Are there Pokémons to hunt in Mali?
In Bamako? Maybe … But in Timbuktu, Gao or Kidal?
Or maybe in the Jihadist camps, sheltered in the rocky and remote corners of the Ifoghas Adrar mountains in Mali?
“Our armoured vehicles resist an anti-tank mine. That’s seven or eight kilograms of explosives… but when they put two hundred and fifty kilos of the stuff on the road, then even the armoured vehicle opens up like a tin of tuna…”
Why has Mali (nearly) entirely disappeared from the radars of the Western mass media?
Why is the same thing happening to Libya, which is crumbling a little bit more every day and descending into mayhem?
Why do the Western military interventions fail everywhere against a political Islam determined to be the victor and against a divided Arab world whose factions never loosen the hold?
In 2013 I went from Bamako to Timbuktu, by jeep through the desert. It was risky, but doable. Today it would be crazy to try again.
The situation in Mali did not improve, quite on the contrary: the omnipresent Islamist force (not present anymore in the urban centres, but inevitable as soon as one moves into the suburbs) has been joined by violent banditism, favouring disorder; also the numerous ethnical and clanic movements make the situation in the country even more complicated – Mali stand on the verge of civil war.
I am not exaggerating when I speak of ‘somalisation’.
Furthermore, the centre of Mali is as of now severely weakened by the Peul revolt; the phenomenon – the ‘somalisation’ – does not limit itself to the north, the region of Azawad, where no governmental structure whatsoever exists anymore. It spreads and the insecurity is also real in Bamako, the capital.
Let us insist to really know: who has previously heard of Mali in the evening news?!
The Western media are silent… Pokémon Go: society inebriates itself in a fictive world, incapable to act in reality, a society that is disconnected from the real world, preferring to shy away in the fake and virtual, being voluntarily manipulated. But that is an entirely different debate… Or is it?
And in the meantime…
Whilst society is catching Pokémon, Aleppo (finally) returns to the front-pages of the mainstream current affairs.
To die in Aleppo… To die in Aleppo, it is like dying yesterday in Cuba… Only a song can tell what it was, to die in Cuba. It was like dying in Madrid, in Algiers or in Dien Bien Phu. But who remembers? Rage…
The Syrian revolution, from civil war to war of civilisations, sees a new twist, of which the office journalists will probably not perceive the amplitude until the new year has started in some months… Too late… Once again… If they end up actually understanding it…
Incha’Allah.
