Why Militancy is Spreading in Mali

Welcome to IWPR’s Frontline Update, your go-to source to hear from journalists and local voices at the front lines of conflict.

 THE BIG PICTURE  

Why Militancy Is Spreading in Mali, published last month in the prestigious Foreign Policy magazine, revealed how local leaders are failing to protect their citizens while allowing ethnic hatred to fuel extremism.

 VOICES FROM THE FRONTLINE 

“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,” da Silva wrote.

“Viewed in the West almost exclusively as part of the wider war against jihadist groups in the Sahel, . . . [s]ecessionist 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.”

Originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, da Silva had to smuggle himself into Mali to gain access to the story, amid ongoing fighting and intense hostility to the media - an experience he also wrote about in a blog for the London Review of Books.

“It was not an easy assignment,” he told IWPR, “given the deteriorating security situation on the ground and the challenges facing every outspoken and independent journalist willing to travel to the Sahel region, which, alongside many West African countries, seem to have become a desert of information.”

 WHY IT MATTERS 

Thousands of people have been killed in Mali since the war broke out in 2012, with nearly 350,000 internally displaced.

Islamist groups, including al Qaeda allies, weighed in on an uprising by Tuareg separatists in the country’s north to try and establish fundamentalist rule over large swathes of the country.

Mali’s rulers have recruited Russia’s mercenary Wagner Group to push back the insurgents, with widespread human right abuses and a growing ethnic dimension to the conflict.

Under intense assault from the government and its allies, including Dogon militia, many Fulani civilians have come to see the jihadists as their protectors, further fuelling ethnic tensions.

“The conflicts between the Fulani and the Dogon have reached alarming proportions amid the fight against terrorism,” da Silva explained.

 THE BOTTOM LINE 

Da Silva’s story was supported as part of IWPR’s Voices for Change programme, which aims to increase accountability for serious human rights abuses across sub-Saharan Africa through accurate, in-depth reporting and an empowered civil society.

Other recent stories published under the project include investigations into how the trade in body parts is fuelling female genital mutilation in Tanzania; how the Ugandan state has used violence to silence anti-corruption activists and how separatists abroad are funding conflict in Nigeria.

IWPR supports courageous journalism that amplifies local voices and joins with civil society to campaign for accountability and justice.