Introduction
An inextricable link between cultural heritage and human rights has developed at the international level over the past five decades. The 1972 World Heritage Convention has achieved a universal scope of application, leading to an era in which the “humanization” of international cultural heritage law is on full display.Footnote 1 The Convention laid the foundation for the collective protection of cultural heritage sites and artefacts considered to be of “outstanding universal value.”Footnote 2 World heritage has become, therefore, a privileged category, one that the international community has chosen to identify, reify, and protect, as states, international courts, and various other actors view sites listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as warranting special protection.Footnote 3 Yet, how are such interventions perceived by the local communities of people whose lives, livelihoods, and cultural heritage are under assault?
Using for example the case of International Criminal Court (ICC) intervention in the aftermath of the destruction of cultural heritage in Timbuktu, it can be argued that the Court prioritized the war crime of destruction of cultural heritage for two main reasons. The first one is expediency; the ICC prosecutor pursues cases in which she hopes the evidence in her possession will result in a conviction, especially given that the Court continues to struggle with major setbacks. The evidence against the Islamist suspect Ahmad Al Faqi Al Mahdi for directing the destruction of the sites in Timbuktu was overwhelming, and he was already in custody in Niger, making his transfer to The Hague and his speedy trial readily accomplished.Footnote 4 The second reason is the convergence of interests between the ICC, the Malian state, and the international community, symbolized in this case by UNESCO. Framed within the context of the global War on Terror and the symbolic representations of Timbuktu in the global imagination, the willful destruction of the sacred edifices was particularly shocking. It is in such a context that the French military intervention and ICC juridical intervention were deployed. Yet, it becomes clear that the local communities of people in whose name justice is delivered find the ICC intervention not aligned with their concerns, as the focus on the crime of destruction of cultural heritage appears to sideline other more serious crimes inflicted upon their lives, bodies, and dignity. This misalignment of priorities highlights the fact that as an international institution, the ICC is concerned with its own image and legacy, and its priorities are often different from those of local constituencies. In this regard then, the three main actors—the international community, the state, and the local community to whom the cultural heritage sites “belong”—do not have the same conceptions, approaches, or views regarding cultural heritage, its protection, or even its value.
As attacks against cultural heritage sites have gained unprecedented attention in recent conflicts, interventionist approaches from the international community, especially from international or hybrid tribunals in areas of protection of cultural heritage, are likely to increase. Moreover, the guilty plea, speedy trial, indictment, and condemnation of Al Mahdi, in addition to the order of reparation rendered against him, augur major developments in the areas of international justice and cultural heritage law. Using a micro-level analysis, this study draws upon an empirical inquiry of individual lived experiences from local communities in Mali. The research for this article, however, was not designed to be an opinion survey of Malians, aiming at measuring their views about the ICC intervention. Rather, the purpose of this article is to investigate the tensions at the heart of international judicial intervention and its dynamics and local effects, in line with the growing literature on the ICC and African domestic contexts.Footnote 5 To that extent, the article relies on extensive research on ICC primary sources, including legal documents, briefs, and judgments. Moreover, the research builds upon background knowledge acquired from many years of research on the ICC and its various cases, which included previous fieldwork in Kenya, Uganda, and The Hague. Finally, the findings of the article are based on a total of eighteen semi-structured interviews conducted with local residents in Timbuktu and Djenné and nine interviews in Bamako with representatives of national and international human rights groups, elected officials, academics, journalists, and a retired Malian judge. The interviewees were selected through a snowballing strategy, with the help of local guides in Timbuktu and Djenné, to identify individuals who, because of their occupations or lived experiences, could bring in personal and compelling insights regarding the attacks on cultural heritage, the conflict in Northern Mali, and the ICC intervention. All the interviews were conducted face to face by the author in the French language during a month of fieldwork in Mali in December of 2016. The next section discusses the basis for interventionist approaches in the prevention of or in response to the intentional destruction of cultural heritage artefacts or sites. A brief contextual history of the 2012 conflict in Mali follows, and then the destruction of cultural heritage sites in Timbuktu is considered as a test case for the ICC. Primary sources and interviews in Mali highlight the contested meanings of Timbuktu’s cultural heritage and the complex socio-cultural questions raised by the ICC intervention.
Interventions in the name of the universal value of cultural heritage
Over the past few decades, the international community has developed a conscience which has matured with regard to the proper scope of the notion of cultural heritage and its connection to the identity and history of peoples and their rights. From the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia to the current civil war in Syria, states, international institutions, and NGOs have driven a set of interventionist approaches to urge protection of and response to the destruction of cultural heritage sites. This international cooperation underlies a conception of the cultural heritage of humanity, often referencing the World Heritage Convention.Footnote 6 This development is concomitant with the drive for states to have their sites listed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Such listing garners for states and local communities some international prestige and allows access to the World Heritage Fund while increasing the potential for tourism and development, despite the overt politicization of that process.Footnote 7
As states remain the primary actors and enforcers of international law, they retain the ability to hinder or promote the protection of cultural heritage sites and artefacts within and beyond their territory. Yet, when faced with interventionist approaches, communities often resist this broad application of the legal concept of common heritage of mankind, which arguably impinges on their primary agency in relation to their own cultural heritage (Vrdoljak Reference Vrdoljak, Logan, Craith and Kockel2015). Although there is a long history of legalist intervention in the area of cultural heritage, such interventions are heightened by not only the recent willful destruction of cultural artefacts in many conflicts around the world, but also the live broadcasting of such assaults which increased their shock value.
Following the destruction of the religious and cultural edifices in Timbuktu in 2012, the Al Mahdi case at the ICC became the first instance in which a perpetrator was charged by an international court with the sole war crime of the destruction of cultural heritage. The ICC prosecutor emphasized that the mausoleums destroyed were important both from a religious and a historical point of view. As Paige Casaly argues, these sites could be viewed as important from a universal perspective as part of a heritage of shared humanity, or their importance may be derived from the attachment to a specific community, society, or nation.Footnote 8 These alternative—if not competing—perspectives are in full display in the events surrounding the arrest and prosecution of Al Mahdi and the focus of the international community on the destruction of the mausoleums while members of the local communities are calling attention to the other atrocities that the jihadists, the rebels, and Malian security forces committed in northern Mali.
The UNESCO designation of the religious and cultural edifices in Timbuktu as world heritage sites attests not only to their outstanding value, but also to their significance as shared heritage belonging to humanity. From the international community standpoint then, targeting those edifices for destruction was clearly an attack against those values of shared humanity and cultural heritage for humankind. As Matthew Weinert (Reference Weinert2017:420) argues, framing local forms of cultural heritage in universalist terms of value and identity exemplifies the importance that UNESCO and other international actors have ascribed to cultural heritage.Footnote 9 Criminal prosecution is but one of the actionable items in the name of the protection of such heritage. Although willful destruction of cultural heritage, especially when broadcast for the world to see, feeds clearly into inhumane acts, Lynn Meskell (Reference Meskell2002:564) warns that one must be cautious not to equate all destruction of cultural heritage with genocidal acts.Footnote 10 The gravity of crimes against cultural heritage must be weighed against the “symbolic and emotional value” of the targets (Weinert Reference Weinert2017). The ICC judges in the Al Mahdi case acknowledged this, recognizing that “not all crimes… are necessarily of equivalent gravity,” although they also found that Al Mahdi’s criminal acts “aimed at breaking the soul of the people of Timbuktu.”Footnote 11 For the local communities in Mali however, Al Mahdi’s criminal acts, despite their gravity, are not the primary concern when weighed against other atrocities committed in northern Mali.
Destruction of cultural heritage in Mali: a test case for the ICC
In January of 2012, a newly formed Tuareg rebel group, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (French acronym MNLA) attacked military garrisons in the northern Mali towns of Menaka, Aguelhok, and Tessalit, which set off the Malian crisis. The inept response from the Malian state and its military command led to widespread discontent among the soldiers and their families, which precipitated the coup in Bamako on March 21, 2012, while the Tuareg rebel groups continued to capture territory in the north.Footnote 12 On April 6, 2012, shortly after the MNLA declared the independent Republic of Azawad, the Islamist groups Ansar Dine, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (French acronym MUJAO) overpowered them, leaving the MNLA only in control of the northern city of Kidal, where it sought to distance itself from the jihadist ideology.Footnote 13 A French military intervention re-established the Malian state authority over the region in January of 2013.
The aftermath of the Islamist takeover of northern Mali proved to be a test case for the ICC. Mali had ratified the founding treaty of the ICC on August 16, 2000, and the 2012 crisis came under the jurisdiction of the ICC through a referral letter dated July 13, 2012.Footnote 14 Notably, Mali referred to grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law committed in the northern part of the country, including “summary executions of Malian soldiers, rape of women and girls, massacres of civil populations, recruitment of child soldiers, torture, […] forced disappearances, destruction of symbols of the state, buildings, hospitals, tribunals, mayor’s offices, schools, NGO headquarters, destruction of churches, mausoleums and mosques.”Footnote 15
Subsequently, the ICC prosecutor announced that she would open an investigation, given that the legal requirements were met, having determined that there was a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes had been committed in Mali.Footnote 16 The ICC issued a warrant for the arrest of Al Mahdi on September 18, 2015, and he was transferred to The Hague a week later. The ICC prosecutor alleged that Al Mahdi, as the head of the Hesbah brigade—the Islamist police—between May and September 2012 had committed war crimes, individually and jointly with others, relevant to the destruction of Sufi shrines in Timbuktu, which were protected as UNESCO world heritage sites.Footnote 17 Al Mahdi pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Al Hassan Ag Abdoul Aziz Ag Mohamed Ag Mahmoud, a second suspect in the Mali case, was taken into ICC custody and transferred to The Hague on March 31, 2018.Footnote 18 Al Hassan is accused of having participated in the policy of forced marriages that led to rape and sexual enslavement of girls and women, in addition to having participated in the destruction of the religious and cultural monuments in Timbuktu.Footnote 19 With the Al Mahdi and Al Hassan cases, Timbuktu has emerged as a new frontier in international law, where destruction of cultural heritage has taken center stage.Footnote 20
Yet, acts of destruction of cultural heritage have been integral to the conduct of war since ancient times.Footnote 21 During the nineteenth century, the international community sought to codify in laws the criminalization of the destruction of cultural heritage, which was later interpreted by the Nuremberg tribunal in 1945, and subsequently the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the ICC have followed suit. The early codification of the crimes of destruction of cultural heritage can be traced back to the Brussels Declaration, which adopted the International Regulations on the Laws and Customs of War in 1874.Footnote 22 The Nuremberg tribunal subsequently recognized both the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions as customary international law, as its jurisdiction covered violations of the laws and customs of war, including “wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity.”Footnote 23 The legacy of the Nuremberg judgement proved influential in the codification efforts of UNESCO and the adoption of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.Footnote 24
The emergence of the view that cultural heritage is part of the shared interest of humanity has grown stronger over the past five decades.Footnote 25 International law has since rallied around the idea of preserving cultural heritage in the interest of our shared humanity, and international legal texts call for adjudicating the destruction of cultural heritage as a war crime.Footnote 26 Moreover, the ICTY has confirmed that attacks on Muslim religious sites during the Balkan Wars may warrant prosecution as crimes against humanity.Footnote 27 The ICTY’s inclusion of crimes against cultural property was a major addition in strengthening international instruments for the protection of cultural property, identity, and history in times of armed conflict.Footnote 28 Additionally, the Rome Statute of the ICC includes in its list of war crimes “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes, historic monuments, hospitals…”Footnote 29 This means that the destruction of cultural sites in Timbuktu falls under the scope of war crimes. Therefore, the ICC intervention in Mali, although unprecedented in its focus on cultural crimes, comes on the heels of a vast number of legal precedents that sought to prosecute those types of crimes as war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Furthermore, it is apparent that in Timbuktu and elsewhere, Sufi shrines have become prime ideological battlegrounds, coming under assault in such places as Pakistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, and Kashmir, to “assert sovereignty [and] terrorize the living.”Footnote 30 From Bamiyan to Palmyra, Islamist fundamentalism has entered the fray of wanton destruction of cultural heritage. The Taliban destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan in 2001 attracted condemnation from states and international institutions and led to the UNESCO adoption of the Declaration concerning the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage.Footnote 31 Unlike the incidents during the Balkan wars, the Buddha demolition was planned and displayed for the world to see.Footnote 32 In Syria, the UN has reported that about three hundred historic sites have been destroyed since the beginning of the civil war in 2011.Footnote 33 The ICC intervention in Timbuktu is therefore but one more step in the attempt by the international community to safeguard the common heritage of humanity.
The ICC intervention in Timbuktu: Contested Meanings
Al Mahdi became the first suspect to be prosecuted under the Rome Statute provision of the war crime of “intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to religion, education, art, science or charitable purposes [and] historical monuments.”Footnote 34 In Timbuktu, the Islamist leaders explained the destruction of the Sufi shrines on religious grounds. Abu Dardar said, “Not a single mausoleum will remain in Timbuktu, Allah doesn't like it…” Ould Hamaha, another leader of Ansar Dine, explained, “It’s forbidden by Islam to pray on tombs and ask for blessings… We will not let the younger generation believe in shrines as God, regardless of what the U.N., UNESCO, International Criminal Court or ECOWAS have to say.”Footnote 35 The symbolic value of Timbuktu and its edifices is apparent to the jihadists also, given that this willful destruction only occurred in Timbuktu.
Beyond the ICC arrest and conviction of Al Mahdi, however, complex socio-political questions remain.Footnote 36 For instance, would the crimes against cultural heritage—which have a long history in Mali, ranging from looting of archaeological sites to the illicit art market—have warranted such attention from the outside world had they happened in isolation or under different circumstances?Footnote 37 Malian history is also fraught with movements of jihad and counter-jihad that have led to many instances of the destruction and rebuilding of mosques.Footnote 38 Therefore, the context of the 2012 destruction of Sufi shrines in Timbuktu and the international attention it garnered must be viewed in the context of transnational jihadism and the global War on Terror.Footnote 39
The city of Timbuktu also symbolizes a great architectural achievement, with its mosques built between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They remain a testament to Timbuktu’s rich past and occupy a central place in the daily cultural lives and identities of its residents. The Ahmed Baba Institute stands as an example of the efforts to preserve the valuable manuscripts derived from Timbuktu’s past, which include 408 private collections comprising one million manuscripts distributed between state, private, and family libraries.Footnote 40 To a large extent, the world imagination of Timbuktu is linked to the manuscripts, whose invocation hold a mythical significance and magical qualities, along with their description as “ancient,” although the oldest Timbuktu manuscripts date only from the thirteenth century.Footnote 41 Given all these representations of Timbuktu, its meaning for the local populations, and the ways in which the city is thought of and captured in the global imagination, the 2012 Islamist takeover of the city was, in the words of a resident, “a catastrophe.”Footnote 42
What about “the more serious crimes”?
Whereas the international community seems to have adopted an ethnocentric approach to the destruction of cultural monuments in Timbuktu, most of the interviewees in Mali believe that the ICC’s focus on Al Mahdi and the destruction of mausoleums is a distraction.Footnote 43 Most interviewees are very skeptical—and often hold negative views—of the ICC’s focus on cultural crimes. Some Timbuktu residents referred to the destroyed monuments as “broken bricks.”Footnote 44 Moreover, interviewees stressed the fact that “those shrines were built by humans,” which is meant to convey the idea that human lives are more valuable that those buildings.Footnote 45 For them, the crimes committed against the residents of northern Mali and the soldiers deserve more attention, especially those committed in Aguelhok. A recurrent question during discussions about the ICC and Mali is “what about Aguelhok, where 100 Malian soldiers were massacred, and there is no justice?”Footnote 46
During the early days of the 2012 Tuareg rebellion, Malian soldiers at the Aguelhok military barracks ran out of ammunition after three days of siege and surrendered to the MNLA rebels.Footnote 47 Later, pictures of soldiers taken prisoner surfaced, all with their throats slit.Footnote 48 A national commission of inquiry concluded that “the disarmed Malian army combatants were arrested, hands tied behind their back, before being coldly killed.”Footnote 49 As a retired Malian judge says, “Malians are not very attached to these cultural artefacts… They ask, what about the soldiers who were killed in Aguelhok? Instead, the ICC goes after this little breaker of shrines [Al Mahdi].”Footnote 50 That the international community is more concerned with the monuments and shrines at the expense of other crimes shows where their priorities lie. Indeed, the speedy trial of Al Mahdi in The Hague contrasts with the lack of investigation or prosecutions of other crimes such as killings, rape, forced marriages, and human rights abuses. Malian authorities arrested some perpetrators, but they were later freed in the framework of the peace negotiations.Footnote 51
The interviewees also deplore the fact that the charges against Al Mahdi cover only crimes committed against cultural heritage. As the head of Amnesty International in Mali asserts, although the ICC intervention was necessary, “it did not meet our demands” because “there are more serious crimes that were committed in the north.”Footnote 52 A librarian in Timbuktu also contends that “trying someone at The Hague did not solve any problem.”Footnote 53 For residents of Timbuktu, the crimes against their lives and dignity ought to take precedent over the destruction of the religious edifices. As one local resident in Timbuktu contends, “What people need to realize is that these mausoleums do not represent that much for us. For us, it’s life, the human being that is significant… So, the mausoleums that they destroyed did not hurt us… The ICC hasn’t done anything for us…This cultural heritage seems to have more value than my life, my daughter’s life.”Footnote 54 Indeed, civilians bore the brunt of the conflict in Mali.Footnote 55
In total, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) has reported 3,589 people killed between the onset of the conflict in Mali in January of 2012 and the end of 2018.Footnote 56 The onset of the 2012 conflict led to the displacement of some 400,000 residents of northern Mali by the end of that year. Islamists groups, Tuareg separatist militias, and Malian state forces all committed atrocities and widespread abuses against civilians—which included summary executions, forced disappearances, recruitment of child soldiers, sexual abuse, looting, pillaging, and amputations.Footnote 57 In addition to the massacre at Aguelhok, abuses by Tuareg separatists and Arab militias include “pillaging of hospitals, schools, aid agencies, warehouses, banks, and government buildings; and use of child soldiers.” As Islamists consolidated their hold on the region, amputations, floggings, and stoning to death increased, to impose new moral codes to the society. On the other hand, Malian soldiers also detained, tortured, and summarily executed men accused of collaborating with rebel groups, or members of rival military units. There has been no meaningful effort to investigate these events or to hold the perpetrators accountable.Footnote 58
Following the 2013 French military operation Serval that defeated the Islamists groups, the UN deployed a peacekeeping force in Mali, as the conflict in northern Mali morphed into a diffused insurgency that later expanded to include intercommunal violence in the central region of the country. Years later, various actors are still committing atrocities in the region.Footnote 59 Moreover, since the deployment of the UN peacekeeping mission in 2013, 206 UN peacekeepers have been killed in Mali, making it the deadliest ongoing UN peacekeeping operation in the world.Footnote 60 Serious abuses by state security forces continue, which include violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrests.Footnote 61 These abuses and crimes have not been seriously investigated either by the Malian state or by the ICC.
However, in March of 2018, more than three years after the arrest of Al Mahdi and the recrimination of the population of Timbuktu, it appears that the ICC prosecutor had signaled a willingness to change course and broaden the charges against suspects in the Malian situation. Unlike the case of Al Mahdi, who was charged solely on the basis of his participation in the destruction of cultural heritage in Timbuktu, Al Hassan was indicted for “crimes against humanity (torture, rape and sexual slavery; violence to persons and outrages upon personal dignity; attacks intentionally directed against buildings dedicated to religion and historic monuments, and the passing of sentences without judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court…).”Footnote 62 These charges obviously address some of the recurring criticism from the populations of Timbuktu, especially in regard to the limited focus on crimes solely committed against cultural heritage.
Frying the “little fish”
The prosecution of Al Mahdi and the focus on the war crime of destruction of cultural heritage are also the result of a convergence of interests between the Malian state, the ICC, and the international community, in addition to the expediency of the proceedings. At his trial, Al Mahdi reached an agreement with the prosecutor’s office in which he would plead guilty and not appeal the verdict if he received a prison sentence of between nine and eleven years. But many Malians believe that the ICC is prosecuting the wrong person, convinced that Al Mahdi was not the one most responsible for the many crimes that were committed in Mali in 2012–2013.Footnote 63 As his former teacher in Timbuktu claimed, Al Mahdi is the wrong man for the ICC because “[he] is just a little fish. But in Mali it is the little fish who are caught.”Footnote 64 Indeed, cycles of rebellions and wars in northern Mali are often followed by peace agreements and cooptation of former rebel leaders into the government, wherein immunity is granted to perpetrators. In fact, one Malian journalist said, “The big fish are the ones who signed the peace accords.” As he noted during the interview, “Al Mahdi has been convicted, that’s good. But [Malians] would have preferred that the prosecution starts with the human rights violations, the cases of rape, assassinations, massacres… [The] ICC justice is selective.”Footnote 65 As Eva Vogelvang and Sylvain Clerc write, “It is questionable whether Al Mahdi is indeed the most responsible for the crimes…The fact that he was the head of the “Hisbah” does not make him the individual who bears the greatest responsibility for the destruction of religious buildings.”Footnote 66 In any case, indicting Al Mahdi positively impacted the legitimacy of the ICC and projected the image of a court that is capable of completing a trial within a couple of weeks, rather than many years. The brief time between the arrest warrant and the transfer to ICC custody was indeed unprecedented in the court’s history. For the ICC, therefore, going after “the little fish” such as Al Mahdi proved to be an effective strategy.
Around the time of the Mali conflict, pursuing lower-level perpetrators had become part of a new strategy that the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) deployed in response to its first decade of challenges. Noting that proving criminal responsibility of those most responsible may face some evidentiary hurdles, the OTP, in its 2012–2015 Strategic Plan, explains that “[it will] sometimes… change its approach due to limitations on investigative possibilities and/or a lack of cooperation.”Footnote 67 The new strategy will gradually build upward “in which the Office first investigates and prosecutes a limited number of mid- and high-level perpetrators in order to ultimately have a reasonable prospect of conviction for the most responsible.”Footnote 68 Ultimately, the OTP “will also consider prosecuting lower level perpetrators where their conduct has been particularly grave and has acquired extensive notoriety.”Footnote 69 This seems to be the case with Al Mahdi, as far as the OTP was concerned. For the Malian state too, Al Mahdi symbolized the “bad jihadist.”
Good rebels and bad jihadists
In its long history of facing cyclical Tuareg rebellions, the Malian state has often taken the position of negotiating with the rebel groups and coopting its leaders into various government positions. This posture has also been supported by various international actors, especially France, which to this day still has an ambivalent stance regarding the Tuareg rebel groups. Whereas the rebels sought independence to build the Republic of Azawad, the jihadists aimed at establishing a political entity based on sharia that does not necessarily limit itself to the northern Malian territory. The 2012 crisis and its aftermath, because it involved both Tuareg secular rebels fighting for secession and other Islamists groups aiming at establishing an Islamist-based rule over the territory, has exacerbated the need to differentiate between the groups and their aims, despite the fluidity of the identities of both the groups and their members.Footnote 70 This differentiation between the good rebels and the bad jihadists plays out in the way the responsibilities for the crimes committed during the crisis are situated. The Malian state position was that the jihadists who had committed the crimes in the North fled after the French intervention, whereas the rebels, “who are our parents, we can negotiate with.” The state has therefore prioritized peace “at the expense of the plight of the victims.”Footnote 71 Yet, the distinction between jihadists (Islamists/bad) and rebels (secular/with legitimate grievances) is tenuous at best. Many youths joined the jihadists when those came into town because they brought money with them and offered new opportunities.Footnote 72
However, the focus on the Al Mahdi case and the later arrest of Al Hassan appear to have let off the hook many of the main perpetrators. As one Malian journalist covering human rights asserts, “Impunity is real in Mali… Women were raped in the North, there were amputations [committed by the Jihadists], public floggings… All these crimes went unpunished.”Footnote 73 The local residents do not see the difference between the MNLA rebels and the jihadists, in terms of the crimes that were committed.Footnote 74 Yet, the Malian government uses labels to explain some of its actions. It differentiates “good” rebels from “bad” jihadists. Whereas atrocities and crimes have been committed by all parties involved in the conflict, only the jihadist groups have engaged in systematic destruction of cultural heritage. Therefore, having the ICC focus on such crimes as destruction of cultural heritage helps the Malian state position itself on the side of the international community that takes cultural heritage seriously, aware of the civilizational value of such heritage, and able to isolate the non-state actors who wantonly destroy cultural heritage. The prosecution of Al Mahdi therefore provides an avenue for the Malian state not just to evade investigations and prosecution of its agents, but also to side with the court and the international community on this case and benefit from the funds raised and the rebuilding and preservation of the cultural heritage of Timbuktu.
Conclusion
Timbuktu, as many other cities in northern Mali, is currently patrolled by both the Malian army and a UN contingent of peacekeeping forces as international funds have come in for the reconstruction of the sites that Al Mahdi and the Ansar Dine jihadists destroyed.Footnote 75 This rehabilitation program, which was piloted by UNESCO, covers three mosques and sixteen mausoleums, as well as the immaterial culture.Footnote 76 These swift efforts to restore and preserve the cultural heritage also demonstrate the extent to which Timbuktu captures the imagination of the international community. As Timbuktu is considered a cultural and religious site, the priorities of the international community lie in the preservation of that image, minimizing the concerns of the local communities.Footnote 77 Whereas, without any doubt, the destruction of cultural heritage merits prosecution as a war crime, many Malians believe that other crimes committed upon their lives and dignity ought to be investigated and prosecuted by both local and international courts as well.
The Malian case highlights the tensions and contradictions of such interventionist approaches to prosecution for destruction of cultural heritage, as well as the complexity of the relationship between local constituencies and the international justice system. In reality, the international criminal justice system operates on a different spectrum than that of the local communities. Whereas the ICC intervention is guided by a professed commitment to uphold accountability for atrocities and to deliver justice in the name of humanity, its allocation of resources for investigations and selective prosecution is also guided by expediency and practical and political considerations. As the ICC stands equally as a testament to hope and as a symbol of deception, many of the expectations that local populations put on the ICC may just not be deliverable.Footnote 78 As Sara Kendall argues, “The theoretical construction of international criminal law as a collective project of the international community, devoid of political interests… contrasts with the field’s work in practice.”Footnote 79 Simply put, for the ICC, the indictment, prosecution, and swift trial of Al Mahdi was a positive development and a vehicle for legitimization.
This study also shows the ways in which for the Malian state, highlighting the destruction of the cultural heritage and placing Timbuktu at the center of the global imagination presents an opportunity. Ultimately, faced with assaults against its existence and survival, the Malian state uses the ICC prosecution for crimes against cultural heritage in Timbuktu as a vehicle for its legitimization. These interventionist approaches from the Malian state, the ICC, and the international community are fraught with tensions vis-à-vis the local populations who experienced an assault not only on their cultural heritage, but also—and more importantly—on their lives, bodies, and dignity.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Leonardo Villalòn and the UF Sahel Research Group for the generous funding of my fieldwork research in Mali. I would like to also thank Ena Barisic for her research assistance, through the Junior Fellows program at the University of Florida’s Department of Political Science. Sebastian Elischer provided helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Thanks also to the three anonymous ASR reviewers and the editors.
