More Belated News From Djenne

 There was a lot more to say about Djenne but everything went like a whirlwind in the four days I was there and the matters closest to my heart was the giving up of my land. But life in  Djenne continues regardless and those private concerns are now receding into their allotted place somewhere a little further back in my mind.

The security situation seems to have stabilized marginally.  I tried to take the pulse of Djenne by speaking to as many people as possible. It does seem that the stories vary depending very much on the position of the person questioned, and it appears that the opinions are shaped by whether one has cattle or is a cultivating landowner.  If the latter, the opinion is overwhelmingly that the Dozo, the traditional hunter militia who have taken it upon themselves to protect the farming villages, has restored order in the villages around Djenne which have lived through a sort of reign of terror for the last couple of years when the Jihadist Front de la Liberation de Macina  has murdered villagers in their fields and forced the village schools to close down. 
 Djenne is situated in the centre of a vast area of rice and millet production. Animal husbandry, mostly an occupation of the Fulani, is not the main means of survival here, but rather cultivation.  One of those in favour of the Dozo is my old friend the Imam Yelpha, with whom I had my customary chat of course as he sat on the traditional  raised tintin seat in front of his Koran school.                                                                     

 According to Yelpha more than sixty percent of the schools in the surrounding villages have now been reopened.  There are also other tangible developments, such as the deployment of ca 100 FAMA (Forces Armees MAliennes) soldiers to Djenne: about half of which are garrisoned by the Prefecture, and the rest by the halted dam construction.  These soldiers are collaborating with the Dozo, albeit in an unofficial capacity. This is perhaps inevitable, since the FAMA soldiers do not know the area and the population and will need to rely on intelligence from the locals in their hunt for Jihadists.  The problem is that the lines have been very blurred between the ‘Jihadists’ and ordinary Fulani, and there have been many innocent victims.

‘But isn’t it dangerous to let militias exact their own justice?’ I ask. ‘Surely they make mistakes?’ Not everyone that is Fulani is a Jihadist?’ But Yelpha insists that they know who is who and who belongs to the Jihadists. 

I met and spoke to the Djenne merchant Craven Landoure who supplied Hotel Djenne Djenno with all its plumbing goods a long time ago in happier times. He is a Diawando- a branch of the Fulani tribe-and has lost all his cattle, apparently through wanton cattle theft by the Dozo.  My friend Ga noticed and mentioned the presence of Fulani when we drove through the market of Somadougou on the way from Djenne to  Mopti- there are hardly any Fulani in the weekly village markets in or around Djenne these days he said. They have all been scared away. My conversation with Ga, from a cattle owning Serakolle family gave a less sunny picture of the present Djenne situation.  I thought there had been a relative calm recently – he said that on the contrary just a few days earlier 14 Dozo had been killed by a group of Jihadists apparently dressed in army fatigues as the traditional hunters  were escorting a convoy of villagers on their way to the market of Martomo to provide their safety. This massacre was said to be in retaliation for a previous attack by the Dozo on the Jihadists in the village of Mamba.  These are villages situated between Djenne and Diafarabe. According to Ga the Jihadists have not left the Djenne area, they are still there, in the bush, biding their time. The water still stands relatively high and that has been the main reason for a lull in activity. 

The Fulani were undoubtedly the main force of what was called the Macina Group, the Jihadist organization of Central Mali. That does not mean that all Fulani are Jihadist. Neither does it mean that all of the Macina Group are made up of Fulani. The situation is complicated and to reduce it simply to an age old conflict between herdsmen and cultivators or a tribal conflict between the Dozo (mostly Bambara, Dogon and Songhay) and the Fulani is a gross simplification.

Some Dozo may  well know who is who – just like the French used the MNLA at Kidal and beyond to root out the  Aqmi, the MUJAO, the Ancardine et al after the fall of the Jihadist occupation of the north, so the Malian Army are now making use of government friendly militia intelligence.
BUT this is tricky business...