Islamist mujahedeen in northern Mali

The situation along the demarcation line that separates Islamist-held northern Mali from the south of the country is agonizingly confusing.  The Malian army claim to have recaptured the strategic town of Douentza, while the Islamist claim the complete opposite. According their spokesperson, the bearded Sanda ould Boumama, the combined forces of AQIM, Ansar ud-Dine and MUJAO have pushed the Malian army back at least as far as the small town of Konna, if not further. Meanwhile France has mobilised some elite troops from a base in Chad and sent them to Sevaré, the town on the main east-west highway that serves as a transport hub for the Mopti region. The idea of Islamists capturing Mopti itself, Mali’s second largest city which is now dangerously close to the frontline, would be an A-grade nightmare not only for Mali but also for France and the international community. France has spent the last few months trying to persuade the US and the UN that need for action in northern Mali is urgent, without a great deal of success. There are also reports of an aerial bombardment of Konna although whether it was carried out by France or by Ukranian mercenaries isn’t entirely clear. The latest new from AFP, no more than two minutes old, is that the Malian army has counter-attacked, and no doubt hopes to retake Konna by night fall.

Talking of mercenaries, a local man from Konna reported that most of the Islamist fighters he encountered in the town were darker-skinned Songhai or Fulani. Some also clearly belonged to other black African nationalities; Nigerian, Guinean, Senegalese, Ivorian, even Bambara and Malinké from southern Mali. In terms of the ‘lower’ ranks at least, this is no longer a clear cut conflict between ‘white’ Arabs and Touareg from the northern deserts and ‘black’ Songhai, Peul, Bambara etc from regions further south. It has become a great deal more ‘asymmetrical’ than that, with black Africans fighting both for and against the Islamists. Some of the mujahedeen at Konna were also very young, no more than in their mid-teens, if that. The International Criminal Court in the Hague is going to be busy if and when this conflict ends.  My hunch is that the men who took Konna belong to the Ansar as-Sunna brigade, MUJAO’s recently formed unit designed to mobilize the local Songhai and Peul youth. Many of these young men will be from the Gao region and given the hitherto transparent will of the large majority of the city’s population to reunite with Mali at the earliest possible opportunity, the fact that they are now attacking the very country they purport to love so dearly indicates a severe case of either mass brain-washing or of desperate mercenary activity.

Meanwhile, the UN Security Council met in emergency session to “express their grave concern over the reported military movements and attacks by terrorist and extremist groups in the north of Mali, in particular their capture of the city of Konna, near Mopti,” according to a Security Council press statement.  The Council called for a rapid deployment of the African-led International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA) and the immediate issuance of an agreed political road map, which includes serious negotiations with non-extremist Malians in the north and presses for the full restoration of democratic governance. It seems that the EU, UN and USA’s preferred option of a slow careful build-up to an invasion of the north by a Malian lead force of ECOWAS, AU and French Special Forces, with D Day set sometime next September and plenty of negotiation in between, has proved to be all too leisurely and fantastical.

Granted, the world and his dog knows that the Malian are in no fit state to fight a war in the north of the country. A military establishment that was riddled with corruption and incompetence even before the current crisis began has been bought to a state of catastrophic unreadiness by the army’s defeat at the hands of the MNLA and the Islamist coalition last April. It must also be remembered that the Malian army hasn’t won a military victory in the north without the use of Arab and Touareg militia since the early 1960s. The idea that the Salafist coalition currently ruling northern Mali was going to patiently wait around until next September whilst the Malian army was rebuilt with funding and expertise from the European Union was wishful thinking. The last few months have felt like a phoney war. There’s been nothing phoney about the fighting in the last few days.

Talking about the Fog of War in relation to northern Mali would be meteorologically unsound. Fog is almost unheard of in the Sahel. Better to call it the sandstorm of war, a haze that is more impenetrable and dangerous than fog. The vastly conflicting accounts of victories, defeats, advances, retreats, casualties and captives that have come spewing forth from the mouths of the spokespersons on either side of the conflict in recent days illustrate the dire opacity of this conflict and the near impossibility for a journalist to find the copper-bottomed truth about what is going on. A friend who works for Al Jazeera recently told me that in her honest opinion, the war in Northern Mali is the hardest conflict to understand in the world. Even obsessives like myself, who spend more time reading reports and analyses about the crisis or talking to people closely involved than is strictly healthy, have to admit that more often than not we are enveloped in a sandstorm of supposition and guess work.

Such is the case with the recent Islamist advance. I’ll give you my hunch, but it’s only a hunch. Short of trading my safe European home for a god-forsaken AQIM hostage camp in the Tegharghar mountains, I can’t do any better.  My guess is that the Iyad Ag Ghali, emir of the Touareg lead Islamist militia Ansar ud-Dine has become impatient with the Burkinabé sponsored mediation process between Mali and the two ‘Malian’ rebel factions, the nationalist MNLA and Ansar ud-Dine, which has been dragging on for a few months. The resumption of these talks that was due to take place on January 10th has now been pushed back to January 21st. Algeria has also re-entered the fray as a mediator, a role which it considered its own almost by divine right before it was taken off them by Burkina Faso at the beginning of the rebellion last February. This has no doubt taken the wind out of the Ougadougou talks and confused matters considerably. Both Ansar ud-Dine and MNLA signed an agreement to cease hostilities and pursue negotiation with Mali in Algiers on December 21st.  It’s this agreement which Ansar ud-Dine are now reneging upon.

The belligerent talk coming out of Bamako following the guarded approval given to a military intervention in the north by the UN in December undoubtedly angered Iyad Ag Ghali and his Touareg side-kicks.  You can feel this anger in the tone of the Political Platform which Ansar ud-Dine posted on their website on January 2nd.  What Iyad and his ghostwriter are saying, in grossly simplified terms is the following:  “I trusted you (Mali) at the end of the rebellion of the 1990s. You betrayed my trust by reneging on your promises and fomenting ethnic war in the north. This was gross ingratitude considering that it was ‘my’ rebellion that enabled you to overthrow your military dictatorship and bring back multi-party democracy in 1992. Now, once again, you’re double-crossing me. You persuaded us to agree to a cease-fire and to renouncing the armed struggle while you were busy importing tanks from Bulgaria and talking about war day in day out. Well if you want war, you can have it.” Iyad, a wily old jackal if ever there was, is no doubt gambling on the fact that the Malian army is too weak to offer any great resistance to his mujahedeen. He also knows that if he were to capture Mopti, the pressure this would then heap on the military junta and its political puppets in Bamako would be so immense that even if his Islamist army couldn’t hold such a large and hostile city for long, it might just afford him the time and strength to push through his demands for an autonomous Azawad modeled on the Autonomous Region of Kurdistan in northern Iraq. It’s a high stakes game but that’s nothing new. Ever since he launched the rebellion of 1990 with a handful of men and a few old Touareg swords, Iyad has proven himself to be a high-stakes player, at least in military terms.

The guessing game becomes even more enthralling when one tries to work out what’s happening within the Islamist coalition itself.  There have been significant changes in the last few months, but owing to the standstorm of war it’s been extremely hard to make any sense of them.  First the old desert fox, ‘Mr Marlboro’, Moktar Belmoktar was given his marching orders by the MUJAO command in Gao.  Was his old adversary Abou Zeid, head of AQIM in Timbuktu, just too sick and tired of him?  Was Belmocktar sick and tired of the more brutal and zany behaviour of the MUJAO chiefs in Gao?  Was he just piqued that the emirship of Al Qaida in the Sahara was handed over to Yahya Abou El Hamam rather than to him? Who knows.  After Belmoktar’s departure, there has been further splintering or atomizing of the Islamist movement, generally along ethnic lines.  A notorious drug don by the name of Sultan Ould Badi has formed a new militia called the Katiba Salah Eddine, after the famous scourge of Europe’s medieval Crusaders. Salah Eddine members are mostly Tilemsi Arabs from the villages north of Gao. Ould Badi was apparently none too pleased when the Mujahedeen Shura Council in Gao decided to go and ‘clean up’ In Khalil, a notorious border town north of Tessalit, the Sahara’s very own Ciudad Juarez, which is an entrepot for every kind of illegal merchandising making its way north or south, east or west through the desert. Ould Badi obviously balked at the idea that his carefully constructed smuggling networks might be dismantled or taken over.

Also in December, a certain Abdullah from Benin took control of yet another Islamist militia called the Katiba Ousmane Dan Fodio, named after a early nineteenth century Islamic preacher and jihadist who founded the Sokoto caliphate in what is now northern Nigeria. Abdullah came from the ranks of the Nigerian Islamist Boko Haram to take over the Ousmane Dan Fodio militia, which is said to comprise black Africans from Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ivory Coast.  At around the same time MUJAO announced the creation of Ansar as-Sunna, a new katiba with four sub-brigades which, as stated earlier, is a vehicle for the scared and impoverished Songhoi and Fulani youth of Gao and its neighboring villages.  Finally, in the last few days, the redoubtable Omar ould Hamaha, aka Red Beard, has created his own katiba called Ansar Shari’a north of Timbuktu. This militia regroups the Berabiche Arabs of Timbuktu, Araouane and the neighbouring desert.

Are we seeing a planned and strategic reorganization of the Islamist coalition or a messy disintegration along ethnic lines that mirrors the fate of the Touareg rebel movement in the early 1990s? I suspect it is the latter. The desert has a tendency to work against unity and federation. Groups with from different ethnicities and with different interests manage to come together under a common banner for short periods of time, but then invariably revert to their natural state of independence and isolation. Any strong man with a little money and influence can set himself up as a new katiba and thus ensure his own and his family’s share of the spoils of both the war and the peace that must follow it. It’s also possible that the current atomization has to do with finance. Perhaps AQIM’s coffers are running a little bare due to lack of ransom income and reduced smuggling revenue. Without money, it would be hard for them to maintain a unified coalition in the north and persuade go-it-alone hotheads to stay together.

If we are seeing a disintegration of the movement, then this would add substance to the arguments of those who favor negotiation and a wait and see policy rather than swift military action. Perhaps there’s no need to defeat the Islamists militarily. Perhaps they’ll simply implode under the pressure of their own internal bickering. Perhaps this splintering is also the reason why Iyad has now decided to push south. No one knows the fractious tribal politics of the Sahara better than him and memories of the disintegration of the Touareg rebellion following the signing of the National Pact in 1992 no doubt still rankle deep within him. He knows that inaction leads to disintegration. If you want to unite your troops, go to war, or else provoke your enemy into attacking you. You can probably find that somewhere in the writings of von Clausewitz, the German philosopher of war to whom Iyad himself is apparently quite partial. If this is Iyad’s strategy, it’s showing early signs of success. His offensive has indeed lured French special ground forces and helicopters into the region, both of which will be deemed a heathen provocation by the Islamist constituency ofNorth and West Africa. The French presence will also no doubt boost recruitment to the Islamist cause.

However, the question of exactly how Iyad Ag Ghali has managed to bring together these disparate Islamist forces to attack Konna and push south still remains to be answered.  What deals have been done?  How does Iyad’s stated desire to see an autonomous Azawad sit with Ansar as-Sunna’s Songhoi footsoldiers desire to avoid a Touareg-dominated state in northern Mali at all costs. What’s in it for MUJAO?  They have never proclaimed the independence of Azawad, quite the opposite, and indeed only managed to rally the citizens of Gao to their side in their fight with the MNLA for the control of Gao back in June precisely because they claimed to defend the idea of a united of Mali.  And what of Algeria, Qatar or those Wahabi Saudi magnates with their petro-dollars and all the other shadowy forces who may or may not be playing a part in the current conflict. But that’s another sandstorm, even more impenetrable than the one that’s currently heading south towards Mopti.

Andy Morgan.  (c) 2013

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The trust that western powers, especially the US and France, once placed in the toppled regime of the ex-Malian President, Amadou Toumani Touré, has been betrayed in spectacular fashion. They trusted him because they thought, or rather hoped in face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that he was a true democrat. In fact he was a really soldier at heart, a machiavellian manipulator of tribal politics and sponsor of self-serving networks of interest, corruption and even crime.

The US hoped that by training the Malian army to fight the mujahedeen of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), who have been rampaging with near impunity in Mali’s northern deserts since 2008, they could empower a local solution to the problem of Islamic terrorism in the Sahel and avoid the pitfalls of doing the job themselves. Contrary to appearances, US global counter-terrorism policy has matured since the days when the Rumsfeld doctrine of direct military intervention was applied in Iraq. The Pentagon now knows that direct intervention is usually counter-productive, resurrecting as it does the red rag of American imperialism and driving hordes of young disaffected Arabs and Africans into the arms of Al Qaida and other terrorist groups.

It can be argued that indirect foreign military intervention has been partially successful in the case of Mauritania and Niger. Mauritania has been a willing participant in US counter-terrorism initiatives in the Sahel since 2002, including the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Initiative (TSCTI) that was launched in 2005 with an annual budget of $100 million. It has also been a cornerstone of the US military’s annual Operation Flintlock exercises designed to increase local military and security capacity in West Africa. France has helped to fund and train the Mauritanian army’s rapid reaction units, and has played an increasing role in advising and strengthening the Mauritanian judiciary.

As a result, Mauritania has become the most ardent and effective opponent of AQIM in region, clinching several modest military victories against the terror group, most notably the joint Mali-Mauritanian attack on the cell of the redoubtable AQIM emir Abou Zeid in the Wagadou Forest of northern Mali in June 2011.

But Mauritania’s belligerence could still cost it dear. AQIM’s virulent hatred of Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz and his regime and the close links between local jihadists and the MUJAO, an AQIM spin off that now controls the strategically important city of Gao in eastern Mali, threaten to destabilise Mauritania. A massive car-bomb attempt on President Aziz’s life in February 2011 was foiled by the army but the President might not be so lucky next time. Furthermore, the Aziz regime has recently been mired in some weighty corruption scandals of its own, and there’s evidence that its popularity at home is on the slide. Mauritania’s close cooperation with the West could backfire if local disaffection translates into more willing jihadists on the ground.

President Mahamadou Issoufou of Niger has so far played a commendably level-headed and intelligent part in the crisis that has swamped the Sahel. The odds are against the world third poorest nation, beset as it is by the Libyan crisis to the north, the Malian civil war to the west and Boko Haram to the south, as well as catastrophic droughts, a massive refugee problem and the return of many thousands of migrant workers from Libya and other countries in the Maghreb.

Contrary to President Toure’s lax response in Mali, Issoufou was adamant about disarming Touareg fighters who flooded south into Ngier from the Libyan war last year. He has also made strenuous efforts to engage tribal chiefs and Touareg rebel leaders from Niger’s northern deserts in the country’s political institutions, promoting open government and freedom of expression in the process. His drive to achieve food self-sufficiency, a massively ambitious target that he’s busy promoting with the slogan Les Nigeriens Nourrissent Les Nigeriens – Nigeriens Feed Nigeriens – is both very necessary and popular at home. He has also been helped by the battle-fatigue caused by the bitter Touareg uprising of 2007-9.

Most importantly in regional terms, Issoufou is trying to turn the Malian crisis to his advantage by taking over from Mali as France’s most trusted and valued ally in the Sahel.  France needs Niger’s uranium, a fact that was strenuously underlined when President François Hollande met President Issoufou in Paris last June and urged him to make every effort to bring the massive new uranium mine at Imouraren in Niger on-stream as soon as possible. Niger and France have also been increasing their military cooperation and talking about a coordinated response to the terrorist threat.

Niger’s current state of grace is extremely fragile however. The problems of drought, refugees and returning migrants threaten to tip the country towards disaster at any moment. The Touareg in the north of the country could still make common cause with the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (NMLA), the Touareg rebel movement in northern Mali, presently licking its wounds after defeat at the hands of AQIM and its allies in Gao and Timbuktu, if their fortunes were ever to improve and the prospect of an independent Touareg-led Azawad became more likely.

In the case of Mali, however, the western policy of indirect intervention has been a disaster. The reasons for this are complex but boil down to the fact that, despite a few direct confrontations in 2010 and 2011 that cost the lives of a number of soldiers, Mali has never displayed the willingness or the military capacity needed to rid its country of the scourge of AQIM. Moreover, there is substantial evidence, including a direct admission made by the loyalist Touareg officer Colonel Alhadji Ag Gamou to the French newspaper Le Figaro in July this year, that Mali allowed AQIM to set up a safe-haven in the north east of the country, so long as it didn’t commit any acts of terrorism on Malian soil.

Why?  First, because Mali hoped that the presence of AQIM in the heart of Touareg rebel country would seriously damage and divide the Touareg secessionist cause.  In that regard, their hopes have been fully answered by recent events. Secondly, AQIM managed to  orge strong alliances with certain powerful figures from the Arab communities in northern Mali, some of whom were involved in drug and weapons trafficking. The government in Bamako had an interest in keeping these powerful northern figures on their side. And thirdly, the Malian army has always been incapable of securing military victory in the north, either against Touareg rebels or Islamic terrorists. Better to leave AQIM be than risk the lives of many more ordinary Malian soldiers. Despite this, the USA and France continued to pour millions into Mali’s military and security apparatus, money that all too often evaporated like a desert mirage as soon as it was spent. You need only read the cables sent by the US Embassy in Bamako and later exposed by Wikileaks to feel the extreme frustration that Mali’s lack of resolve in its fight against AQIM provoked in the diplomatic community in Bamako and elsewhere.

Thanks to bitter experience, the US now knows that you cannot use southern armies, who are used to combat in temperate sub-Saharan zones, to fight wars out in the open deserts of the Sahara. That’s why it has been reluctant to support a regional threat to launch an ECOWAS force of 3,000 troops against the various armed groups in the north of Mali, and has made sure that this reluctance has been echoed by the UN.

The only force capable of taking on and beating AQIM in northern Mali is the Algerian army. The armies of Morocco or Chad might also prove effective, but neither country has shown any willingness to become militarily involved so far, even if it were ever possible for them to do so, which is doubtful. The belief is growing that Algeria holds most of the keys to the problem. Nevertheless, it has always considered northern Mali to be its own backyard, and has put every possible effort into keeping it free of outside interference, whether from France, America, ECOWAS or anybody else. Moreover, so far at least, Algeria has kept its substantial military might well within its own borders.

Not that Algeria is unconcerned about the chaos in Mali. On the contrary, it views the idea of an independent Touareg state on its southern borders with extreme alarm. It has a substantial Touareg population of its own, who dominate its strategically important and mineral-rich southern deserts, and it fears that a Touareg victory in Mali could provoke those desert populations into copy-cat dissent. This fear also extends to the numerous other Berber populations in Algeria, especially the economically and politically powerful Kabyles. Algeria knows that any Touareg victory will be seen as a Berber victory at home, and the Berber cause for greater political and cultural rights has been a thorn in the foot of every Algerian government since independence.

The same is true in Libya, a country riven by racism and ethnic strife that has increased tenfold since the demise of Ghadafi. Recent anti-Touareg pogroms in the southern city of Ghadames and clashes between black-skinned Tubu and armed Arab militia in Sebha demonstrate the volatile relationship of Berber and African minorities with the Arab majority. Salafist elements in the new government see an AQIM hegemony over northern Mali as preferable to a Touareg state. Moreover, most of the weapons currently blighting the peace of northern Mali come from Libyan arsenals.

Rather than sending in the troops, Algeria has played an extremely subtle hand in the current conflict. Just before the outbreak of the Touareg rebellion in January, it sent a group of military personnel to the strategically important army base in the northern Malian town of Tessalit. As the NMLA wanted to avoid an open confrontation with Algeria at all costs, this move had the effect of delaying a Touareg victory by several months. Then, whether by shady design piloted by the Algeria secret services or merely by happenstance, AQIM and its allies managed to hi-jack the Touareg rebellion and kick the idea of an independent Azawad into the long grass. This outcome suited Algeria, despite the fact that the leaders of AQIM are ex-members of the GIA and GSPC, the terrorist groups responsible for the worst of the violence during Algeria’s dark decade of the 1990s. Better in Algeria’s mind for these home-grown jihadist to be causing havoc outside Algerian borders, than to let the existence of an independent Touareg state threaten Algeria’s territorial integrity.

Both France and the USA have never managed to have much leverage on Algerian foreign policy. The only real and immediate military solution to the chaos in northern Mali is therefore frustratingly beyond their grasp. The dominant super-powers will be forced to find other ways of containing the Islamist threat in the Sahel, a threat that could turn the entire region against them and spread into Europe and beyond.

Some fundamental questions will need to be asked. Can African governments be trusted to fight terror and crime, even if they are democratically elected?  What is more important, the integrity of African states or the fight against Islamic terrorism?  Is the nation-state even the best form of political organization in the Sahara?  Is it possible to win the war on terror with military might alone?  Finding answers to these questions is a challenge that becomes more and more pressing as the black flag continues to flutter over Timbuktu.

Andy Morgan.  (c) 2012

First published in BBC Focus On Africa Magazine – September 2012

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