Peace: It's All How You Look At It.

Islamists in North Mali Stone Couple to Death

By ADAM NOSSITER

New York Times

Published: July 30, 2012

BAMAKO, Mali — Islamists in control of a town in northern Mali stoned a couple to death after accusing them of having children outside of marriage, a local official who was one of several hundred witnesses to the killings said Monday.

The official said the bearded Islamists, armed with Kalashnikov rifles, brought the couple into the center of the town of Aguelhok from about 12 miles away in the countryside. The young man and woman were forced into holes about four feet deep, with their heads protruding, and then stoned to death at about 5 a.m. Sunday, the official said.

“They put them into the holes, and then they started throwing big rocks, until they were dead,” the official said, speaking by satellite phone from the remote desert town near the Algerian border.

“It was horrible,” he said, noting that the woman had moaned and cried out and that her partner had yelled something indistinct during the attack. “It was inhuman. They killed them like they were animals.”

The official insisted that he not to be identified because he said “our lives are in danger here.” The official said many of the 2,000 people in Aguelhok had already begun leaving, crossing the border into Algeria, as a result of Sunday’s stoning.

The stoning was the Islamists’ most brutal reported act of repression so far. Refugees from the north have given numerous accounts of public whippings and beatings for alleged violations of Shariah law in the main towns of Timbuktu and Gao.

All of northern Mali, a vast area larger than France, most of it desert, is in the hands of Islamists linked to Al Qaeda, after a rebellion against the Malian government that began in January. The rebellion began as a new iteration of a decades-long struggle by a nomadic ethnic group, the Tuaregs, to gain autonomy from a central government based in the south that it had long accused of neglect and persecution.

But the Tuaregs were soon overtaken by their de facto allies, a local Islamist movement, the Ansar Dine, or Defenders of the Faith, which itself was allied with Al Qaeda. Ansar Dine now controls the region, in alliance with another radical Islamist splinter group, the Mujao, or the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa. The groups share the goal of imposing an extreme form of Shariah law on the people of northern Mali.

The official in Aguelhok said the rural couple were heard to protest, faintly, that the children — the youngest a baby of 6 months — were not even theirs. But the men who executed them said the couple had been guilty of a serious crime, and deserved punishment.

“All they said was, it was the law of Shariah that prescribed it, that God willed it,” the official recalled. He said the execution had lasted about 15 minutes, but the woman died quickly, after crying out.

In silence, more than 300 people from the town watched. “The people protested, that no law could possibly prescribe such a thing,” the official said. “On the slightest pretext, they execute people.”

Aguelhok drew notoriety early in the rebellion, in January, as the place where dozens of Malian Army soldiers were apparently summarily executed, according to human rights groups. Some had their hands tied behind their backs and their throats cut.

A protest over the executions by angry soldiers’ wives in the capital, Bamako, in early February was an early sign that the government was in trouble. The government was later brought down by a military junta in a coup d’état at the end of March, allowing the Tuaregs and Islamists to overrun the north.

The south is still in disorder, with the junta still active behind an appointed civilian government whose powers remain uncertain. On Friday, the interim president, Dioncounda Traoré, returned to Bamako from Paris after an absence of over two months following an attack by a mob — some said orchestrated by elements in the military — that left him seriously injured.

In a televised speech on Sunday, Mr. Traoré announced a reorganization of the government with the aim of recovering the troubled nation’s unity.

Islam

Protecting Christianity

·        3 Jul 2012

·        National Post - (National Edition)

·        BY RUKMINI CALLIMACHI

·        The Associated Press

Ransacking of timbuktu by ‘divine order’

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DAKAR , SENEGAL • Muslim extremists razed tombs and attacked the gate of a 600-yearold Timbuktu mosque on Monday, triggering an international outcry over the destruction of the ancient Malian city.

The International Criminal Court has described the demolition of the city’s patrimony as a possible war crime, while UNESCO’S committee on world heritage was holding a special session this week to address the pillaging of the site, one of the few cultural sites in sub-saharan Africa that is listed by the agency.

The Islamic faction, known as Ansar Dine, or “Protectors of the Faith,” seized control of Timbuktu last week after ousting the Tuareg rebel faction that had invaded northern Mali alongside Ansar Dine’s soldiers three months ago. Over the weekend, fighters screaming “Allah Akbar” descended on the cemeteries holding the remains of Timbuktu’s Sufi saints, and systematically began destroying the six most famous tombs.

Reached by telephone in an undisclosed location in northern Mali, a spokesman for the faction said they do not recognize either the United Nations or the world court. “The only tribunal we recognize is the divine court of Sharia,” said Ansar Dine spokesman Oumar Ould Hamaha.

“The destruction is a divine order,” he said. “It’s our Prophet who said that each time that someone builds something on top of a grave, it needs to be pulled back to the ground. We need to do this so that future generations don’t get confused, and start venerating the saints as if they are God.”

Among the tombs they destroyed is that of Sidi Mahmoudou, a saint who died in 955, according to the UNESCO website. In addition, on Monday they set upon one of the doors of the Sidi Yahya, a mosque built about 1400. Local legend held that the gate leading to the cemetery would only open on the final day at the end of time.

Local radio host Kader Kalil said the members of Ansar Dine arrived at the mosque with shovels and pickaxes and yanked off the door, revealing a wall behind it. Mr. Kalil said that they explained they were doing so in order to disabuse people of the local legend and to teach them to put their whole faith in the Koran.

“Since my childhood, I have never seen the door on the western side of the mosque open. And I was born in 1947,” said Mr. Kader, a longtime resident of the city. “When we were children, we were told that the door would only open at the end of time. These religious people want to go to the source, to show us that this is not true ... Of course our population is not happy. The women, especially, are crying a lot.”

Shamil Jeppie, who heads the Tombouctou Manuscripts Project at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, says the destruction in Mali is analogous to the demolition of the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan. The Wahabi interpretation of Islam that Ansar Dine — like the Taliban — espouses is a narrow version of the faith, and stands in contrast to what he says is the history of Islamic learning.

“Timbuktu was a centre of Islamic learning, a very significant centre — there is lots of internal and external evidence of this. But Ansar Dine is ignorant of this,” Mr. Jeppie said. “For them, there is only one book and it’s the Koran. All this other [Islamic] learning is inconsequential to them,” he said.

The UN cultural agency has called for an immediate halt to the destruction of the sacred tombs. Irina Bokova, who heads the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, reported in a statement issued Saturday that the centuries-old mausoleums of Sidi Mahmoud, Sidi Moctar and Alpha Moya had been destroyed. Meeting in St. Petersburg in Russia, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee, last week placed the mausoleums on its list of sites in danger due to earlier attacks by the Islamists, said UNESCO spokesman Rony Amelan.

On Sunday during a stop in Senegal, Fatou Bensouda, prosecutor for the International Criminal Court, said the destruction of the city’s patrimony constitutes “a possible war crime,” according to private radio station RFM. And on Monday, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland condemned the destruction, telling reporters in Washington that the United States calls on all groups to enter into a ceasefire.

For years before the north of Mali became a base for an offshoot of al-Qaeda, Timbuktu was a must-see for backpackers and package tour groups. Much of the city thrived on tourism.

Scholars held out hope that the Islamists would not also attack the city’s 20,000-catalogued manuscripts, some dating as far back as the 12th century. Beyond the tombs, the manuscripts are considered to be the real treasure of the region and library owners have succeeded in spiriting some of the manuscripts out of the city, or else buried them in secure locations.

“We’re talking about generations and generations of culture being destroyed,” said New York-based Michael Covitt, chairman of the Malian Manuscript Foundation . “It’s an outrage for the entire world.”

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Of course, these people are not acting in an Islamic way, they are no different than cultish sorts in Christianity who burn Bibles and wave placards saying God loves dead fags.  of course.  Except with Christianity, they tend not to get violent and death engaged killing as they go.  Oh, yes, maybe 500 years ago, but Christianity has evolved.  That, and the fact Christians exclude the extreme and embrace toleration versus these individuals who run amok with no regulation killing and destroying in the name of their religion.

Mali Coup: Me Wonders Why?

AP Interview: Mali coup head dismisses countercoup

By MARTIN VOGL, Associated Press

March 24, 2012

BAMAKO, Mali (AP) — Mali's U.S.-trained coup leader said Saturday he is in control of the country, has no fears of a countercoup and wants peace talks with the rebels whose northern rebellion was the trigger that led him to oust a democratically elected president.

Capt. Amadou Sanogo, who appeared exhausted, his voice hoarse, stressed the importance of unity for the West African nation in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press at Kati garrison outside Bamako, the capital. What started there Wednesday as a mutiny of low-ranking officers and rank-and-file soldiers turned into a full-blown coup d'etat.

"Tuareg people in the north, Arab people, are our brothers. ... I want all of them to come to the same table right after this interview, my door is open, we should talk about this process," Sanogo said.

Sanogo's ouster Wednesday of President Ahmed Toumani Toure just five weeks before he was to step down after presidential elections threatens the cause of democracy in a region prone to coups and jeopardizes Mali's standing at the heart of the Western-backed fight against Africa's thriving wing of al-Qaida.

The European Union, the World Bank and the African Development Bank all have suspended aid because of the coup, and the African Union has suspended the country's membership. The United States is considering suspending all but humanitarian aid.

"Right now I'm in control of all the country," Sanogo, 39, said confidently.

But rebels seeking to create a separate state in northern Mali for the nomadic Tuareg people have taken advantage of the power vacuum to advance to the gates of the strategic northern town of Kidal. Soldiers are deserting by the dozens while others are retreating without a fight amid disarray in the army command, a senior rebel commander told the AP on Thursday. The rebels are led by battle-hardened colonels who fought in the army of Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi before returning home heavily armed.

Mali's land borders and airspace remained closed Saturday, trapping thousands of visitors including three African foreign ministers who were there for a meeting. The country has been under a curfew since the coup.

Sanogo would not say where Toure is, or even if he knows his whereabouts.

"As a soldier, I have my secrets," is all he would say.

Pushed about whether Toure is protected by any soldiers, he said "Not even one."

He was contradicted by one officer who told the AP that a handful of the red-bereted parachutists who made up the presidential guard remain with the toppled leader. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The African Union also said Thursday that it has information that Toure is safe, under the protection of Red Berets at a location not far from Bamako.

Sanogo, however, claimed the Red Berets were with him, and at least three soldiers in his office at Kati garrison sported red berets.

The putschists have also arrested at least three Cabinet ministers, but the whereabouts of Defense Minister Gen. Sadio Gassama are unknown.

Sanogo says he acted Wednesday to avert a national security crisis because the government was not providing the arms and ammunition needed to fight the rebels, who have killed scores of soldiers.

On Friday, state radio and TV went dead for about an hour and troops set up barricades around its downtown headquarters, raising speculation that a countercoup was in progress. Rumors coursed that Sanogo was wounded, even dead.

But the television station flickered back to life, and later showed Sanogo in a room of soldiers wearing different uniforms and berets, which the coup leader said indicated they were members of the police, the paramilitary gendarmerie and the Red Berets. It was a show of unity meant to dispel reports of a divided army.

When asked about a countercoup, Sanogo calmly responded: "To be honest, I don't fear."

The Africa Command of the U.S. Defense Department confirmed that Sanogo received basic officer training in the United States as well as participating in several other training programs there.

State TV and radio on Saturday repeated warnings for soldiers to stop the pillaging that began Friday, when soldiers were stealing everything from people's cars to bananas being sold by vendors on street corners.

State TV and radio were also broadcasting a communique urging gas stations to reopen. They had closed because soldiers had been ordering their vehicles refilled without payment.

Saturday morning, major stores and the city's downtown market remain shuttered. People fearful of more trouble rushed around small grocery stores and roadside vendors to stock up on food supplies. Cars returned to the streets as the looting subsided.

Sanogo played down any chaos.

"People are starting with their daily life, the market is open, transportation has been going on now. I believe I am getting closer to what I promised to my people," he said.

But he has offered no clear agenda.

"I'm scared to say it but it must be said: We can never put our confidence in a young soldier with a gun," said Kalifa Keita, 30, who was buying goods from a street vendor in downtown Bamako. "The problem is that these things take time to resolve, and that makes me afraid."

This week's coup represents a major setback for the nation of 15.4 million at the bottom of the Sahara desert. Although Toure initially took power in a 1991 coup, he became known as the "Soldier of Democracy" because he handed power to civilians, and retreated from public life. Years later he re-emerged to win the 2002 election and was re-elected in 2007.

A dozen candidates were running in the April 29 vote, which is now in jeopardy.

 











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