The Tuaregs and rebellion in Mali: The 2012 Rebellion and French military intervention

The Tuaregs, a normadic group occupying the north of Mali had rebelled against the Malian state since 1963, only 3 years after Mali gained independence from the French. The group again rebelled in 1990 against the Malian government, and ever since then the Malian state has found itself in constant confrontation with the group and has remained in one negotiation or the other with the group until the outbreak of the 2012 rebellion that saw the intervention of France. The 2012 rebellion appeared to have differed from previous rebellions in that certain transnational group along with the Tuaregs rebelled against the Malian state. The Malian state's inability to stop the rebel advance resulted in the request by the Malian president for Paris to intervene. This research seeks to find out why France intervened in the 2012 conflict in Mali? The intervention can be viewed from two perspectives; the French perspective, which can be explained in terms of security threat to French economic interests not only in Mali but also in neighboring states like Niger, where France is seen to have invested heavily in various sectors of its economy, and the Malian perspective, which is explained in terms of the weakness of the Malian state and the eminent threat posed by the rebel groups, and the inability of the state to counter the offensive of the rebel groups which threatened stability in the region and the need to avoid what Paris termed as the emergence of a terrorist state in the Sahel region. Keywords: Mali, Tuaregs, France, Intervention, UN, Negative Sovereignty.