The Calvary of the Tuareg People

In the early 1960s, a young French woman from the congregation of the White Sisters, who had served in Tuareg lands and observed that these people had been arbitrarily divided among the new independent African states, decided to request an audience with the French president to understand why. Surprisingly, her request was accepted.

Without hesitation, she asked why France had conquered the Tuareg kingdoms, then deliberately decided to dismantle them and attach them to newly independent states with which they had no political ties. Why did France not restore this nation’s independence at the time of decolonization?

The president’s response was clear and direct, almost accusatory. He explained that France had punished the Tuareg for several reasons:

1. Fierce resistance: Because of the fierce resistance the Tuareg had shown to the French army.
2. Rejection of French education: After the conquest, the Tuareg had refused to send their children to French schools.
3. Refusal to support the war effort: In 1939, they refused to participate in the war effort.
4. Rejection of an independent territory: In 1957, an independent territory, the OCRS, had been offered to them, but they declined it.

The president added, “The Tuareg don’t like us.” This, he explained, was why France had decided to punish them by attaching them to Arabs and Black Africans who despised them, to ensure their eventual extermination.

These words, though honest and harsh, omit many truths. Indeed, the Tuareg had offered thousands of cattle and liters of butter to France during the war, but they refused to send their children to die in a war that didn’t concern them. Is this such a fault?

As for the generous but self-serving offer of the OCRS, the Tuareg refused it because they quickly understood it to be an exception, a last French colony, while all of Africa would gain independence. Today, it is widely accepted that the OCRS was a Bantustan, designed to legitimize the exploitation of mineral resources as well as nuclear and space experiments that would ensure France’s access to the ranks of the world’s great powers. Additionally, France left the Tuareg in the Sahara/Sahel with nuclear and industrial waste, which continues to silently devastate the populations, livestock, wildlife, and flora.

Can we blame the Tuareg for rejecting this false promise?

Moreover, the Tuareg had realized that the French school system was only serving the colonial administration by training subordinates at the expense of the people.

Since independence, France’s successors have scrupulously ensured after-sales service. They went even further, diversifying and refining methods to destroy the Tuareg population:

• State ostracism.
• Blocking of basic social services: closure of nomadic schools or their relocation to Black communities, elimination of school canteens to discourage education.
• Land confiscation: Tuareg lands were given to Black populations.
• Political exclusion: Tuareg representation in the National Assembly was exclusively entrusted to Black notables.
• Professional discrimination: Tuareg candidates were denied positions in ministerial and administrative responsibilities.
• Manipulation of demographic statistics: refusal to conduct demographic censuses of the Tuareg to reduce their numbers on their own territories.
• Exposure to radioactive waste.
• Exploitation of natural disasters: droughts, epidemics, to decimate the Tuareg people.
• Incitement of rebellions and civil wars: to justify blind reprisals against civilians.
• Encouragement of migration: pushing the Tuareg to emigrate abroad.
• Blocking of public resources.
• Exclusion from development funding.
• Authorization of trafficking: including drugs and terrorism on Tuareg territories.
• Genocide: killings, burning of sites, poisoning of water sources, destruction of infrastructure.
• Pillaging of cultural heritage: such as the so-called “Timbuktu manuscripts,” which in reality belong to the Tuareg but are officially attributed to the city of Timbuktu, populated mostly by Black people, to the detriment of their rightful owners.

In summary, the entire arsenal of classic genocide has been extensively deployed to eradicate the Tuareg population, amidst the world’s near-total indifference. A masterpiece of genocide perpetrated by Enlightenment France and completed by its puppets.