On Mali and Azawad

I recently read an article on Mali which sums up what's been going on since it stopped being such a news attraction.  Looks like, after the Tuaregs chased off the Bamako military, a separate Islamic faction beat out the Tuaregs and now there are basically no Tuaregs anymore.  This new Islamic faction has apparently renamed Northern Mali as Azawad, and it sounds like it's being treated by locals as a new country.  The article says that Mali's heading down the same path as Somalia.  Apparently Somalia is "the most enduring failed state" in the world, but now Mali is looking to succeed that title.

I thought this was the direction that things were headed.  I think they only consider Mali to be a "failed state" because they're considering Mali and Azawad to be the same nation.  Sounds like the area outside North Mali is pretty stable at this point, and I think the researchers are saying that Mali is in a rough way, not because of the individual stability of either Mali or Azawad, but because Mali and Azawad are so separate.

I don't like the sound of the people in charge of Azawad, and there are going to be people who don't like the idea of their land's identity as a nation changing, so it will have to deal with the friction that comes with the creation of a new nation, but I'm willing to bet that it isn't the "greatest failed state" when looked at as an individual country.

I thought that the North was pretty much lost, but I'm surprised that the Tuaregs got beat out the way they did.  The takeover of North Mali came because of a sudden gain in strength by the Tuaregs.  The Islamic extremists have been out there the whole time, and to my knowledge, they haven't increased in power.  I'd think that if a greater power seized the North, and they had not been able to take control during times when it was ruled by a lesser power, than they would only be in a worse situation now.  I guess there's something that I'm not getting.

I expected the Tuaregs military might to regress over time, as it was founded on a past event with no renewable resources, and because the democratic world is on the side of Mali, but I thought that their regression would come over a long period of time.  Maybe they really did only have enough resources for the takeover, and they couldn't handle defending what they'd taken.

The news in Mali is the leading news of the entire African continent right now.

I've been writing my "unpublishable" stories about Mali on my laptop.  I have to say, you guys missed out.  These stories include such incredible things as me performing in the middle of a stadium for a politician from the North of Mali, me being credited for saving the life of a young girl and me refusing an order from the president of Mali.  There's a moment of insanity on my part in this, there's romance and danger, there are moments of heroism on my part... and even an instance of villainy.  These stories include the best things I've ever done in life, and the worst thing I've ever done.  Damn.  And it's all unpublishable.