If there is a danger that is now keeping an eye on Mali in particular and the Sahel in general, it is the emergence of what is now called the « Fulani question », added to the « Tuareg question » born in 1963 because of the amalgam between the Tuareg community and the irredentism embraced by some Tuaregs.
In his study entitled « Center of Mali: Challenges and Dangers of a Neglected Crisis », editorialist and columnist Adam Thiam, explains that there is every reason to believe that this issue is emerging, in the sense that the fact that some Fulani pour into the armed struggle leads to put the index on the whole community. Apart from the fact that the connections between Ansardine and Katiba Macina insinuate the existence of a jihadism with a Fulani face. As a result, relations between the Fulani community and its sedentary neighbors are distorted (Kareri, Nampala, Bankass).
Some Fulani cry about the stigmatization of their community and say that terrorists draw combatants from all ethnic groups, giving rise to a shift in armed violence, as we saw with the surprising announcement on Saturday 18 June 2016, the creation of the political armed movement, the National Alliance for the Safeguarding of the Fulani Identity and the Restoration of Justice (ANSIPRJ), led by Oumar Aldjana.
The danger, Adam Thiam believes, is that this stigmatization could lead the Fulani people to see in terrorists, in addition to « identity groups », allies who give protection and justice. However, faced with the risk of ethnic radicalization, there is a mobilization of the Fulani civil society on which the State could rely on so as not to have to deal with a violent rupture in the long run. These non-violent actors, who put forward the need to defend the Fulani people otherwise, are for Adam Thiam a kind of manna that the state must exploit.
Boubacar Sangaré