Is this the new al-Qaeda?

Quiet, reserved, sort of tired-looking, and “nothing of the cold-blooded warrior persona”.

That’s not our description of Keanu Reeves, but rather a leaked US diplomatic cable’s description of a guy called Iyad Ag Ghali back in 2007. 

He’s gone from taking up arms for Gaddafi, jamming with a rock band (Tinariwen) that later won a Grammy, leading a Tuareg rebellion against Mali, and serving as a Malian diplomat in Jeddah, to now heading a jihadi movement on the outskirts of Mali’s capital.

That’s one of the wildest LinkedIn profiles you’ll ever see, so we’re gonna need a classic…

**Record-scratch, sepia flash-back to…**

After decades of French colonial rule, an independent Mali emerged from the 1960s, but kept grappling with inter-related divisions like…

• Ethnicity: nomadic Tuaregs up north versus sub-Saharan Bambara down south
• Ideology: southern nods to African socialism vs a northern dabble in Islamism
• Governance: corruption and oppression across various administrations, and
• Politics: centralising power and wealth down south, alienating folks up north

That’s all fuelled Mali’s ~five coups, with the last three (2012, 2020, and 2021) all at least partly reflecting disputes on how to handle a Tuareg rebellion brewing up north.

So against a backdrop of rising anti-colonial sentiment, Mali’s current leader (General Goïta) booted UN-backed French troops in 2022, pledging to instead go harder against the northern insurgency with help from a more ruthless and less conditional Russia.

And how’s that worked out? Not well. 

The Tuareg rebellion was actually a little less active by 2021, until village atrocities by the military and Russian mercenaries pushed more northern communities towards the various jihadi groups already capitalising on all the chaos, poverty, and resentment.

And that’s helped those extremist groups up their propaganda game and spread across Mali until September, when Ag Ghali’s group called Jamaat Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (Support Group for Islam and Muslims, or JNIM) got within a day of Mali’s capital, Bamako. 

‘Support Group’ sounds like your grandma’s bridge game on Thursdays, but JNIM (pronounced jay-nim) is the result of a 2017 merger of several jihadi groups, and is now also active across Burkina Faso, Niger, Benin, Togo, and (as of last week) even Nigeria.

Describing itself as Al-Qaeda’s West African branch, JNIM has carried out terrorist attacks against a tourist resort near Mali’s capital, the French embassy in Burkina Faso, a passenger boat on the Niger River, plus various villages accused of not getting onboard.

And since September, it’s imposed a fuel blockade on landlocked Mali’s capital of Bamako.

But why squeeze the capital’s fuel supply rather than keep attacking? It’s partly about

• Retaliation against the military’s unpopular rural fuel ban targeting JNIM
• Consolidation of its existing control elsewhere, and
• Destabilisation of the junta’s rule by framing it as incompetent and oppressive.

They’re hoping for a regime collapse or some kind of negotiated transfer, rather than roll the dice on an attempted urban war in a heavily-fortified city of three million.

So will JNIM win? We already covered how the junta itself rattled foreign mining investors last year. But now the fact foreign embassies are evacuating non-emergency diplomats reflects real fears Bamako could fall into JNIM hands.

And then what?

JNIM has been open about wanting to replace this regime with a strict Islamist state, though Ag Ghali himself has also given mixed messages over the years, and his team has been downplaying its Al Qaeda links in recent months. That’s led to speculation he might’ve learned lessons from Syria, where a fellow Al Qaeda affiliate ended up toppling the regime before moderating in a (successful) bid for international backing.

In the meantime, Bamako and the broader region holds its breath.

Intrigue’s Take

Two questions you might now hear: first, does this matter to the rest of the world? 

And the reality is yes — history shows a worldview’s ascent in one place tends to embolden adherents elsewhere. So beyond the humanitarian implications, you can bet this’ll all rattle neighbours where JNIM already has a solid foothold, particularly Niger and Burkina Faso. Ditto, you can bet Al Qaeda’s comeback across the Sahel will inspire affiliates across the Middle East and beyond.

And a related second question: who else wins and loses here?

One of the biggest losers is Russia, given it rolled into town promising a tough Putinesque response. Instead, Mali now risks joining Syria as a demonstration of how brittle Russian support can be. It’s also tricky for neighbouring Algeria, which has often been conciliatory towards Tuareg movements in hopes of stabilising its frontier. But this particular jihadi strain, even if its backstory is a little more complex, will rattle the elites in Algeria like everywhere else. 

Sound even smarter:

• JNIM has extracted ransoms to finance its expansion, trading an Iranian and two Emirati hostages for tens of millions of euros plus tonnes of arms just last week.
• The International Criminal Court has a warrant out for Ag Ghali on war crime allegations. 
• It’s unclear if any other capitals plan to get involved, though the US just spoke to Mali’s foreign minister and flagged “greater cooperation” ahead.