To the International community: How would you react if your ancestral land was divided into five states? The marked area on this map shows the land where the people of the Sahara have lived since milennia. In the map in the picture is the land they call Azawad (in todays north Mali) and beside it is Azawagh (in today’s northern part of Niger) this whole area has been inhabited since thousands of years by Tuaregs, Arabs (moors) Fulanis and others.
The borders we see today are all colonial/post colonial borders written by strangers from another country who came to this area in the Sahara to colonize it and its people, an invader on the hunt for natural resources. This invader in Azawad (northern Mali) was France, who colonized it and called it “French Soudane”. But it was not French! there were people who lived there already, it was not a non inhabited no man´s land.
How would you feel if a strange nation came to your land, colonized it and gave it another name than the one it already had?
The Tuaregs most of all, did fight this colonization and refused to bow. And they kept fighting over the years and keep fighting for their freedom even to this day. Because today they are oppressed by Mali. And Russia, in the form of Russian mercenaries violating every human right in existence. Against defenseless civilians.
If your area of living was invaded and new borders were drawn which divided your people and mixed you with people and cultures which you had nothing in common. And the government and many of those people as well, treated you as a stranger in your own land… and marginalized and oppressed you because of pure racism, and that`s where a big part of this conflict lies, apart from being robbed of their land.
And the government started a genocide against you to force you out of the land where you were born, to drive you out, not hesitating to use all means, even the most inhuman and barbaric. Using the scorched earth policy which in this case includes even burning people alive.
And you resisted and fought back because where would you go? this is where you were born, this is your land. This is your RIGHT!
What would you do?
This is the situation for the people of Azawad today.
It´s an existential fight for survival against an enemy and oppressor who can kill a baby without blinking, or shoot an 90 year old man who have done nothing except existing.
A mass grave that was discovered in Azawad, 2025.
Because the Azawadians fought back, France already punished them in the 1960s by attaching them to this created state they called “Mali”. And because they fought back and still fight back, the Malian authorities today call them “terrorists”.
Because Mali cannot defeat them they brought in both (the real) terrorists to create chaos and tarnish the reputation of the Azawadian freedom fighters, and they brought in Russian mercenaries, composed of criminals who are there only to rob the country (they care about NOBODY but themselves and the resources of the land, if any Malian believes the mercenaries are there to protect them they deceive themselves) and performs this genocide with exceptional cruelty in exchange for gold and mineral “rights”.
The junta buy Turkish drones to kill both whole families and animals and if they did not find anyone to kill on any given day they even targets just sand. So they could say on the national television later that evening, that they had “successfully neutralized terrorists”. But maybe it was just sand, or maybe a “terrorist chief” was just a donkey. Or a bird.
But it could as well have been a family, with children, women, elders sleeping in their house until the drone came at night and killed them all and burnt everything. This has happened many times!
Azawad belongs to the Azawadian people, not to Mali. They should never have been attached together and France “should” fix this error of the past.
The Azawad Liberation Front does not fight any expanding war, they only fight for independence of this specific part of northern Mali that is called Azawad which is their ancestral land. Then, they just want to live in peace on their land and they would be good neighbors to the surrounding countries and a stabilizer of the Sahel.
How would you, international community, react if your land was colonized and divided into five states and these states marginalized and oppressed you, and as is in the case of Mali, even went to so far as to perform a genocide against you? and with utmost barbarity, even resorting to cannibalism.
Would you just bow, sell out your people and lose your dignity or lay down and die? or would you resist, keeping your honor while fighting back to regain your land and your freedom?
Is resisting such oppression as they do make them “terrorists” as the Malian junta claims? or does it make them freedom fighters?
An ancient people refusing to bow down to oppression.
Isn’t justice a beautiful thing?
Azawad Support Group
01-09-25