They came to burn down their village.
By Khamidune Ag Toumast
04-01-25
Are these the “terrorists” that the Malian army claims to be fighting…?
They are children of Azawad who have never carried weapons, only frail bodies and innocent dreams.
They are women of Azawad seeking shelter under their tents and on their land, which the Malian army has turned to ashes.
They are defenseless elders and poor shepherds, who knew nothing but grazing, water, and the sky.
Even camels, cattle, and horses did not escape the killing machine, as they are the lifeblood of a people whom they seek to starve to extinction.
These are the “targets” that the Malian army is eliminating under the pretext of “fighting terrorism.”
The naked truth: the Malian army is terrorism.
The Malian army does not fight terrorism; it practices it, legitimizes it, and enforces it by force on a defenseless people. What is happening in Azawad is not a security operation, nor a war against armed groups, but a policy of systematic, organized, and repeated extermination of civilians, especially children and women.
Documented massacres… names engraved in blood.
In the Moura massacre, the Malian army committed one of the most atrocious crimes in the region’s history:
civilians were gathered, hands were tied, mass executions were carried out, victims were buried in mass graves or left exposed to the elements, and survivors were hunted or forcibly disappeared.
In Gao, civilian gatherings were indiscriminately bombed. In Gossi, entire villages were burned after their residents were killed. In Hombori and Tessalit, dawn raids were conducted:
- Men separated from women.
- Men executed in front of their children.
- Women raped and humiliated.
- Homes and tents set on fire afterward.
In Kidal, Léré, open grazing areas, and remote villages, nameless massacres took place, because witnesses were killed, and villages were erased from the map.
Methods of killing that leave no doubt about criminal intent.
The Malian army does not merely kill, it engineers terror:
- Shooting children deliberately to instill mass panic.
- Killing women because they screamed or resisted.
- Burning people alive in their homes.
- Crushing bodies with military vehicles.
- Poisoning wells to prevent life and return.
- Burning pastures to destroy traditional economies.
- Slaughtering camels, cattle, and horses to create deliberate famine.
- Forbidding the burial of the dead as a form of collective psychological humiliation.
These are not isolated incidents, but a deliberate military policy,
a doctrine of mass killing.
Who is the terrorist?
Is the terrorist:
- A child killed for being Azawadi?
- A woman raped for belonging to Azawad?
- A shepherd executed because of his language or clothing?
Or is the terrorist:
- The one who bombs villages?
- The one who burns the land?
- The one who poisons the water?
- The one who uses the army to exterminate a people?
International law is clear:
Killing civilians, forced displacement, deliberate destruction of livelihoods, sexual violence, mass graves = war crimes and crimes against humanity.
What the Malian army is committing is state terrorism documented by sound and image.
A Silent genocide:
What is happening in Azawad: Is not a mistake, not an incident, not an exception, but a slow and progressive genocide:
- killing human beings
- breaking the soul
- erasing identity
- draining the future
The child is killed today, the land is burned tomorrow, the survivors are prevented from returning the day after, and the world is told: “There are no civilians.”
The final appeal
I will continue to shout when silence becomes betrayal.
I will speak because silence is complicity in the crime.
I will bear witness because the blood of children does not expire.
We demand:
- An independent international investigation.
- Prosecution of the leaders of the Malian army.
- Immediate protection for the women and children of Azawad.
- An immediate end to state terrorism.
Azawad is not a battlefield.
Azawad is an open-air cemetery for civilians.
Khamidoune Ag Toumast
11-01-25