Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 80

group changed its name and began to expand its ties with international jihadist organizations. AQIM tried to install an Islamic emirate across the Sahara and Sahel, between Mauritania and Chad. The leaders of AQIM are, mainly, Algerian. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, for example, is a former jihadi fighter turned smuggler in Afghanistan. Abdelhamid Abu Zeid is a hard-line ideologist. Their link to the ethnic Tuareg population is the Ansar Din movement, led by Iyad Ag Ghali French soldiers conduct a search for munitions in the Tigharghar Hills in Mali, and his cousin Abdelkrim, March 2013. (Photo courtesy of Defense Staff (État-major des armées), French Ministry of Defense). both Tuaregs from Kidal. The anarchy in Mali, in the a violent reaction of the government against the local wake of the Tuareg uprising, provided the opportunity population. A vicious cycle of terrorism and repression for these jihadists to realize their ambition. In the first started, fueling ethnic hostility in the north, political quarter of 2012, MNLA and Ansar Din took control of dissent in the south, and criticism abroad, and culmithe northern half of Mali. Rapidly, they imposed a strict nating with the Tuareg uprising of 14 January 2012. Sharia law on the population of the whole region, causThis last insurgency was led by two newly formed ing the first rifts between the secular MNLA and the groups, the Mouvement National de Libération de l’Aza- fundamentalist Ansar Din, along with a flow of 300,000 wad (National Movement of the Azawad Liberation, to 400,000 displaced persons. known as MNLA) and its Islamic satellite named Ansar Ansar Din, with the support of AQIM and Din (meaning soldier of the faith). The insurgents MOJWA—one of its splinter groups—managed to rapidly took the northern towns of Menaka, Aguelhok, expel the MNLA from the major towns. A few Sufi Tessalit, and Léré, causing the Malian Army to withshrines were destroyed in Timbuktu, a historic sacred draw, under pressure, south of the Niger River. The city—an event reminiscent of the destruction of the insurgents deprived the government of control over half Bamian Buddhas by the Afghan Taliban in March its territory (representing only ten percent of its pop2001. The interim Malian government of President ulation). This setback caused the coup d’état of March Diocounda Traoré and the international communi2012, when army Capt. Amadou Sanogo overthrew ty watched helplessly.5 The United Nations Security then-president Ahmadou Toumani Touré.3 Council unanimously passed Resolution 2085, 20 The rise of jihadists in the Sahel, which started about December 2012, authorizing the deployment of what the same time in Algeria, was another destabilizing facwas named the “African-led International Support tor. The Algeria-based AQIM (originally called Groupe Mission to Mali.” The European Union validated, in Salafiste de Prédication et de Combat—translated as December 2012, a plan for a “European Union Training Salafi Group for Preaching and Fighting) took advanMission” to advise the Malian Army and planned to set tage of traditional smuggling routes to fund its terrorist up the mission in February 2013.6 activities with drugs and arms trafficking. In addition, However, the jihadists started to move south of the it captured foreign tourists or workers from well-toNiger bend on 8 January 2013. After they captured the do countries and demanded ransoms.4 In 2007, the town of Konna from the Malian Army and threatened 78 November-December 2014  MILITARY REVIEW