This paper examines the protracted ethnic and religious conflict between Tuareg Arabs and sub-Saharan black Africans across countries including Mali, Niger, Sudan, and Chad. The analysis traces the roots of the conflict to over a thousand years of Arab-conducted slavery, which affected an estimated 20 million people and persisted in Mauritania until 2007. The paper surveys major regional uprisings, considers the role of European colonialism in shaping unstable borders, and evaluates prospects for outside intervention. Drawing on concepts from social psychology — including conformity, social cognition, and social perception — it argues that mutual distrust, religious division between Islam and Christianity, and accumulated historical grievances make peaceful resolution extremely unlikely in the near term.
Africa is a tumultuous continent for a number of reasons. Whether the conflicts involve race, ethnic rivalries, religion, or some combination of the three, wars and instability are not hard to find. North Africa in particular, with its proximity to the Middle East, makes an already volatile situation even more combustible. One ongoing and protracted conflict is that between the Tuareg Arabs and black populations in sub-Saharan Africa. These groups occupy much of the same territory across Niger, Mali, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria, among other countries. The problems between the two groups date back at least a thousand years, and the wounds run deep on both sides. While peaceful coexistence may someday be possible, the accumulated grievances of the past millennium will likely prevent that outcome for many more centuries to come.
Perhaps the primary reason that Berbers and blacks in North Africa have been at odds is that the former enslaved the latter for roughly a thousand years, with the total number of black victims of these atrocities estimated at nearly 20 million. While the United States abolished slavery in the 1860s during its Civil War, the same did not happen in Mauritania until 2007 — and the practice did not begin to decline meaningfully there until the 1960s. This slavery was so protracted and deeply embedded that just under one-tenth of all Nigeriens were enslaved, and anywhere from one-tenth to one-fifth of Mauritanians were as well.
The broader region — encompassing countries such as Mali, Niger, Sudan, and Chad — has experienced very violent uprisings in recent decades, all of which have stratified along ethnic lines. Many travelers and regional experts who know the area will attest to how palpable and visceral the animosity remains on the ground (Van Dyke, 2014). The legacy of slavery in Africa continues to shape intergroup relations in ways that outside observers often underestimate.
The most recent of the four countries to experience major upheaval is Mali, which saw an uprising in 2012. Another conflict erupted not long before that, from 2007 to 2009, engulfing both Mali and Niger. One of the more notorious epicenters of violence in the region — and one that has directly involved both Tuareg and sub-Saharan black participants — is the fighting in South Sudan that lasted from 1983 to 2005, eventually culminating in South Sudanese independence in 2011. Between 2005 and 2011, the South Sudan conflict spilled over into Chad and continued there until 2010.
Some analysts have argued that the countries of Mali, Niger, Sudan, and Chad should not exist in their current form, given the manner in which their borders were drawn during and after the era of European colonialism in Africa. However, the fractures and historical grievances that now define the region are precisely what make it extremely difficult for either party to ever decisively "win" the conflict or achieve lasting peace — not unlike the situation between Israel and the Palestinians in the Middle East. In both cases, there has simply been too much bad blood, too much warfare, and too many horrific acts for either side to let the past go (Van Dyke, 2014).
"UN, NATO, and resistance to foreign involvement"
"Psychological concepts applied to ethnic conflict"
The social perceptions sustaining the Arab–black conflict reflect mutual feelings of distrust and an unwillingness — on both sides, and for understandable reasons — to release the past and orient toward a peaceful future. Both sides are either seeking retribution or are unwilling to trust the other. As long as these attitudes persist and are transmitted to future generations, the status quo in the region will remain unchanged.
The conflict in Northern Africa is not unlike that in the Middle East in that the ethnic and religious issues span back centuries — if not millennia — and until both sides are willing to come to the table and restrain their own extremists who wish to keep fighting, nothing is going to change, for much the same reasons. The racial and religious lines being drawn are maintained by those who are neither flexible nor reasonable. The degree of coexistence seen in countries like the United States or Great Britain between Muslims and non-Muslims — tense as it sometimes may be — is simply not feasible in Northern Africa, for several converging reasons. Nevertheless, as time passes, perhaps a breakthrough can eventually be reached.
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