Sahara Unveiled

by William Langewiesche

  “Electronics are the best,” one of the guests said. “They are small and light and easy to hide, and they don’t spoil in the heat.”

  And you can mark them up 1,000 percent.

  Governments have fought back with expanded border patrols and stiff prison terms. They have regularly declared a war on contraband. People in Tamanrasset are not concerned. The Sahara is a big place.

  I mentioned the Islamic radicals. They claim to be economic liberals. Might they not do away with import restrictions altogether? And wouldn’t this undercut business? Abderhadim urged me not to worry. His logic went like this:

  A free-market economy, though of course desirable, is a remote possibility.

  Islamic radicals are moralists, which of course is also desirable. They have plenty of reasons to ban imports.

  Look at Iran. Look at Sudan.

  Mohammed himself was a trader.

  Thanks be to Allah and the desert, business prospects in Tamanrasset remain excellent.

  We stood to leave, and I asked Abderhadim a final question, whether the Tuareg attacks had not complicated his work.

  He looked up at me languidly, and said, “Oh yes, you’re aware of that, then.”

  16

  A

  TUAREG

  STORY

  THE JACKAL AS usual was wandering from one waterhole to the next, hoping to find a stray lamb or kid goat, or carrion left by some more discriminating carnivore. To his delight he spotted a beautiful young sheep who was grazing on a green plateau some distance from her flock and shepherd. The jackal was famished, but a coward by nature, and willing to attack only if he could lure her closer to him. After some thought he decided he had the solution. He crept to the base of the plateau, and from below he called, “Hello, my big sister sheep.”

  The sheep ignored him and continued to graze.

  “Hello, my big sister sheep. Have you heard the good news?”

  “What good news?” she answered.

  “Why, ever since yesterday, there is complete peace between all creatures. If you would only come a little closer to me I could tell you many wonderful things. Come closer, big sister sheep. I am small and I have been running so hard all morning that I cannot climb up to you.”

  The sheep looked away at the horizon, and was apparently intrigued by what she saw there.

  “What do you see over there?” asked the jackal. “Come, I’m in a hurry. I have to get the great news to all the other villages.”

  “Wait a moment, little brother jackal, wait.”

  “But what do you see over there?”

  “I see the shepherd coming, with his four dogs. Wait until they arrive, and we can all talk together.”

  The jackal did not wait, but began to run away.

  The sheep called after him, “Little brother jackal, why are you running away?”

  “Because I don’t get along with shepherds or their dogs.”

  “You told me there is now total peace between all creatures.”

  “Yes, but never between jackals and dogs. Good-bye, good-bye.”

  17

  LESSONS

  IN

  HISTORY

  IN THE MORNING the man named Aissa stood in a walled dirt yard barking unnecessary orders to immigrant Malians who were loading goats into the back of two Toyota pickup trucks. Dust swirled in the sunlight. The goats stood flank-to-flank so tightly packed that they had to crane their heads upward to breathe. I would like to think that from the beginning I did not trust Aissa, but the truth is I suspended judgment. He was a wiry sharp-faced man, about thirty, barefooted, in a billowing shirt and black-and-gold embroidered pants. He draped a pure white chèche dashingly over his shoulders, like an aviator’s scarf, and wore rings on several fingers. I know now he was the type of man who would watch himself in any reflection. This morning the reflection would be me. He watched me watching, and after a suitable delay, came over to hear himself speak.

  He said that later, if it still pleased him, we might visit the rock paintings of the Tadart. But first we would drive three days east to Djanet, across 500 miles of rough desert, and some of the goats would die. There would be other passengers, too—Tuaregs who spoke only Tamachek. But I did not need to worry. I would accompany Aissa in the lead truck. He told me he was an excellent driver, and also the son of a powerful man. They were a family of Chaamba Arabs, authentic nomads from the vicinity of Ouargla. I would find this fascinating. If I had any questions, he would know the answers. He spoke many languages. His close friend was the crown prince of Belgium. He had girlfriends in every major city of Italy.

  We started off. The other truck was driven by Aissa’s servant, a masked Tuareg of the black lower classes. His name was Abdullah. He seemed friendly, and perhaps a little stupid. He drove too close behind us, deep in Aissa’s dust. Nonetheless, only an hour out of Tamanrasset, I had begun wishing for his company.

  The route took us north of the Hoggar Massif, across a desert of black oxidized sand and gravel. The track was unmarked—easy to follow where it narrowed through canyons and passes, more difficult where it spread across plateaus. We passed a hamlet of stone huts. Aissa played a tape of Beethoven sonatas, and impressed himself by listening.

  The wind was hot. We crossed sand dunes. Aissa asked me to notice that he rarely engaged the four-wheel drive. I admitted that he was a good driver. For a brief stretch across salt flats he hit 80 miles an hour. Abdullah lagged behind.

  We stopped for lunch and a rest in the shade of a stunted acacia tree. In the afternoon we entered a desert of basins and ranges. A herd of gazelles leapt away from us. We descended and the air grew hotter. Creeping across a dry riverbed, we blew a tire. Aissa allowed Abdullah to catch up and mount the spare. The spare was flat. Abdullah inflated it with a bicycle pump.

  “Don’t worry,” Aissa said. He held two fingers together. “This is how I am with the desert. If you love a woman, she can never hurt you. The desert is my woman.”

  Oh, I thought.

  A goat in the back lay down to die. Aissa twisted its ears, forcing it to stand again. He seemed to take pleasure in this. He said, “As long as the goat stands, he will survive.”

  “Maybe he needs a drink.”

  “I told you not to worry.”

  “I don’t. I won’t. He’s your goat.”

  Aissa looked hurt. I regretted my irritability. We drove on in silence. The goat died. We abandoned its carcass to the shade of thorns.

  Aissa said, “You see, he lay down.”

  I surrendered. “You were right.”

  Aissa nodded. Reminded of himself, he asked, “Did you notice that I have drunk no water today?”

  “Tell me,” I said wearily.

  “You—you drink whenever you get thirsty. I have trained myself not to, so I don’t need water like you do. If we had to survive out here, I would last longer.”

  “I’m glad.”

  The day ended. The night exploded in stars. We settled on a sandy shoulder between piles of volcanic rubble. The Tuaregs walked away to say their prayers. They returned, and squatted close to the fire. Abdullah cooked a stew. Over tea, Aissa showed me snapshots of his women. “These are not all,” he said. “I have thirty in France alone.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  He paused. “But I have never loved a woman.”

  He had composed a poem to explain why, and he recited it to me. It addressed the moon rising over the Sahara, veiled by cloud, too shy to show herself because on earth there was one person more lovely still, the only woman Aissa could love.

  I asked Aissa to describe her.

  He couldn’t, but mentioned green eyes.

  I wandered into the desert until the campfire became a flicker. The wind blew softly through the mountains. I lay rolled into a blanket, listening to the shifting sand. After the wind faded, the grains settled, and the desert became absolutely quiet. Past midnight, the cold interrupted my sleep. I huddled until dawn, absorbing the solitude.

/>   THE TUAREGS INVADED the central Sahara from the north perhaps 3,500 years ago, and eventually established a nomadic existence based on the camel and the goat. Converted to a nominal form of Islam during the Middle Ages, they were known for the autonomy of their women, and more generally for the fierceness with which they clung to their ancient traditions. The Hoggar Mountains stood like a fortress at the center of their territory, which stretched for a thousand miles through the core of the desert. The land was wild and utterly poor, but it occupied a strategic position between the rich civilizations of black Africa and the Mediterranean. The Tuaregs survived by taking advantage of the trade that crossed it. Their isolation was a façade.

  The advantage of the camel is not just that it endures drought, but that it carries heavy loads. The first camel caravans plodded through the Sahara around the time of Christ. By the Middle Ages the caravans had become large and regular. The biggest business was in salt, which was mined by slaves in dry lake beds, and hauled short distances to ports on the Niger and Senegal rivers. But for the Tuaregs the most important caravans were the long-distance ones that spanned the desert. The largest such caravans could carry as much cargo as a modern freight train: fortunes in grain, gold, ivory, and slaves for the north, and in metals, beads, and trading goods for the south.

  The Tuaregs themselves were not traders. They were camel breeders, desert guides, toll collectors, bandits. They were opportunists. By siphoning wealth from the caravans, they managed to break free of the nomad’s hand-to-mouth existence. They built a hierarchical society in which light-skinned aristocrats ruled over black slaves and serfs, whom they forced to settle around the wells, to cultivate their crops. The aristocrats continued to herd and to raid. They taught their sons to stand straight and tall, and to hide their faces, and treat others haughtily. They thought of themselves as noble warriors. They had a reputation as killers.

  Their tactics were sly. The caravans were loose groupings of independent merchants, involving thousands of pack camels strung out unprotected for miles, lacking cohesiveness and organization. Small groups of masked Tuaregs would appear quietly out of the desert and ride along for days, searching for the weakest and most unattached members. The bandits might demand a few tributes, or small charities, but they remained generally friendly and even helpful. The caravaners knew what the Tuaregs were about, but were unwilling to assist one another. When the time was right, the Tuaregs would cut their victims out of the caravan, to rob and kill them in private. They counted on the remainder of the caravan simply to ride away. If the Tuaregs did not overreach, they could chew like this at the same caravan for weeks.

  Then came the French. By the mid-nineteenth century they controlled the big oases to the north, and much of West Africa to the south. But the central Sahara remained untamed, and to the French largely unknown. The Tuaregs wanted to keep it that way, and may have believed that the French were afraid. The truth was that the French were too busy with more promising parts of the continent. In a world before cars and airplanes, the central Sahara simply remained too hard to get to. But empires abhor a void. In 1879, the French government, frustrated by British control of the lower Niger River, decided to explore the possibility of supplying its West African colonies by building a railroad directly across the desert. The man chosen to survey the route was an experienced Sahara hand, a lieutenant colonel named Paul Flatters.

  Flatters led two expeditions into the central mountains. He knew about the scattered killings of lone adventurers and missionaries over the previous years, and he suspected correctly that the Tuaregs would resist the threat posed to the caravan trade by any railroad. From the start, he was afraid.

  The first Flatters expedition left Ouargla in March 1880 with a hundred men, most of whom were Chaamba camel drivers. A month later, they entered the mountains, and encountered a small group of Tuareg warriors. Over the following days, the Tuaregs shadowed the surveyors, appearing and disappearing on the crests of the rising country, and spooking Flatters into the feeling that out there just beyond sight he was being surrounded. The Tuaregs had long experience in judging their enemies. In typical fashion, they entered the Flatters camp and listened to the grumbling of his native troops. They learned that Flatters was a weak and uncertain leader. When the time was right, they lined up with their shields and swords, and refused him permission to proceed farther. Flatters retreated all the way to Paris.

  The next year, he left Ouargla at the head of a more heavily armed column, again of about a hundred men. This time the Tuaregs offered to serve as guides. They led Flatters deep into the desert north and east of the Hoggar Mountains. The country grew steadily drier and more difficult to cross. Days now lay between the wells and watering holes. Camels died. The Tuaregs began demanding gifts. In places the ground was dense with fresh camel prints, as if a large force of hostile riders were gathering just out of sight. But this time Flatters refused to be intimidated. He forced his way south from one well to the next.

  By February 16, 1881, more than two months out of Ouargla, he knew he was in trouble. The expedition had marched several days since the last water hole, and men and camels alike were growing desperately thirsty. Now where there should have been a well, there was only dry desert. At midday the guides admitted that they had made a mistake, but said they now knew where the well lay, several hours away.

  Flatters angrily ordered the expedition to make camp, and he set off immediately for the water with an advance party of five Frenchmen and twelve Chaamba soldiers and camel drivers. The other camels were to follow as soon as they were unloaded.

  It was, of course, a trap. When Flatters and his companions got to the well, at the bottom of a narrow valley, two hundred sword-swinging camelmen rode down upon them. Flatters and his entire advance party were annihilated. Flush with victory, the Tuaregs then backtracked, killed the camel drivers, who were strung out from the baggage camp to the water hole, and seized almost all of the expedition’s camels.

  When the men at the camp learned of the ambush, they shoved the baggage into a defensive bulwark against an attack that never materialized. That night, the fifty-nine survivors abandoned the supplies they could not carry, and began their retreat on foot.

  The Tuareg followed, and picked off the stragglers. The expeditionaries found water, but no food. On the fourth day they ate their dogs. Later they killed and ate their last camels. The Tuareg toyed with the starving men. They offered them a meal of poisoned dates, which killed several. They sold them a flock of sheep, then slaughtered the soldiers sent to collect them. They taunted the men. They shot at them. They made camp within their sight, and ate well. They showed no mercy.

  One month into the retreat, thirty-four Chaamba troops and one French sergeant remained alive, but barely. In desperation, they began to eat one another. They started by eating corpses, but soon turned to murder. The French press later assumed that the sergeant had resisted, as if only Africans were capable of cannibalism. The sergeant was shot and eaten late in March. On April 4, 1881, the twelve survivors arrived in Ouargla, and found that, because news travels fast in the desert, knowledge of their defeat had preceded them.

  The Flatters massacre bought the Tuaregs another seventeen years of isolation. But in 1898 a large military expedition left Ouargla, marched defiantly through the Tuaregs’ Hoggar homeland, and fought its way to Agadez, on the desert’s southern edge. From there it went on to conquer the people of Lake Chad, then marched south, and by late 1901 floated down the Congo River and returned to France. In all the history of the desert, nothing like this had ever been seen before. Meanwhile, north of the Hoggar Mountains In Salah fell to the French in 1900. The Tuaregs’ future now was clear.

  That future came in the form of a new style of colonial soldier—camel-mounted Chaambas commanded by Frenchmen, freed from the disciplines of garrison duty and encouraged to live as nomads in the open desert. A column of these soldiers left In Salah on March 23, 1902, and rode to the well at Tamanrasset. Their forma
l mission was to find and punish a band of camel thieves, but in practice they had Flatters and revenge in mind; they wanted to provoke the Tuaregs to come out and fight, and they did. Fifteen miles north of Tamanrasset, along a barren oued called Tit, hundreds of Tuareg warriors assembled. There are two versions of the ensuing battle. The old version envisions a desperate and heroic stand, in which outnumbered French troops managed to hold off and then defeat hundreds of fanatic rifle-bearing tribesmen. The new version wonders why the French lost only three men, and the battle-wise Tuaregs lost several hundred. It calls the battle not a battle but a massacre. This of course is the version now promoted by the Tuaregs. It should be no surprise that the modern French, who tend to romanticize the Tuaregs, are the first to agree.

  The fight at Tit decimated a generation of Tuareg aristocrats. Afterward the French army effectively took control of the central Sahara. Merely three years later, in 1905, Charles de Foucauld could establish himself safely in Tamanrasset. His own killing in 1916 was an unimportant miscalculation.

  The same in fact was true across the highlands in Niger called the Aïr, where a larger Tuareg rebellion broke out between 1915 and 1918. It was led by a man named Kaocen, who is still revered today by Tuareg separatists. Kaocen was armed by the Ottoman Turks in Libya. He marched on Agadez, took it, and held the town for nearly a year. Confused by his success, the French thought that he was not Tuareg at all, but rather an agent named Adolf Kraus—the German equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia. But Kaocen was an authentic Tuareg—the first to dream of a modern and independent Tuareg state. He told his followers not to trust any foreigner, whether French or Turkish. That was the easy part. But when he told the Tuaregs, on the other hand, to trust each other, he ran against the traditional disunity of the desert. Members of his own clan, the Kel Gress, were hired by the French to hunt him down. Forced to retreat to the east, Kaocen was executed by his old allies the Turks, who knew that he had betrayed them.

  After World War I, the French turned their attentions again to their colonial holdings, and brutally suppressed the remnant rebellion in the Aïr, and similar Tuareg disturbances in Mali, near Gao and Timbuktu. It is said that 30,000 Tuaregs fled the central Sahara. A similar exodus has occurred in recent years. Bad memories have been awakened. Normally this would have nothing to do with me, but history in Africa lies on the land like a trap.