LAUSR

It has been five years since a coup d’état was staged in Mali by disgruntled military personnel on March 22, 2012, putting an end to nearly twenty years of procedural democracy for this West African state. Amidst the chaos of the coup, the government lost control of the northern two-thirds of the country to a variety of armed groups, including ethnically based separatists, internally and externally backed Islamists, and drug traffickers. Less than a month after the coup, the principal Tuareg (Tamasheq) rebel movement announced its secession from Mali and the formation of a new state it called Azawad. Not long after, the coup leader in the south agreed to step down from power and a series of interim governments ensued. The Tuareg rebellion