Mali, Mariam Cisse and the risk of implosion, Prof. Jibrin Ibrahim,

Five years ago, a military junta took over power in Mali with a firm promise to end terrorism and establish security in the country, end French neo-colonialism and set the country on the path of development. Last Saturday, Mariam Cisse, a twenty-year old social influencer with 90,000 followers on TikTok was arrested by jihadists while creating content in the market in her town of Tonka near Timbuktu. The following day, Sunday this week, they brought her back to the market, announced that she had been producing video content supportive of the military junta and executed her. There were no Malian security forces to protect her. Among the onlookers were her brother and uncle. The incident has been a major turning point in the development of collective shock and trauma by terrorists who have completely changed their modus operandi in the past few years. 

In 2012, they set out to capture the entire country, beginning from the north. They captured territory after territory, setting up administrative and judicial structures for the implementation of Sharia law, and killing or jailing all those who disagreed with them. They also burnt down libraries of the Sufi orders and destroyed the tombs and mausoleums of their saints. The question that arose was how similar would Mali Jihad 201 be to Jihad 101.

Two months ago, fighters from JNIM, the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, imposed a fuel blockade that has forced the government to close schools and prevented harvesting in several regions. They burnt down over 100 fuel tankers trying to get fuel to Bamako on the Dakar-Bamako route. With that axis closed, the government started bringing in fuel from Cote d”Ivoire in the south and they closed that route also. An attempt was made to bring in a few tankers from Niamey and that route was also closed and the three million inhabitants of Bamako are today encircled with schools and business closed due to lack of fuel. Inflation is galloping due to lack of supplies of goods. Will JNIM take over Bamako? It does not seem likely! They appear to be pushing a strategy of regime implosion as life becomes impossible for Malians.

Mali is a huge country with 1,241,328 km² and a frontier of 7240 km with seven countries – Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Senegal and Mauritania. If the country implodes, it is the entire West African region that will come down with it and there is urgent need for the entire region to get into salvation mode intervention and diplomacy. In 2012, it was the inability of ECOWAS to deploy forces on the ground to combat the insurgents that led to the takeover of much of northern Mali by insurgents and the attempted march on Bamako. Without an ECOWAS Standby Force intervention, Mali was forced to call on France to send in jet fighters to stop the takeover of Bamako and fight back the terrorist takeover. Almost a decade later, France failed and was expelled from the country.

The French intervention from Friday 11th January 2013 which began with air strikes and later ground troops halted the advances by the insurgents and led to the recapture of all major towns and cities they held. Up till that time, there had been endless discussions with the UN Security Council about the authorisation of the ECOWAS/African Union demand to establish a 3,300 strong-mission to Mali with the acronym AFISMA for an initial period of one-year and the international community had been lackadaisical about acting. The raised the issue of the “necessity” of a one-year human rights training for the troops to be sent, while in three days, the insurgents took over the three key northern towns of Kidal, Timbuctoo and Gao. It turned out the plan all along was to bring in France. When the French took over Kidal, the vital artery to the north, they refused to carry the Malian army along and appear to the making a deal with the Tuareg MNLA on running the city. That was the point where the French agenda was exposed, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The coup d’état of Assimi Goita of August 2020 was supposed to end the state of insecurity and set Mali on the course to development based on the exercise of full sovereignty. The French and the United Nations were chased out and the patriots took over power. The reality five years later is that insecurity today is much worse than before the junta came into power. JNIM insurgents are quietly taking over villages, towns and cities but they are not taking over direct territorial control, nor establishing a new administration. They are simply showing the people that – we have the power, look at your useless military, there is nothing they can do. The state is crumbling, poverty is deepening, hunger is spreading and inflation is getting out of hand. Many Malians are fleeing the country and moving to Cote d”Ivoire. This is the context in which the fuel crisis was devised by the terrorists as a mechanism  to accelerate state collapse. The tariff on fuel constitutes 40% of state revenue in Mali so as the crisis deepens, state bankruptcy is on the agenda. Without fuel, even the mines are closing down so economic activities have ceased.

As the state crumbles, beautiful videos are being produced on the great success of the country against imperialism and on development. The latest this week is the laying of the foundation stone of the best hospital in West Africa that will be built soon by the government. The reality is that the government is not in charge of much of the country. The government is however right in its explanation that the gang of five – France, Algeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritania and Ukraine are responsible for creating the massive insecurity characterising the country. It appears that armed Ukrainian drones are used to blow up fuel tankers and crippling their military escorts. The recruitment of the Wagner group, now re-baptised as the African Corps has not produced significant gains for the Malian army. It has in fact worsened their reputation with the series of massacres of civilians they have orchestrated.

Given the high level of political repression in the country, there is no opposition to the military within the country. The junta dismisses the exiled opposition as megaphones of the gang of five orchestrated by France. Rumours circulating that the radical Salafist mobiliser, Imam Dicko, currently in exile in Algeria would return to negotiate a way forward have been dismissed by the Government. The problem for the junta is that they have justified their coup on a promise of improving the security situation and they have failed. At the same time, there are virtually no other legitimate interlocutors within the country to seek a way out. 

The two other AES countries – Burkina Faso and Niger are suffering from similar levels of insecurity and appear unable to save themselves. The AES countries have left ECOWAS but the crisis within them can lead to the implosion of not just the Sahelian states, but also the Gulf of Guinea countries. We cannot sit down and watch Mali implode. We are all at risk. The time to act is now.