Saturday, April 28, 2012

Update to Azawad


[An update to this post, followed by this.]

"Azawad", écrit en tifinagh


 
(Notice that, from this alone, you can deduce that tifinagh, unlike Arabic, is written from left to right.)

From Wiki:
Le tifinagh ou libyco-berbère  est un alphabet utilisé par les Berbères.  Tifinagh est le pluriel de Tafineq qui signifie caractère d'écriture en touarègue. Tifinagh  renvoie à une racine FNQ,  rappelant l'origine phénicienne évidente, de cet alphabet.

That is to say:  The Hamito-Semitic languages (possibly like Proto-Indo-European) consist of morphological elaborations of a triliteral consonantal skeleton.  The root F-N-Q lies at the base of both the words Phoenician and Tifinagh.
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A number of scholars have been making soothing noises about the situation in Azawad;  e.g.

where a former Ambassador and CFR bigwig  proclaims “the Tuareg rebels seem to have most of the cards”.

Even sillier is this line from a well-bearded scholar:  
A secular Berber, pro-Western, nation is born 
in the middle  of Sahara.”


Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Touareg tribesmen have retreated from Timbuktu, their tails between their legs, on orders fron AQIM:


Without a fight.

As for this blossoming "secular" society-- most of the Christians in Timbuktu  have fled for their lives, so perhaps you could call that secularization of a sort.  Anyhow, religious cleansing.  For in case any of these infidels are so unwise as to hang around, Boko Haram has sent an armed contingent to do mop-up.   (After all, Boko Haram has extensive expertise in Christian-deletion.  "Who ya gonna call?"


Nor does this desert blossom of a secular society count as a Paradise for women and children:
And lest, lulled by the Small-Small World happytalk from the likes of such scholars, you imagine that Azawad is a post-racial paradise as well --  check this out:



And as for the so-called (proposed, imaginary) Regional Force composed of ragtag elements from surrounding African countries, which is supposedly going to bring order to northern Mali:

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde/20120426.AFP4488/mali-un-nouveau-groupe-arme-entre-dans-tombouctou.html

they gonna get their butt whupped -- whipped and soundly shtupped.  If they ever show up to fight, which I doubt.  (As the Nouvel Observateur diplomatically puts it, "le caractère 'immédiat' du déploiement de cette force, saluée par le front anti-junte et la France, est tout relatif.")

In Talibanistan, AQ were merely uninvited guests, rather resented by most of the locals.   Now, for the first time in history, AQ may have their own wholly-owned independent nation.

Stay tuned ...

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~ Commercial break ~
For a book-length semantic investigation,
in Arabic and the European languages,
click here

We now return you to your regularly scheduled essay.

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[Update 1 May 2012]  Things change too quickly to keep up --- and too randomly and impermanently, even to care very much.  The following, a genuine headline, might have come from The Onion:


Mali junta overruns loyalist base in blow to counter-coup



[Update 17 May 2012]  Soon you'll need a scorecard to keep track of the action in Azawad.
Among the carpetbaggers is a group known as Ansar al-Din  -- Arabic for 'Supporters of the Faith'; that is a morphological transcription; you will also see it transcribed as Ansar Eddine, which reflects the pronunciation, roughly  on-SAHR ad-DEEN.
And here is the latest pretty face:

Iyad Ag Ghali, head of Ansar al-Din

[Update 18 May 2012]

Le Chef d’Etat-major du MNLA



 "Le point de vue de tous les Azawadiens sera respecté dans l’Azawad,  qu’ils soient Chrétiens, Juifs, ou Musulmans."

http://www.tamurt.info/droit-de-reponse-du-mnla-a-el-watan,2602?lang=fr


*
Pour d’autres friandises
de la confiserie 
du docteur Justice,
consultez:

*
[Update 27 V 2012]  MNLA and Ansar al-Din(*) announce a lash-up:

http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2012/05/27/97001-20120527FILWWW00031-mali-creation-d-un-etat-islamique.php
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2012/05/27/01003-20120527ARTFIG00058-nord-mali-la-rebellion-cree-un-etat-islamique.php
http://mg.co.za/article/2012-05-27-mali-rebels-unite-found-state-of-azawad

And AQMI ?  Playing gooseberry?  Stay tuned!

[Update 9 June 2012]  Already these strange bedfellows  have had a falling-out:
http://www.elwatan.com/international/la-fusion-tourne-a-l-affrontement-09-06-2012-174026_112.php



(*) Linguistic note:  The transcription here, Ansar al-Din, directly reflects the Arabic spelling.  Wikipedia does not include this in its lists of variants:

Ansar Dine (Arabic: أنصار الدين‎, also transliterated Ançar Dine, Ançar Deen or Ansar ad-Din; meaning "Defenders of Faith"

The spelling “Dine” reflects French orthography, “Deen” the English, in rendering the Arabic long vowel.   
The "al-" is the morphological definite article, phonetically assimilated to "ad-" before "d".  You really do need it, since without it you get the misleadingly ecumentical-sounding Wiki translation "defenders of faith".  The true phrase means rather "defenders of the faith" -- i.e., the one true faith, in this case Islam.

The Algerian site El Watan uses a good transcription: 
--Ançar Eddine.  Here the c-cedilla denotes the Arabic "hard S".

[31 V 2012]  An excellent site for all things Azawadi:
http://toumastpress.com/

[4 juillet 2012]  Images of what is being destroyed during the iconoclastic outbreak:
http://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/2012/07/03/03004-20120703ARTFIG00941-tombouctou-quel-est-ce-patrimoine-en-danger.php

[8 VII 12] Now more here:
http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2012/07/on-profanation.html

[18 VII 12]  Refugees from Azawad -- the view from Mauretania:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/world/africa/jidhadists-fierce-justice-drives-thousands-to-flee-mali.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
Sado-Islamists, ruling with an iron hand.


[30 VII 12]  For extramarital begetting, lapidation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/31/world/africa/couple-stoned-to-death-by-islamists-in-mali.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print
[Insert predictable finger-wagging here: _______]
But consider ...
Imagine that such sanctions were applied in America;  tens of millions would die.
And yet ... absent such sanctions ... What have we come to ??

[8 Aug 2012]
Burkina Faso Official Goes to Islamist-Held Northern Mali in Effort to Avert War 
The foreign minister, Djibril Bassolé, met in the town of Kidal with a leading warlord, Iyad ag Ghali, who directs the Islamist Ansar Dine movement, which is allied with Al Qaeda’s regional franchise  ...  --> Burkina Faso — through its perennial leader, Blaise Compaoré — played a key role in picking the civilian leaders who now head up a much-contested “interim government” in Mali’s capital, Bamako.

[22 Nov 2012]  Like the West, the MNLA refers to the takfiris as "terrorists":
 http://toumastpress.com/actualites/liberation-azawad/864-reprises-combats-mnla-terroristes-menaka.html
 

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