Malik, an English teacher from the town, knows just how hard-line the new arrivals are. He said a friend was brutally beaten on a Niafunke street after Salafists caught him with a flask of alcohol in his pocket. Malik also enjoys beer, a cigarette and music - all "vices" abhorred by the Salafists of a movement known as Ansar Dine - so he fled. His story is all too typical. Mali, traditionally a tolerant society, has become bitterly divided in the wake of a rebellion by the Tuareg, a nomadic people who inhabit the north of this country as well as areas of Niger, Libya, Burkina Faso and Algeria.
Niafunke was one of the initial towns the Tuareg attacked in January, sparking a coup by disgruntled Malian soldiers. The soldiers, running low on ammunition and food in the face of rapid rebel advances, abandoned their northern bases en masse. They felt that political elites in the far-off capital of Bamako had virtually abandoned them.
