In a sober book, Anta Barry makes an uncompromising diagnosis of the security, political and humanitarian crisis that has thrown Mali in the midst of the turmoil and from which it is now rising. For the author, who is studying agricultural engineering at the Rural Polytechnic Institute (IPR-IFRA) in Katibougou, if today we are at this stage of neither peace nor war, it is because somewhere the feeling of belonging to one and the same country was missing. Needless to say that it is the problem of the Malian nation that is raised. This is at a time when clan and ethnic risk is manifested through self-isolation: organizations such as the Ginna Dogon, Taabital Pulaku, the association of the noble Doumbia, of the Diawara ….
« When it is no longer the patriotic spirit that prevails, but rather the ethnic, clan and tribal feeling, the country will soon be the victim of tearing and eventually find itself in shreds. », she writes. State failure, loss of patriotism, failure of governance, rebellions that shook the country, the thorny issue of Azawad, the failure of previous agreements. Nothing escapes the insightful pen sometimes charged with revolt by this passionate of history and philosophy who proposes strategies for an emerging Mali at the price of enormous sacrifices and renunciation. But the interest of this book also lies in the fact that it rejects the conspiracy theory about the occupation of the North by the Jihadist groups AQIM, MUJAO, ANSARDINE. For her, « it was because our country was the weak link that we were attacked. The weakness, inability, and laxity of the State were the decisive circumstances which enabled the terrorists to find the ground conducive to their disastrous intentions. »
Mali, entre tourments et espérances, Anta Barry, La Sahelienne, 2017
113 pages
Boubacar Sangaré