Why Militancy is Spreading in Mali
Leaders who fail to protect their citizens while allowing ethnic hatred to spread are fueling extremism.
Serene, meditative, and holding a chaplet while mumbling a few words in Arabic, Moussa sits in a makeshift chair and orders a cup of black coffee and kola nut. The Islamic afternoon prayer, salat asr, is over, and he is ready to talk.
“Prayer and meditation keep people like us stronger and steadfast to continue the jihad until final victory,” said the seasoned fighter and former member of Katiba Macina, one of the groups at the heart of Mali’s 12-year civil war, who described himself as “demobilized.” He agreed to this interview on the condition that his real name and precise location be withheld.
To Moussa, victory means a time “when the Fulani people are free from the chains of the munafiqoon [hypocrites] authorities of Bamako, the Russian infidels of Wagner, and their mushrikun [polytheist] Dogon associates.”
Moussa said that the conflict would continue for as long as the government marginalizes the Fulani ethnic group to which he belongs. And for as long as its army, along with its auxiliaries, keeps killing Fulani civilians.
“The government concocts lies to make us look bad and barbaric in the face of the entire world so that they can be given money to fight what they describe as terrorism,” he said.
Since 2012, Mali’s war has claimed thousands of lives and internally displaced more than 344,000 people (as of December 2023), creating an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. What began as an uprising by Tuareg separatists in the country’s north quickly took on a religious dimension as Islamist groups muscled in. Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), an al Qaeda-aligned alliance of groups including Katiba Macina, and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) have since waged a brutal campaign of terrorism in their efforts to establish Islamic fundamentalist rule over northern, eastern, and central Mali.
In response, Mali’s government first sought the help of Western military powers to push back the jihadists. Then, after military coups in 2020 and 2021 and a pivot toward Russia, it enlisted the Wagner mercenary group for a reported $10 million a month. But if the junta that now rules Mali was frustrated by the ineffectiveness of Western troops—mostly supplied by France, alongside several thousand United Nations peacekeepers and forces from elsewhere in Africa—its new strategy is backfiring. Violence has spread to the country’s peaceful south, while the conflict’s ethnic dimension is becoming increasingly entrenched.
In central Mali, where Katiba Macina and JNIM are reportedly headquartered, Fulani civilians have faced the brunt of the government’s renewed assault, with multiple reports of atrocities committed by its new Russian allies. Many have come to see the jihadists as providing them with vital protection.
Worse still, from the government’s point of view, the jihadists have become emboldened. On Sept. 17, Katiba Macina launched an unprecedented attack on Bamako, Mali’s capital city. That, in turn, has stirred up anti-Fulani sentiment in the south and among the country’s elite, which is dominated by the Bambara ethnic group.
With democratic politics suspended and independent media silenced since the recent coups, the official account is upbeat. The junta rejoices after each anti-terrorist operation, with the Malian army’s website often giving an account of the number of terrorists “neutralized” and not disclosing the military casualties or civilians accidentally killed.
“Most of the reports you hear on radio and TV which say the army killed hundreds or dozens of terrorists are lies. They can kill up to five or even six or seven, but not more than 10. If today you say you killed 50, tomorrow you say you killed 100, that makes it up to 500 per week. How many of us are there? That means we would have been finished by now,” Moussa said, dismissing the army’s official death toll as “cheap propaganda.”
Mali is a cautionary tale about what can happen when a country’s leaders are seemingly more interested in tightening their grip on power than protecting their people. Viewed in the West almost exclusively as part of the wider war against jihadist groups in the Sahel—the semi-arid region just south of the Sahara Desert—it is in fact several conflicts at once. Secessionist claims, interethnic rivalries, and a squeeze on resources as the climate crisis pushes the desert southward have all fed into the war, which shows no sign of abating more than a decade after it began.
What ignited the conflict was the security vacuum left by an earlier coup in 2012, when President Amadou Toumani Touré was ousted by soldiers who were unhappy at his handling of the Tuareg rebellion. Amid the instability that followed, Tuareg nationalists and Islamist groups overran Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao, three of the largest cities in the north. Many communities in northern and central Mali formed self-defense militias or joined the emerging jihadist groups for protection.
As Ousmane Diallo, a researcher on West and Central Africa for Amnesty International, explained, these militias often split along ethnic or religious lines, reigniting older conflicts that go back to Mali’s origins as a state.
These local conflicts added to the resentment many Fulani felt toward the Bambara-dominated government in Bamako, which has pursued policies for many years that prioritize the development of southern Mali over its central and northern regions.
In 2015, Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa founded Katiba Macina—also known as the Macina Liberation Front, recalling the name of a 19th century Fulani state—which he allied with the jihadist JNIM. In response, two Dogon militias—the Dan Na Ambassagou and the Dozo hunters—allied themselves with the Malian army in its fight against the jihadists.
Both sides have abused civilians. Since 2018, Diallo said, there have been several incidents of communal conflict and ethnic cleansing in central Mali. These include the massacre of around 160 Fulani by the Dan Na Ambassagou in Ogossagou in March 2019 and the reprisal killing of over 30 Dogon just a few months later by the Katiba Macina, who regularly raid the towns of Koro and Bankass, near Bandiagara.
“The aim of these incidents is to force locals to flee their homeland and move in urban areas so that the attackers from one of these groups could take over their much-needed resources, which include land, water, cattle, and grazeland,” Diallo said.
Abdou Razak, a herder, fled Mali shortly after the Ogossagou massacre in March 2019, and became a cross-border trader elsewhere in West Africa. Others, including two of his relatives, joined the Katiba Macina. “One attack on one Fulani is an attack on all Fulani. It cannot go unpunished,” Razak said, speaking from Aflao, a Ghanaian border town with Togo. “That is why we are responding, because it’s sharia [law]: an eye for an eye.”
In 2020, frustrated by Mali’s lack of progress in quelling the conflict, a group of military officers led by Col. Assimi Goïta overthrew the country’s elected pro-Western leader, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. A year later, Goïta overthrew Mali’s interim president and took direct control. He launched a reorganization of the army, hiring Russia’s Wagner mercenaries to train Malian troops, a decision that led France to announce it was withdrawing its forces from the country. In June 2023, the junta ordered the U.N.’s decade-old peacekeeping mission (MINUSMA) to leave the country, as well.
During these years, Russia strengthened its ties with Mali. Its deliveries of military equipment were often broadcast on national television—a sign, according to the junta, that the army’s firepower was rising and that it was ready to defeat the rebels and restore territorial integrity to the country. Goïta ordered the Malian army and Wagner to intensify military operations in northern and central Mali.
As of September 2023, violence targeting civilians has increased by 38 percent in Mali, with the main perpetrators of these attacks being JNIM (33 percent), Malian state forces and Wagner (29 percent), and ISGS (15 percent). The arrival of Russian mercenaries has also drawn Mali into another geopolitical conflict: In July of this year, Tuareg separatists, who were fighting alongside JNIM, claimed to have killed 84 Wagner operatives and 47 Malian soldiers. Ukrainian military intelligence claimed to have a role in the July attack and subsequently announced that the rebels had “received necessary information, and not just information, which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals.”
In the wake of the escalating violence, some Fulani now see the jihadist groups as offering them vital protection. Razak said that while he did not support the aims of the jihadists, he appreciated the assistance and protection they provided.
“They have become our shields,” Razak said. “Many rural areas are now no-go areas for the army, the Russians, and the Dogon militiamen.”
For the jihadists, the conflict presents an opportunity. Moussa thought that the Fulani youth were being increasingly driven toward armed groups—a positive development in his eyes. “The more the army and its helpers kill or arrest innocent Fulani, the more the youths will join the Jihad to take revenge,” he said.
The three main motivations for taking up arms, Moussa said, were “religion, money, and revenge.” He joined the Katiba Macina after a massacre in the Moura, Mopti region in March 2022. A U.N. investigation found that over 500 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in just a few days of anti-terrorist operations undertaken by the Malian army and Wagner. At least 58 women and girls were also raped or subjected to other forms of sexual violence.
“We cannot stand aside and watch while our people are unfairly targeted and exterminated by the very people who are supposed to protect them,” Moussa said.
He was also inspired to join by the preaching of Koufa, whose sermons are widely circulated online among Fulani communities. “Koufa’s sermons cut like a knife to the heart,” Moussa said.
Koufa has preached about corruption, which is widespread in Mali. Every time the jihadists attack a military base and seize equipment, they make sure the local communities see it either live or in videos, saying, “We want you to see the things that the government gave the army to come and kill us with.”
While Moussa declined to say how much a jihadist could earn—other than saying that it “pays well”—Razak said a fighter can take home up to 2 million CFA francs ($3,400) a month. He remembers his relatives coming home on leave “smiling and carrying bags full of banknotes.”
Climate change is also a factor in why people join the Katiba Macina. “It’s not only in Mali, it’s in Burkina Faso and Niger, as well, or even Chad. If you are a small-scale farmer, you need some cash to keep you going while you wait to harvest the crops. Sometimes, the soil no longer produces enough for you to eat and sell because of drought and lack of rain. There are also livestock farmers whose cattle either died of thirst and hunger who join,” Moussa said. “It’s all about survival.”
The junta’s promise to restore peace and stability has so far proven to be wishful thinking. On Sept. 16, Goïta assured the public that terrorist groups had been significantly weakened. A day later, Bamako residents woke up to the sound of bullets and explosions as the Katiba Macina mounted a multipronged assault on the city, attacking a military training school and the country’s largest airport, among other locations. More than 70 people were killed.
The double attack on the capital came as a shock to residents, prompting a wave of anti-Fulani rhetoric. In the aftermath of the attack, videos were posted on social media showing jihadists speaking Fulfulde, a Fulani language, and ordering one of their members to set fire to the presidential plane at Modibo-Keita International Airport.
Some Malians openly called for a “day of reckoning” against the Fulani, prompting army chief Oumar Diarra to appeal for calm. One man, believed to be Fulani, was lynched and set on fire by a mob.
According to Diallo, anti-Fulani sentiment was already circulating before the latest attacks. “Despite top Malian officials stating clearly that there is no such thing like targeting the Fulani or the army is multiethnic and that those who are saying the army is deliberately targeting the Fulani aim to divide Mali, the rhetoric is different on the ground, on social media, and in pro-government media outlets,” he said. “It is dangerous rhetoric.”
On Sept. 28, Mali’s government appeared to acknowledge that its military strategy had limitations. Abdoulaye Maiga, former deputy prime minister, who has since been appointed prime minister, told the U.N. General Assembly in New York that Mali was committed to “dialogue with armed groups and the provision of basic social services to our brave populations.”
In the meantime, however, the war continues to take a heavy toll on ordinary Malians. Approximately 1.3 million people face acute food insecurity in Mali, including 2,570 people hit by catastrophic hunger, according to the U.N. World Food Program.
A 2021 study argued that military solutions wouldn’t end terrorism in the Sahel, but addressing the environmental factors destroying livelihoods and fueling extremist groups’ recruitment could.
Razak echoed these sentiments, noting that it would take much more than guns, drones, and jet fighters to eradicate terrorism. He sees the jihadists as having restored a kind of stability to his region. “You must be a fool to tell someone who is earning an income, a good one, to quit and become poor and economically inactive again, he said. “What are you proposing as an alternative?”
This article was originally published in Foreign Policy.
This publication was produced as part of IWPR’s Voices for Change, Africa project.
