Mali: Islamist fighters melt away as French begin to regain control

Just two weeks after intervening in Mali, French troops, together with the Malian army, have wrested back control of most of the north of the country from Islamist rebels.
At the weekend the French seized back Gao – under jihadist control since last April – securing the airport and the bridge across the Niger river. Thousands of residents turned out to celebrate, shouting “Liberté!” and “Vive la France!” The French suffered no losses with around a dozen “terrorists” killed, the French defence ministry said. The rebels were said to have fled on foot, or by camel, since there was no fuel.

At the same time, a column of French troops were trundling serenely towards Timbuktu, the remote Saharan town that has been a magnet for the intrepid and the foolhardy since the 19th century. French and Malian troops reached Timbuktu’s gates on Saturday, army sources said. The town’s maze of mud-walled mosques and sand-blown streets was deserted. Fighters from al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) that took Timbuktu last summer appeared to have left.
Elsewhere, French jets pounded the mountainous rebel-held town of Kidal. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the AQIM commander behind the recent attack on the Amenas gas facility in Algeria in which 37 workers were killed, is said to be holed up there.
But despite these swift successes, it is uncertain whether France’s giddy military advance will deliver any kind of lasting peace. So far the “war” in Mali has involved little fighting. Instead Islamist rebels have simply melted back into the civilian population, or disappeared. Refugees who fled the rebels’ advance believe it is only a matter of time before the jihadists come creeping back. “The rebels haven’t gone far,” Mohamad Miaga, a 28-year-old secondary school teacher said. “They are in nearby villages.”
Miaga, who teaches English, fled his home in Gao last April. He now lives in a refugee camp in the government-controlled town of Sevare, home to around 4,000 refugees. French soldiers guard the nearby airport.
Last year some “200-300 pickup trucks laden with fighters” swept into Gao, he said, destroying buildings, including the town’s food security office, and firing randomly. When the rebels arrived, several terrified residents jumped into wooden boats and escaped to an island in the Niger. He left Gao two weeks later, as the price for a ride out of town soared.
“The rebels had big beards. They wore pantaloons. Their trousers didn’t quite reach their ankles. They were a mixture of foreigners and Mali people,” he noted. He added: “They imposed sharia law.”
Some of the jihadists were Tuareg, the lighter-skinned ethnic group who have been waging a bitter on-off secessionist war in the north of Mali for decades, and account for around 11% of the north’s population. The rebels who seized Gao came from the Movement for Tawhid and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), a violent offshoot of AQIM.
At least two other rebel factions are active in northern Mali. One, the MNLA, is a Tuareg nationalist militia that fought the government but is now seeking an alliance with the capital. Another is Ansar Eddine, an Islamist group controlled by a former MNLA Tuareg leader, Iyad Ag Ghali. It was Ansar Eddine that seized the central town of Konna on January 10, prompting Paris, the former colonial power, to intervene.
France’s intervention in Mali, with 3,700 troops, has attracted broad international support. Britain has offered logistical help and two planes. One promptly broke down. The US has belatedly agreed to refuel French jets.
Western governments have treated the problem of growing Islamist extremism across North Africa as one of “terrorism”. David Cameron has talked of an “existential struggle”, warning it will take decades to defeat.
But in reality, the rebels’ earlier successes had less to do with hardline jihadist doctrine than with organised crime and drug smuggling. There is strong evidence, moreover, of collusion between the previous and possibly current Mali government and radical Islamist groups.
In recent years, western nations have secretly paid millions of dollars in ransom to various Al-Qaida-allied factions for the release of kidnapped nationals. Since 2008, around 50 westerners have been abducted in the region. Eleven are still being held. The biggest beneficiary of this lucrative industry has undoubtedly been AQIM.