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“Is the worst yet to come or are we already in it? asks a human rights defender in view of the advance of jihadists in north-east Mali and the violence that has accompanied it.
The Gao and Ménaka regions have been the scene of a major offensive by the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS) since March. There is fierce fighting with the armed groups stationed in these vast desert areas and massacres of civilians. At least eleven of them died in the attack on a camp for displaced people near Gao on Monday, November 21. “If nothing is done, the entire area will be occupied by the jihadists,” the right-back wrote on Whatsapp. He lives in Gao and, like many of the interlocutors, remains anonymous for his own safety.
Such testimonies collected by AFP, as well as information from these almost inaccessible areas, reflect a continuous push by the EIGS and the distant devastation that is disturbing even by the standards of a country that has gone from trial to trial for a decade.
“Climate of Terror”
The residents, mostly nomads living in scattered camps, suffered from the 2012-2015 war between the Tuareg separatists and the army. They have now come under fire from the ISGS fighting against rivals recruited under the al Qaeda banner, against the former separatists who signed the peace in 2015, or against the loyalists who once fought the separatists.
The United Nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are reporting repeated attacks and punitive actions against communities accused of helping the enemy or refusing to join the jihadist ranks. Human Rights Watch reported in October that ISGS-affiliated groups massacred hundreds of villagers.
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Moussa Ag-Acharatoumane, leader of the Mouvement pour le salut de l’Azawad (MSA), one of the loyalist groups fighting ISIS, says the violence has reached such proportions that “God only knows” what has happened since March is. He speaks of the “climate of terror”: “The whole economy is at a standstill, the axes have been destroyed, (it is) an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, the displaced people are piling up (in) Ménaka,” he says.
Ménaka, Gao, Ansongo… the population is migrating en masse to the cities, where their arrival creates tension, or to the camps, even on the other side of the Niger border. A mayor from the Ménaka region says there is “no one left” in his town. In Gao alone, nearly 60,000 people have been displaced, according to a November UN document.
Various actors explain that the jihadists have plunged into the gap left by the withdrawal of the French anti-jihadist force “Barkhane”. “Barkhane” focused part of its anti-IS operations in these regions before being ousted by the newly-Russian-allied junta.
“Whoever is not with them is against them”
Although porous, the Mali-Niger border limits military action. On the Nigerian side, the national army is fighting, supported in the air and on the ground by foreigners, including the French. On the Malian side, the army is confined to Ménaka, leaving the field relatively clear for the jihadists.
“The way is clear for them,” said another local elected official, a refugee in Bamako. He himself lost his cousin in a bus attack in September. “They suspected him of being linked to the MSA and the Gatia,” two armed groups in the area fighting ISIS. “Whoever is not with them is against them,” he explains on the phone.
Following a well-established pattern, military victory is followed by a violent social takeover with subjugation of the villagers and imposition of the Islamic tax. At the end of September, IS stoned an unmarried couple in the village of Tin-Hama. An illegal “punishment for fornication,” according to the UN. “They dug a hole on the day of the weekly market on the 18th, they put the 50-year-old man and the 36-year-old woman in up to their hips before throwing stones at them,” says a humanitarian in Ansongo .
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Faced with this “poverty,” armed groups loyal to the Malian state are trying “privately to recruit other actors to the cause,” says a security official in Niger, considering the possibility of an alliance with the former rebels to coordinate the movements of Azawad (CMA), but also with the support group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM, JNIM in Arabic), the fog linked to Al Qaeda.
But a “common front” is unlikely to emerge, says an African diplomat in Bamako. “Politically, it seems difficult for both sides to show themselves openly with al-Qaeda today.”