April 27 (Reuters) – Mali’s government is facing new questions about how long it can hold on to power two days after insurgents launched attacks across the country, hitting the main army base outside the capital and killing the defence minister.
Saturday’s assaults, featuring what analysts and diplomats described as an unprecedented level of coordination between West Africa’s al Qaeda affiliate and a Tuareg-dominated rebel group, further undermined the government’s assertion that it is restoring order.
Following are details on the main insurgent groups operating in the landlocked Sahel nation:
JAMA’AT NUSRAT AL-ISLAM WAL-MUSLIMIN (JNIM)
Emerging from an ethnic Tuareg uprising that seized swathes of northern Mali in 2012, al Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) formed in 2017 when several militant groups merged.
Its leader is Iyad Ag Ghaly, the ethnic Tuareg head of the Ansar Dine Islamist group that took over Timbuktu in northern Mali in 2012 and imposed sharia law there. His deputy is Amadou Koufa, the ethnic Fulani head of the Macina Liberation Front.
JNIM fighters have been operating for nearly a year within 50 km (30 miles) of Bamako, though analysts say the group does not have the military capability to actually take the city and appears more interested in destabilising the government.
That appeared to be the motivation behind a fuel blockade that JNIM announced in September, a tactic made possible after the group entered southern Mali and expanded operations in the west. It is part of a broader campaign by JNIM of encircling urban centres.
JNIM has hit Bamako before Saturday’s coordinated assault. In September 2024, it carried out an attack on strategic sites including the airport and an elite police training academy, where dozens of students were killed.
In 2022, the group targeted the army base in Kati, 15 km from the capital.
The group is believed to have around 6,000 fighters. It also operates in Burkina Faso and Niger, and it claimed responsibility for an attack in October that killed a soldier in central Nigeria, its first known strike in Africa’s most populous country.
JNIM wants to establish Islamic governance across the Sahel, analysts say.
AZAWAD LIBERATION FRONT (FLA)
Mali has been grappling with ethnic Tuareg rebellions since shortly after it gained independence in 1960.
The nomadic Tuaregs, present across the Sahara region including in northern Mali, are fighting for an independent homeland they call “Azawad”.
In 2012, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) swept through the northern regions of Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu, but their campaign was later hijacked by Islamist groups.
Mali then asked France to intervene to help fight the Islamist groups.
Mali struck a peace deal with Tuareg separatists in 2015, but in 2024 the military-led government, which took power after coups in 2020 and 2021, withdrew from the agreement. Tensions with the Tuareg separatists had resurfaced after the government expelled French forces and U.N. peacekeepers and teamed up with the Russian paramilitary organisation Wagner.
In July 2024, Tuareg fighters attacked a convoy of Malian soldiers and Wagner fighters in the north, claiming to have killed 84 Russians and 47 Malian soldiers.
Ukraine hinted it had helped the Tuareg rebels carry out the attack by providing intelligence, and Mali responded by cutting ties with Kyiv. Ukraine later denied media reports it was providing drones to the Tuaregs, and an FLA spokesperson told Reuters the group had received no external assistance for the attack.
The current iteration of the Tuareg alliance, the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), officially formed in November 2024.
ISLAMIC STATE IN THE SAHEL PROVINCE (ISSP)
Islamic State in the Sahel Province (ISSP) is an affiliate of Islamic State and, like JNIM, operates in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. It split off from Al-Mourabitoun, one of the groups that now makes up JNIM, in 2015.
The group attracted international attention with the killing of four American soldiers, along with four Nigerien soldiers, in the Niger town of Tongo Tongo in October 2017.
That incident drew scrutiny of the little-known U.S. military presence in Niger at a time when many Americans were weary of U.S. involvement in conflicts abroad and Nigeriens were chafing at the growing presence of foreign troops on their soil.
ISSP is a main rival of JNIM. Clashes between the two groups beginning in 2019 have resulted in more than 2,000 deaths.
ISSP’s leader, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, was killed in a French drone strike in August 2021 in northern Mali.
Last year ISSP stepped up attacks in western Niger, killing more than 127 people in five separate strikes and highlighting authorities’ failure to protect civilians, Human Rights Watch said in September.
The group aims to establish an Islamic caliphate across the Sahel region and is considered to be less willing to build ties with local communities than JNIM.
(Writing by Jessica Donati and Robbie Corey-BouletEditing by Frances Kerry and Andrew Heavens)
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