Mali, 1991 — military coup attempt

Event Summary

The dataset records an event coded as an attempted military coupi in Mali on 14 July 1991 during the turbulent transition that followed the overthrow of the longtime dictator Moussa Traore. Traore, who had ruled Mali since his own 1968 coup, had been toppled in March 1991 after a popular uprising and a general strike, when a group of officers led by Lieutenant Colonel Amadou Toumani Toure arrested him and established a transitional committee, the CTSP, to steer the country toward multiparty democracy. The transitional period was tense and volatile, with the army divided, pro Traore loyalists still active, and violent unrest continuing in Bamako.

A coup attempt or plot in July 1991 arose within that unstable transition, reportedly by elements resisting the democratic opening or loyal to the old regime, and it did not derail the process. Amadou Toumani Toure's transitional authority held, oversaw a national conference and a new constitution, and handed power to an elected civilian president, Alpha Oumar Konare, in 1992, a widely praised democratic transition, before Toure himself was later elected president in 2002.