Neighbours hit Mali junta with border shutdown

By Bate Felix and Diadie Ba

BAMAKO/DAKAR (Reuters) – Mali’s neighbours agreed to shut their borders with the

West African country on Monday as part of tough sanctions aimed at forcing the leaders of last month’s coup to step

down.

Leaders of the 15-member Economic Community of West

African States, ECOWAS, also announced they would “activate” the region’s standby military force, though it was unclear when

any troops would deploy and with what mandate.

The measures came as local Islamists who helped Tuareg separatists

seize northern towns over the weekend began imposing sharia, or Islamic law, ransacking bars and banning Western clothes and

music, residents said.

“All the diplomatic, economic, financial and other measures will be applied from today and will

remain in place until constitutional order is re-established,” Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara said after a summit in

Dakar, Senegal.

The closure of borders will suffocate the landlocked economy of Africa’s third biggest gold miner by

cutting it off from the imported fuel on which it depends.

Mali will also be starved of funds from the regional BCEAO

central bank, which manages the money supply in the West African zone, while individual members of the junta will face travel

bans and asset freezes.

“We call on the armed groups to halt their advance towards the south,” Ouattara added. He said

ECOWAS military chiefs would discuss later this week how to “activate” a standby ECOWAS force, but gave no detail on when and

how it would be deployed.

In Mali, the junta reaffirmed that it was ready to consult with civilians over a transition

of power but said the priority remained the fight against the rebels whose stated aim is to carve out a homeland in Mali

northern desert region.

“The CNRDR (junta) would like to reiterate that the most important priority at the moment is

Mali’s territorial integrity,” it said in a statement read on state television.

People in the streets of the capital

Bamako viewed the prospect of a trade embargo with dismay.

“It is a bit severe because the junta has not refused to

step down. This is going to hurt ordinary Malians,” said 31-year-old Yaya Kane.

REBEL GAINS

The stated aim of

the coup by disgruntled soldiers was to give the army more power to tackle the two-month-old rebellion, but it backfired by

emboldening the rebels to make further gains in what is the latest security threat to a troubled region.

Residents in

the ancient trading post of Timbuktu said local Ansar Dine Islamists, who seized the town alongside Tuareg separatists on

Sunday, had now gained control of the town and said they would impose Islamic law.

In the northern city of Gao, locals

said Islamists were ransacking bars and hotels serving alcohol. In Kidal, the third main town of the region, a resident said

music had been barred from radio stations and Western-style clothes banned.

“Ansar Dine people have entered the town

and they are saying that they are now in control,” a tourist guide in Timbuktu, who declined to be named for fear of

reprisals, told Reuters. “They have said they will institute sharia.”

A local nurse said that the separatist

Tuareg-led MNLA had mostly been in control on Sunday, but had since been pushed to the outskirts of town by the

Islamists.

“There was a little fighting between the two. But the Ansar Dine were better armed than the MNLA,” said the

nurse.

In Gao, 300 km (200 miles) further east, food, fuel and medicines were starting to run out. The region was

already suffering shortages because of the failure of last year’s rains and fighting that began in mid-January.

The

aid agency Oxfam said over 200,000 Malians had fled their homes since January, around half into neighbouring countries, and

that the refugee crisis could worsen.

A resident in Gao said the town was currently under the joint control of Ansar

Dine and the MNLA group, and that some rebels were ransacking the warehouses of aid agencies including U.N. World Food

Programme and Oxfam.

“They have destroyed everything, including attacking the hospital where there were sick people,”

said the resident, who also refused to be named.

“The religious guys – Ansar Dine – attacked the hotels and

nightclubs, saying such places are against their religion.”