Mali and the Burnt Manuscripts : A blow to History, Culture and Civilisation

Despite the claim by archivist that precious manuscripts have been safely moved earlier from Timbuktu to Bamako, some precious artifacts and manuscripts must also have been lost due to the destructive activities of the islamists in Mali.

A building housing over 60 thousand manuscripts from the ancient Muslim world and Greece was set aflame, raising fears of further damage to the country's cultural heritage after months of destruction by Islamists.

Timbuktu mayor Halley Ousmane, who is in Bamako, confirmed the fire at the Ahmed Baba Centre for Documentation and Research, which housed between 60,000 and 100,000 manuscripts, according to Mali's culture ministry.

"I spoke to my media officer this morning. What has happened in Timbuktu is dramatic," he said.

Ousmane said he had also been informed that Islamists had "burnt alive" a resident who had cried out "Vive la France".

The Ahmed Baba institute was set up in 1973. A new building was opened in 2009 following a bilateral agreement with South Africa to promote the conservation, research and promotion of the manuscripts as African heritage.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on Monday indicated Rome was scrapping plans to provide logistical support for French-led forces in Mali due to a failure among the main parties to reach a political deal ahead of elections next month.

"I asked the leaders of the three parties of the majority to give their views but we did not receive the support we had hoped for," Monti, who is himself running as leader of the coalition of centrist parties, said in an interview with La7 television.

Defence Minister Giampaolo Di Paola last week said Italy would send a refuelling plane and two transport planes to carry troops and equipment in the conflict against Islamist-led rebels in Mali.

While expressing Italy's "strong support" for the operation, however, Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi said that "internal political conditions" meant Rome could not offer concrete backing at the moment.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday that London was "keen" to contribute more in addition to two transport planes and a surveillance aircraft which have already been provided.

The manuscripts are very crucial to West Africa as well as African civilisation and history. Most of them represent the earliest objective and undiluted accounts and experiences of travellers; most especially Arab traders and Islamic missionaries.

France has so far done the best. The French troops have successfully taken over Kidal, the last stronghold of the Islamists. Reports have it that some of the main leaders of the Islamists have escaped into neighbouring countries especially Nigeria.

Mali is being liberated

PARIS, Jan 28 (Reuters) - A French-led offensive in Mali that forced out al Qaeda-allied Islamist insurgents from the towns of Gao and Timbuktu at the weekend shows that Mali is slowly being freed, the French foreign minister said on Monday.

"Little by little, Mali is being liberated," Laurent Fabius told France 2 television. But Fabius cautioned that armed fighters from the Islamist alliance in north Mali, who had sought to impose Islamic law in the vast desert area, were now hiding and could reappear.

"The terrorist groups are carrying out a strategy of evasion and some of them could return in the north, primarily in Mali," Fabius warned. He declined to say whether France would intervene again if the militants returned.

Weekend gains by French and Malian forces capped a two-week offensive, involving warplanes and ground troops, launched to halt a southward push toward the capital, Bamako, by the loose coalition of Islamic militants.

French and Malian armoured columns forced fighters out of the central Malian towns of Diabaly and Douentza last week, and in recent days have inched their way northward.

"We are winning back a series of towns with the Malians," said Fabius, adding that troops from an African intervention force were preparing to deploy. Soldiers from Chad and Nigeria are already on the ground. (Reporting By Alexandria Sage)

Another Nigeria and Libya: Mali Forces and undue Executions

Mali could be on the verge of creating a haven for a long-term insurgency-style of continuous attacks that could gradually consume West Africa with the constant human rights abuses the Malian army has been accused of committing.

Mali's army has sealed off a central town amid allegations that some of its soldiers had summarily executed dozens of people allegedly connected to rebel fighters. The experience of Nigeria in the Boko Haram menace ought to be a foundation structure for counter-activities on the rebels.

The International Federation of Human Rights Leagues said on Thursday that in the central town of Sevare at least 11 people were executed in a military camp near a bus station and the town's hospital, citing evidence gathered by local researchers.

Credible reports also pointed to around 20 other people having been executed in the same area and the bodies having been dumped in wells or otherwise disposed of, the organisation said. At Niono, two Malian Tuaregs were executed by Malian soldiers, according to the FIDH. All these executions and killings are properly documented.

The rights group, Human Rights Watch, said its investigators had spoken to witnesses who saw the executions of two Tuareg men in the village of Siribala, near Niono. The group also said witnesses had reported "credible information" of soldiers sexually abusing women in a village near Sevare, and called on the government to urgently investigate these incidents, AFP news agency reported.

The majority of the al-Qaeda-linked rebels being hunted by the armies are either Tuaregs or Arabs, reports say.

 But Mali's army has denied the claims. General Ibrahima Dahirou Dembele, the Malian army chief, promised that any soldier involved in abuses would be brought to book.

"One mustn't get confused. Every white skin is not a terrorist or a jihadist and among the enemy which attacked our different position were many black skins. We are among brothers, whether one is black or white."

Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defence minister, urged extreme "vigilance" against any abuses, saying the "honour of the (Malian) troops is at stake".

Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, said: "We cannot accept any rights violations. The international community will face a very serious situation if (the intervention force) is identified with abuses." The rebels in Mali are the same people NATO and the West armed against Gaddafi in Libya a Russian official said.

A circulating news now is that the rebels have become factional and one group is ready for negotiation. How credible this group will be is yet to be known as it is almost a tradition for rebel groups to split under such intense firepower.

Mali could end up becoming another Libya in which weapons will be freely circulated among groups after being delivered by Western powers. The Kremlin confirms this as well as Hillary Clinton in her statement delivered to congress on Wednesday.