abc NEWS: Booms from rocket launchers and automatic gunfire crackled Sunday around Mali's fabled town of Timbuktu, known as an ancient seat of Islamic learning, for its 700-year-old mud mosque and, more recently, as host of the musical Festival in the Desert that attracted Bono in January.
On Sunday, nomadic Tuaregs who descended from the people who first created Timbuktu in the 11th century and seized it from invaders in 1434, attacked the city in their fight to create a homeland for the Sahara's blue-turbanned nomads. Their assault deepens a political crisis sparked March 21 when mutinous soldiers seized power in the capital. The Tuaregs have rebelled before, but never have they succeeded in taking Timbuktu or the major northern centers of Kidal and Gao, which fell Friday and Saturday as demoralized government troops retreated.
The expression "from here to Timbuktu" conjures up the end-of-the-earth remoteness of the sun-baked frontier town. It does not express the town's dynamic role as a major crossroads for the caravan trade between the Arab north and black West Africa, bringing together black Africans, Berbers, Arabs and, above all, the Tuaregs. » | Michelle Faul | Associated Press | Agadez | Niger | Sunday, April 01, 2012
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