Andrew McGregor
Al-Qaeda has come hunting for Russian troops in the Sahel region, scoring another blow against Moscow’s “Africa Corps” in Mali’s capital of Bamako on September 17 (France24, September 17; Al Jazeera, September 20). The attack on Russian and Malian military facilities came a month after a devastating joint strike by al-Qaeda and Tuareg separatists on a Russian-Malian column at Tinzwatène, near the Algerian border (see EDM, September 11). Recent defeats of Russian-backed government forces in Niger, the sudden withdrawal of paramilitaries for deployment on the Kursk Front, and the instability of military regimes in three Sahel states belonging to the pro-Russian Sahel Group State Alliance (AES, consisting of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso) are beginning to raise questions about the future of Russian forces in the region (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, July 31; The Moscow Times, August 31).
The September 17 attack was carried out by militants of the Group for Supporters of Islam and Muslims (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin, JNIM), led by a veteran Malian Tuareg jihadist, Iyad ag Ghali (see Militant Leadership Monitor, February 29, 2012). JNIM was formed in 2017 as a coalition of smaller jihadist groups drawn from the Tuareg, Arab, and Fulani communities. They pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda almost immediately and were accepted into the movement (see Terrorism Monitor, April 21, 2017). This by no means, however, indicates general support for al-Qaeda amongst these minority ethnic groups, who are targeted daily in Malian and Russian counterinsurgency operations.
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