Mali, the tourism sweetheart and West African cultural melting pot, even though hailed as a stable democracy, has had an intense history witnessing a series of coups to this day. Interestingly enough, the coups have been alternating with Tuareg rebellions in the north of the country, which have been present on an on-and-off basis since the 1960s, when France ceased to be Mali’s colonial ruler. The current crisis in the Sahel is not a new phenomenon, nor was it totally unexpected, as I see it, after the buds of the Arab Spring blossomed to create an uncontrollable bullet garden at the edges of the Sahara.