“The Insurgency Has a Momentum of Its Own”

On 7 November, jihadists in Mali killed the well-known TikToker Mariame Cissé, whom they had kidnapped the day before. The shocking attack has drawn more attention to the ongoing Islamist insurgency in the country. What were their motives? What are the goals of Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), and how are the military regimes in the Sahel region responding to the jihadists? Armin Osmanovic, head of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s West Africa Office in Dakar, discussed these issues with Alex Thurston, an expert on jihadi insurgency in the Sahel region.

The execution of the TikToker Mariame Cissé in northern Mali was quite shocking. Why did jihadists abduct and kill the young woman?

The main explanation in media reports and from local witnesses is that she was killed because of her pro-military posts and, some reports add, because of jihadist accusations that she was informing on them to the military.

Having looked through a great deal of her recent posts myself, I suspect jihadists also targeted her because of her popularity more broadly and the lifestyle she depicted — one of fun, dancing, fashion, parties, local pride, etc. That lifestyle clashes considerably, to say the least, with how jihadists demand Malian women behave.

What are the goals pursued by the JNIM jihadists in the Sahel? Is it about the fall of Bamako, or is there more to it?

I find their goals somewhat opaque. Their propaganda has long emphasized expelling foreign forces, overthrowing hostile governments, and creating their version of a pure Islamic society. But I suspect there is a mix of motivations among both leaders and fighters — some may want profit and power, others may want revenge for security force abuses, still others may have political ambitions, some may have joined for circumstantial reasons or under duress, and many likely are committed to the ideology.

Clearly, some of the leaders and fighters want to keep expanding and opening new fronts, and they are working hard to push the Malian (and Burkinabè) militaries back — but for what ultimate goal, I can’t say. Perhaps they do not even know themselves — the insurgency has a momentum of its own, after all.

Do you think that the jihadists might be capable of capturing Bamako?

I think they probably lack the manpower to take and hold Bamako. Some estimates put their fighting strength at 6,000, which seems too few for defeating the Malian military outright – let alone controlling a city whose population is often estimated at 3 million or more. For comparison’s sake, the Seleka rebel coalition that captured Bangui in 2013 may have had 20,000 fighters or more.

If I were advising the EU or France, I would advise them to keep their distance, diplomatically and militarily, from this conflict.

So, JNIM might hesitate to bid for control, preferring to let their current fuel blockade play out further. On the other hand, sometimes when states truly disintegrate, the process can accelerate rapidly in its final stages. If the morale of the Malian military collapses, or if senior officials panic and flee, or if the civilian population grows restless, conditions could shift such that JNIM could walk in and take the city without much of a fight. At that juncture, of course, the movement would then face a whole new slate of questions and challenges.

The military juntas in the Sahel states of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger appear helpless against the jihadists, which seems to be winning on all fronts. Is the “sovereigntism” seen in other parts of West Africa, such as in Senegal, just an empty shell?

Yes, I think the “sovereigntism” of the Sahelian military juntas has proven to be more bravado than substance so far. Expelling French forces was a reclamation of sovereignty in some ways, but real economic sovereignty remains a distant dream.

In Senegal, I think the new authorities have been caught between various pressures and obstacles, including the public debt crisis and the International Monetary Fund. Perhaps President Diomaye Faye and Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko are quite different in how they see their mandate and in how they see the path towards greater sovereignty and greater development.

It is often said by some experts in the region that the jihadists represent a Peul (Fulani) uprising. Is that true?

No, I think they are genuinely multi-ethnic in character. Certainly there is a major Peul presence at the level of leadership and the rank-and-file, but there are also Tuareg, Arabs, and, as they expand south, various other ethnicities. In its propaganda about a major September 2024 attack on Bamako, JNIM was keen to highlight that one of its two frontline commanders was Bambara, while the other was Peul. There have also been numerous Peul victims, both of the insurgency itself and of security forces and community militias, who sometimes target the Peul collectively. 

Given the situation in the Sahel, which threatens to become a second Afghanistan, is there a role for the EU — or even for the former colonial power France, which managed to repel the jihadists in 2013?

If I were advising the EU or France, I would advise them to keep their distance, diplomatically and militarily, from this conflict. EU and French interventions in Mali (counterterrorism, training, and efforts to shape governance) simply did not work in the 2010s, beyond France’s initial success in defeating jihadists in early 2013.

Certainly, I think all global powers should be offering humanitarian assistance to the Sahelian countries, and even fuel supplies as well in order to help outlast this blockade, but beyond that I think it’s worth adopting a “wait-and-see” approach now vis-à-vis the overall conflict. The government in Bamako remains hostile to France, and even if it were not, artificially propping it up would risk repeating the many mistakes of Afghanistan.

If the government falls to jihadists it will be a grim scenario, but I think it would be better to react to that scenario when and if it occurs, rather than to attempt to support or save a government that is ultimately quite repressive itself.

This text was first published in nd in cooperation with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.