Orphans of the Sahara

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[edit] General Information

Sociopolitical Documentary hosted by May Welsh, published by Al-Jazeera in 2014 - English narration

[edit] Cover

[edit] Information

Documentary series about the Tuareg people of the Sahara desert. It follows Tuaregs who fought for Muammar Gaddafi in Libya as they return home to crushing poverty in Mali and Niger, then as they launch a rebellion for an independent country in the Sahara, and as their dreams are crushed, first by al-Qaeda, then by French military intervention.

[edit] Return

With the fall of Gaddafi, thousands of Tuaregs return to Mali and Niger and launch their fight for an independent state. In late 2011, thousands of Tuareg workers and fighters, many of them mercenaries for slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, return to their Saharan homeland in Niger and Mali. Having lost access to the country that was their only source of livelihood, they find little more than crushing poverty, hunger and drought back home. Barely able to feed their children amidst total state neglect, the men launch a rebellion to found their own country.

[edit] Rebellion

Northern Mali in 2012 falls to Tuareg separatists and their al-Qaeda rivals. Early in 2012, as the massive Tuareg rebellion sweeps northern Mali, defeated Mali Army officers stage a coup d'etat in the south leading to the total collapse of government in the country. Tuareg rebels declare an independent state in the north called "Azawad", but al-Qaeda emerges from the Sahara to take over historic Timbuktu, and compete with the secular rebels for control of northern Mali. Isolated, illiterate and imploding from extreme poverty, Tuaregs provide the foot soldiers of both separatism and jihad.

[edit] Exile

The wealth that lies beneath the Tuareg's ancestral land. The French uranium mining zone in Niger is the most deprived nation on earth. Eighty percent of Niger's people are illiterate and 90 percent have no electricity. Yet under Tuareg land in the north of the country lies a massive and lucrative reserve of uranium which a French state-owned corporation has been mining - with fees to the Niger government - for over 40 years.