SUMMARY
MPA (Mouvement populaire de l’Azaouad; Azawad Peoples Movement; originally MPLA, Mouvement Populaire de Libération de l’Azaouad: Popular Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) was a Tuareg rebel group that fought an armed conflict against the Malian government over the status of the Azawad region in northern Mali.
MPLA’s roots can be traced to the migration of large numbers of young Tuaregs from both Mali and Niger to Libya and Algeria due to severe droughts during the 1970s. Those in Libya received military training, as General Muammar Gadaffi incorporated some into his regular military forces and others into his Libyan-sponsored "Islamic Legion". They also became politically active, and during the 1980s, the so-called Tanekra movement emerged, having a separatist outlook. The economic decline of the 1980s meant that the Tuareg groups that had previously been incorporated into the Libyan armed forces were expelled from the country. The expulsion pushed a large number of well trained, well equipped, Tuareg fighters back into northern Mali. Subsequently, in 1990, the Malian part of Tanekra took the name MPLA and launched an armed struggle against the Malian state, with the aim of creating an independent Azawad state.
Initially, MPLA was able to overcome historical intra-clan divisions within Tuareg society and served as a pan-Tuareg movement. Furthermore, the group also claimed to represent the Bidan population of Arab heritage, inhabiting the vast area between Timbuktu and the Mauritanian border. However, cracks soon started to show, both concerning ideology and along clan lines. It was when negotiations were initiated, soon after the rebellion started, that the ideological differences in the movement started to surface; while some were hardline separatists who refused to bulge from the idea of creating an independent Azawad, others turned out to be more open to compromise, and to remaining within a unified Mali. When the Tamanrasset peace agreement was signed in January 1991, these rifts caused the movement to split in two, as MPLA signed the agreement under the new name MPA (Mouvement Populaire de l'Azaouad: Popular Movement of Azawad), dropping the contentious "Liberation" and limiting its aim to autonomy, whereas the hardliners launched FPLA. Furthermore, and more due to ethnic considerations, the Bidan component of the movement had already broken away at that point, in order to protect its constituency’s interests during negotiations, creating FIAA. These early splints left an MPA with a much more narrow support base in terms of Tuareg clans. Tuareg society has traditionally been hierarchical, with nobility- and vassal clans. When cracks started to show during the fall of 1990, the main fault line ran between the Ifoghas sub-group, which is the Tuareg nobles, who have ruled over other Tuareg groups since the colonial era, and who stayed with MPA, on the one hand, and the non-Ifoghas on the other. Aside from the early loss of the Bidan and those clans that left to form FPLA, MPA suffered yet another split in November 1991. At this point, the Imghad or Tillaqqiwin components of the group – which were vassal clans who had stood under Ifoghas domination in colonial times – left to set up ARLA. With this, MPA became a wholly Ifoghas affair.
Due to the consecutive splits, MPA lost many fighters and it is not known how many actually remained as the years passed. However, what is known is that in late 1990, then MPLA was said to number some 3000 men. The group’s area of operation was largely confined to the Adagh, a mountain area in northern Mali, and it had its main base in Mont Tigharghar.
MPA was led by Iyad ag Ghali, an Ifoghas Tuareg with a background in the Libyan diaspora. He later went on to become the General Secretary of the ADC (Alliance Démocratique du 23 Mai pour le Changement) which carried out some attacks on government targets in 2006. However, the fighting was of low intensity and did not cross the threshold for inclusion in UCDP data. When a new phase of the conflict erupted in 2012, Iyad ag Ghali re-entered the fray yet again, having created the mainly Tuareg Islamist rebel group Ansar Dine late the previous year.
Many of the MPA fighters had received arms and training in Libya during the 1970s and 1980s, and the group itself acknowledged that this had continued until March 1989. However, credible reports indicate that the support in fact continued also during 1990. As for cooperation with, and assistance from other rebel groups, this was a complex issue. The rebel landscape of northern and central Mali became increasingly scattered as the conflict progressed, with no less than four rebel groups jockeying for influence. The four groups did attempt to support one another in the diplomatic field by joining forces in the umbrella organization MFUA (Mouvements et Fronts Unifiés de l’Azawad: United Movements and Fronts of Azawad), but militarily alliances shifted quickly and there were a number of instances of in-fighting in the rebel camp.
On 27 March 1996, the so-called Flame of Peace ceremony was held in Timbuktu. Conducted to mark a final conclusion to the conflict, the ceremony saw some 3 000 decommissioned weapons be destroyed symbolically in a giant fire. Furthermore, FPLA leader Zeidane ag Sidalamine, representing all four rebel groups, as well as the Songhai MPGK militia, announced their formal dissolution. With this, MPA ceased to exist as an entity in UCDP data.
