"TUAREG" and the national state

Independence

•  1960 Mali
•  1960 Niger
•  1962 Algeria

The national states were formed out of the colonies. They kept the colonial borders and power centers. They took on the European state and democracy system. Not the Tuareg society but other ethnic societies took power in the new national states. They built mighty power centers far away from the Tuareg regions, without any consideration for the Imuhar/Imascheren/Imuschar society. This established the marginalization of the “Tuareg” society. The land of the Tuareg including the natural resources became state property. The nomads who lived on “their” land for centuries became landless.

SETTLEMENT

The central government tried intensely to settle down the Tuareg nomads in order to gain better control over Tuareg society. They tried to separate the children from the nomad families by sending the children off to schools and boarding schools.

NOMADISM

Nowadays, the national government discerns the quality of nomadism more and more in their ability to economize even bleak land. Only Tuareg carry on with rural pastoral economy in the Central Sahara  desert.

 Arlit (North Niger)

Sedentary population

Low living standards, copious corruption and enormous rates of unemployment are prevalent in the urban setting of the Tuareg region. The Arab populations govern urban areas like Tamanrasset in Algeria, while Hausa populations rule the urban centers in Niger.

Development of urban region in South Algeria

The five new national states have been developing in totally different directions and even cut themselves off from the others. That disrupted the social, cultural and economic networks between the main groups. Sometimes the borderlines of a national state ran right through the territory of a main group like the Kel Azjer group, whose territory is now divided between Algeria and Libya.

Formerly, the village of Abalessa was one of the most important trade junctions of the region located in-between the main groups of the Taytoq and the Kel Ahaggar. The present town Tamanrasset, located in the west of the Ahaggar Mountains, was founded and supported under colonial military administration. In only 100 years the population grew from 42 people in the year 1909 (Keenan 1977: 359) to about 150.000 people (Keenan 2006: 920). An artificial place became a center with a magnetic pull to especially non-Imuhar people. The traditional transnational centers like Abalessa shifted into a peripheral position.

In the beginning during colonial times, several families of the Kel Ahaggar settled down. Since the 1990s, more and more Arab populations from North Algeria immigrate to Tamanrasset due to the political conflicts in the North.

Nowadays, more and more migrants from the sub-Sahara countries are waiting in the “transit lounge” Tamanrasset in order to get to Europe.

That development has transformed the about 25.000 Kel Ahaggar (Keenan 2004: 68) into a minority in their own region.

   Downtown Tamanrasset (North Algeria)