For example, a New York Times article confirmed that the man who overthrew the elected Malian government in 2012 was trained and mentored by the United States between 2004 and 2010.
Nor did he reveal that she and her grandmother had made the 600-mile journey from Guinea to Kayes, via the Malian capital, Bamako, on public buses.
She's from a modern Malian military family; his roots are tribal, magical.
Realising the enormity of the situation, Koungoulba alerted the rapid response team in the Malian capital, Bamako, and dispatched a sample of the girl's blood for immediate testing.
Most worrying, according to Malian health officials, was the revelation that the girl had been showing symptoms of Ebola on her bus journey.
"The Islamists get richer, while the local people get poorer," says Adama Diarra, a Malian journalist.
The French helped to smooth the way by keeping some Tuareg forces intact, even allowing them to hold on to bits of territory for a while, and then surrender to troops from Chad, who were supporting the French effort, along with other neighbours, rather than to their old Malian foes.
The Malian defence minister, Soumeilou Boubeye Maiga, has conceded that "the sovereignty of the state is not effective" in Kidal.
The Malian army has a mere 7,500 men.Outsiders fear the Tuareg will make common cause with Islamist extremists.
The same is true for other Malian stars including Habib Koite, Boubacar Traoré, Amadou and Mariam, a couple who met in Bamako's school for the blind, and a Touareg group called Tinariwen.
Bolstered by ransoms paid for kidnapped Europeans, sometimes worth millions of dollars each, they have plenty of weapons captured from Malian bases they overran in the north or smuggled from Libya since Muammar Qaddafi's fall.
