In an archival library building, in Timbuktu in northeast Mali, restoration experts are working on thousands of medieval manuscripts. The library, sponsored by South Africa's Cape Town University, is one attempt to repair some of the damage fanatics inflicted on this historical city during their brief but brutal occupation. During the one year that they controlled the city, Islamic extremists destroyed nine mausoleums and mosques and thousands of priceless documents. Since the jihadists were expelled two years ago, Timbuktu has been trying to regain its position as a city of tolerance, a nexus of civilisations and a beacon for learning. While experts in the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project work to restore around 800,000 documents, Ahmad Al-Faqi Al-Mahdi appeared at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague in connection with the destruction of cultural heritage in Mali. Prosecutors say that Al-Mahdi led a morality squad called hisbah that helped impose sharia law on behalf of the Islamic Court of Timbuktu. Al-Mahdi is believed to be a member of Ansar Dine, an ally of Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM). This is the first time the ICC has brought to trial someone charged with cultural destruction. Timbuktu is not the first city to be subjected to such a terrible fate. It joins a list of heritage sites that Muslim fanatics wilfully destroyed in recent years: Afghanistan's Bamiyan, Iraq's Nineveh and Syria's Palmyra. Since the 12th century, Timbuktu, a desert port, has been a hub for culture and coexistence. The city is located on the southern edge of the Sahara, 20 km north of the River Niger. For centuries, it has attracted caravans from Egypt, Sudan and north Africa, as well as riverboats from Nigeria and Senegal. In the 15th and 16th century, at the height of its fame, Timbuktu was at the epicentre of an important book trade, with dozens of scribes copying books on history, science and religion. Timbuktu is now reaching out to this past. According to the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project, the city will soon have six libraries for manuscripts. Four of these already exist, chief of which are the Ahmed Baba Institute and the Mamma Haidara Library. The latter two alone have close to 50,000 manuscripts. Two new libraries are under construction. Mali's political turmoil began with the overthrow of its strongman, Moussa Traoré (1968-1991) in a coup d'état following protests in which 100 people were gunned down by the police Since then, the landlocked country has experienced something of an economic revival and reformed its politics, but it has failed to improve living conditions for most of its population. On the cultural plane, Mali has produced some of the most talented musicians in Africa, including Salif Keita, and hosts an annual musical festival for Tuareg music. When the Arab Spring came, Mali had its share of the regional fallout. Like many African countries in the sub-Sahara, Mali had close relations with Libya. For years, Muammer Gaddafi's regime recruited members of the Tuareg tribes to its army. The Tuareg, a North African community with a strong presence in Niger, Nigeria, Libya and Burkina Faso, have been pressing for their own state for years. In Mali, tensions between the government and Tuareg separatists began right after the country won its independence from France in 1960. With Gaddafi's downfall in 2011, many of the Tuareg who were in his employ returned to Mali where they joined the ranks of Ansar Dine and the National Movement for the Liberation of Azwad, also known by its French acronym, MNLA. By January 2012, the MNLA, in an alliance with Islamic militants, took control of Mali's northeast region, including Timbuktu. Since then, the country has teetered on the edge of chaos. On 21 March 2012, dissident Malian troops, led by Amadou Sanogo, a mid-ranking army officer, overthrew the government of Amadou Toumani Touré, citing his inability to end the Tuareg rebellion as the reason behind their actions. Sanogo was arrested in 27 November 2013 on charges of killing and torturing army personnel. Meanwhile, the MNLA had taken control of two-thirds of Mali, including the cities of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu. Its self-declared state was short-lived, however, as it failed to gain local support or international recognition. The turbulence gave the extremists of Ansar Dine and AQIM a chance to grab control of several cities. Between May and July of 2012, Muslim militants, seeking to impose their own version of sharia, destroyed mausoleums, mosques and historic Islamic schools in Timbuktu. Seeking regional expansion, Muslim extremists began shoring up ties with like-minded groups in Algeria, Libya, Niger and Nigeria. A transborder network of terror emerged, with Mali at its epicentre. To the north, Algeria, the birthplace of hardened groups such as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, soon felt the heat. Since the Islamic Salvation Front was denied an electoral victory in 1991, Algeria has been fighting a wide range of insurrections. Some of the militants who cut their teeth battling the government in that country were instrumental in creating AQIM, which later on played a key role in the occupation of northeast Mali. So when Malian and French troops finally pushed the militants out of their strongholds in Mali, many fled to Algeria where, on 16 January 2013, a brigade led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar mounted an attack on the Amenas gas facility, taking hundreds of hostages. The ordeal ended four days later, with nearly 70 people killed, including 29 militants. In the ensuing months, Niger, Cameroon, Niger and Benin joined ranks with Mali in the fight against Boko Haram, a radical Islamist group that in March 2015 pledged allegiance to the terrorist Islamic State (IS) group. Countries bordering Lake Chad eventually raised an army of 8,000 men to fight Boko Haram, which US intelligence experts believe has only 6,000 men under arms. According to the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre (NOREF), the militant group AQIM managed to train some Boko Haram fighters during the ten months that the two cooperated in Mali. David Francis, a professor of African studies at Bradford University, believes that dozens of fighters who were formerly with AQIM and the Signers in Blood Battalion joined Boko Haram in recent months. Experts say that Somali militants have also helped train the Nigeria-based Boko Haram. After recruiting militants who were expelled from northeast Mali, Boko Haram was able to escalate its operations in the region as of March 2013, according to the Brookings Institution, Following in the footsteps of its IS allies, Boko Haram developed a taste for preying on unarmed civilians. On 14 April 2014, the group abducted 276 schoolgirls from a secondary school in Chibok, a town in Nigeria's Borno State. In all, the group has abducted more than 2,000 women and girls since early 2014. But its attack on the school in the town of Chibok was met by international outrage, culminating in the widely circulated hashtag #BringBackOurGirls. Some of the abducted women and girls were eventually rescued. On 23 September, the Nigerian military rescued 241 women and children in a raid on two Boko Haram camps in the villages of Jangurori and Bulatori, arresting 43 militants in the operations, according to Nigerian army spokesman Colonel Sani Usman. Many of the freed victims were found to be pregnant, according to local media. Libya has no borders with Mali, and yet Islamist fighters seem to be able to move between the two countries with relative ease. When the Gaddafi regime fell, Tuareg fighters left Libya to join the short-lived Azwad state. Later on, as Islamists in Libya locked horns with the internationally recognised government, scores of militants left Mali and went back to Tripoli to help out their friends. After being a centre for trade and knowledge, Timbuktu became a transit point for drugs, weapons and illegal immigrants. According to reports by the Brookings Institution, violent groups finance their activities with protection money paid by gangs smuggling cocaine from Latin America. They also received millions in ransom money paid by the families and employers of Western hostages. In 2014, networks working under the protection of militant groups smuggled nearly 300,000 Africans to Europe through Libya, says the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Arms traffickers connected with the militants, having acquired weapons looted from Gaddafi's extensive arsenal, ran a brisk business across the Sahara. Libyan weapons were later used in ethnic and political strife in Sudan, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso.
