Ethics on Film: Discussion of “Timbuktu”
For an American audience used to war movies with explosions, good guys and bad guys, and finite conclusions, the Oscar-nominated, Mauritanian film Timbuktu is a departure. The violence is never gratuitous, most of the jihadists seem like normal (albeit dangerously misguided) people, and, at the end, the fates of the eponymous city and several main characters are left hazy. The people who would most likely choose to see Timbuktu are already numbed by the constant stream of horrific news out of Syria, Nigeria, Pakistan, etc., so this low-key approach is the perfect strategy. We know about the executions, suicide bombings, and coalition airstrikes. But what we don’t realize is, perhaps, the main takeaway from the film: This type of militant extremism, more than anything else, is soul-crushingly boring for the occupied populations.
A New Take on Jihad
Directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, a Mauritanian-Malian filmmaker, Timbuktu chronicles a brief period during the 2012 occupation of the ancient Malian city by the militant Islamic group Ansar Dine during the Malian Civil War. The jihadists single-mindedly go about instituting sharia law in Timbuktu, a city famed for its diversity and as a center of Muslim learning. Each day, seemingly, a keffiyeh-covered jihadist walks the empty streets and shouts into a megaphone in multiple languages all that is banned—soccer, music, cigarettes, adultery, sitting in front of your home, “any old thing”—and, mostly for women, all that is required—socks, gloves, head scarves.
It is an exhausting charade for all. A jihadist leader sneaks cigarettes behind sand dunes and flirts with a married woman, young militants passionately argue about soccer superstars Zinedine Zidane and Lionel Messi, and every night, the fighters creep through Timbuktu’s alleys searching for the source of soft guitar music. The locals, meanwhile, mostly stay indoors (many of the scenes taking place in the city portray it as eerily quiet). Those who do venture outside are either gently subversive, like an older imam who attempts to teach the ignorant, young militants what “jihad” really means, and the group of teenaged boys who incredibly mime a soccer game without a ball; or are outright defiant, like the fishmonger woman who dares the jihadists to chop off her hands for refusing to wear gloves. (The jihadists decline and the woman eventually covers her hands.)
These episodes, which are equally hypnotic, with the silent, sun-drenched city as a backdrop, and humorous, as the jihadists barely attempt to hide their hypocrisy, are interrupted by disturbing scenes of extreme violence: A woman is given 80 lashes for singing (and then sings as she is getting whipped), a young couple is buried up to their necks and stoned to death in broad daylight, and an argument about fishing nets and drinking water for cows ends in tragedy for two families. These moments are a stark reminder of why Ansar Dine is in charge.
Beyond Islamic Militancy
In this film, though, which is rightfully being hailed as a groundbreaking artistic statement against terrorism and extremism, the main conflict (the aforementioned argument that ends in tragedy), taken literally, is not even about Islamic militancy.
Kidane, a young cow-herder with a loving wife and daughter, lives quietly on the outskirts of the city sipping tea, playing guitar, and watching over his eight cows. This serenity is shattered when a fisherman, Amadou, kills Kidane’s favorite cow, a pregnant sow named GPS, after she gets tangled in Amadou’s nets in a nearby watering hole. Kidane, with a gun concealed under his clothes, confronts Amadou, and accidentally shoots and kills the fisherman as they scuffle in the water. Kidane is soon apprehended by the militants and is imprisoned and sentenced according to sharia law.
At first glance, this fight seems tangential to the film’s message, but a closer look at the conflict between Kidane and Amadou offers a synopsis of life in Northern Mali. Sissako could be saying that the conditions that led to the shooting are the same as those that bred Islamic extremism and allowed it to take hold in the region.
The two men were actually fighting over much more than GPS. Perhaps adding to the tension are the clear differences between the two men. Amadou has the dark skin and the given name of an ethnic West African and wears shorts and polo shirts. Kidane is a Taureg who has lighter skin and wears traditional Berber clothes. Furthermore, the physical land that two men share is under attack as well. As the Sahara Desert expands, which has been occurring at an alarming rate, it swallows up watering holes, forcing fishermen, cow-herders, farmers, and thirsty families, of all types of ethnicities and traditions, to share valuable and dwindling resources.
This punishing environment, it can be argued, created conditions ripe for extremism. It is not hard to imagine that if Kidane and Amadou had taken a few different turns in their respective lives, they could have ended up as jihadists. Why struggle with cowherds and fishnets when you can just grab a Kalashnikov, interpret the Quran in a different way, and strut around as the ruler of one of the world’s most iconic cities?
These facts are not lost on the jihadists, either. Most (maybe all) of the militants are outsiders, ignorant of the local traditions, and speaking Arabic, French, or English, and not the local dialects of Tamasheq and Bambara. This means that the terrorists chose Northern Mali and Timbuktu to wage their war and it is easy to see why. How can the local population be expected to fight back when they are fighting amongst themselves? Indeed, it took the outside intervention of the French military during Operation Serval to rid the city of Ansar Dine.
Looking Backward and Forward
No matter how hard the jihadists tried, glimpses of Timbuktu’s culture managed to peek through. The locals still wore their brightly colored clothes (the woman maybe just wore more of them to conform to the new dress code), soft guitar music still could be heard at night, and the devout prayed peacefully in the city’s mosques. It was as if many of the residents assumed that the militants would just be a passing phase and they would soon have their city back. It was nonviolent resistance in its own way.
There are myriad geopolitical questions that arise from these types of situations. (Is nonviolence enough when an entire culture is being threatened with whips and machine guns? What would have become of Timbuktu if the French hadn’t intervened?) But Sissako doesn’t attempt to answer these questions and he doesn’t and shouldn’t have to. He is an artist and this film is how he saw the Ansar Dine occupation of Timbuktu.
In the same way, the vast majority of Syrians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghanis, Libyans, Somalis, and Nigerians shouldn’t have to answer these questions either. Violence has invaded their parts of the world, but their lives should not be defined by it. Their stories existed before and will exist after this particular type of extremism (hopefully) dies out. It is difficult to make a movie based on this principle but Sissako has done it masterfully.
Ethical Issues and Discussion Questions
1. Was a foreign intervention the right answer to the problem of Ansar Dine in Mali? Can nonviolent resistance ever be a useful strategy against terrorism?
2. What obligations do artists have (if any) in times of war and conflict?
3. How does Sissako’s portrayal of the militants differ from portrayals in other films and television shows? Does Sissako portray them fairly? Should he have been “tougher” on them?
4. This review made the case that the fight between Kidane and Amadou was a synopsis of the struggles of Malian society. Is there another interpretation of this?
5. In this review—and more generally in Western media—various words have been used to describe the kind of fighters who came to Timbukutu: “Islamic militants/extremists,” “terrorists,” “jihadists.” Are these the words that we should be using to describe these groups? Are there better/more descriptive terms? Do words matter in this context?
6. Does this film change the way you think about other Islamic militant groups, like ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, or the Taliban, or individual Islamic militants? From the way it is portrayed in the film, is Ansar Dine different from these groups?
Source: isnblog.ethz.ch