The Malian army is advancing toward the strategic Kidal region, the stronghold of the Tuareg rebellion, security officials announced on Monday. The convoy consists of 119 vehicles and departs from Gao.
Published on: 02/10/2023 – 3:56 p.m
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A large Malian army convoy left Gao on Monday, October 2, for the strategic region of Kidal, the stronghold of the Tuareg rebellion, two security officials said on condition of anonymity.
“As part of the reorganization of our system in the north, we have begun redeploying our forces to the northeastern Kidal region,” a Malian military official told AFP. The convoy left Gao, about 300 km southwest of Kidal, on Monday morning, he said.
Another security official said the convoy consisted of 119 vehicles and was currently stopped on the road several dozen kilometers north of Gao.
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This operation comes as northern Mali has been the scene of a resumption of hostilities by predominantly Tuareg separatist armed groups and an intensification of jihadist attacks against the Malian army since late August.
Kidal’s insubordination, a major sovereignty problem, is an old irritant in Bamako, including for the junta that violently seized power in 2020. The colonels have made restoring state control over the entire territory one of their mantras.
Kidal occupies a special place in the geography, politics and consciousness of the Sahel. It is a key stopover between Mali and Algeria, more than 1,500 km and a 24-hour drive from the capital Bamako and hundreds of kilometers from other major cities in the north, Gao and Timbuktu.
The 2015 agreement is falling apart
It is not the central state that governs it and ensures order, but the Coordination of the Azawad Movements, an alliance of predominantly armed Tuareg groups.
The Kidal region was one of the first to fall into the hands of rebels, part separatists, part Salafists, after the uprisings broke out in the north in 2012. It subsequently fell under the sole control of the Salafists and was then taken over by the region’s separatists in 2013 in the wake of the French intervention in Mali. Since then, Kidal has been under their control. The rebels there defeated the Malian army when it tried to regain control in 2014.
Armed independence or autonomous groups signed a peace agreement with the government in 2015. Continuing to fight the Malian army and foreign presence, the jihadists expanded their actions into central Mali, Burkina Faso and neighboring Niger, helping to plunge the Sahel into deep security, humanitarian and political crisis.
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The agreement signed in 2015 is once again destroyed. These developments coincide with the ongoing withdrawal of the UN mission pushed by the junta.
Minusma has begun handing over its camps to the Malian authorities. The separatists believe UN territories in the north should be returned to control under previous agreements. However, the UN mission still has to liberate its camps in Kidal, but also Aguelhok and Tessalit, even further north, by December 31st.
The head of the junta, Colonel Assimi Goïta, assured on the sidelines of the recent independence celebrations that the state would regain control of all the territories seized from it.
With AFP