The leader of the military coup in Mali said Friday that the president and other top government officials have been arrested and will soon be handed to the courts for trial, but refused to reveal their whereabouts.
“These people are safe and sound. We will not touch a hair on their heads. I will hand them over to the courts so that the Malian people know the truth,” Captain Amadou Sanogo said.
Sanogo and the rebel troops he leads toppled the democratically elected government in Mali this week after tensions arose over how to fight the Tuareg insurgents in the north of the country. Mali’s army had grown upset with President Amadou Toumani Toure for not arming them sufficiently enough to quell the Tuareg fighters who had recently returned from fighting for Gadhafi’s side in Libya.
Mali appears to be very unstable from this week’s events. Looting has spread throughout the country and Tuareg fighters continue to battle Mali soldiers and try take advantage of the power vacuum left by the collapse of the government. Those in the army not close to the coup group have been deserting, leading to further instability.
A UN report released in February assessing “the Libyan crisis” claimed that the impact of the NATO-backed rebel victory over Gadhafi “reverberated across the world” as “such neighboring countries as…Mali,” among many others, “bore the brunt of the challenges that emerged as a result of the crisis.”
“The Governments of these countries, especially those in the Sahel region, had to contend with the influx of hundreds of thousands of traumatized and impoverished returnees as well as the inflow of unspecified and unquantifiable numbers of arms and ammunition from the Libyan arsenal,” the report said. The precise extent to which the current chaos in Mali was caused by the NATO intervention in Libya has not been covered much yet.
Kadhafi had a stabilizing effect on the greater Sahara. He gave millions of the region's people jobs and hope. Thanks to NATO's foresight, the area now is flooded with gangs and weapons.
The old colonial system has only been papered over by "democracies", and is now unravelling. The colonial powers became emboldened, thinking how easy they had it in destabilizing Libya, and Ivory Coast. Since events in Ivory Coast, where France has directly been involved in toppling the undesirable regime, and appointing its own favorite, former IMF official — there is this irrational fervor going on in the West that the crisis is an opportunity. This fact free theory will cause damage, ultimately, to everyone involved. Those who live there will pay the ultimate price, but we are paying it by economies that are imploding, and only kept alive and "recovering" by massive influx of money printing and near zero interest rates. So, while speculating banks can still make us believe we have an economy, it is at the expense of investors and savers. The damage to people's savings is now in trillions. Money, that should have been there for investments, and expenses of retirees or money for college. Instead, we are loosing money every day, as getting no interest, with the inflation in food and fuel, means we are really PAYING TAXES to keep the imperial fantasies going
>>>"The precise extent to which the current chaos in Mali was caused by the NATO intervention in Libya has not been covered much yet."
The destruction of Libya awoke many Africans to the neocolonial intentions of "the West" for Africa. The Tuareg uprising is only the first hot spot to develop as a reaction. There will be many more as "the West" tries to use the old colonial system in Africa, that was never dismantled, as bases for their new colonization of Africa. This will turn the continent into an inferno; with France, like Israel, depending on the USA to do the heavy lifting for them. So, the Empire, already bloodied and crippled from screwing with the Arabs and Afghans, is going to take on a billion Africans. There comes a time for all Empires when the cost of holding the land it grabs exceeds the value of the loot taken. This Empire reached that point in Iraq, but desperately trudges on to the catastrophic end.