and founding director of the Ahmad Baba Institute, told Time, that before the rebel take-over the manuscripts: “They were put in a very safe place. I can guarantee you. The manuscripts are in total security.”

Finally, the journalist Markus M. Haeflinger, writing in Neue Zuercher Zeitung this morning, reports on his interview with the previous and present directors of the Ahmad Baba Institute in Bamako, on how the larger part of the Ahmad Baba collection was hidden and even transported out of Timbuktu during the crisis.

The protection of the cultural and intellectual heritage of this region needs to be enhanced and promoted. The abandonment of the security of Timbuktu nine months ago, the flight of archivists and researchers, and the closure of libraries should not be repeated. We remain in contact with our colleagues in Mali and are keen to establish precisely which manuscripts were damaged, destroyed, or stolen.

http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/blog/entry/timbuktu_update/

Why does Timbuktu matter?

31 January 2013

Tombouctou Manuscripts Project
(http://www.tombouctoumansucripts.org)
Huma (Institute for humanities in Africa)
University of Cape Town

Timbuktu sits on the edge of Saharan desert. It was a trading entrepôt in the age when the camel was the only means of transport and it became a centre of commerce in the region; trade in books come to be part of that exchange network. The city and its desert environs are an archive of handwritten texts in Arabic and in African languages in the Arabic script (mainly, Fulani and Songhay), produced, it appears, between the 13th and the 20th centuries. The earliest date of written heritage is still speculation for no scientific tests have been done on inks and paper.

A recent estimation by a prominent Timbuktu researcher and collector, Abdel Kader Haïdara, refers to 101,820 manuscripts, stored in about numerous private libraries and a state-run archive in the town. By manuscripts we mean hand-written books, not handwritten scrolls. Moreover, the handwriting reflects a series of regional styles of calligraphy mostly unique to West Africa.

The texts included in the manuscripts display a wide range of topics, covering the traditional Islamic sciences. The majority are works on Qur’anic sciences, Theology, Jurisprudence, Mysticism, Grammar, Medicine, Mathematics, History and Esoteric Sciences such as Astrology and Numerology. Some of these works were written by eminent Muslim scholars from all over the Islamic world, while others were composed by local scholars and their students. In addition, the Timbuktu libraries contain materials relating to local concerns, such private letters as well as official state correspondence, legal documents and fatwas (juridical rulings).

The libraries of Timbuktu are significant repositories of scholarly production in West Africa and the Sahara. They are part of a larger regional phenomenon of book collecting across the Saharan and Sahel regions. These manuscripts are a unique and invaluable treasure and heritage which sheds light on this vast area’s African past, from the age of the great African states of the pre-colonial and into the colonial periods.

This documentation debunks the still prevalent stereotype that Africa is a continent only characterized by oral cultures and lacking of any written heritage. The scholarly culture of Timbuktu demonstrates the close link between written and oral heritage, that represent a continuum more than a break. In this light, the dichotomy between oral and written culture often referred to in relation to Africa is unsustainable.

Given the large number of manuscript collections it is surprising that Timbuktu, as an archive still remains largely unknown and under-utilized. Conservation efforts are on-going but there is much left to be done and only a small percentage of the manuscripts has been digitized. Moreover, few of these manuscripts have been properly catalogued, studied and translated.

Among the works translated from Timbuktu are the two major chronicles, the Ta’rikh al-Sudan by al-Sa‘di, and the Ta’rikh al-Fattash, of contested authorship. These chronicles describe the apogee of Timbuktu during the epoch of the Songhay state in the 16th century. The authors offer us a clear portrait of the city’s vibrant intellectual life and include copious biographical notes on its scholars. Among them Ahmad Baba is one of the most famous; he was such a prolific scholar that he left more than sixty works on different topics. Deported to Marakesh after the Moroccan conquest of Timbuktu in 1591, Ahmad Baba managed to become a renowned scholar there where he taught in some of the most celebrated study-circles of North Africa before returning to his homeland.

However, Ahmad Baba is not the only representative of the learned environment of Timbuktu. Other scholars came before him, the likes of Muhammad al-Kabari, the first scholar in the chain of transmission of learning from Timbuktu who lived in the 15th century, or Muhammad Bagayogho, Ahmad Baba’s teacher. Other scholars came after the apogee of Timbuktu. The well-known family of the Kunta, with Sidi al-Mukhtar, Sidi Muhammad, Ahmad al-Bakkay and Shaykh Bay dominated the intellectual life of Timbuktu for almost one century and a half, from the late 18th to the early colonial period. During the French occupation, it was Ahmad Bul‘araf who distinguished himself. Bibliophile and entrepreneur of the book market, he owned a workshop for copying manuscripts that overrun the libraries of the city as testified by the huge number of documents bearing his signature. He was himself quite a prolific scholar.

The manuscript culture in Timbuktu does not only belong to the past, if we consider that one of the most important scholars of the present, Shaykh Hammu, continues to produce works in manuscript format.

Timbuktu is a significant starting-point for reflecting on Africa’s written traditions. In fact, it does not represent an isolated case in the continent. Other West African regions, as well as other areas such as Ethiopia, the East African coasts from Somalia to northern Mozambique, as well as in the Cape since Dutch rule, were characterized written cultures that were in the Arabic script. Only comprehensive research on this inadequately charted heritage will give us fuller understanding of many aspects yet unknown of Africa’s past.

Authored by Mauro Nobili (Ph.D. in African Studies at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” [2008] and Post-Doctoral fellow at the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project – University of Cape Town), Susana Molins-Lliteras (Ph.D. candidate in Historical Studies and researcher at the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project – University of Cape Town) & Shamil Jeppie (A/Prof., Director Tombouctou Manuscripts Project –University of Cape Town).

http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/blog/entry/why_does_timbuktu_matter/

[Dauphin]

France’s achievements help to explain another French “military victory”. Whether it is ranks (general, captain, corporal, lieutenant); equipment (lance, mine, bayonet, epaulette, trench); organisation (volunteer, regiment, soldier, barracks) or strategy (army, camouflage, combat, esprit de corps, reconnaissance), the language of warfare is French.

Given English vocabulary in general is very French in origin, how can they be sure that the words are French military in origin and not just French root words.

I'd think they'd have thought of that, but I'd be interested if you have a link.

[MichaeltheGreat]

One that's the very definition of an ungrateful teenager...

If it wasn't for that ungrateful teenager, both you and the frogs would be speaking German now.

[Alexander's Horse]

Maybe but in both great wars if Germany won the more likely outcome would have been Britain coming to terms with Germany without anhiliation, the "save the silverware" outcome. The combination of the German army with the British Navy raises some interesting possibilities. Adroit diplomacy and changing sides, or allies, at the right time is part of Britain's greatness.

The Germans in both wars, could never understand why Britain allied with its traditional enemy, the French.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Lord Palmerston's principle.

[Dinner]

My money is on the French declaring victory in the next few months then going home while no sooner do they leave then the civil war restarts.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

It will be interesting to see how do they act in the aftermath, at least retaking the towns was pretty painless, plus locals actually love them for a change.