Timbuktu Libraries Burned~ A Major Loss for Humanity

More Sadness in Mali

Libraries like the Ahmed Baba institute were rescuing Africa's history from oblivion.

 Photograph: Sebastien Cailleux/Corbis

Luke Harding in Sévaré
guardian.co.uk,
Monday 28 January 2013 17.07GMT

Timbuktu mayor: Mali rebels torched library of historic manuscripts

Fleeing Islamist insurgents burnt two buildings containing priceless books as French-led troops approached, says mayor.

Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts, according to the Saharan town's mayor, in an incident he described as a "devastating blow" to world heritage.

Hallé Ousmani Cissé told the Guardian that al-Qaida-allied fighters on Saturday torched two buildings that held the manuscripts, some of which dated back to the 13th century. They also burned down the town hall, the governor's office and an MP's residence, and shot dead a man who was celebrating the arrival of the French military.

French troops and the Malian army reached the gates of Timbuktu on Saturday and secured the town's airport. But they appear to have got there too late to rescue the leather-bound manuscripts that were a unique record of sub-Saharan Africa's rich medieval history. The rebels attacked the airport on Sunday, the mayor said.

"It's true. They have burned the manuscripts," Cissé said in a phone interview from Mali's capital, Bamako. "They also burned down several buildings. There was one guy who was celebrating in the street and they killed him."

He added: "This is terrible news. The manuscripts were a part not only of Mali's heritage but the world's heritage. By destroying them they threaten the world. We have to kill all of the rebels in the north."

On Monday French army officers said French-led forces had entered Timbuktu and secured the town without a shot being fired. A team of French paratroopers crept into the town by moonlight, advancing from the airport, they said. Residents took to the streets to celebrate.

The manuscripts were held in two separate locations: an ageing library and a new South African-funded research centre, the Ahmad Babu Institute, less than a mile away. Completed in 2009 and named after a 17th-century Timbuktu scholar, the centre used state-of-the-art techniques to study and conserve the crumbling scrolls.

Both buildings were burned down, according to the mayor, who said the information came from an informer who had just left the town. Asked whether any of the manuscripts might have survived, Cissé replied: "I don't know."

The manuscripts had survived for centuries in Timbuktu, on the remote south-west fringe of the Sahara desert. They were hidden in wooden trunks, buried in boxes under the sand and in caves. When French colonial rule ended in 1960, Timbuktu residents held preserved manuscripts in 60-80 private libraries.

The vast majority of the texts were written in Arabic. A few were in African languages, such as Songhai, Tamashek and Bambara. There was even one in Hebrew. They covered a diverse range of topics including astronomy, poetry, music, medicine and women's rights. The oldest dated from 1204.

Seydou Traoré, who has worked at the Ahmed Baba Institute since 2003, and fled shortly before the rebels arrived, said only a fraction of the manuscripts had been digitised. "They cover geography, history and religion. We had one in Turkish. We don't know what it said."

He said the manuscripts were important because they exploded the myth that "black Africa" had only an oral history. "You just need to look at the manuscripts to realise how wrong this is."

Some of the most fascinating scrolls included an ancient history of west Africa, the Tarikh al-Soudan, letters of recommendation for the intrepid 19th-century German explorer Heinrich Barth, and a text dealing with erectile dysfunction.

A large number dated from Timbuktu's intellectual heyday in the 14th and 15th centuries, Traoré said. By the late 1500s the town, north of the Niger river, was a wealthy and successful trading centre, attracting scholars and curious travellers from across the Middle East. Some brought books to sell.

Typically, manuscripts were not numbered, Traoré said, but repeated the last word of a previous page on each new one. Scholars had painstakingly numbered several of the manuscripts, but not all, under the direction of an international team of experts.

Mali government forces that had been guarding Timbuktu left the town in late March, as Islamist fighters advanced rapidly across the north. Fighters from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) – the group responsible for the attack on the Algerian gas facility – then swept in and seized the town, pushing out rival militia groups including secular Tuareg nationalists.

Traoré told the Guardian that he decided to leave Timbuktu in January 2012 amid ominous reports of shootings in the area, and after the kidnapping of three European tourists from a Timbuktu hotel. A fourth tourist, a German, resisted and was shot dead. Months later AQIM arrived, he said.

Four or five rebels had been sleeping in the institute, which had comparatively luxurious facilities for staff, he said. As well as the manuscripts, the fighters destroyed almost all of the 333 Sufi shrines dotted around Timbuktu, believing them to be idolatrous. They smashed a civic statue of a man sitting on a winged horse. "They were the masters of the place," Traoré said.

Other residents who fled Timbuktu said the fighters adorned the town with their black flag. Written on it in Arabic were the words "God is great". The rebels enforced their own brutal and arbitrary version of Islam, residents said, with offenders flogged for talking to women and other supposed crimes. The floggings took place in the square outside the 15th-century Sankoré mosque, a Unesco world heritage site.

"They weren't religious men. They were criminals," said Maha Madu, a Timbuktu boatman, now in the Niger river town of Mopti. Madu said the fighters grew enraged if residents wore trousers down to their ankles, which they believed to be western and decadent. He alleged that some fighters kidnapped and raped local women, keeping them as virtual sex slaves. "They were hypocrites. They told us they couldn't smoke. But they smoked themselves," he said.

The rebels took several other towns south of Timbuktu, he said, including nearby Diré. If the rebels spotted a boat flying the Malian national flag, they ripped the flag off and replaced it with their own black one, he said.

The precise fate of the manuscripts was difficult to verify. All phone communication with Timbuktu was cut off. The town was said to be without electricity, water or fuel. According to Traoré, who was in contact with friends there until two weeks ago, many of the rebels left town following France's military intervention.

He added: "My friend [in Timbuktu] told me they were diminishing in number. He doesn't know where they went. But he said they were trying to hide their cars by painting and disguising them with mud."

The recapture of Timbuktu is another success for the French military, which has now secured two out of three of Mali's key rebel-held sites, including the city of Gao on Saturday. The French have yet to reach the third, Kidal. Local Tuareg militia leaders said on Monday they had taken control of Kidal after the abrupt departure of the Islamist fighters who ran the town.

Libraries like the Ahmed Baba institute were rescuing Africa's history from oblivion. Photograph: Sebastien Cailleux/Corbis

 

Destruction of Timbuktu Manuscripts is an Offence Against the Whole of Africa

Jonathan Jones
guardian.co.uk,
Monday 28 January 2013
12.32 EST

The reported destruction of two important manuscript collections by Islamist rebels as they fled Timbuktu is an offence to the whole of Africa and its universally important cultural heritage. Like their systematic destruction of 300 Sufi saints' shrines while they held Timbuktu at their mercy, it is an assault on world heritage comparable with the demolition of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban in 2001.

The literary heritage of Timbuktu dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries when the gold-rich kingdoms of Mali and Songhai traded across the Sahara with the Mediterranean world. It took two months for merchant caravans to cross the desert, and while gold and slaves went north, books were going south.

In his Description of Africa, published in 1550, the traveller Leo Africanus marvels that in the bustling markets of Timbuktu, under the towers of its majestic mosques, the richest traders were booksellers.

They were selling manuscripts by Arab scholars on everything from astronomy and arithmetic to Islamic law, as well as mystical texts on Sufism, the otherworldly, saintly style of faith that the al-Qaida-affiliated Ansar Dine finds so offensive.

This legacy of Arab learning that goes back to the great scientists and mathematicians who preserved the classical Greek heritage in the early middle ages is richly represented in the manuscripts of Timbuktu – but not necessarily in its original form. For scribes copied and recopied books in this city that loved leaning, creating a legacy of works transcribed in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as earlier.

They also wrote down their own history and laws, chronicling the families of Timbuktu and preserving the poetry and stories of north Africa – at least, that is what seems to have lain in the many manuscripts of Timbuktu's lost legacy that were just starting to be properly conserved when this terrible religious vandalism plagued the city.

When European empires scrambled for Africa in the 19th century the continent was seen as illiterate and lacking in history, memory, or literature. Its art was seen as "primitive", partly because it lacked a written art history.

Timbuktu is a palimpsest in the sand that proves otherwise. Libraries like the Ahmed Baba institute were rescuing Africa's history from oblivion. Timbuktu is Africa's city of ancient books and learning that disproved racist myths about the continent. That luminous inheritance is what the Islamists have destroyed.

I appreciate this reporter's words, but disagree that the luminous inheritance of the knowledge and wisdom of Africa could ever be destroyed. What has been destroyed are the physical books that held a portion of the ancient knowledge and wisdom, that today's world rests upon. We mourn the loss of these manuscripts and books, but the inheritance and legacy is whole. We contain it.

In my thinking, the luminous inheritance lives within those of us that continue to pull out of what often appears to be a desert of shifting sands, false mirages and harsh unlivable conditions,~ deep understanding about Life, the Cosmos and natural phenomena and apply it to our present existence.

I rest in the truth of Bob's words telling of the Natural Mystics that abound upon the earth. We are indestructible, because we adapt and evolve. We receive the insight that is needed to allow us to continue to live true to a Principal of Wholeness, that is sourced from the Original Nature. And therefore, as Maya said, ".....still I Rise!"
Listen as you read Bob encouraging our Spirits~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqg90Qj2ApU
There's a natural mystic blowing through the air;


If you listen carefully now you will hear.

This could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last:

Many more will have to suffer,

Many more will have to die - don't ask me why.



Things are not the way they used to be,

I won't tell no lie;

One and all have to face reality now.

'Though I've tried to find the answer to all the questions they ask.

'Though I know it's impossible to go livin' through the past -

Don't tell no lie.



There's a natural mystic blowing through the air -

Can't keep them down -

If you listen carefully now you will hear.



There's a natural mystic blowing through the air.



This could be the first trumpet, might as well be the last:

Many more will have to suffer,

Many more will have to die - don't ask me why.



There's a natural mystic blowing through the air -

I won't tell no lie;

If you listen carefully now you will hear:

There's a natural mystic blowing through the air.

Such a natural mystic blowing through the air;

There's a natural mystic blowing through the air;

Such a natural mystic blowing through the air;

Such a natural mystic blowing through the air;

Such a natural mystic blowing through the air.

Peace be unto you.

Lovu,

Kentke





More Mali - A Government Unraveling - A Tale that'll have you Shaking your Head

In this April 1, 2012 file photo, coup leader Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo addresses the media at his headquarters in Kati, outside Bamako, Mali. The ease of the junta's takeover in March, just six weeks before a presidential election, shows how quickly the course of a nation in this part of the world can change, despite or even partly because of funding and training from the U.S. It also underscores how fragile democracies remain in Africa, and how the fate of an entire country can still be bent by the ambitions of a single man.

(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

Jul 7, 7:12 PM (ET)

By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI


SEGOU, Mali (AP) - On the morning three months ago when the fate of Mali was irrevocably changed, Mamadou Sanogo awoke in the house here where he and his wife had raised six children, including a 39-year-old son, now a captain in the nation's army.


It was still dark outside. The elderly man got up and turned on the TV, setting the volume to low so as to not disturb his sleeping wife, according to relatives and friends. What he saw next made him shake her awake. "Come see what your imbecile son is doing," he yelled.


Instead of the normal newscast, they saw a group of soldiers huddled in front of the TV camera. It took them a moment to recognize their son, Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo, who was announcing that the military had overthrown the government of Mali.


If the coup was a shock to his parents - his mother subsequently fainted - it seems also to have come as a surprise to Sanogo himself, who by all accounts had no plans for it. Perhaps most of all, it was like a bucket of ice water over the heads of Mali's 15.4 million people, who saw two decades of democracy collapse in just a few hours into what is rapidly becoming an ungovernable hole and a haven for al-Qaida-linked terrorists.

The ease of the takeover, just six weeks before a presidential election, shows how quickly the course of a nation in this part of the world can change, despite or even partly because of funding and training from the West. And it underscores how fragile democracies remain in Africa, and how the fate of an entire country can still be bent by the ambitions of a single man.


"This is considered a thing of the past in Africa. If you look at the video, it looks like a caricature of a 1970s coup," said Jennifer Cooke, director of the Africa program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "This is why this is so tragic and disappointing - the trend for this kind of ham-handed power grab has been, fewer and fewer."


Mali is a landlocked nation twice the size of France that has long taken pride in its democratic track record, despite chronic poverty and repeated rebellions in the north.


In the past decade, the U.S. alone has poured close to $1 billion into Mali, including development aid as well as military training to battle an al-Qaida offshoot in the north. In doing so, the U.S. unwittingly also helped prepare the soldiers for the coup: Sanogo himself benefited from six training missions in the U.S., the State Department confirmed, starting in 1998 when he was sent to an infantry training course at Fort Benning, Ga.


He returned in 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008 and 2010 to attend some of the most prestigious military institutions in America, including the Defense Language Institute at the Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. He took a basic officer course at Quantico, Virginia, and learned to use a light-armored vehicle at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Just a few weeks before the March takeover, Sanogo made a trip to Segou to say goodbye. He'd been accepted into a peacekeeping training course abroad and was due to leave sometime in April, said his cousin, Salif Sanogo.


What happened next is described by those who know him as an "accidental coup."


It started at the Kati military camp, where Sanogo lived in a decrepit housing unit with cement walls and a tin roof, just 10 kilometers (6 miles) over a barren hill from the presidential palace.


Sanogo, an English-language teacher at a military college, had failed several exams in officer school, according to Lt. Col. Oumar Diawara, an officer also stationed at the camp. However, because of his training in the United States and because he spoke and taught English, he gave off a worldly air. The rank-and-file soldiers looked up to him because he frequently socialized with them, unlike other officers who adhered to the strict hierarchy of military life.


Sanogo, officers said, was among the instructors fired last fall at a military college where five recruits died in a widely publicized hazing incident. He was sent back to Kati, said Diawara.

"He was there with no function," he said. "He had absolutely nothing to do."


In the meantime, anger was growing at the corruption that had spread like a tumor across the arteries of Mali's government and military: In recent years, the country dropped from No. 78 out of 182 countries to No. 118 on Transparency International's index tracking corruption.
In the military, generals sat in lavishly decorated offices while soldiers were routinely sent to the battlefield without proper boots. Earlier this year, an entire company of several dozen soldiers was wiped out after fighting a new rebellion in Mali's north without enough ammunition.


The troops at Kati started to plan a march to protest how the government had handled the rebellion. At around 1 p.m. on March 21, Minister of Defense Gen. Sadio Gassama came to the Kati barracks to ask them to call it off.


Soldiers who were present said the general talked down to them, and the crowd became angry. The mutiny erupted when the minister's bodyguard shot into the air in an effort to push back the mob.


"The minister spoke in a way that was not polite," said George Coulibaly, a civilian who lives in the Kati camp and accompanied the soldiers during the coup. "He said things like, 'You want to march? You're a bunch of uneducated people. I'll educate you.'"


The renegade troops stoned the defense minister's car as his driver floored the gas to get away. They forced the doors of the armory and emptied it out. Then they began hunting down the other officers, nearly all of whom fled or hid - except Sanogo, whose recent dismissal as an officer had given him credibility with ordinary soldiers.


The crowd, led by Sanogo, initially planned to march to the palace to dress down President Amadou Toumani Toure, said several soldiers. Instead, the president fled. They found themselves inside the seat of government.


"Our objective was not a coup d'etat," said Lt. Samba Timbo, one of the leaders of the putsch. "Not at first."


By late afternoon, around 100 soldiers had arrived at the state television station. They sent the employees home, and television screens across the country went black.


"The presidential palace fell in their laps," said the cameraman who helped them broadcast their first message, and who requested anonymity for his safety. "For two hours, not a single person, not a single interlocutor, tried to contact them to see what they wanted. To negotiate. It was after that they got the idea for a coup."


By the time Sanogo's father turned on the TV the next morning in Segou, some 240 kilometers (150 miles) northeast of the capital, the intentions of the soldiers had become clear. So had their leader.


When his mother saw him on TV, she at first refused to believe it was her son, called "Bolly" by friends and family. Shaken, she left the house and crossed a sandy courtyard to the home of his cousin, Salif Sanogo.


Salif Sanogo was brewing his morning tea on a bed of charcoal when she knocked. "She asked, 'Is it true? Is it true that Bolly did this?'" recalled the cousin. "We said, 'Yes, Ma. It's true.'"
She screamed. She got hysterical, and then she fainted. They carried her in and fanned her until she woke up.


If Sanogo's parents were initially mortified, they quickly became used to their new status. Just days after the coup, visitors started to line up outside their house on Road 270 in Segou.
In the capital, the soldiers were looting government buildings. A businessman with ties to the junta estimates that they raked in between $2 and $3 million in the first three days after the coup, from government safes they pried open.


Most of the ministries no longer have computers. And the normally 1 1/2-hour-long evening news hour is now just 40 minutes because all but a few of the cameras at the state television station were stolen.


Even while Sanogo said the army had only seized power to address rebellion in the north, the rebels took advantage of the confusion to seize half the country. Among the groups that invaded the north is Ansar Dine, or "Defenders of the Faith," an Islamic faction with ties to al-Qaida.


In the capital, Bamako, Sanogo and his men quickly made themselves at home. The captain held court from the office of the Zone 3 commander at Kati, a rundown colonial structure that became increasingly well-equipped. Each week, construction crews poured cement, updated the electrical wiring and hauled in new office chairs, their metallic legs still covered in plastic.


Months later, the future of both Mali and Sanogo remains uncertain.


A poll of 1,100 residents of the capital found that after the initial shock, about 60 percent were either "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with the coup because it put an end to a regime viewed as corrupt.


"Our democracy? It was a facade," said 54-year-old Soumara Kalapo, who took part in pro-coup demonstrations after the putsch. "Our democracy needed this coup so that it could right itself. ... It was a democracy run by, and benefiting, a mafia."


But in his last blog post before leaving Mali for the U.S., anthropologist Bruce Whitehouse lists the disastrous consequences of what happened, including the suspension of more than a billion dollars in aid, the closing of Bamako's flagship Grand Hotel and the government's loss of control of half its territory. Last month, Islamic fundamentalists announced that they now hold the major towns in the north.


"In the 90 days since the coup, it's hard to look at any area and see anything good," said Whitehouse, an assistant professor at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Penn. "Some of us were looking for a silver lining. Months later, we can't see any reason for hope."


After countless diplomatic interventions, a round of sanctions and a library's worth of condemnations from world leaders, Sanogo finally agreed to step aside on April 6. But the young captain continued to meddle in state affairs until May, when he signed a second agreement promising to leave in return for the status of a former head of state. A diplomat versed on the matter said that status includes a salary of $9,000 a month, more than 30 times the salary of an army captain.


The former head of the national assembly, Dioncounda Traore, took over as interim president of a transitional government. In May, a mob of pro-Sanogo youth forced their way into his office and beat him. Traore was evacuated to France for treatment on May 23, and has not returned since.


Even the Wikipedia entry on Mali is confused about who is now in charge. In the box naming the head of the government, the online encyclopedia lists both Sanogo, as chairperson of the military junta, and Traore, as acting president.


Repeated attempts to speak to Sanogo for this article were unsuccessful.


On Wednesday, the body representing nations in western Africa sent notice that it does not recognize Sanogo's status as a former head of state, and threatened sanctions against him if he continues to obstruct the return to constitutional rule. But diplomats say businessmen are still waiting in front of the former commander's office to see him, with the customary suitcase of cash, a sign of his enduring influence.


Those around him still call him "Le President." And a framed portrait on the wall shows Sanogo, a green beret cocked to one side, next to the title, "Head of state."
---
Associated Press writer Baba Ahmed contributed to this report from Bamako, Mali.

Mali Islamists to Continue Destroying Timbuktu World Heritage Cultural Sites

Fighters from Ansar Dine, an al Qaeda-linked Islamist group in northern Mali, have destroyed historic Sufi shrines in the ancient desert city of Timbuktu, triggering international outcry.

I've been terribly upset by the news of the African Islamist group Ansar Dine's actions in the Malian city of Timbuktu. I wrote about their presence in the African nation in December 2011. That post is a good introduction to the this week's escalation of their objectives. (http://knewzfrommeroewest.blogspot.com/search?q=Islam+in+Africa)

They have embarked on a campaign to destroy all of the ancient tombs and Mosques which are both the heart of the local people's religion, and a much needed source of revenue for the remote area. The awesome buildings attract tourists from all over the world for their unique architectural design. The tombs and buildings that date back to the 15th century have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and the destruction which began Friday has attracted world attention and alarm.

To familiarize you with the region and situation, here are two articles about what's currently happening, and a very informative 7 minute video made in 2000 that shows the efforts Timbuktu was focused on accomplishing before these invaders arrived area with their agenda of wiping out indigenious culture and establishing the sharia law. I'm also going to add an article link at the end I hope you'll be sure to click as it gives an understanding behind the Ansar Dine group and their leader Ag Ghali.
Keep your head up.
Louv,
Kentke
Sorry about this post's layout. After the first article, please scroll down for the rest of the post.

Photo: A still from a video shows Islamist militants attacking a shrine in Timbuktu on Sunday. Credit: AFP / Getty Images

L A Times

July 2, 2012
Carol J. Williams in Los Angeles

Islamist rebels who have seized control of northern Mali used axes, shovels and automatic weapons to destroy tombs and other cultural and religious monuments for a third day on Monday, including bashing in the door of a 15th century mosque in Timbuktu, news agencies reported.

Rebels of the Ansar Dine faction fighting to assert Sharia law over the African nation at the crossroads of ancient trade routes ignored the appeals of United Nations officials over the weekend to cease the "wanton destruction" of the region's cultural heritage.

In New York, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday called on "all parties to exercise their responsibility to preserve the cultural heritage of Mali," saying the attacks "are totally unjustified.”

Irina Bokova, head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, on Saturday urged the Ansar Dine fighters “to stop these terrible and irreversible acts” after militants smashed mud-walled tombs in Timbuktu.

On Monday, the Islamists, who claim allegiance to Al Qaeda, tore open the door to the Sidi Yahia mosque, telling townspeople they were wiping out "idolatry" at the monuments to Sufi Islamic saints and scholars.

"In legend, it is said that the main gate of Sidi Yahia mosque will not be opened until the last day [of the world]," said the town imam, Alpha Abdoulahi, according to Reuters news agency, which reached him in Timbuktu by telephone.

In radio and television interviews from Senegal, the newly appointed chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, warned the rebels that destruction of religious and cultural heritage could lead to war crimes charges.

“The only tribunal we recognize is the divine court of Sharia,” the Associated Press quoted Ansar Dine spokesmen Oumar Ould Hamaha as saying in response to Bensouda's warning.

The AP said Hamaha justified the destruction as a divine order to pull down idolatrous constructions "so that future generations don't get confused, and start venerating the saints as if they are God.”

Timbuktu had been developed as a tourist attraction, with locals operating hotels, guest houses and guided tours for visitors to the ancient sub-Saharan trading post and Islamic educational center.

Hamaha told the AP that Ansar Dine opposes tourists' coming to the religious sites, saying they "foster debauchery."

UNESCO put Timbuktu and the nearby Tomb of Askia on its List of World Heritage in Danger last week, after the Ansar Dine rebels seized the region that has been beset by a three-way civil war since a March 22 coup deposed Mali's government. The Islamist radicals have been fighting for territory with Taureg separatists since the latter defeated Mali government troops in the spring, leaving the capital Bamako rudderless and incapable of putting down either rebellion in the remote north.

"Timbuktu was an intellectual and spiritual capital and a center for the propagation of Islam throughout Africa in the 15th and 16th centuries," UNESCO notes on its website. "Its three great mosques, Djingareyber, Sankore and Sidi Yahia, recall Timbuktu's golden age."

The sites designated as important cultural heritage represent "the power and riches of the empire that flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries through its control of the trans-Saharan trade," UNESCO recalls in its description.

Fundamentalist Salafist Muslims have also attacked Sufi heritage sites in Libya and Egypt over the past year, and Al Qaeda-allied Taliban militants a decade ago blew up two 6th Century Buddha figures carved into a mountainside near Bamiyan, in central Afghanistan, on the same grounds that they idolized false gods.

Jul 1, 5:32 PM (ET)
By BABA AHMED

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) - Islamist rebels said Sunday they will continue to destroy historic sites in Mali's northern city of Timbuktu before they implement strict Shariah law, as Mali's government compared the destruction to "war crimes" and said they would seek international justice.

"Timbuktu was an Islamic city since the 12th century, and we know what the religion says about the saints' tombs," he said. "Contrary to what the Islamists or the Wahabis of Ansar Dine say, here in Timbuktu, the people don't love the saints like God, but just seek the saints' blessings because they are our spiritual guides."

Ansar Dine spokesman Sanda Abu Mohamed said Sunday that Islamists will continue the destruction they started Saturday. "We're going to destroy everything before we apply Shariah in this city," he said.

Resident Moussa Maiga said the Islamists have expressed disapproval of what they think is worship of the tombs of the Muslim saints. "They say that the population loves the saints like God," he said.
But resident Bouya Ould Sidi Mohamed said the historic city has long had Muslim roots.

Mali's government condemned the destruction, which they say is akin to "war crimes."

"The council of ministers has just approved, in principle, the referral to the International Criminal Court and a working group is working to this end," the government said in a statement.

The U.N. cultural agency on Saturday called for an immediate halt to the destruction of three sacred Muslim tombs. Irina Bokova, who heads the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, cited in a statement Saturday reports the centuries-old mausoleums of Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi, Moctar and Alpha Moya had been destroyed.

On Thursday, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, placed the mausoleums of Muslim saints on its list of sites in danger at the request of Mali's government.

Islamist fighters from the Ansar Dine group have declared that they now control the northern half of Mali after driving out an ethnic Tuareg separatist group. The rebel groups took advantage of a power vacuum created by a March coup in the capital to seize ground in the north.

The Islamists' growing reach is more worrying news for the landlocked West African nation.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the attacks on the mausoleums "totally unjustified" and urged all sides to preserve Mali's cultural heritage, according to a statement from his spokesperson.

" The secretary general reiterates his support for the ongoing efforts of ECOWAS, the African Union and countries in the region to help the government and people of Mali resolve the current crisis through dialogue," the statement said.
---_
Edith M. Lederer contributed from the United Nations in New York.

Click link for video: ON THE LINE: MALI: INTERNET: ITN Source

Here are some facts about Ansar Dine and its leader, Iyad Ag Ghali:

ANSAR DINE:

* The name means “Defenders of the Faith” and it follows the puritanical form of Islam known as Salafism, which looks to the religion’s 7th-century origins as a guide to conduct.

* Along with Tuareg separatist movement MNLA, Ansar Dine and other Islamists were among rebels who seized northern Mali following a March 22 coup in the capital Bamako, in the south of the country, which paralysed the Western-backed Malian army.

* Diplomats say Ansar Dine – with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), originally from Algeria, and al Qaeda splinter group MUJWA – have hijacked the MNLA’s secular separatist uprising and now control two thirds of Mali’s desert north, territory that includes the regions of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.

* Ansar Dine’s leader, renegade Tuareg chieftain Iyad Ag Ghali, has links with AQIM through a cousin who is a local commander, according to diplomats.

* In direct opposition to MNLA’s stated aims, Ag Ghali has rejected any form of independence of the northern half of Mali and has vowed to pursue plans to impose sharia, Islamic law, throughout the now divided west African nation in the Sahel.
* Ansar Dine’s turbaned fighters, who operate under the black Islamist flag, initially gained a reputation in the north for keeping order after outbreaks of looting. But when they started enforcing sharia – making women wear veils, shutting bars and shops selling alcohol, and lashing offenders – they earned hostility from locals who have a long history of practising a more liberal, tolerant style of Islam.
* Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou said last month that Afghan and Pakistani jihadists were training recruits for Islamist groups in the Malian north.
* Diplomats and analysts say Ag Ghali, long known as a power broker in the north of Mali, formed Ansar Dine late last year after failing in separate attempts to become head of the MNLA and of his Ifoghas Tuareg clan.
* The Islamist allies said last week they had now secured full control of the north after pushing the Tuareg separatists out of Gao in a battle that killed at least 20 people.

(The black flag of the Ansar Dine Islamic group is posted on a road sign in Kidal in northeastern Mali, June 16, 2012. REUTERS/Adama Diarra)

AG GHALI:
* Ag Ghali, an Ifoghas of the Kel Ireyakkan faction of northern Mali’s Tuareg nomads, was a commander in a 1990 rebellion against the central government in Bamako launched by the fiercely independent “blue men of the desert” warriors, who are known for their distinctive indigo-coloured robes and veils.
* He helped negotiate a peace deal with the Malian government, establishing his reputation as an influential, yet notoriously inscrutable figure among the Tuaregs.
* A leaked U.S. diplomatic cable from 2007 said the Malian government appointed Ag Ghali an adviser to its consulate at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an Israeli think-tank, says it was at this time that Ag Ghali adopted Salafism before being expelled by the Saudi authorities.
* On his return to Mali he was again involved in 2008 as a mediator in helping to end another Tuareg rebellion, and took part in negotiations to free foreign hostages seized by AQIM.
* Another U.S. diplomatic cable says of the Tuareg leader: “Like the proverbial bad penny, Ag Ghali turns up whenever a cash transaction between a foreign government and Kidal Tuaregs appears forthcoming … Ag Ghali is … adept at playing all sides of the Tuareg conflict to maximize his personal gain.”