Following intense protests against widespread government corruption and a
deterioriating security apparatus, Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita w


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Mali Coup Occurs Against Backdrop Of Growing Islamist Insurgency

(New York, N.Y.) – Following intense protests against widespread government
corruption and a deterioriating security apparatus, Malian President Ibrahim
Boubacar Keita wasousted
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last week in an apparent military coup. The coup has since drawn widespread
international condemnation and occurred as the country struggles to combat
al-Qaeda and ISIS fighters, who have recently expanded their territory in
Mali’s countryside. Analysts are concerned that the coup in Mali will throw the
country into further chaos and create a power vacuum for jihadists to exploit
as a focal point for terrorists to organize attacks across Africa and beyond.

 

Human Rights Watch laid caution to this evolving threat in a February report
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that tracked and detailed the nation’s rising toll of jihadist-backed armed
attacks.Mali <[link removed]>, which has been
operating under a state of emergency since November 2015, has been a hotbed for
rising
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ethnic and jihadist-backed violence in recent years with civilians bearing the
brunt of the casualities. In 2019, more than 456 were reportedly killed and
hundreds more wounded. A tally ofU.N.
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Malian civilians were killed in the first five months of 2020.

 

Jihadists from both al-Qaeda and ISIS have been encouraging inter-ethnic
attacks in hopes of asserting their power throughout both the state and the
West African region. Although ISIS and al-Qaeda are generally rivals in other
parts of the world, the regional groups—Islamic State in the Greater Sahara
(ISGS) andJamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen
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more or less cooperated with one another throughout the Sahel to destroy
Western-allied governments and traditional leaders. According to data from the
Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the two groups launched over
1,000 attacks in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso in the past year.

 

Both ISGS and JNIM maintain a presence in Mali. However, on May 8, 2020, it
was reported in ISIS’s latest edition of its weeklyAl-Naba newsletter, that
al-Qaeda started a “war” against ISIS militants in West Africa.Al-Naba
criticized JNIM’s leadership, specifically Iyad Ag Ghaly and Amadou Kouffa, as
undermining the jihad in favor of negotiating with the Malian government. JNIM
sought to diffuse the tension by releasing booklets—indirectly targeted at ISIS
sympathizers who are skeptical of JNIM’s motives—by calling for unity among all
jihadists. On May 28, ISIS spokesman Abu Hamza al-Qurashi asserted that ISIS
will actively retaliate against al-Qaeda in Africa due to violence allegedly
instigated by the former jihadist camp.

 

To read the Counter Extremism Project’s (CEP) Mali resource, please click here
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