For the past decade, Mali has been incrementally portrayed as the poster-child of good democratic transition in West Africa and its president, Amadou Toumani Touré, respected as a leader of some substance. That was until Wednesday this week, when the army ousted Touré less than one month before the next presidential election.
The fall-out of the Arab Spring has been the dominant security issue in the Maghreb for past months, while Boko Haram has held the media's eye in Nigeria and the western Sahel region. Meanwhile, conflict in Mali involving the Tuareg minority in the North, the latest round of which has been simmering since the start of the year, had been proving unexpectedly difficult for government forces to quash. This week it triggered a cabal of soldiers, led by junior officers, to express their disaffection by seizing, at least temporarily, the most visible reins of Malian state power - the Presidential palace and State TV station.
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