After a decade of combating Islamic militants, attacks in northern Mali have more than doubled since UN forces finished the first stage of their withdrawal last month, claiming more than 150 lives.
49 victims were killed in one heinous attack by militants who targeted a triple-decker passenger ferry. Also this week, numerous security personnel were killed and injured when another rebel group attacked Malian army camps in the Lere region near the Mauritania border.
Malians who are currently fleeing worry that the violence will continue for a while longer.
“In Timbuktu, all the communities are leaving the city,” said Fatouma Harber, a local of the city, which is among the worst-hit locations.
“A child lost his life after a rocket crashed in the town a few weeks ago. Everyone believes they or their kids could be affected.
Mali’s military junta is struggling to quell escalating violence in a hard-hit northern area after more than three years in control and after demanding the departure of around 17,000 peacekeepers.
A 2015 peace agreement with ethnic Tuareg rebels also appears to have fallen through, which hastens the security situation.
According to analysts, Mali’s overstretched security infrastructure has gaps as a result of the UN force’s ongoing withdrawal since 2013, which has led to an increase in deadly attacks by both jihadist groups and former rebels who are all looking for new opportunities to seize control of more areas.
Mahamadou Bassirou Tangara, a Mali security analyst and researcher for the Conflict Research Network West Africa, claims that the number of violent attacks has never been this terrible before 2020, when the nation saw the first of two coups that led to the present junta.
This is not new, but the number and ferocity of the attacks are, according to Tangara. “The attacks are rising and the armed groups are carrying out attacks against civilians.
Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a leading database for conflicts throughout the world, show that since the beginning of the year, Mali has experienced four violent attacks on average per day, a 15% rise over the same period last year.
However, the situation is worse in the country’s hard-hit north, where fighting has been centred in places like Gao town.
Since 25 August, when the first phase of the UN forces’ withdrawal was finished, attacks in that region of Mali have more than doubled, resulting in more than 150 deaths.
An unusual attack on a significant Malian army camp was recently blamed on the Tuareg rebels; analysts said this indicated that the vital peace accord reached with the rebels, who formerly pushed security forces out of northern Mali in an effort to establish the state of Azawad, had failed.
The rebels, who call themselves the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security, and Development (CSP-PSD), also assert that they have briefly taken control of some of Bourem, where Malian military have been reorganising, in the Gao region.
They have been described to as a “terrorist group” by the Malian government, and the army has been accused of breaking its security arrangement by them.
Mali is one of Africa’s leading gold producers, yet it is also the world’s sixth least developed country.
Many more face a deteriorating humanitarian catastrophe as a result of the violence, with nearly half of its 22 million inhabitants living below the national poverty threshold.
According to the aid organisation Mercy Corps, more than a third of Mali’s population is already in need of humanitarian assistance as a result of the fighting, and an increasing number of locals in areas of high violence are forced to decide between staying in their villages to protect their sources of income at the risk of being killed or fleeing to safety.
In order to flee the violence in the northern Mali districts of Timbuktu and Taoudeni, more than 33,000 persons have already been registered by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). They are travelling to Mauritania and Algeria.
According to a recent UN assessment, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated and Islamic State group-linked organisations in Mali nearly doubled the area they control there in less than a year, prompting some to question the efficiency of the UN peacekeeping operation.
Un conducts ‘record’ 6-month Mali World pullout
According to MINUSMA spokeswoman Fatoumata Kaba, more than 30% of its staff are anticipated to have left the nation by the end of September after being requested to leave by Mali’s military administration in June. On January 1st, the operation will formally terminate.
According to diplomatic and security experts, the Wagner mercenary force from Russia has also contributed to the effort to quell the violence in Mali.
Col. Assimi Goita, the head of Mali’s military, recently posed for a picture with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, and it was uploaded to X, formerly known as Twitter. Many were reminded of the already-existing alliance between Mali and Russia.
Wagner’s assistance hasn’t been enough, and it won’t be able to bridge the security gap left by MINUSMA’s departure, according to senior fellow Rida Lyammouri of the Policy Centre for the New South Moroccan think tank.
Security troops in Mali’s severely affected northern region, according to Lyammouri, are only able to restrict their onslaught to “few airstrikes [with] no operations on the ground against CSP forces [rebels]”.
Ryan Cummings, director of security consultancy firm Signal Risk, which focuses on Africa, claimed that Mali’s “ability to curtail militant groups” would be constrained now that the UN forces are leaving the nation.
With regard to Mali’s projected political transition, Cummings noted that the removal of MINUSMA “is expected to deteriorate an already precarious security environment, which could potentially have broad-reaching implications for the economic and political environment of the country.”
