An Islamist insurgency has been ongoing in the Sahel region of West Africa since the 2011 Arab Spring. In particular, the intensive conflict in the three countries of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso has been referred to as the Sahel War.
The conflict is generally seen to have begun during the early stages of the Mali War, which itself was seen as a spillover conflict of the Insurgency in the Maghreb. As Islamist Tuareg rebels overran Mali in 2012, a concurrent insurgency in Nigeria, led by Boko Haram, began to spread to nearby countries. By 2015, the Mali war had spread to Burkina Faso and Niger, which led to heavy fighting and humanitarian crises in both countries. The conflict in Nigeria also reached a climax before a coalition offensive forced insurgents into remission. By 2019, the effects of the region-wide conflict began to accelerate due to resentment within the populace and due to alleged inability to handle the conflict. These views led to a series of coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Sudan, Chad and Guinea, which led to the region being labeled a 'coup belt'.
Since 2007, the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have been engaging the Algerian government in an insurgency campaign in the Maghreb. AQIM fighters are mostly drawn from the Algerian and local Saharan communities (such as the Tuareg and the tribal clans of Mali). [39] After the First Libyan Civil War in 2011, south-western Libya has offered sanctuaries to AQIM fighters, which dispatched cells to be established in the region. [40]
After the end of the 2011 Libyan Civil War, an influx of weaponry led to the arming of the Tuareg in their demand for greater autonomy and independence of their homeland in northern Mali, which they called Azawad. [41] In Libya, the Tuareg people largely supported Gaddafi during the war, and Tuareg areas such as Ghat remain Gaddafi loyalist strongholds. [42] Tuareg fighters who fought for Gaddafi began to return from Libya after war ends, citing discrimination from the new government. [43]
In October 2011, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) was formed from rebels of previous Tuareg rebellions and fighters who have returned from Libya. Another Tuareg-dominated group, the Islamist Ansar Dine, also fought against the Malian government. However, unlike the MNLA, it does not seek independence but rather the impositions of sharia across united Mali. [44]
In March 2012, Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré was ousted in a coup d'état over his handling of the conflict. Following the coup, Northern Mali's three largest cities: Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu were overrun by the rebels. [45]
On 6 April 2012, the MNLA said that it had accomplished its goals and proclaimed Azawad to be independent from Mali. [46]
The MNLA were initially backed by Ansar Dine. However, Ansar Dine and other Islamist groups, including Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), a splinter group of AQIM, began imposing strict Sharia law in conquered territories. They soon came into conflict with the MNLA. By July 2012, the MNLA had lost control of most of northern Mali to the Islamists. [47]
By January 2013, Islamist forces advanced to 600 km from the capital and were closing in to capture the major town of Mopti. The MNLA began peace talks to realign with the Malian government while the French military launched Opération Serval on January 11, intervening in the conflict. French air campaign helped Malian government to push back Islamist advances, allowing them to take back major cities of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal. By the end of May 2013, Islamist and Tuareg forces have to retreat to the desert of northeastern Mali.
Since February 2007 the United States and partner nations in the Saharan and Sahel regions of Africa conduct Operation Juniper Shield, consisting of counterterrorism efforts and policing of arms and drug trafficking across central Africa.
French Opération Serval ended in July 2014. Operation Barkhane commenced shortly after on 1 August 2014 to "assure the Sahel nations' security, and in effect France's security". [48]
In 2022 Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group were deployed in Mali, [49] [50] as well as soldiers from the Russian regular army[ citation needed ]. At the same time, Turkish intervention had intensified[ citation needed ].
The Niger faces jihadist insurgencies both in its western regions (as a result of the spillover of the Mali War) and in its southeastern region (as a result of the spillover of the Islamic insurgency in Nigeria). The insurgency in the west of the country began with incursions in 2015 and intensified from 2017 onwards. Since 2021, attacks were carried out with greater frequency in the country. In 2023 a coup was carried out that was successful leading to the creation of a military junta and start to an international crisis.
The insurgency in the Sahel spread to Burkina Faso in 2015, beginning with an attack on a gendarmerie by alleged Boko Haram members. In 2016, the amount of attacks spiked after a new group, Ansarul Islam was founded by imam Ibrahim Malam Dicko.
Since 2021, the insurgency in Burkina Faso has begun to spread to neighboring countries of Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin and Togo. On 8 February 2022, insurgents attacked the W National Park in Benin, killing nine people. On 11 May 2022, militants crossed the border into Togo and killed eight soldiers. [51]
Beginning in the early 2020s, numerous coups were staged in countries in the Sahel, namely the 2020 and 2021 coups in Mali, in Guinea, Chad, Sudan, Burkina Faso and Niger. The coups further complicated the situation in the region.
Having cooperated and trained alongside AQIM in the Sahel since 2006, the Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram began expanding into Chad and Niger in 2014 after successfully seizing territory in the insurgency in Nigeria. [22] By then controlling a significant area around Lake Chad, a coalition of Western African countries launched an offensive against the group in January 2015. [52] The group eventually departed its alliance with al-Qaeda, pledging allegiance to ISIL in March 2015. By the end of 2015 Boko Haram had been largely pushed to retreat into the Sambisa Forest in Nigeria, although attacks have continued including in Niger. [53] [54]
As a result of the insurgency, the affected countries have been severely destabilized, with the emergence of the coup belt following several coup d'états within the region due to perceived inability to handle the conflict. In Mali and Burkina Faso, both countries lost significant control of their territory to the Islamists. The conflict has also seen a political shift in the region, with many military juntas, many having recently overthrown US- and Chinese-backed governments, allying themselves with the Russian government and the Wagner Group. In particular, Mali has seen significant activity of the Wagner Group as the government moved closer to Turkey and Russia. Niger saw its government being overthrown in 2023 due to poor management of the conflict. In particular, the M62 Movement, a pro-Russian and anti-Imperialist group, supported the coup. Burkina Faso also saw its government being overthrown twice within a year, with coups occurring in January and September, both of which caused by poor management of the conflict against Islamists. As a result of Russian expansion, Ukraine had funded opposition groups. [359]
Although not affected as much, countries nearby like Ghana, Benin, Guinea, Togo and the Ivory Coast have been under constant threat of either full-on insurgency or severe destabilization internally. Guinea has already seen a coup d'état while the Gambia has seen turmoil internally. Northern Benin has seen an increase in terrorism attributed to Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and the Islamic State, with 28 incidents attributed to the groups between 1 November 2021 and 14 September 2022, including the W National Park massacre. [360]
An Islamist insurgency is taking place in the Maghreb region of North Africa, followed on from the end of the Algerian Civil War in 2002. The Algerian militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) allied itself with al-Qaeda to eventually become al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Algerian and other Maghreb governments fighting the militants have worked with the United States and the United Kingdom since 2007, when Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara began.
Al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is an Islamist militant organization that aims to overthrow the Algerian government and institute an Islamic state. To that end, it is currently engaged in an insurgency campaign in the Maghreb and Sahel regions.
The Mali War is an ongoing conflict that started in January 2012 between the northern and southern parts of Mali in Africa. On 16 January 2012, several insurgent groups began fighting a campaign against the Malian government for independence or greater autonomy for northern Mali, which they called Azawad. The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), an organization fighting to make this area of Mali an independent homeland for the Tuareg people, had taken control of the region by April 2012.
The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali was a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali. MINUSMA was established on 25 April 2013 by United Nations Security Council Resolution 2100 to stabilise the country after the Tuareg rebellion of 2012, and was terminated over a decade later on 30 June 2023. Officially deployed on 1 July 2013, MINUSMA was the UN's deadliest peacekeeping mission. While UNIFIL, the mission in Lebanon, has lost more peacekeepers overall, by incident type the majority of those deaths at 135 are officially listed as "accidents." At 175 deaths by "malicious act," MINUSMA was officially the deadliest Peacekeeping mission of all time.
Al-Mourabitoun was an African militant jihadist organization formed by a merger between Ahmed Ould Amer, a.k.a. Ahmed al-Tilemsi's Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and Mokhtar Belmokhtar's Al-Mulathameen. On 4 December 2015, it joined Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The group sought to implement Sharia law in Mali, Algeria, southwestern Libya, and Niger.
Operation Barkhane was a counterinsurgency operation that started on 1 August 2014 and formally ended on 9 November 2022. It was led by the French military against Islamist groups in Africa's Sahel region and consisted of a roughly 3,000-strong French force, which was permanently headquartered in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad. The operation was led in co-operation with five countries, all of which are former French colonies that span the Sahel: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. Mali was a part of the operation until August 2022. The countries are collectively referred to as the "G5 Sahel". The operation was named after a crescent-shaped dune type that is common in the Sahara desert.
The 2016 Nampala attack was an armed assault against a Malian Army base in the Niono Cercle subdivision of the Ségou Region of Mali on 19 July 2016, that left at least 17 government soldiers dead and 35 others injured. The Katiba Macina, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the ethnic Fula militant group National Alliance for the Protection of Fulani Identity and the Restoration of Justice (ANSIPRJ) claimed joint responsibility.
Jama'at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin is a Salafi Jihadist organisation in the Maghreb and West Africa formed by the merger of Ansar Dine, the Macina Liberation Front, al-Mourabitoun and the Saharan branch of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Its leaders swore allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri.
The Islamic State – Sahel Province(ISSP), formerly known as Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (IS-GS), is an Islamist militant group adhering to the ideology of Salafi Jihadism. IS-GS was formed on 15 May 2015 as the result of a split within the militant group Al-Mourabitoun. The rift was a reaction to the adherence of one of its leaders, Adnan Abu Walid al-Sahraoui, to the Islamic State. From March 2019 to 2022, IS-GS was formally part of the Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP); when it was also called "ISWAP-Greater Sahara". In March 2022, IS declared the province autonomous, separating it from its West Africa Province and naming it Islamic State – Sahel Province (ISSP).
On 14 April 2018, militants attacked the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) base in Timbuktu Airport, known informally as the "super camp". The JNIM later claimed responsibility for the attack, in reprisal for the deaths of some of their commanders in clashes that occurred about a week earlier.
Events in the year 2021 in Mali.
Since 2015, the border area between Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger has been a hotbed for jihadist forces originating from Mali. The insurgency has taken place in two distinct regions of Niger. In southwest, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and the Nusrat al-Islam have carried out attacks in the tri-border area with Burkina Faso and Mali. Meanwhile, in the southeast, the Islamic State in the West African Province has established control in parts of southern Niger.
On 3 May 2021, Islamic militants attacked Kodyel, a village in Foutouri, Burkina Faso. The attack left at least 30 people dead and another 20 injured.
Events in the year 2023 in Mali.
On April 24, 2022, militants from Katibat Macina attacked Malian Army bases in the cities of Sévaré, Niono, and Bapho, all in central Mali's Mopti Region. The attacks killed fifteen soldiers and six civilians.
Events in the year 2024 in Mali.
The JNIM-ISGS war is an ongoing armed conflict between Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State – Sahil Province (ISGS), the Sahelian branches of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State respectively. Since ISGS' formation in October 2016 and the creation of the JNIM coalition in 2017, the two groups had been described as the Sahelien exception or Sahelien anomaly: despite the global war between al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates since the latter's splinter from the former in 2014, both ISGS and JNIM have ignored each other and in rare cases worked together against Malian, Nigerien, Burkinabe, French, and international governments and non-Islamist militias until 2020.
On July 31, 2021, jihadists from Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin ambushed Nigerien forces near Torodi, Tillabéri Region, Niger, killing 18 Nigerien soldiers.
On February 10, 2023, militants from Islamic State in the Greater Sahara ambushed Nigerien soldiers at Intagamey, Niger, killing at least seventeen people.
On August 4, 2021, jihadists from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara attacked several towns and Burkinabe bases in Markoye Department, Oudalan Province, Burkina Faso. Several rural villages were raided and civilians were killed, and the jihadist raids on Burkinabe bases in Tokabangou sparked battles that killed dozens of Burkinabe soldiers and ISGS fighters. The attacks were the deadliest day for the Burkinabe government since the Solhan and Tadaryat massacres in June 2021.
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