APRIL 2012
Sunrise on Monday brought a new cavalcade of vehicles from the east. They filed along the sandy street that ran past Ismael’s house, Toyota trucks painted the dun colors of the desert, each with a heavy machine gun mounted on the back along with a handful of swaying men. Unlike the vehicles Ismael had seen the day before, these picked their way along the road with deliberation. As they passed he could see that instead of flying the multicolored banner of the MNLA they carried black flags inscribed with white Arabic lettering. The new arrivals drove to the military camp and pulled down the MNLA’s multicolored standard and burned it before replacing it with their own oblong of dark material. “There is no God but Allah,” the flags read.
By ten a.m. Jansky’s phone was buzzing. A group of new arrivals had stopped in front of the mosque near the Flamme de la Paix monument at the northwestern edge of town, he was told, so he climbed into his car to go see who they were. Following the ring road he passed a group of rebel leaders driving in the other direction. His phone rang again. Another group had arrived at the hospital. He turned south.
The list of jihadists who arrived in Timbuktu that day would make a strong poker hand of “Most Wanted” playing cards. They included two senior al-Qaeda commanders: Yahya Abou al-Hammam, the “emir of the Sahara,” and Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the leader of AQIM’s Masked Brigade. Both were in their thirties, veterans of the Algerian civil war who had been sentenced to death in absentia, and by 2015 they would each have a $5 million bounty on their heads. Al-Hammam was said to have been involved in the murder of a seventy-eight-year-old French hostage in Niger, while Belmokhtar—a veteran of Afghanistan who went by an assortment of colorful nicknames including “One-Eye” and “Uncatchable”—was wanted for a string of killings and kidnappings.
But these men would play minor roles in the city’s future, compared with two others who arrived in Timbuktu that day: Abdelhamid Abou Zeid and Iyad Ag Ghaly. Abou Zeid was also a veteran of the Algerian war, older than the others, most identifiable by his short stature: he was around five feet tall. The “Little Emir” was a rising star in AQIM thanks to the money he had made from kidnapping, which had earned the organization millions of euros. He was said to keep this money buried at a secret desert location, and was seen paying his fighters in brand-new euro notes. He could be ruthless—in 2009 his jihadist brigade had murdered a British man, Edwin Dyer, who had been captured near Timbuktu—and wherever Abou Zeid went, his Western hostages were held close by. Despite his wealth he led an ascetic life, and like a good jihadist he carried his Kalashnikov at all times. He spoke in a murmur that was said to be inspired by the soft tones of Bin Laden. He drank Coca-Cola and enjoyed milk mixed with rice and dates.
Ag Ghaly, meanwhile, was from the same Tuareg clan as Mohamed Ag Najim. Like Ag Najim, he had joined Gaddafi’s military as a young man but returned to Mali in the 1980s to carve out a career as a revolutionary. He had a black beard and a babyish face, and though at one time he enjoyed whiskey and music, he had since become radicalized. In one U.S. diplomat’s assessment, he cast a shadow over the north of the country and turned up “like the proverbial bad penny” to take his cut whenever a ransom was paid. His ability to play both sides was legendary: the Malian government once sent him as an envoy to Saudi Arabia, but he was expelled for making contact with extremist organizations. When his bid to lead the MNLA was rejected, he created a new jihadist group named Ansar Dine (“Defenders of the Faith”), which acted as a domestic branch of al-Qaeda. That day, he was in Timbuktu to hijack the MNLA’s victory.
At eight a.m., Alkadi went to see a colleague, and together they decided to go into town on Alkadi’s little motorbike to find out what was happening. In the Petit Marché they saw two Toyotas pull up next to a small mosque. Each vehicle was packed with gunmen wearing turbans that tumbled down to their waists, and in the lead truck was a man with distinctive bright teeth and a hennaed beard whom Alkadi recognized as Oumar Ould Hamaha. Known to most as Barbe Rouge, or “Redbeard,” Hamaha was a Timbuktien and a jihadist commander.
“Come, gather round the car,” Hamaha told the crowds in the market in good French, as his fighters jumped down from the 4x4s and began to usher people toward him. “We have not come to kill you,” he said. “We have come in the name of Islam.”
When a crowd had assembled, Hamaha began to explain their mission.
They were not looking for independence from Mali, he said, nor did they want to do people harm. Timbuktu had once been a great Islamic city, and they simply wanted it to become one again. The problems that people had—of poverty, unemployment, unhappiness—existed because they had been led astray from the laws of God. Now that God had allowed them to capture the town, it was His will that they ensure Timbuktu lived by the strict laws of Islam.
After his speech, Hamaha took questions, and when he had finished he moved on a short distance and his men went to round up a new audience. He continued in this manner for much of the day, and other jihadists did the same, so their message was broadcast to the people.
It wasn’t long before these question-and-answer sessions became dominated by complaints about looting. The jihadists listened. Then they started handing out phone numbers that people with grievances could call, and from then on, whenever anyone had an issue with the MNLA—when their car or motorbike was taken or their shop looted—they phoned the jihadists, and if the stolen goods were private property, the jihadists would order the MNLA to hand them back. “Ansar Dine said that looting against private people was not normal,” recalled Sane Chirfi Alpha, Haidara’s childhood friend and a former head of tourism for the city. “If it was against the state, it was okay, but if it was against private citizens, they had no right to do it. Every time someone seized something private, Ansar Dine—and elements of al-Qaeda too—took it upon themselves to get it returned.”
Some essential state-owned assets were also protected. The city was in a “catastrophic” condition after the looting, the Ansar Dine spokesperson Sanda Ould Bouamama said, so they set about trying to fix it. They made sure the utilities were secured—including the water supply, the Energie du Mali electricity plant, the telecommunications equipment—as well as Radio Bouctou and the hospital. On Sunday night the head of Timbuktu’s health services had been called by an assistant and told that he had no office left: it had been looted and trashed. On Monday morning Ag Ghaly went to the hospital personally and asked the health workers what was missing. The vehicles, including the ambulance, had been stolen, along with medical machines and supplies, so Ag Ghaly found two trucks to replace them.
After the wave of destruction that had washed through the town on Sunday, people were impressed. “They were psychologists, they knew how to win people over,” Diadié recalled. “They started listening. If there were frustrated people, or people who had lost things, they would make amends and try to buy their esteem.” Even Jansky conceded that Ag Ghaly was a “boss.”
The looting hadn’t entirely stopped, though, and later on Monday the city elders went to see Ag Ghaly to complain: family homes were still being broken into, they said, and things were being stolen and destroyed. At that moment, the Ansar Dine leader ordered the MNLA out of the city center altogether. From then on, the town would be held by his jihadist fighters, while the southern districts, including the airport and the riverside, would be the domain of the secular MNLA. “The MNLA had the right to come and do its business here, to buy what it needed,” said Sane Chirfi Alpha, “but they were not allowed to stay in the city after eight p.m.” When they came into town, they had to come without weapons or flags, in vehicles without guns.
Timbuktu would pay a price for Ag Ghaly’s protection, however. That evening, the Ansar Dine leader called the imams to the military camp to explain that they would “fight to the death” against those who wanted to speak of the creation of a secular republic—in other words, the MNLA—and he set out the requirements of the new theocratic regime.
Details of Ag Ghaly’s political philosophy were broadcast on Radio Bouctou later in the week. He began by citing a controversial hadith in which the Prophet is alleged to have said that he had been “ordered to kill the people until they testify that there is no god except Allah, and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer and pay the zakah [give thanks to God].” Ansar Dine was not an ethnic, tribal, or racist group, he said, but an Islamic one that was the enemy of unbelievers and polytheists. The suffering of the Muslim people was the fault of the laws of Jews and Christians:
It is not a secret, the scale of hardship our Muslim society is suffering, and the worst of it is disabling the Islamic sharia, which Allah has blessed us with, and replacing it with man-made laws that are taken from the Jews, Christians and their followers, which result in oppression, aggression, immorality, disobedience, poverty, deprivation and only Allah knows what.
For these reasons, he went on,
your brothers from the mujahideen and the Ansar Dine organization have come together and vowed to uphold what is right, to implement the religion, to lift injustice from the oppressed, to reunify the Muslims, and to unite their efforts around the [belief] that there is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his Messenger.
To succeed in his endeavor, Ag Ghaly required three things from the people of Timbuktu. First, he called upon “all segments of Muslim society to help . . . in establishing the religion,” spreading justice and security, promoting virtue, and preventing vice. Second, he said, “our brothers the traders” must continue to supply the city with basic foodstuffs, fuel, and medicines, since “Allah will aid the slave as long as the slave aids his brother.” Finally, the population of the city, especially those with “talents and capabilities,” must pull together and help the community, either financially or by volunteering, since it was written in the scripture that:
He who has done an atom’s weight of good shall see it
And he who has done an atom’s weight of evil shall see it.
On Monday evening, Timbuktu began its first night under sharia law.
• • •
THE KEEPERS of the manuscripts met the jihadists’ arrival with relief. Whatever strange ideas these people had about the Muslim faith, they would surely not threaten the safety of what were, after all, mostly Islamic texts. They might even help protect them from the looters.
Abdoulaye “Air Mali” Chabane—a portly figure, nicknamed after the national airline many years before because of his speed on the soccer pitch—was sitting opposite the new Ahmad Baba institute building in Sankore on Monday morning when he saw two vehicles pull up and several gunmen enter. After a moment’s reflection he stood and followed them. Inside the compound, he saw two young men on the lower ground floor and several more in the offices above, all armed, and thought it prudent to leave. Sitting outside once more, he heard a good deal of shouting from the building, and soon the men reappeared, carrying a plastic sack full of loot. He watched them climb into their vehicles and drive away.
An hour later, another group arrived, in a pickup with a black flag. Their leader was a fat, bearded man who looked foreign. Air Mali approached and told him that the “lunatics” had come to visit. He had heard a lot of noise but did not know what they had done. “Are they still there?” asked the jihadist. When Air Mali said no, the commander said they should go in together.
Inside, they found the offices smashed up and the windows broken. Air Mali thought the men must have been searching for cash, because there were cellphones lying around that they hadn’t bothered to take. They also appeared to have tried to get into the safe, without success.
“Where are the workers?” the commander asked.
“Gone,” said Air Mali. “Fled.”
The center must be preserved, the commander announced grandly, since it contained the history of the people; the stories of their fathers and grandfathers were all kept in here. Did Air Mali know anyone who could come to evaluate the damage?
Air Mali felt a wash of relief: it appeared that the jihadists could be made to understand. Even if everything else was looted, this place could at least be saved. He called the institute’s accounts manager and explained the problem. At first he said he couldn’t come, but Air Mali insisted, and the manager arrived that afternoon and checked the contents against his inventory. Everything valuable that was left should be removed to a safe place, he said: the computers, the furniture—everything but the manuscripts. Those were in a safe place and were not going anywhere. Anyway, the thieves had shown earlier that they were not interested in taking them.
When the inventory had been checked, the manager gave the list of missing items to the jihadists, who said they would investigate. They would also send people the following day to guard the building.
Several days passed, but nobody came.
Ismael Diadié Haidara meanwhile spent much of Monday in his Fondo Kati library, finishing the job of moving his manuscripts. In the afternoon he was sitting under the tree in his courtyard with a friend when a car pulled up outside. There were five armed men in the back and two in the front, and their leader asked who was the responsable for the house. Before Ismael could speak, his friend said that the director wasn’t there.
“He has gone to Bamako,” he said. “He fled.”
“What is this place?” asked the rebel. “Is it an office?”
“No, a library.”
“What is inside this library?”
“Books. Kurans.”
“Ah,” said the man. “If they are Kurans, then no one will touch them until the return of the owner.”
The pickup moved off. Fifty yards down the street it stopped and reversed, and the jihadist went to speak to the man who owned the shop next door. Ismael thought they were trying to verify what his friend had said.
“We must keep calm,” Ismael told his companion. “If they ask us again, this time I will speak.”
The jihadists bought a few things from the shop, including sugar and tea, then came back. “It was a very delicate, very difficult moment,” Ismael recalled. “They were no more than five meters from the library.”
“I know you now, you two, I have seen you,” said the leader. “If something happens to this house, I will come looking for you.”
“No problem,” said Ismael. “Everyone is calm. Nobody is going to touch anything here.”
When the men had gone, Ismael’s friend turned to him. “Those people are going to come back,” he said. “You have to get out of here. Leave this town, because you are known—everyone knows you. In the end they will come to look for you.”
“Perhaps,” said Ismael. “Yes.”