Video: Mali: humanitarian workers braced for 'long period of instability' The fact that so many people have very little to fall back on means that if their lives get disrupted, if they are forced to leave their homes, their farmland, they have very little to cope with. Mr McCormack said that some sense of normality would perhaps return if those cities which had already been liberated stayed that way, but added that he feared there would be a "long period of instability" before that could happen. Footage courtesy of APTN