Django Sissoko named as Mali prime minister

The article I chose for my blog post was about Mali electing a new prime minister, Django Sissoko, after the former prime minister Cheick Modibo Diarra was forced to resign and now is arrested.  It was said that the military had a coup to force Diarra to resign although the military said they only facilitated it and did not force him to quit.  As many know Mali has been quite in disarray since the Islamists militants and Tuareg separatists seized control of the north while unhappy militants have also stirred up trouble elsewhere.  The president of Mali appointed Sissoko as prime minister after United Nations and the Security Council of Mali imposed sanctions over the former prime ministers arrest.  The president felt that appointing a civilian as prime minister as quickly as possible could facilitate Mali returning to a democracy faster to satisfy international calls to do so. 

I picked this article because Mali was a topic of discussion in class many times this semester most of all because it went from a stable democracy to very problematic because of these coups and military takeovers.  It was evident from the article that Mali is trying very hard to get things back in order by removing problematic leaders and revising leadership to garner support from the international community to receive help to defeat the other threats such as the heavily armed Islamist.  It is very sad to see a country that was stable and doing well just a little bit ago get ravaged by all these problematic groups and people, especially since there are not many stable democracies currently in Sub Saharan Africa.  I was confused though and wanted to bring up why the United States felt that Mali’s setback to democracy had to do with it s military.

We should care about this issue because if another democracy is completely lost in Africa, things will become more unstable and other countries that are currently democracies could fall to the same fate by copycat groups trying to take over a country.  More importantly though, we should care about this in a positive light because we can see that Mali is trying to solve its internal problems by getting new leaders from a non biased area such as the new prime minister being a civilian, this will reduce the amount of danger he could pose because he is not intertwined with other corrupt leaders or military groups.  All in all, we should be worried about Mali and at the same time feeling good about Mali because there is a lot of turbulent activity in the country right now but at least the president knows what to do to start restructuring and getting things back on track to return democracy to the country. 

Based on what we learned in class this conflict can go one of two ways, the leadership restructuring will allow better control to be taken of the country and therefore better organization in attacks against rebel and terrorist groups that don’t belong in Mali.  The other way it could go is that this new prime minister along with other possible new leaders do not cut it and are not fit to take control of the conflict therefore letting it get out hand and lessening the possibility of return democracy to Mali.  In the end, policy makers should focus on Mali’s military and get that under control because with all the Coups and rebels that are rising from the military, Mali won’t be able to fight off the Islamists and other groups very easily if their military is not cooperating.  I have noticed that policy makers in Nigeria and western Africa are taking charge by giving Mali reliable military support to fight because that is what they need most right now to stabilize the country.

 Work Cited:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20687562