With Kadhafi’s fall, Tuaregs lose powerful ally focus 09/12/2011

With Kadhafi’s fall, Tuaregs lose powerful ally

focus

09/12/2011
AGADEZ — For many Tuaregs in Niger, the fall of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi means the loss of a powerful ally who for decades had strong ties with the desert community scattered across several countries.

“Libya is the land of the Tuaregs, their base and their support,” Kadhafi said in 2005 to Tuareg leaders who he had invited to Oubari in the center of southern Libya.

“Kadhafi is indisputably the ally of the Tuaregs, he cherished them,” said an employee of a tour agency in Agadez, the town in north Niger on the edge of the desert that is regarded as the Tuareg capital.

“The Libyan authorities automatically gave us working papers, but other west Africans without papers were persecuted,” recalled a former emigrant to Libya, Yassine Souleymane..... MORE

Source:  The Daily Tribune

URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110912com3.html