Mali and northwest Saharan Africa is almost the last place on earth anyone would pay attention to Bugs Bunny's proverbial wrong turn at Albuquerque.
But jihad, corruption, occupation and ancient secrets have put at least one of its cities, that byword for the obscure, Timbuktu, into a tale worthy of Indiana Jones.
The region's obscurity and isolation has long made it a haven for banditry, violence and smuggling but it was the unintended consequences of another well-meant Western invervention - a flood of weapons into the region stemming from the collapse of Libya in 2011 - that metastatized various local tribes, rebels and warlords into a volatile al-Qaida-spiked cocktail. Outside money, whether from those sympathetic to al-Qaida or from ransoms paid for foreign hostages, plus a coup by junior officers that fractured the army and crippled the government, enabled the jihadists to effectively take over the north of Mali in the spring of 2012, creating a virtual terrorist state with Timbuktu as their de facto capital.
For ten months the city endured every horror barbarism and the jihadist's twisted version of Sharia law could unleash - random executions, random mutilations, beatings, public floggings, gang rape; women, especially, suffered. Then the French - so much for cheese-eating surrender monkeys - sent paratroopers and strike aircraft into Mali, retaking Timbuktu in late January and driving the jihadists into the desert.
But the jihadists had one more cruel trick up their sleeve. Among their extreme, perverse views is a hatred of scholarship, culture, learning - it's that cultivation of ignorance through violence that makes their ilk such a worthy candidate for force. So as the French approached Timbuktu, they set about destroying whatever ancient treasures they could.
Among them are a vast collection of ancient manuscripts that together form a priceless record of African scholarship. Timbuktu mayor Halle Ousmane Cisse lamented to journalists that the militants had burned 40,000 manuscripts, and 300,000 ancient documents, many contained in the Ahmed Baba Institute of Higher Learning and Islamic Research, a splashy public works project opened in 2010.
Then the story took a heroic turn. The militants didn't know most of the manuscripts had yet to be transferred from an old library and they didn't think an illiterate 72-year-old named Abba Alhadi would care.
Alhadi, with the help of a cane, spent August stuffing book after book into rice sacks, pushing them across occupied Timbuktu in a trolley, piling them into trucks and motorcycles so they could be then taken to the banks of the Niger River, where they were floated back to civilization. The jihadists chopped off people's hands for smoking cigarettes and playing soccer - imagine what they would have done to Alhadi.
Alhadi saved 28,000 manuscripts. But the bulk of them were already being taken care of by a group who have kept them safe through centuries of not trusting the institute and not trusting the government.
Al-Qaida isn't the first to have taken over Timbuktu, from Morrocans, to European explorers, to the very French who this time saved the city to al-Qaida. According to Time, as the militants approached the city, the old families of Timbuktu, who for centuries guarded the bulk of the manuscripts in around 80 private libraries, spent a month cataloguing and packing the priceless works in 1,000 metal trunks, each locked with two keys.
They then spirited the trunks across the city and across Mali, secreting them wherever they could. They're safe for now.
They knew the institute was vulnerable - the original plan for Ahmed Baba didn't even have a walled compound and when the militants arrived, there was one night watchman to guard the institute.
So what began as a tragedy turned into triumph but is now a dilemma. Thanks to the panicked mayor, now everyone knows of the hidden treasures of Timbuktu.
They are also fragile and should be digitized to preserve them for future generations but after what happened, those who are charged to protect them are reluctant to hand them over to authorities, even temporarily. The razing of the institute by militants only claimed a handful of the works but it's enough to spook the caretakers of the remaining artifacts.
The fractured government and weak army can't protect the city without help. The French aren't interested in staying.
And, embarrassed, the jihadists have melted into the desert, no doubt waiting for their next chance to burn the treasures of Timbuktu.
