The world is suddenly paying attention to the oft-ignored North
African country of Mali, as it is racked by its most recent in a
long string of crises: a coup d’etat. This political and
constitutional crisis sits atop an already extremely vulnerable
situation – a volatile mix of climate change, drought, food
shortages, migration and immobility, armed insurrection and
heavy weapons proliferation that threaten to plunge the country
into a state of instability not unlike Somalia. As the
international community, including the UN Security Council,
moves to act on this crisis, it will be important to consider
all the identifiable sources of Mali’s insecurity in order to
get the solutions right. From model to mayhem? Mali has been
described by some as a benchmark country in Africa, where
democracy had put down healthy roots over the past two decades.
Yet on March 21, a military junta seized control of the
government in Bamako, ousting the democratically-elected
President Amadou Toumani Toure from power. The rational