Revival of Islamists in Mali tests Paris, UN

Men, accused of collaborating with the radical Islamist group Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), sit in a canoe after being arrested in in Kadji.

Reuters/Dakar/Nouakchott

Nine months after they were scattered across the Sahara by waves of French air strikes, Islamists in Mali are making a comeback - naming new leaders, attacking UN peacekeepers and killing two French journalists.

Their return is making it harder for the west African country’s new president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and his foreign backers to stabilise the northern desert despite the incentive of more than $3bn in international aid for the area.

Mali imploded last year when Tuareg separatists tried to take control of the north. Their rebellion was soon hijacked by better-armed and funded Islamic militants linked to Al Qaeda before the French intervention in January.

Increasingly blurred lines between the Islamist militants, separatist rebels and gangs of smugglers has complicated the task of calming the area and Keita’s party has allied itself with leaders of some armed groups in a bid to wield influence.

 Experts are starting to worry that France will get bogged down in an open ended war if UN peacekeepers cannot pick up the baton.

“Mali is entering a guerrilla war, waged by sleeper cells and fighters who returned from southern Algeria, Libya and Niger,” said a French former diplomat and counter-terrorism expert who blogs under the name Abou Djaffar.

Last month, two Chadian UN troops were killed in a suicide attack in the remote town of Tessalit. Gao, the largest city in northern Mali, has been hit by a series of rocket attacks, while French special forces have taken action against Islamists north of Timbuktu for the first time in months.

But it was the killing of two French journalists, seized in broad daylight in the northern town of Kidal on November 2, which sent shockwaves through France. Al Qaeda-linked fighters said the killings were a response to France’s Mali operation although analysts say it may have been a botched kidnapping.

France dispatched reinforcements to Kidal after the journalists’ deaths but insists it will not further delay its plan to reduce its 3,200 troops in Mali to 1,000 by February, already two months later than originally scheduled.

“We are conscious that it will take a long time to eradicate the terrorism threat in the Sahel (desert),” a French diplomat said.

“Of course, there is Serval (the French operation) and MINUSMA (the UN mission), but long-term efforts will be needed and a deep regional coordination to completely kill the terrorism threat in Mali.”

Donors are once again disbursing aid after Keita’s election in August restored a legitimate government. Military officers seized power in March 2012 in anger at President Amadou Toumani Toure’s handling of the Tuareg rebellion.

Keita won power with a pledge to remove the web of corrupt elites that rotted the state under Toure. But with parliamentary elections on November 24, Keita’s party has allied itself with some leaders of armed groups who the previous government sought for war crimes.

“They are reverting to the same old practices,” said Wolfram Lacher, an associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “The whole complex of drug trafficking, organised crime and warlordism is going to be back in place. I didn’t expect it to happen quite so quickly and so openly.”

The journalists’ killing highlighted the gaps in foreign military cover in a country twice the size of France. French troops in Kidal had to call in helicopters from Tessalit, 250km away to try and track them down. France has just 16 in all of Mali.

Five months into its mandate, the UN mission is only at half strength. Regional military power Nigeria pulled its troops out and Mauritania, Mali’s western neighbour with long experience fighting Islamists, has refused to join.

The bills are mounting at a time when Paris is under pressure to cut defence spending. According to a Senate report on the defence budget, the Mali operation will cost €650mn in 2013. Add the support for African allies and the final amount will be much higher.

Angering many in Bamako, France refused to carry out military operations against Tuareg separatist MNLA rebels in Kidal, saying the government should open a political dialogue.