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I will return to Timbuktu

A testimonial by a Tuareg Leader
16 April 2013

The representative of ICV and its E-TIC program has to flee the war that is currently shaking Mali. He tells his story and that of his country in a book to be published on 19 June 2013 in Ixelles Editions.

I'm Shindouk. I am the exiled leader of the Oulad Nagim community, a BĂ©rabish born in Timbuktu. The territory of my tribe is located 120 km northeast of my hometown in Iwa-Watane on the road to Azalai. There, I built the first desert school and rehabilitated wells of my ancestors. I married an American, Miranda, who lived in rural Mauritania, with local Fulani communities the language of whom she speaks. We had a child. Then, Islamist groups arrived.

A year ago, in March 2012, Shindouk and his family fled in extremis Timbuktu as the town got taken over by armed Islamist groups. The family sought refuge in the United States, near the Canadian border, in the village of origin of Miranda, then settled in Nova Scotia in Canada.
These days, Northern Mali makes headline news.

Will the victory over the jihadists by the intervention of the French and the African armies  be enough to resolve the crisis in Northern Mali?

In the longer run, how will the Malian and French soldiers deal with the Islamist fighters and their suicide bombings?

This book provides a testimonial which sheds light on the crisis in the North of Mali, giving a voice to a Tuareg chief from Timbuktu who agrees to tell his personal story and share his views on the events.

It is also the pretext for international security analysts and a field police officer, specialist of the Saharan region, to explain the unstable geopolitical situation in the area which is under high tension.

Since the emergence of terrorism in the Saharan (restrictions / travel bans imposed by Western governments to their nationals, the death of tourism) until the return of Tuaregs from Libya and the arrival of a number of jihadists and the fleeing with his American family, Shindouk traces the history of his country, the fractures of Malian society and the political suicide of the Nation.

And after? Shindouk, how does he see the future? What are the prospects of the crisis for the  Touareg communities from Northern Mali? No solution seems to be emerging in a situation, which is particularly complex.

Ixelles Editions, on sale after 19 June 2013

A book by Shindouk Ould Najim, Laurence Ammour JeanLuc Peduzzi

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