The Blue Men Rise

Kiss the hand you cannot sever.

--Old Tuareg Saying

It cost the French army hundreds of hands to put the Tuaregs in a kissing mood. The fierce, veiled warriors of the high Sahara gave up their murderous ways only in 1917, when they settled uneasily into a pastoral life as goat and camel herdsmen in the sere, sand-scoured mountains north of Timbuctoo. Last week in the Republic of Mali, some 5,000 Tuaregs decided the kissing had to stop. Holed up in the Adrar des Iforas, a parched, 40,000-sq.-mi. redoubt that straddles the Mali-Algerian border, they prepared to fight off half of Mali's army.

Moderation & Macaroni. The Iforas rebels represent only a fractious fraction of some 500,000 "blue men" who range the Sahara from Mauritania to Libya. Nominally white, they get their colorful name from the dark blue robes they wear. The robes are impregnated with a cheap dye that rubs off and stains the Tuaregs' skins a glossy, metallic blue. The Tuaregs seem to be related to the Phoenicians, write with an ancient alphabet called tifinagh that can be read from right to left, left to right, up or down. But they use it often to compose erotic poetry or scrawl obscenities on lonely desert rocks. Lukewarm Moslems, the Tuaregs twist the usual Islamic custom by insisting that their men go veiled while the women's faces remain bare. It is not a bad idea, since most Tuareg women are handsome--at least before marriage. Obesity is a sign of beauty among the Tuaregs, and many tribesmen force-feed their wives on macaroni and goat's milk just as the people of Strasbourg stuff their geese.

French administrators tamed the Tuaregs only by treating them with moderation. In return for giving up their rez-zous--raids for slaves and plunder--and such practices as impaling thieves on spikes placed under their chins and armpits, the Tuaregs were permitted to roam the Sahara as if there were no boundaries. And the French always winked when the Tuaregs cheated on their cattle taxes.

Cattle & Collectors. But such leniency was more than Mali's President Modibo Keita could afford. Eager to create a sound, solvent state, he exercised his sovereignty in 1962 by raising Mali's cattle tax by 300% (to $1.20 a head), stubbornly insisted on collecting it. The Tuaregs saw no reason why they should obey. Blithely, they began smuggling their cattle into Niger and Upper Volta. When Keita's tax collectors cracked down, the Tuaregs began shooting.

Last week a Keita ultimatum demanding that the Iforas Tuaregs turn in their weapons expired with no response. "This is their last chance," roared the President. "All rebels found carrying arms will be shot immediately." But Keita's harsh threat sounded as empty as the echoing wastes of the Iforas. Merely keeping the 800-mile supply line open from Mali's capital city of Bamako to the ruggedly desolate Iforas hills has brought Keita's tottering treasury close to collapse.

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