Mali goes to polls under threat of Islamist violence

Millions of Malians were expected to vote on Sunday in parliamentary elections intended to cap the troubled west African nation's return to democracy but overshadowed by the threat of Islamist reprisals. The polls mark the troubled west African nation's first steps to recovery after it was upended by a military coup in March last year, finalising a process begun with the election of its first post-conflict president in August. Some 6.5 million Malians are eligible to elect a new national assembly, with more than 1,000 candidates running for 147 seats. But voting takes place amid an upsurge in violence by Al-Qaeda-linked rebels who stalk the vast northern desert, an ever-present danger to French and African troops who are tasked with providing security for the election alongside the Malian army. French security forces witnessed their first attack in the capital Bamako on Friday, when a police officer working with the army was lucky to escape serious injury after a gunman thought to be influenced by Islamists opened fire on him. A day earlier militants had shelled the northern city of Gao, and although their rockets fell harmlessly short of the main urban centre, the attack underlined the continuing security threat. Al-Qaeda-linked insurgents ousted by French and African troops in January from the northern towns they had occupied last year resumed their deadly insurgency on September 28, after a lull of several months. Since then, a dozen civilians as well as Malian and Chadian soldiers in the United Nations' MINUSMA peacekeeping mission have been killed in the country's vast desert north. Much of the worry ahead of the polls has been focused on the largely lawless region of Kidal, occupied for five months by Tuareg separatists until a ceasefire accord signed in June allowed in the Malian army. In a grisly reminder for the West of the ongoing security crisis, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb on November 2 kidnapped and shot dead two French radio journalists who had come to Kidal city, the capital of the region, 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) northeast of Bamako. United Nation peacekeepers, the Malian army and French troops are tasked with ensuring voters' safety in the region, the stronghold of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA). Malians are voting in a new parliament following a coup in March last year that toppled democratically elected president Amadou Toumani Toure and created an opening that allowed the MNLA and groups allied to Al-Qaeda to seize northern Mali. A UN peacekeeping mission expected eventually to number more than 12,000 troops is charged with ensuring security as Mali rebuilds, allowing France to withdraw all but 1,000 of the 4,500 troops it sent to its former colony. The three-week election campaign never caught fire in Mali, and pundits are predicting a lower turnout than the 50 percent achieved in the presidential election won by former prime minister Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. The ruling Rally for Mali (RPM) has vowed to deliver "a comfortable majority" to smoothe the path for the reforms Keita plans to put in place to rebuild Mali's stagnant economy and soothe simmering ethnic tensions in the north. But Bamako-based social scientist Mamadou Samake told AFP that it would be "difficult or impossible" for any one political party to manage an overall majority, predicting that the RPM would be required to go into coalition to form a government. The election will be supervised by hundreds of Malian and international observers, including a European Union mission and a 100-strong team from the ECOWAS regional bloc. Amos Sawyer, the head of the ECOWAS mission, appealed for Malians to show the same "maturity" which allowed the presidential election to take place peacefully. "That is the reason we are here -- because what happens in Mali affects everyone in our region," he said on his arrival in Bamako on Thursday. He said observers would be deployed to all the country’s eight regions, including Kidal, and urged voters to turn out at the country's 20,000 polling booths in large numbers. A second round will take place on December 15 if no party is able to form a government following Sunday's vote.