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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Violence, Dignity and Mali's New Model Army, 1960-68
Author:Mann, GregoryISNI
Year:2003
Periodical:Mande Studies
Volume:5
Pages:65-82
Language:English
Geographic term:Mali
Subjects:violence
civic service
socialism
organized crime
armed forces
Military, Defense and Arms
History and Exploration
Law, Human Rights and Violence
Politics and Government
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/44078823
Abstract:Paradoxically for a country that won its independence peacefully, Mali's first regime was deeply invested in the management of violence. This paper seeks to understand that paradox. It also sets the public face of managed violence against dignity, its most essential counterpart. It examines the roles of the army and paramilitary organizations including youth brigades, popular militias and regimented rural labour forces, as well as the conflicts which rose between them. To the ideologues of Mali's regime, the army represented more than independence, promise or danger. It had a unique potential to represent the key element of President Modibo Keita's (1960-1968) political thought, dignity. However, after 1965 the army's functions and its personnel became increasingly politicized and their professional identity was gradually subordinated to a larger vision of the revolutionary regime, in the context of which soldiers were made into farmers and labourers. Within the ranks, such labour was a blow to the soldiers' dignity. More damaging, and eventually more dangerous, was the empowerment, in defence of the regime's socialist path, of the Milice. Keita lost control over this militia, which grew increasingly powerful at the expense of the army. Miliciens stripped both political opponents and ordinary people of their own dignity. The conjugation of the army's frustration and the people's resentment produced a situation in which the 1968 coup d'état was met with dancing in the streets. Bibliogr., notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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