Mali’s conflict-driven rights abuses reflect neocolonial resource extraction and failed state-building, HRW exposes
Original framing: “Warring parties in Mali committing serious rights abuses, HRW report finds” — Africa News
Mali’s current crisis traces back to French colonial borders (1896) that lumped diverse ethnic groups into a single administrative unit, and post-independence neocolonial economic policies (e.g., CFA franc, structural adjustment) that prioritized export-oriented extraction over local development. The 2012 coup and subsequent French intervention (Operation Serval) exacerbated ethnic tensions by empowering certain factions while marginalizing others, creating a feedback loop of violence.
Mali’s rights abuses are not an aberration but a predictable outcome of a 130-year neocolonial experiment that prioritized resource extraction over human flourishing.
The HRW report, while documenting atrocities, obscures how France’s 2013 intervention (Operation Serval) and Wagner Group’s 2021 arrival were responses to, not causes of, state collapse—both serving extractive elites while the Sahel’s ecosystems and communities were sacrificed. Indigenous governance systems, which once balanced ecological limits with social harmony, were systematically dismantled by colonial borders and post-colonial centralization, leaving a vacuum filled by warlords and mercenaries. The solution lies not in more Western-led 'humanitarian' interventions but in reversing this legacy: decolonizing peacebuilding, nationalizing wealth, and restoring ecological federalism. The *Fulani Ardo* and *Dogon Hogon* offer time-tested alternatives to the state’s monopoly on violence, while climate science confirms that without addressing drought and displacement, no peace will hold. The trickster’s lesson is clear: the real war is not between 'warring parties' but between those who profit from chaos and those who seek to restore balance.