AMID widespread bloodshed, jihadists associated with the Islamic State group have taken a powerful position in strategic northeastern Mali, allowing fighters to expand further into neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.

The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) has significantly extended its control in the vast, remote and arid zone known as the tri-border area, which straddles the three Sahel countries.

The jihadists have stepped into a vacuum left by French soldiers who departed last year, experts say, and its fighters have since massacred hundreds of civilians and committed numerous abuses.

The capture this month of Tidermene – a village some 75km north of the city of Menaka – was the latest victory in a successful offensive in the Menaka region against the IS group’s rivals.

Those include the al-Qaeda-linked Group to Support Islam and Muslims (JNIM), the Malian armed forces and local Tuareg-dominated armed groups.

The only part of the region to have escaped conquest by ISGS is its capital, where the Malian army, the UN stabilisation mission and other armed groups continue to operate. 

“The population is traumatised, we can’t get out of Menaka, the road to Gao is blocked,” one resident, who asked not to be named for security reasons, told AFP.

But any offensive on the city seems unlikely. In Mali, as in northeast Burkina Faso, jihadists prefer to isolate towns and control the rural areas.

Looting

“ISGS members prowl around 15km from Menaka and demand a passage tax for transporters linking Menaka to Niger or Gao, while extorting cattle from communities,” a UN official in the city told AFP.

Cattle rustling is a primary source of funding for the organisation.

Many of its members are nomadic herders threatened by the expansion of agricultural crops in a region neglected by the central state.

The rise of cross-border banditry that in 2012 was followed by full-blown jihadist insurgencies plunged pastoral communities into a cycle of violence. 

In 2018, fighting between ISGS, which had pledged to protect some marginalised Fulani factions, and local armed groups partly composed of members of the Daoussahaks tribe of Tuareg herders, led to massacres of civilians by both sides.

ISGS declared a religious decree, or fatwa, in March 2022 to authorise violence against Daoussahaks and the seizure of their property. 

According to Human Rights Watch, the group’s fighters attacked dozens of villages and massacred large numbers of civilians in northeastern Mali in the months that followed.

“These attacks largely targeted the Daoussahaks ethnic group,” the rights group said.

More than 30,000 displaced people have moved to Menaka city over the past year, according to the UN.

“The organisation legitimises looting rebel communities, mobilising fighters from all over the region who are attracted by the spoils, and then attacking en masse and overwhelming the enemy,” a Malian military official told AFP.

In the conquered territories, the locals must submit to Sharia law and pay the “zakat”, an Islamic tax, in exchange for a form of protection.

Within marginalised communities, ISGS has capitalised on resentment against a state seen as having failed to fulfil its security and social contracts.

“(The jihadists) have a discourse that catches on – they recruit, strengthen their positions and gradually spread,” said Kalla Moutari, Niger’s former defence minister.

‘Threats on opposite sides’

According to Liam Karr, an analyst with the think tank American Enterprise Institute, ISGS will use the Menaka region as a support base to increase its operations in the tri-border area. 

“ISGS is expanding westward into areas of northern Mali and northeastern Burkina Faso that it has not contested since it lost clashes with JNIM in 2020,” he said.

Also under threat is central Niger, a 200km-wide corridor between Mali and Nigeria where bandits and arms smugglers have operated for decades.

In a 2021 report, the International Crisis Group flagged “the jihadisation of banditry” as a growing risk.

Experts also warn of strengthening ties – via influential cross-border criminal groups – between ISGS and the IS group’s West African branch, Iswap, which is active in northeastern Nigeria. 

“The simultaneous increase in activity by ISGS and ISwap along the Nigerien border will increase IS control on both ends of routes connecting the groups and will strain Nigerien resources by posing threats on opposite sides of the country”, Karr said. – AFP, April 21, 2023.