The main Islamist group in Mali, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), comprises three battalions made up mostly of Algerians who fled south after a long and bloody Islamist underground war against the Algerian army in the 1990s. But it also includes Mauritanians, Malians and other recruits attracted to northern Mali since the Malian army was scattered last spring after a bungled coup d’etat in Bamako.
A second group, the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, led by Hamad Ould Kheiru, split off from AQIM but operates in close cooperation with AQIM units, according to Mathieu Guidere, a French specialist on African terrorism.
Together, they have long thrived on proceeds from hostage-taking and smuggling of cigarettes and Europe-bound cocaine, Guidere said. As a result of their flush finances, they are well armed with light weapons and move freely about the region in pickup trucks mounted with machine guns or aged anti-aircraft weapons.
Ansar al-Dine, a third group, is led by Iyad ag Ghali, a rebellious former Malian army officer who was converted to extremist Salafist doctrine while serving in the Malian consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia.
Ghali is a member of the Tuareg ethnic group, which differs from the black Africans who rule in Bamako and has repeatedly sought to throw off government control. Since his return from Saudi Arabia, Ghali has split with other Tuareg independence leaders in favor of a close alliance with AQIM leaders and a fierce determination to impose strict Muslim law in the Tuareg area.
The Malian army was driven out of northern Mali, however, by a fourth group, the secular Azawad National Liberation Movement led by Col. Mohammed ag Najim.
Najim’s militia served for several years in Libya as an adjunct to Moammar Gaddafi’s army. When Gaddafi was toppled by a French-led air campaign in coordination with Libyan rebels in 2011, Najim returned to Mali with plentiful supplies of weapons and ammunition lifted from Gaddafi’s warehouses.
Some reports said Najim brought with him some of Libya’s portable surface-to-air missiles, raising the prospect of their being sold to AQIM and used against civilian airline flights that pass routinely over the area. Those fears were cited by French diplomats as they sought to round up support for an international intervention to drive the Islamist militias out of Mali.
In any case, the Malian army, leaderless after the coup in March, was no match for Najim’s well-equipped men. Malian forces collapsed immediately, and Najim and his AQIM allies declared an independent Tuareg state.
Within a short time, however, Najim’s soldiers were shoved aside by AQIM and Ansar al-Dine, whose leaders were intent on setting up an Islamic “caliphate” with a population ruled according to sharia, or strict Koranic law.
Since then, Najim has been courted by French and other diplomats seeking to recruit him and his secular Tuareg forces into the battle against Islamist militias. But so far, he has steered clear of the conflict, reportedly from refuge in a neighboring country.
