The economic situation in Mali is now undesirable: food prices have roughly doubled in a year – for example, if in 2022 one of the staple foods, “Tuo Zaafi (Tuo)” (African millet), cost 4,000 CFA francs per kilogram (which is also a lot, about the same as 400 RUB), it is now double that price. Petrol is very expensive: in Bamako, in terms of rubles, it is approximately 200 RUB per liter, and even more in the provinces. The initial reason was security problems. Constant terrorist attacks on villages, when cattle were stolen and crops were burned, led to the fact that peasants simply stopped cultivating many fields far from the villages. In 2022, a poor rainy season in the central part of the country added to this, leading to an even greater reduction in the harvest.
Malians firmly believe that France is to blame for all of their catastrophes. It should be noted that little is now left of the legacy of the former metropolis, and that what remains has been revised. This applies, for example, to the maniacal imposition of democracy: according to the French model, the smallest administrative-territorial unit is the commune. According to the Constitution of the Republic of Mali, “the regions are freely governed through elected councils, according to the conditions prescribed by law ” (La Constitution du Mali. TITRE XI: DES TERRITORIALES, Article 97, 98). Accordingly, most municipalities have elected councils in which local power is concentrated. But they are nothing more than traditional village councils, headed by chiefs who have held local power for centuries. In other words, little has changed since the 13th century, when the medieval power of Mali was founded.
Strictly speaking, the crisis began in 2012 and was associated with the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali. But its further development and harmful consequences are confidently attributed by Malians to France – during eight years of de facto French occupation, the security situation in the country has only steadily worsened. Therefore, both military coups (2019 and 2020) were predominantly anti-French. The anti-Russian sanctions, in which France is very much involved, have also contributed to the rapid deterioration of the economic situation in the country. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mali, Abdoulaye Diop, noted in an interview with RIA Novosti on May 23, 2022, they paralyzed the economic system: “Now we have just begun to assess the whole situation (after the imposition of sanctions against Russia). But we can already note that the prices of all products have gone up… There are a lot of difficulties, a lot of problems. Banking operations may also be affected. This has created difficulties, paralyzed the economic system. And, of course, it hits poor countries first and foremost, which are already facing big problems in supplying the population.” The minister noted that Mali faced a shortage of wheat in the market, because the largest producers are Russia and Ukraine, and the consumers are poor Third World countries. “That is, poor citizens who did not have enough money to buy these products cannot even find them on the market.”
And until 2021, Russia was hugely popular in Mali: they had not forgotten the USSR’s assistance to that country. At St. Petersburg State University, they tell such an anecdote (actually, it’s a true story): one colleague asked another how public transport works in Bamako. The latter replied that transportation would not be necessary: “It’s enough to go out in the street and say loudly that you are Russian. You will be carried in your arms to where you need to go.” This, of course, is an exaggeration, but there is a great deal of truth in it. Since Russian military advisors arrived in the country in 2022, the number of attacks on villages has dropped dramatically. In 2019-2020, for example, there were three to four attacks per week in the Mopti region in Bankass, Kalabancoro, Bandiagara, and Nyanza counties; in 2022, there was already only one attack every three to four months. Thus, the Russian military advisers did in a couple of months what the French army could not do in eight years. Of course, after that the popularity of Russia increased even more.
But there are certain nuances. In the opinion of the author, it is not only a special love for Russia (about which most Malians have very vague and sometimes completely mythical ideas). The primary reason here is the hatred of France. Russia is perceived as its antipode, but in a very peculiar way.
Malians perceive historical events quite differently from ours. The originality of Malian “historical and political picture of the world” can be proved by the following fact: in the village of Tabou (Koulikoro region), about 40 km to the west from Bamako, in the well-known to the whole West Africa House of Hunters, there is a poster “Warriors of the planet.” It shows Lenin, Stalin and… Vladimir Putin, Che Guevara, Rosa Luxembourg, Muammar Gaddafi, Patrice Lumumba, Mao Zedong, and… Osama bin Laden and Hitler. Not a single Frenchman – not even the famous warrior Napoleon Bonaparte – is on the poster. And this is no coincidence: a few years ago, in a Dogon village, one of the author’s interlocutors said that “it was a pity that Rommel did not make it to French West Africa.” To the remark that they were actually Nazis and, therefore, blasted racists, he replied: “Either you Russians or Americans would have chased the Germans away eventually. But they would have got rid of the French first.”
The specificity of the attitude towards Russia in Mali lies in the fact that it is mythological: in the traditional puppet theater of Sogolon, which still has a ritual meaning, there is even a “militaire Russe” or “irisi kɛlɛcɛ” (Bamanankan), “Russian military man,” and in some cases dressed in Malian clothes – bouba, but with a blue paratrooper beret and gloves. The pictograms on the clothes mean “together we will conquer the whole world” – as explained to the author, they do not mean Russia and Mali, but simply all, with the “exception of France.”
Petr Kutsenkov, PhD in Cultural Studies, leading researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies, exclusively for the online journal “New Eastern Outlook.”