Al-Qaeda Attack on Russians in Bamako Latest Setback for Russia’s Africa Corps

Andrew McGregor

Eurasia Daily Monitor 21(146)

Jamestown Foundation, Washington DC, October 9, 2024

Executive Summary:

  • Over the past months, Russia’s “Africa Corps,” partly made up of former Wagnerites, has faced numerous blows from jihadist groups in Africa’s Sahel states.
  • These defeats have begun to raise questions about the future of Russian military forces in the region following the eviction of French and US forces, replaced by Russian mercenaries whose massacres fuel rebel anger and desire for revenge.
  • Having seized power unlawfully on the pretext of needing to evict the Western military presence, Sahelian coup leaders’ credibility rests on Russian-backed military success against the jihadists and separatists who challenge them.

Al-Qaeda has come hunting for Russian troops in the Sahel, scoring another blow against Moscow’s “Africa Corps” in the Malian capital of Bamako on September 17. The attack on Russian and Malian military facilities came a month after a devastating joint strike by al-Qaeda and Tuareg separatists on a Russian/Malian column at Tinzwatène, near the Algerian border. Recent defeats of Russian-backed government forces in Niger, the sudden departure of recently-arrived Russian paramilitaries for urgent deployment on the Kursk Front and the instability of military regimes in three Sahel states belonging to the pro-Russian Alliance des États du Sahel group (AES -Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso) are beginning to raise questions about the future of Russian forces in the region.

Attacker Sets Fire to an Aircraft (Jeune Afrique)

The attack was carried out by militants of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM), led by a veteran Malian Tuareg jihadist, Iyad ag Ghali. JNIM was formed in 2017 as a coalition of smaller jihadist groups drawn from the Tuareg, Arab and Fulani communities. They pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda almost immediately, and were accepted into the movement. This by no means indicates a general support for al-Qaeda amongst these minority ethnic groups, who are targeted daily in Malian and Russian counterinsurgency operations.

Location of Bamako Attacks (BBCM)

A small number of members of the mostly Fulani Katiba Macina (katiba = battalion) struck two military installations south of the Niger River in the morning of September 17. The leader of the attack on the first target, Senou Air Base 101, a launch point for drone operations against militants in northern Mali, was ‘Abd al-Salam al-Fulani (Chirpwire, September 17, 2024, via BBCM).

The second attack on a gendarmerie school in nearby Faladié was led by Salman “Abu Hudhaifa” al-Bambari, a member of the Muslim Bambara ethnic group. As the dominant ethnic group in the Malian military and government, the Bambara have more often been the target of the jihadists than their allies. The school also serves as a dormitory for Russian troops, who came under attack. Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa, leader of the Katiba Macina, said the operation was in response to massacres of civilians committed by government troops and their Russian allies (al-Zallaqa, September 20, via BBCM).

On the day of the attacks, JNIM issued an inflated claim of heavy losses of “hundreds of Wagner” personnel (Chirpwire, September 17, via BBCM). A more accurate figure is 77 dead and 200 wounded, Malians and Russians combined. Although the GRU (Russian military intelligence) has assumed command of the former Wagner fighters in Africa, former Wagner personnel (who still form about half of the force) are still allowed to wear Wagner insignia, leading many Sahelians to still refer to Russians as “Wagner” (Reuters, September 11).  A short video released the day of the Bamako attack purports to show Russian mercenaries who had just killed several militants near the airport (X, September 17). Russian embassy officials deplored the loss of Malian troops, but said nothing about Russian losses (X, September 20).

Young Fulani Men Were Rounded Up in Bamako After the Attack as Suspects: None Wear the Camo-pattern Uniforms Worn by the Attackers (ORTM)

A week after the attack on Bamako, Tuareg separatists of the same group that worked with JNIM in the deadly Tinzwatène ambush (the Cadre stratégique pour la défense du peuple de l’Azawad – CSP-DPA), destroyed a Russian command post in Mali’s northern Timbuktu region with a bomb-carrying drone (X APMA, September 25; X Wamaps, September 26).

Fellow AES state Burkina Faso is far from stable, even with Russian support. Captain Ibrahim Traoré’s military regime has survived four coup attempts since it took power in September 2022 and began to evict French and American forces in favor of Russian mercenaries. In the worst terrorist attack in Burkina Faso’s history, JNIM militants killed as many as 400 people at Barsalogho on August 24, including government troops, militia members and civilians (Bamada.net [Bamako], September 17).

A week later, 100 Russian troops of the “Bear Brigade” were withdrawn from Burkina Faso to fight on the Kursk front in Russia after a short three-month deployment. The unit (officially the 81st Bear Special Forces Volunteer Brigade) is a Russian PMC composed of special forces veterans supplied with arms and equipment by the Russian Defense Ministry (L’Indépendent/AFP, August 31). Its members have signed contracts with the GRU (AFP, August 30).

Captain Ibrahim Traoré with Bear Brigade Commander Viktor Yermolaev (Le Monde)

Led by commander Viktor Yermolaev (a.k.a. “Jedi”), one hundred members of the brigade arrived in Burkina Faso in late May to provide security for junta leader Captain Ibrahim Traoré; they were later joined by up to 200 more members. In what might be interpreted as unsettling news for AES junta leaders dependent on Russian military support, Yermolaev announced that “When the enemy arrives on our territory, all Russian soldiers forget about internal problems and unite against a common enemy” (Le Monde, August 29). However, he did promise that his Russian troops would return once their mission in Russia was complete (RFI, August 29).

Niger, the third AES member, is also facing an upsurge in attacks by religious extremists since replacing French and American forces with GRU “mercenaries.” Two days before the strike on Bamako, JNIM’s Katiba Hanifa raided a military post in Niakatire, Niger, killing at least 27 members of a special forces battalion (Chirpwire, September 20, via BBCM; Wamaps, September 15). Katiba Hanifa is a branch of the JNIM/al-Qaeda network led by Abu Hanifa, (A.K.A. Oumarou), a Malian Fulani.

Russia’s strong-handed tactics have not restored order to the post-coup Sahel nations; on the contrary, civilian and military deaths have sky-rocketed. Civilian fatalities are reported to have risen by 65% over the previous year, with both sides bearing responsibility (Reuters, September 11). Nearly half the territory of Sahel Alliance nations is now under rebel or separatist control. Rebel anger and desire for revenge is fuelled by Russian massacres large and small. The Sahelian coup leaders cannot acknowledge the reality of a Russian failure; having seized power unlawfully on the pretext of needing to evict the Western military presence, their credibility rests on Russian-backed military success against the jihadists and separatists who challenge them.

Ukraine’s African Campaign Against Russia Prompts International Backlash

Andrew McGregor

Eurasia Daily Monitor 21(130)

Washington DC, September 11, 2024

Executive Summary:

  • The July attack by Tuareg rebels in Mali that killed Malian government troops and Wagner Group mercenaries has been connected to Ukraine, causing substantial international backlash for Kyiv.
  • The death of multiple members of Mali’s army in the attack would mean Ukraine was involved in the killing of regular army members of a sovereign state unengaged in any hostilities with Ukraine, past or present.
  • If Ukraine were involved in the clash at Tinzawatène, it would find little in international law to support its intervention, which could risk international support for Kyiv.

During fighting that took place on July 25, 26 and 27 around the north Malian border town of Tinzawatène, Tuareg rebels launched a devastating ambush that killed scores of Malian government troops and their Russian Africa Corps allies. Reports later emerged that the Tuareg fighters had received substantial aid and training from Ukraine, quickly sparking an international backlash.

The Tuareg forces involved in the battle hailed from a coalition of armed separatist groups, the Cadre Stratégique pour la Défense du Peuple de l’Azawad (CSP-DPA), and the al-Qaeda affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM). It is Ukraine’s alleged involvement with the latter that has contributed most to creating an international incident.

After the ambush, a photo was posted in Kyiv Post showing victorious Tuareg fighters holding a Ukrainian flag. Sources in Ukraine’s defence and security forces confirmed the photo’s authenticity, asserting that Ukraine fully supports any forces in the various parts of Africa that are fighting against Wagner terrorists. (Kyiv Post, July 29; Ukrainska Pravda, July 29).

Russia’s foreign ministry seized the opportunity to declare that Kiev’s support for al-Qaeda-affiliated  terrorist groups was “not surprising at all,” citing Ukraine’s alleged “terrorist methods on the territory of the Russian Federation, committing sabotage, political assassinations and regularly bombing civilian targets” (Agence de Presse Africaine [Dakar], August 7). 

Malian media described the ambush as a “secret project” of the Ukrainian GUR (Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine), including the training of “terrorists in combat techniques and supplying equipment, drones and weapons” for destabilization operations (Maliweb, August 17). The alleged director of this project is GUR Lieutenant Colonel Andrii Romanenko, though the source of this information appears to be Anatoly Chari, a controversial Ukrainian journalist and politician (Maliweb, August 16). Chari is generally viewed as pro-Russian (though he denies this), and was charged with High Treason by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) in 2021.

The first cohort of Tuareg fighters is reported to have started combat training under Ukrainian direction in early 2024 (LeFaso.net [Bamako], August 15). An investigation by Malian authorities is reported to have established the training was carried out in Mauritania, where local authorities have launched their own investigation at Bamako’s request (LeFaso.net [Bamako], August 5). It has also been reported that some members of the Tuareg alliance were sent to Ukraine for intensive training (Le Monde, August 7).

Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence (GUR), told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne TV that the rebel fighters had received from Ukraine “useful information, and not just that, which allowed them to carry out a successful military operation against Russian war criminals”  (Kyiv Independent, August 5). Despite this, a CSP-DPA spokesman downplayed any special ties to Ukraine’s intelligence services: “We have links with the Ukrainians, but just as we have with everyone else, the French, Americans and others” (Le Monde, August 2).

Mali’s transitional government announced it had learned “with deep shock” of Yusov’s admission that Ukraine was involved “in a cowardly, treacherous and barbaric attack by armed terrorist groups.” These actions had not only violated Mali’s sovereignty, but constituted “a clear aggression against Mali and support for international terrorism, in flagrant violation of international law, including the Charter of the United Nations” (Maliweb [Bamako], August 4). Yusov later issued a retraction of his remarks, claiming he was not speaking of the involvement of Ukrainian intelligence services (Maliweb, August 17).

Matters were worsened when Yurii Pyvovarov, Ukraine’s Dakar-based ambassador to Senegal, published a Facebook video which Senegalese authorities described as providing  “unequivocal and unqualified support for the terrorist attack” in Mali.(al-Jazeera, August 7). While the post was deleted within 24 hours, Pyvovarov was summoned by Senegalese authorities to account for it, while the pro-Russian Alliance des États du Sahel (AES – Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso) encouraged Senegal to break diplomatic relations with Ukraine (Sputnik, August 5; Maliweb, August 10).  Mali severed diplomatic relations with Ukraine on August 4, referring to the “neo-Nazi and villainous nature” of Ukrainian authorities (Maliweb [Bamako], August 4). Niger followed suit on August 6 (Le Monde/AFP, August 6).

Ukraine’s foreign ministry described Mali’s break as “unfriendly… short-sighted and hasty,” adding that Bamako had failed to provide “any evidence of Ukraine’s involvement” in the ambush. The ministry further denied Ukrainian support for terrorism and reiterated its commitment to international law and “the inviolability of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries” (Kyiv Independent, August 5).

On August 19, the foreign ministers of the AES states sent a joint letter to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) denouncing Ukraine’s alleged support for international terrorism and calling upon the Council to take appropriate measures against Ukraine (L’Essor [Bamako], August 22; Asharq al-Awsat, August 22).   As the UNSC does not have a mandate to address conflicts between member states, the letter could be a preliminary step to bringing the matter before international courts (RFI, August 22).

Accusations of Ukrainian support for terrorism will be welcomed by Putin-admiring Western politicians seeking to defund Western support for Ukraine’s defense. The death of multiple members of Mali’s army in the attack would mean Ukraine was involved in the killing of regular army members of a sovereign nation (albeit a military dictatorship), unengaged in any hostilities with Ukraine, past or present.

Mali has the right to partner with another country (e.g. Russia) for defensive purposes, but this does not give the right to a nation belligerent with that partner to combat its enemy on Mali’s sovereign territory. In May 2023, GUR director General Kyrylo Budanov famously declared “we’ve been killing Russians and we will keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine” (Yahoo!News, May 5, 2023). However, if Ukraine was involved in any way in the clash at Tinzawatène, it will find little in international law to support its intervention. Kiev’s decision to expand its war against Russia may prove to have been a serious misstep.

Can Russia Displace French Influence in Chad?

Andrew McGregor

Eurasia Daily Monitor 21(6)

Jamestown Foundation, Washington DC

June 25, 2024

Executive Summary:

  • Mahamat Idriss Déby, Chad’s new president, has voiced interest in increasing cooperation with Moscow amid creeping Russian influence throughout the Sahel.
  • Any move by the young president toward replacing French influence with a Russian presence will likely be met with strong resistance from Chad’s military leaders, who have not expressed a preference for Russia.
  • Suspicions that Russian troops have already entered the country may have been misplaced, as the troops arriving in April were an official Hungarian contingent with no clear connections to the Kremlin.

Mahamat Idriss Déby and Vladimir Putin (Kremlin.ru)

Surrounded by countries with a growing Russian presence, Chad’s new president, Mahamat Idriss Déby, appears to be entertaining Moscow’s overtures at the expense of long-established ties to former colonial power, France. The question is whether Chad is merely diversifying its partners or moving directly into the Kremlin’s orbit. Much has changed since 2021, when then-Foreign Minister Chérif Mahamat Zene said the presence of Russian mercenaries in Africa posed “a very serious problem for the stability and security of my country” (France24/AFP, September 24, 2021). More recently, during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in January in Moscow, Déby remarked, “This is a history-making visit. Chad and Russia maintain long-time relations. … We hope that this visit will allow us to enhance our bilateral relations and to strengthen our relations” (Kremlin.ru, January 24).

Chad’s Military: In the French Tradition (NYT)

The French military helped drive the Soviet-supported Libyans out of Chad during the Toyota War in 1987. French forces then intervened to preserve the rule of Mahamat’s father, Idriss Déby Itno, in 2006, 2008, and 2019. Even the 2021 rebel offensive, in which Idriss was killed after ruling Chad for 30 years, was repulsed with the help of French aerial and satellite intelligence (AFP, March 15).

Chad’s relations with France deteriorated quickly after Mahamat became the country’s transitional ruler on April 20, 2021, heading a junta of 15 generals. France sought quick elections, while Mahamat insisted on an 18-month transition that eventually stretched out to three years before he was elected president in May. The Russian Foreign Ministry expressed satisfaction with the “final stage of the transition process” and a desire to strengthen relations with Chad (TASS, May 11).

General Ahmet Kogri (TchadOne)

Franco-Chadian General Ahmet Kogri (aka Serge Pinault), director of Chad’s internal security agency, l’Agence Nationale de Sécurité de l’Etat (ANSE), was accused of playing a leading role in repression of the 2022 demonstrations. The protests opposed the extension of the transitional period through a special unit tasked with the interrogation, torture, and eventual murder of demonstrators in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital (TchadOne, January 3). Kogri was replaced in February, a move that has been interpreted as part of a separation from French influence and a means of bringing the ANSE under tight presidential control (TchadInfos, February 21; Jeune Afrique, February 22). The French military still has three bases in Chad, with roughly 1,000 troops.

General Amine Idriss (al-Wihda)

The US presence in Chad has also been compromised in recent months. In April, French-trained General Amine Idriss, Chadian Air Force chief of staff, ordered the immediate suspension of US activities at the Adji Kosseï air base, citing Washington’s inability to justify its continued presence there (Al-Wihda, April 25). On May 1, 75 members of the US 20th Special Forces Group withdrew from Chad to Germany.

Initially, the order was thought to be related to pre-election tensions between the United States and Mahamat over alleged US support for the leading opposition candidate. Some sources suggested, however, that the move was intended to force a new, more profitable deal involving Washington’s rental of the air base (TchadOne, April 20). Others argued that France was behind the Chadian demand based on worries that US troops withdrawing from neighboring Niger might end up in N’Djamena (Al-Wihda, April 25). On June 10, some 1,100 US troops in Niger began their withdrawal (see EDM, April 11).

Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Déby (Sputnik)

Only days before the presidential elections, a report described the arrival of 130 Russian troops at the N’Djamena airport. The soldiers were reportedly processed by Chadian intelligence agents and escorted into the city (X.com/TchadOne, April 28). The troops themselves were Hungarian, however, part of a mission approved on November 7, 2023.

The Hungarian mission has three stated aims: deterring illegal migration to Europe, aiding counter-terrorism efforts, and providing a secure base for economic and humanitarian assistance (Defence.hu, October 30, 2023). While the Hungarian government under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has adopted a stance sympathetic to Moscow, there has been no indication that the Hungarian deployment has any connection to Russian activities in Chad. Budapest’s objectives in Chad may actually clash with those of the Kremlin, which is believed to be intent on increasing the flow of migrants to Europe through Libya (Libya Observer, March 7).

Chad is unlikely to make a sudden leap into the Russian camp. The late Idriss Déby Itno routinely played off one potential partner after another, always returning to the French after they had been reminded Chad’s allegiance was neither automatic nor unconditional. Moreover, Chad has not undergone a drastic change of regime seen in other Sahel states. It remains in the hands of the late president’s son and a cabal of Zaghawa relatives that occupy senior posts in the army and the administration. The Zaghawa ethnic group represents less than 3 percent of the population (Al Jazeera, December 26, 2023, February 29). Asked whether he intended to switch Chad’s military alliance from France to Russia, Mahamat replied, “Chad is an independent, free, and sovereign country. We are not like a slave who wants to change masters” (RFI, April 15). He added that economic cooperation was more important to the country than defense cooperation. France is a major trade partner for Chad, while trade with Russia is nearly nonexistent (Russia Today, January 28).

Chad remains desperately poor, other than the oil revenues that never seem to trickle down to the masses. The country needs the trade that France offers but Russia cannot. The regime, composed of a tiny ethnic minority, needs little instruction on Russian techniques of political repression. The sudden dalliance with Moscow, so closely aligned with an election intended to restore permanent Déby clan rule, was a reminder to the West that calls for democracy are not the key to a military alliance. As proof of this approach’s effectiveness, on March 7, the French president’s personal envoy to Africa stated that the French army would remain in Chad to support its “independence,” apparently without preconditions (AFP, March 15).

Mahamat himself has created divisions within the ruling Zaghawa elite by retiring many Zaghawa generals close to his father while promoting members of the Arab and Gura’an (Tubu) minorities (Mahamat’s mother is from the Gura’an) (Al-Masry al-Youm, May 18). The Zaghawa of Chad have close ties to the Zaghawa of Darfur in Sudan who have suffered from the rampages of the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Mahamat’s decision to allow the United Arab Emirates to supply the RSF with arms and other supplies through Chadian territory has created further rifts within the country’s Zaghawa community.

Any move by Chad’s young president toward replacing the steady French partnership with an unpredictable Russian presence would likely be met with strong resistance from the armed forces. Unlike their counterparts in other countries of the Sahel, Chadian military leaders have not shown a public preference for Russia.

Russia in Niger – A Military Junta Walks Away from the West

Andrew McGregor

Eurasia Daily Monitor 21 (56), April 11, 2024

Jamestown Foundation, Washington DC

Executive Summary

  • Russia is actively expanding ties with Niger’s military junta to consolidate control over resource-rich assets and to push out Western influence.
  • Moscow has now signed multiple agreements to provide security guarantees to Abdourahamane Tchiani and potentially take over the rights to several Nigerien gold mines.
  • Kremlin propaganda relies on “anti-colonial” narratives that have played a role in pushing the French and US military presence out of the country.

Nigerien president Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown by his own Garde Présidentielle on July 26, 2023. The Army backed the coup a day later, enabling former Garde leader Brigadier General Abdourahamane Tchiani to proclaim himself Niger’s new head-of-state. Bazoum was detained and coup supporters flooded the streets of the capital, Niamey, many of them waving Russian flags. The display raised suspicions of Russian/Wagner involvement in the coup.

Brigadier General Abdourahamane Tchiani (Reuters)

President Bazoum was known for his support of Ukraine at the UN and joined a diplomatic initiative to return rule of Crimea to Ukraine, though there were other factors at work in the coup besides pro-Russian sentiment in the military, including Bazoum’s Arab ethnicity in a Hausa-majority country (Arabs form less than 1% of the population) (AfricaNews, February 19, 2021). A stagnant economy, growing insecurity and the presence of Western troops were other factors, but the spark for the coup appears to have been Bazoum’s intention to shake up the ineffective military leadership. Like many other regional coup leaders, General Tchiani (a Hausa) and his armed forces chief-of-staff General Moussa Salaou Barmou received American military training.

Ukraine insisted Russia was behind the coup as part of its “scenario for provoking instability to undermine the global security order”​​​​​​​ (Anadolu Agency, August 1, 2023). Perhaps putting a damper on the idea that Russia had orchestrated the coup was Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov’s initial condemnation of the putsch as “an anti-constitutional undertaking” (Vedomosti, January 17).

Protesters in Niger’s capital Niamey hold a Russian flag and banner with images of coup leaders in Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea (AFP)

Moscow nonetheless came to the defense of the junta when the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) indicated it was planning a military intervention to restore President Bazoum (BBC, August 11, 2023). The military dictatorships of Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea (all ECOWAS members) signalled their intent to oppose any ECOWAS action against Niger and its new rulers, the Conseil Supérieur pour la Sauvegarde de la Patrie (CNSP – National Council for the Safeguarding of the Homeland).

With 1500 French troops in Niger, the French military was the junta’s first target with the cancellation on August 3, 2023 of all five military cooperation agreements with France (signed between 1977 and 2020). The French force was assisting in the struggle against Islamic State militants and jihadists of al-Qaeda-related Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimeen (JNIM) but was no longer having the impact it once did, providing fertile ground for anti-French Russian media manipulation. As ordered by the junta, French troops began evacuating Niger on October 10 (RIA Novosti, October 10, 2023). The last French troops left on December 22. Several weeks after their departure, Niger Defense Minister General Salifu Modi said the evacuations had already provided a “positive impact on our fight against terrorism” (RIA Novosti, January 17).

There were initial concerns that the coup in Niger might interrupt the flow of uranium to French nuclear reactors, but these concerns appear to have been overstated. Shortly after the coup, France’s Ministry of Energy Transition insisted: “The situation in Niger does not present any risk to France’s security of supply of natural uranium” (TV5Monde/AFP, July 31, 2023).. Niger is one of France’s top three uranium suppliers, supplying 20% of French needs  (TV5Monde/AFP, July 31, 2023). France maintains a strategic stockpile of strategic uranium equal to a two-year supply and is actively seeking to diversify its supply, including a long-term deal with Mongolia in October 2023 and the construction of a uranium recycling plant (Portail de l’IE [Paris], January 9; La Tribune [Paris], January 9).

A speaker believed to be Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin used a Wagner-associated Telegram channel to make a pitch to Niger’s new rulers to engage Wagner while employing the anti-colonial rhetoric now pervasive in West Africa: “What happened in Niger is nothing other than the struggle of the people of Niger with their [French and American] colonizers… who are trying to foist their rules of life on them,,, and keep them in the state that Africa was in hundreds of years ago” (Meduza, July 28, 2023; al-Jazeera, July 31, 2023).

Following Prigozhin’s death last August and the subsequent reformation of the Wagner Group, Nigerien minister of state for defense Lieutenant General Salifou Modi joined Russian deputy minister of defense Colonel General Yunus-Bek Yevkurov in signing an agreement on December 4, 2023 providing for the deployment of Russia’s new GRU-directed Africa Corps in Niger (Izvestia, March 13).

Generals Yevkurov and Modi Sign a Defense Agreement (ANP)

According to General Modi, the cost would be significant: “A large part of our military budget will be allocated directly to our Russian partner.” Niger’s minister of mines added that some gold mines might be ceded to the Russians as well (Agence Nigérienne de Presse, December 4, 2023). In an interview a few days later, General Tchiani thanked Russia’s soldiers and mercenaries, but noted “we are paying them very dearly… Certainly, the security guarantees provided by Moscow have a high price and will require significant sacrifices, but it is a reliable partner” (Agence Nigérienne de Presse, December 10, 2023).

The tempo of reciprocal visits and meetings increased after this agreement, culminating in a March 26 phone call with President Putin in which General Tchiani expressed his gratitude for Moscow’s support and discussed stronger security cooperation (AFP, March 26).

A diplomatically disastrous visit to Niger by American officials in mid-March convinced the junta to cancel its “status of forces” agreement with the US on March 17 (ActuNiger, March 16; Al-Jazeera, March 17). The move forces the closure of a $100 million American drone facility and a separate CIA drone facility.

In another post-coup development, the junta repealed 2015 legislation outlawing migrant trafficking through Niger, claiming it had been implemented “under the influence of certain foreign powers” (AFP, January 23). Imprisoned traffickers were released and military escorts provided for migrant convoys. These measures were applauded both by traffickers and NGOs. The move raises the possibility of Russian manipulation of migrant flows to Europe.

Russia alone is unlikely to be able to provide all the assistance Niger needs in the economic, technical and financial fields. For these, Niger must be open to regional and international partnerships that might be jeopardized by an armed Russian presence following its own agenda. Niger has missed four debt payments in a row and is now $519 million in default (al-Jazeera, February 19).  With foreign aid accounting for half its budget, Niger can hardly afford to abandon all other partners in favor of Russia.

The junta will be taking a gamble with a relatively unknown partner like Russia, which has had few dealings with Niger since the Soviet era. On the other hand, Niger’s army has suffered numerous setbacks in trying to contain the jihadist insurgency and will require a new partner to replace the French.

This article was first published as “Niger Cozies Up to Russia and Walks Away From the West,” EDM, April 11, 2024.

The Islamic State’s Mysterious Claim to Have Killed Canadian Troops in Lake Chad

Andrew McGregor

AIS Special Report

December 15, 2020

The Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP) claims to have killed four Canadian soldiers and “dozens” of Chadian troops on November 24 when an IED exploded under their boat on Lake Chad. The survivors were then targeted by fire from automatic weapons onshore (RocketChat, November 26, 2020). The incident occurred at Ngouboua on the Chadian side of Lake Chad, opposite the Borno stronghold of Boko Haram and its splinter group, ISWAP. N’Djamena acknowledged only four Chadian dead and 16 wounded, with no mention of Canadians. ISWAP repeated the claim on its Amaq news-site on November 26, saying the heavy losses suffered by Canadian and Chadian forces had prevented an attack on ISWAP units near Ngouboua (BBCM, November 27, 2020).

A December 8 AIS query to Canada’s Department of National Defence regarding these reports received the following response: “The claim that Canadian soldiers were killed or at all involved in this incident is completely untrue.”

(BBC)

The struggle between BH/ISWAP and the Chadian military has grown even more bitter this year as it continues to intensify. During a counter-terrorist offensive in the Lake Chad region, 92 Chadian soldiers were killed and 47 wounded in a March 23 Boko Haram attack on Boma (Lac Province). On April 18, 44 Boko Haram prisoners were found dead in a Chadian prison while awaiting trial. Post-mortem examinations detected toxic substances in their stomachs; Chad’s justice minister Djimet Arabi suggested “collective suicide” (AFP April 18, 2020). The incident came two days after the Islamic State mocked Chad and the March Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF) offensive in an editorial in its al-Naba weekly magazine.

The various al-Qaeda and Islamic State-aligned militants operating in the Sahel region of Africa (including the Lake Chad region) are now opposed by a much larger array of counter-terrorist forces involving the militaries of some 60 nations.  These include forces belonging to the following formations:

  • France’s 5,100-man Operation Barkhane, launched in August 2014 as the successor to the 2013 Operation Serval intervention in Mali;
  • Operation Takuba, a multinational European Special Forces effort to relieve pressure on the French military, which has lost over 50 men in combat operations in the region since 2013. Fifty members of the Estonian Special Forces deployed in October; they will soon be joined by Czech and Swedish detachments. Another nine European NATO nations have pledged participation;
  • The Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a regional anti-Boko Haram security force which includes components from Niger, Chad, Nigeria, Cameroon and Benin;
  • The G5 Sahel Joint Force, the military arm of the Group of Five – Sahel, which includes Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger;
  • The Mission multidimensionnelle intégrée des Nations unies pour la stabilisation au Mali (MINUSMA), a UN peacekeeping force with contributions from some 55 nations. This month the UK sent 300 troops to join the force, which has suffered over 200 dead since its launch in 2013;
  • Ongoing EU and US training missions in the Sahel.

The one thing common to all these counter-terrorist efforts is that Canada does not belong to any of them. So how does the death of four Canadian Special Forces members come to be proclaimed in an Islamic State announcement?

Background: Attacks on Chadian Forces in Lake Chad

Chadian president Idriss Déby Itno insisted in early April that all Boko Haram elements had been cleared from the islands of Lake Chad (Tchadinfos.com [N’Djamena], April 4, 2020). The Islamic State, however, is determined to use the opportunity presented by regional states currently diverting their attention from security operations in favor of direly needed public health measures and economic reconstruction to correct the damage done to already fragile economies by COVID-19.

ISWAP intensified their operations in the region around the Chadian village of Ngouboua later in April, with an attack on the shores of Lake Chad between the villages of Litri and Ngouboua on the 17th. Equipped with firearms, the extremists damaged one boat and seized some weapons (RocketChat, April 19, 2020). ISWAP later videotaped the execution of a Chadian prisoner taken in the attack (AFP, April 27, 2020).  

ISWAP Patrol

In July, ten Chadian soldiers were killed and another 20 wounded by an ISWAP IED in the village of Kalam on Lake Chad (al-Wihda [N’Djamena], July 10, 2020).

ISWAP issued a statement on November 20 describing the remote detonation of an IED against a troop-carrying boat on the 18th between the villages of Goboa and Litri that killed “dozens” (RocketChat, November 20, 2020). Four days later, Chad reported the loss of four soldiers and 16 wounded after a boat near Ngouboua hit an underwater IED (Al-Wihda [N’Djamena], November 25, 2020).

Since the Ngoubouoa attack, ISWAP claims to have pursued its campaign against Chadian troops on Lake Chad with a December 1 IED attack on two boats carrying Chadian troops near Ngouboua, allegedly killing 30 soldiers, though this report remains uncorroborated (RocketChat, December 8, 2020).

Jihadist activity has grown intense in the tri-border region where Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso meet. After pulling back from cooperative military efforts earlier this year due to a perceived lack of international support, President Déby recently committed to the “quick” deployment of a Chadian battalion in the tri-border region, where it will likely be involved in heavy fighting (Al-Wihda [N’Djamena], December 1, 2020).

Canada’s Operation Presence-Mali 

Having made repeated commitments to favor peacekeeping efforts over the counter-terrorism deployments of the Conservative government during the 2015 national election, the incoming Liberal government eventually committed to a modest contribution to the MINUSMA peacekeeping operation in Mali that involved little chance of encountering armed jihadists. The mission, limited to a strict timeline of August 1 2018 to July 31, 2019, consisted of a medevac helicopter squadron of 3 CH-147F Chinooks and 5 CH-146 Griffons that could also transport UN personnel and equipment in the region. Ultimately, the Canadian Forces’ Task Force Mali would conduct 11 medical evacuations and over 100 transport missions.

Far from addressing the menace of terrorism and extremism to the impoverished population of the Sahel, the Canadian mission arrived bent under the burden of Justin Trudeau’s liberal vision of the military as a band of uniformed social-workers engaged in a battle against climate change and gender inequality. More importantly, Operation Presence-Mali was a political mission – an unwelcome necessity required to further the Prime Minister’s vain efforts to obtain a rotating seat on the UN’s Security Council. In the end, Canada’s contribution, competent in itself and surely appreciated by the wounded soldiers it assisted, contributed nothing to the elimination of terrorism in the Sahel and the UNSC seat never materialized. When Trudeau visited the Canadian troops in Mali in December 2018, his main message to them did not concern the importance of ending terrorism, but rather the importance of ending the Canadian mission on time. Statements from government and party officials emphasized the safety of the members of the mission, to the point it began to appear that ensuring its own safety was the mission’s primary goal.

RCAF Helicopters over Mali (Corporal Ken Beliwicz/Canada DND/CAF)

The Canadian deployment was scheduled to end in mid-summer 2019, but Canada agreed to an extension of one month. Though their Romanian replacements could not begin their deployment until mid-October 2019, the Canadian government repeatedly dismissed all appeals from the UN and its allies to cover the gap between deployments. With only days left before withdrawal, the government agreed to provide transport to the Romanians and a small transition team to work with early Romanian arrivals using contracted helicopters, though the latter were not properly equipped for medical emergencies (CP, August 28, 2019).

Then-Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland offered that the Canadian mission had taken “tangible steps to secure lasting peace and stability for the people of Mali,” but failed to explain just how a small 12-month air-ambulance and transport deployment accomplished this (DND News Release, August 31, 2019).

In reference to the mission, Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan declared “Canada will continue its support to the UN while leading the inclusion of women in peace operations” (DND News Release, August 31, 2019).  Following a series of scandals involving UN peacekeepers and an assessment that male peacekeepers lacked understanding of, or empathy with the needs of women trapped in combat zones, there have been many international calls for a greater number of female peacekeepers. Sajjan, however, appears to have missed the point – the calls are for more women on the front-lines of peacekeeping operations, not in rear areas with little or no contact with the local population.

Other Canadian Military Deployments in the Sahel

Unlike France’s impressive Operation Barkhane, existing Canadian operations in the Sahel are small and little-known even in Canada, involving no direct confrontations with terrorists or religious extremists.

The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) run a training program in Niger for members of the Forces armées nigériennes (FAN), Niger’s national army. Known as Operation Naberius, the program involves up to 50 CAF Special Forces troops per year and is scheduled to run until March 2023.

Using RCAF Globemaster III and Hercules transports, Canada’s Operation Frequence has assisted in the movement from France of French military equipment and personnel belonging to Operation Barkhane. The operation has no presence on land in the Sahel.

The Liberal Party’s 2019 election platform proclaimed: “We will renew Canada’s commitment to peacekeeping efforts, and use the expertise of our Armed Forces to help others prepare for climate-related disasters.” By August 2020, Canada’s global peacekeeping deployment consisted of a mere 34 police officers and military personnel (CP, August 3, 2020). By comparison, in 1992, Canada had 3,285 peacekeepers serving abroad.

Justin Trudeau’s dismissive attitude towards the armed forces (a legacy of his late father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau) and rejection of the use of force against terrorists became evident when Islamic State radicals rampaged through northern Iraq in 2014. As appeals poured in for military assistance to end the IS atrocities, Trudeau instead asked: “Why aren’t we talking more about the kind of humanitarian aid that Canada can and must be engaged in, rather than trying to whip out our CF-18s and show them how big they are?” (CTV News, October 2, 2014).

After the 2016 Islamist terrorist attacks in Nice, France, Trudeau insisted that “Canada stands with France as a steadfast ally [and will] continue to work with our allies and partners to fight terrorism in all its forms” (CP, July 15, 2016). In reality, fighting terrorism in any of its forms has not materialized as a priority of the Trudeau government and Canada has done little to “stand with France as a steadfast ally.”

Unfortunately, Canada’s timid approach to counter-terrorism and peacekeeping may be spreading to its allies. The arrival of 300 UK troops in Mali this month was expected to add a sharp edge to MINUSMA, which has suffered some 200 deaths from IEDs and clashes with regional jihadists.

Trained in long-range desert reconnaissance, a task force formed from the Royal Anglian and Light Dragoon regiments using “Jackal” armored fighting vehicles will now instead perform training duties at a UN camp in Gao, with reconnaissance operations restricted to a 10-mile radius around the base. According to a Ministry of Defence spokesman, the British forces will remain at the base “until they know it’s safe” (Sun [London], November 16, 2020). The last-minute change to the mission’s operational mandate shocked MINUSMA’s Swedish commander, Lieutenant General Dennis Gyllensporre, who declared he did not need any more troops limited to their own bases.

Conclusion

To return to our original question – how does the death of four Canadian Special Forces members come to be proclaimed in an Islamic State announcement? A case of mistaken identity seems impossible; neither France nor any other European state has acknowledged the loss of four of its Special Forces. Chadian soldiers are well-known to ISWAP and unlikely to be confused for Canadians. Could this have been a warning from the Islamic State, a projection of the kind of losses Ottawa could expect in a future deployment to the Sahel? For reasons of Canadian policy, this too seems unlikely.

According to then-Foreign Minister Freeland, “It is precisely the democracies, it is precisely the countries that stand for values and human rights that also need to be ready to say we are prepared to use hard power where necessary” (CBC News, June 10, 2017). Despite this declaration, the Canadian government continues to shun “hard power” and deny its allies and the UN access to its large pool of highly capable French-speaking troops ready and capable to take on difficult tasks in the Francophone Sahel region. Even as Canadian citizens have been killed across the globe by the Islamic State and its affiliates during the Trudeau government (now in its second term), the Liberal Party has remained attached to the 1990s concept of “soft power,” or the ability to exert influence in global affairs by non-violent means. In these circumstances, a Canadian combat mission in the Sahel would seem to be the last thing the Islamic State needs to worry about.

French Troops Kill JNIM Military Leader Colonel Bah Ag Moussa Diara: What are the implications?

Andrew McGregor

AIS Militant Profile

November 20, 2020

Colonel Bah Ag Moussa Diara (Le Combat, Bamako)

French forces deployed in the Sahel under the “Operation Barkhane” banner scored a notable triumph on November 10, 2020 when they eliminated one of the region’s leading Islamist militants.

The French airstrike in Mali took out Colonel Bah Ag Moussa Diara “Abu Shari’a,” a prominent military leader of the Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda-allied Islamist militant formation active in the African Sahel. Two others were killed in the strike, including Ag Moussa’s aide and his son Hamza. The attack took place as the targets were travelling in a 4×4 seven kilometers from Tadamakat, near Ménaka in the Gao region (one of the three territories of Mali’s arid and sparsely populated north-east, the others being Kidal and Timbuktu).  Ag Moussa’s death is of some significance, as his military leadership had helped score a series of successes in the Sahel that demoralized local troops and pushed Mali’s government towards talks with JNIM terrorists led by veteran Islamist Iyad Ag Ghali. The move towards talks with the Islamists was a major factor in the August 2020 military coup in Mali; it should be recalled that it was a 2012 military coup that enabled the launch of an Islamist occupation of northern Mali and the creation of the ongoing Islamist insurgency, which has spread to neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.

Wreckage of Ag Moussa’s Vehicle (Walid la Berbere)

Two drones, fighter jets, four helicopters and 15 commandos were involved in the operation, suggesting the French had acquired intelligence aforehand regarding Ag Moussa’s itinerary for November 10. A French military spokesman declined to say whether American intelligence sources were involved in the operation (AP, November 13, 2020). According to French sources, the men ignored warning shots, fighting back with small arms and machine guns before they were hit directly by French fire. The bodies of the three dead were buried on the spot; there was no word regarding the fate of two other occupants of the vehicle (Le Monde, November 13, 2020; Kibaru [Bamako], November 15, 2020),

Ag Moussa was one of the main drivers behind efforts to push the Sahelian jihad into southwestern Mali. A two-time deserter from the Forces Armées Maliennes (FAMA), Ag Moussa’s father was a Bambara from Mali’s populous southwestern region (Diara, or Diarra, is a common Bambara name). Ag Moussa assumed a Tuareg identity through his mother, who came from the aristocratic Ifoghas Tuareg clan in the north-eastern Kidal region (Defense Post/AFP, March 18, 2019; Africa Times, March 24, 2019). Ag Moussa was considered to be very close to JNIM leader Iyad Ag Ghali, with whom he is reported to have received military training in Libya (RFI, March 18, 2019). Most recently, Ag Moussa had a leading role in violent clashes with JNIM’s Islamist rivals in the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). If not the military commander of JNIM (this point is uncertain), he was at least an important and influential military leader with responsibility for training new recruits in weapons and tactics.

Approximately 50-years of age, Ag Moussa was known as a clever strategist and capable tactician whose inside knowledge of the workings and capabilities of the Malian army played a large role in his battlefield successes. The colonel had a special role in training recruits at a camp in the Nara rural commune in the Koulikoro Region of southern Mali. (RFI, March 18, 2019). The base is close to Mali’s northern border with Mauritania and the Wagadou Forest, a traditional zone of jihadist operations.

Ag Moussa deserted the Malian Army to join Tuareg insurgents in the 2007-09 rebellion in northern Mali and Niger. He rejoined the Army through the re-integration protocols of the Algiers Accords that ended the rebellion. As a newly-appointed colonel, he was put to work combatting banditry and recalcitrance in his native Kidal.

With the launch of a new Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali in late 2012, Ag Moussa deserted once again, briefly joining the secular rebel Mouvement national de libération de l’Azawad (Azawad National Liberation Movement) before defecting to their Islamist rivals, Iyad Ag Ghali’s Ansar al-Din (Supporters of Religion). Ag Moussa was accused of being the military commander of Ansar al-Din forces who brutally slaughtered 128 FAMA prisoners at Aguelhoc in January 2012 after the poorly supplied garrison ran out of ammunition (L’indicateur du Renouveau [Bamako], January 26, 2016).

Victims of the Aguelhoc Massacre

He also took part in several battles in northern Mali before the French military intervention in the Spring of 2013. Like many Tuareg militants, Ag Moussa then joined the newly-formed Haut Conseil pour l’Unité de l’Azawad (HCUA) as a means of publicly disassociating himself from the extremists being pursued by French and Chadian forces, though he continued working for Iyad Ag Ghali and recruited for Ansar al-Din. According to the UN, his half brother, Sidi Mohammed Ag Oukana, serves as Iyad Ag Ghali’s advisor on religious affairs (UN Security Council, August 14, 2019).

After taking charge of most of JNIM’s military operations in 2017, Ag Moussa increased the tempo of JNIM operations in central Mali, the region at the physical center of Mali’s ethnic and cultural divide. In 2019, the UN reported that Ag Moussa was the new commander of JNIM’s Katibat Gourma (Gourma Brigade) following the death of its Tuareg founder, Almansour Ag Alkassoum.

FAMA insisted that Ag Moussa directed the major attack on a Malian military post at Dioura in the Mopti region of south-central Mali in March 2019. Twenty-six Malian soldiers died in the strike, with 17 men wounded and an additional loss of several armored vehicles. JNIM admitted three dead.

Amadou Koufa (Jeune Afrique)

However, JNIM’s media arm, the Zallaqa Foundation, insisted the raid was carried out by the Fulani Katiba Macina, led by Fulani jihadist Amadou Koufa and part of the JNIM coalition since 2017. The JNIM statement said the attack was retribution for the government’s “heinous crimes” against the Fulani. The message also cited the lack of international support for the Fulani and the presence of French military forces in the Sahel as reasons for the attack (Kibaru [Bamako], March 23, 2019). Ag Moussa was known to work very closely with the Katiba Macina, so it is possible that Ag Moussa may have taken part in the operation without actually being its official leader. Since then, Ag Moussa was credited with leading the November 1, 2019 attack on the FAMA base at Inelimane, in which 50 soldiers were killed. The former colonel became a US specially designated terrorist in July 2019, followed by the imposition of UN sanctions as an al-Qaeda associate the next month.

Morale, pay and equipment in FAMA are all poor. Real fighting is carried out by the French, with the Malian military still indulging in politics, struggling to take control over a state they have no means or training to run. The French military presence has become increasingly unpopular, with President of Mali Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta resigning on August 19, 2020 amidst large anti-French street demonstrations in Bamako.

(AFP)

The multinational Task Force Takuba, intended to relieve pressure on the French military which has lost over 50 men in combat operations in the region since 2013, is still in its early stages. Some 50 members of the Estonian Special Forces began operating alongside French troops in October; they are expected to be joined in the coming months by 60 Czechs and 150 Swedes, with the latter also deploying three Blackhawk helicopters. A small Greek deployment is expected soon, though this has been held up by growing tensions with Turkey. Other European states have committed to joining TF Takuba or are exploring the idea, including the UK, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Ukraine and Italy, but deployment has been held up by COVID-19 and, in some cases, failure to obtain parliamentary approval (Greek City Times, November 24, 2020; FranceTVInfo, November 9, 2020; AFP, November 5, 2020).

French forces go from victory to victory over the jihadists, but they are only a strike force, no longer a colonial force of occupation. In this sense, they have become an independent arm of the Malian state, operating without reference to the putschists in Bamako. Yet killing jihadists and their leaders cannot end the jihad, which is ultimately a political problem. The political instability generated by the military coup and the promised creation of a new civilian government pushes military and diplomatic progress back to the starting point, though the putschists have at least vowed to honor their alliances with the G5 Sahel, Takuba, MINUSMA and France’s Operation Barkhane (FranceTVInfo.fr, August 19, 2020).

Perhaps most importantly, France has likely succeeded in derailing the continued pursuit of unwanted negotiations between the terrorists and the new regime in Bamako. On the other hand, the French attack is yet another example of the ever-growing reliance of Mali’s military on French forces to conduct successful anti-terrorist operations that enable the nation’s continued survival and avoid a new descent into the political chaos surrounding the Islamist occupation of the north in 2012-13.

The day before the strike on Ag Moussa, Operation Barkhane commander Major General Marc Conruyt noted that JNIM had been taking advantage of a recent French focus on targeting Islamic State personnel and assets, adding that JNIM was still “the most dangerous enemy for Mali and the international forces” (AFP, November 9, 2020). Ag Moussa’s carefully engineered death was a potent reminder to JNIM and its supporters of France’s determination to restore regional stability by ridding the Sahel of religious extremists.

Yahya Abu al-Hammam: France Eliminates Leading Saharan Jihadist

Andrew McGregor

March 5, 2019

French commandos tore through the desert north of Timbuktu on February 21, in hot pursuit of a leading jihadist who had been detected as part of a three-car convoy by a Reaper surveillance drone. As the commandos caught up, the militants opened fire. Five French helicopters moved in and quickly destroyed the convoy, killing 11, including the main target, Algerian Yahya Abu al-Hammam (a.k.a. Djamel Okacha), a top al-Qaeda financier and strategist (Jeune Afrique/AFP, February 22; Defense.gouv.fr, February 22).

Yahya Abu al-Hammam

Al-Hammam was the second-in-command of Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM), al-Qaeda’s Sahel/Sahara affiliate. There are reports that al-Hammam may have been ill and decided to seek medical treatment elsewhere (Malijet, February 23). According to a Malian security source, Abu al-Hammam had been tracked for three months through his telephone (AFP, February 22). Al-Hammam was the third JNIM leader to be killed within a year as French forces work to decapitate the JNIM leadership in the hopes of destroying the Salafi-Jihadist movement in the Sahara/Sahel region.

The announcement of al-Hammam’s death came only hours before French Prime Minister Edouard Phillipe arrived in Mali, where French troops have been fighting militants and terrorists since 2013. An upbeat Phillipe told a gathering of French, Malian, British, and Estonian troops that they had “managed to destroy [the jihadists’] means of combat, to intercept their logistical flows, to dry up their resources… every day our enemies suffer significant losses…” (Ouest-France, February 24).

Born on May 9, 1978, in the Reghaïa commune of Algiers province, al-Hammam began his career in 1998 as a militant with the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA – Armed Islamic Group) and later, after 18 months of imprisonment, the Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC – Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat).

Al-Hammam arrived in northern Mali in 2004 with the controversial GSPC commander ‘Abd al-Razzak al-Para (Malijet, February 23). From bases there, al-Hammam left an explosive trail through Mauritania, where, under the direction of Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abu Hamid ‘Abd al-Zaïd, he and his fellow militants exploited Mauritanian military weakness in a series of deadly attacks that killed dozens of Mauritanian troops between 2005 and 2008 (Malijet, February 23). In 2009 he was a suspect in organizing both the murder of American missionary Christopher Leggett and a suicide attack on the French embassy in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital.

In 2009, as commander of the Katiba al-Furqan, al-Hammam ordered the assassination of Mali’s intelligence chief in northern Mali, the Timbuktu-based Colonel Lamana Ould Bou, a Bérabiche Arab. Though the killing was a setback for security forces, it reportedly provoked a disagreement between al-Hammam and his former sponsor, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who had spent years cultivating relationships with the Bérabiche of northern Mali (Malijet, August 13, 2014).

From 2009, al-Hammam became heavily involved with kidnappings, particularly those of Western tourists or workers.

Al-Hammam led AQIM gunmen into Timbuktu in April 2012 as part of the Islamist uprising and occupation of northern Mali. As governor, he oversaw a rigidly strict Shari’a regime that destroyed much of the city’s Islamic heritage and applied corporal and capital punishments to its people for offenses against their interpretation of Islam.  He was rewarded in October 2012 when AQIM leader ‘Abd al-Malik Droukdel (a.k.a. Abu Mus’ab ‘Abd al-Wadud) appointed al-Hammam the new amir of AQIM’s Saharan affiliate in October 2012. (Agence Nouakchott d’Information, October 4, 2012; Le Monde, February 22). Unlike many of his fellow militants, al-Hammam survived the 2013 French-led Operation Serval that dispersed the Islamists and assumed ‘Abd al-Hamid Abu Zaïd’s command when the latter was killed by a Franco-Chadian patrol in February 2013.

The founding of JNIM: Yahya Abu al-Hammam (left), Iyad ag Ghali (center), Abu Hassan al-Ansari (right, killed by French forces in February 2018).

Remaining aloof from the rival Islamic State group, al-Hammam appeared in the March 2017 video that announced the establishment of the al-Qaeda-affiliated JNIM alliance of four Sahara/Sahel jihadist groups under veteran Tuareg militant Iyad ag Ghali (al-Akhbar [Nouakchott], January 10, 2016, MaliActu, March 2, 2017).

Al-Hammam last appeared in a November 8, 2018 video, in which he sat alongside ag Ghali as Amadou Kufa, the Fulani leader of the Force de libération du Macina (FLM – Macina Liberation Front), and called on his fellow Fulani to “make jihad” wherever they are (Le Monde/AFP, November 9, 2018). Two weeks later Koufa died in the Wagadou Forest after being mortally wounded by a French attack. With al-Hammam now gone as well, the priority of French forces will be the elimination of JNIM leader Iyad ag-Ghali. Al-Hammam could be succeeded by Abd al-Rahman Talha al-Libi, the current commander of the Katiba al-Furqan, though there are rumors that Talha may have been one of those killed in the attack on al-Hammam’s convoy (Malijet, February 23).

This article was first published in the March 5, 2019 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Militant Leadership Monitor.

 

Mauritania – Will Islamist Crackdown Make It a Terrorist Target?

Andrew McGregor

When Mauritania’s President Mohamed Ould Abd al-Aziz identified political Islamists as extremists and national enemies of Mauritania last August, his bluntness surprised some observers: “Proponents of political Islam are all extremists… Islamists, who practice politics and wear ties, can take up arms if they cannot achieve their goals via politics” (Saudi Gazette, August 31).

Faced with what authorities believe is religious and political interference in Mauritania by Iran and Qatar and the threat posed by jihadists lurking along the border with Mali, the president has undertaken several steps to scale back Islamist activities in Mauritania, including the closing of Islamic universities and moving towards a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood. Mauritanian troops are also now operating with the French-backed Sahel Group of Five (G5S – a regional security and development alliance that includes Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso) to tackle Islamist terrorism throughout the Sahara-Sahel region. However, Mauritania’s poverty and an unemployment rate of 40 per cent make it an inviting target for political interference and religious agitation.

The Presidential Succession

Elections last September gave the ruling Union pour la République (UPR) party a majority in Mauritania’s National Assembly. The president has promised to step down at the end of his second term in 2019, though some suspect he may still be considering a third term. Abd al-Aziz is expected to choose his own successor and may select a military man as Mauritania’s next president with the support of the solidly loyal UPR. Abd al-Aziz is a former UPR leader, but was required to officially step away from the party when he became president. The Mauritanian opposition has warned that the nation’s stability “will suffer if the next president again comes directly from the army ranks” (Arab Weekly, November 4).

General Mohamed Ould al-Ghazouni (Taqadoum.mr)

General Mohamed Ould al-Ghazouani is considered a favorite to succeed Abd al-Aziz, but his November 4 appointment as Minister of Defense may be a sideways move intended to derail his succession. It is suggested that Abd al-Aziz fears his post-presidency influence will evaporate under a strong president like Ould al-Ghazouani, while the more pliable Colonel Cheikh Ould Baya (currently speaker of parliament and a UPR stalwart) might be more acceptable as Abd al-Aziz’s successor (Arab Weekly, November 4).

Mauritania’s Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic Education

Leading Mauritania’s political opposition is the Rassemblement national pour la réforme et le développement (RNPRD), better known as “Tewassoul.” Mohamed Mahmoud Ould al-Sidi leads the party, which is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. Abd al-Aziz claims that the Muslim Brotherhood has caused the destruction of several Arab countries,” adding that the Brothers are working inside the political opposition to divide and destroy Mauritanian society (Saudi Gazette, August 31).

The Tewassoul leader has rejected charges of religious-political extremism:

“[The authorities] are extrapolating the reality of other Islamists upon us. It is better for them to give proof and facts to back their accusations. The difference between us and the others is that we are inspired by Islamic values in our political activities while others are exploiting Islam for their political benefit” (Arab Weekly, September 30).

In late September, authorities shut down two Islamic higher education institutions in Nouakchott, the Mauritanian capital. Both the University of Abdullah ibn Yasin and the Center for Training Islamic Scholars were believed to be closely tied to the Tewassoul Party. Mauritanian Muslim Brotherhood leader and prominent preacher Mohamed al-Hassan Ould Dadou was a leading faculty member at both institutions. The action resulted in student demonstrations and the arrest of two academics (University World News, October 2).

Shaykh Mohamed al-Hassan Ould Dadou

The day after the closures, Ould Dadou did not attack the government directly, but used his Friday sermon to warn that Arab countries were being “destroyed by despotism and injustice, the main causes for the destabilization of nations” swept up in the Arab Spring (AFP, September 26).

In preference to the opposition-affiliated schools, Ould Abd al-Aziz has stated his support for establishing an Islamic education center in Mauritania that would be affiliated with al-Azhar University in Cairo, a bastion of anti-extremism closely watched by the Egyptian government (MENA, March 19).

Mauritania and the Struggle for the Middle East

Mauritanians are overwhelmingly followers of the Sunni Maliki madhab (school of Islamic jurisprudence), but there are fears among top clerics and other officials in Mauritania of an Iranian campaign to convert Mauritanians to Shi’ism. [1]

Relations between Iran and Mauritania began to warm in 2008, after the military coup led by Abd al-Aziz and the consequent severing of relations with Israel. Since then, however, Mauritania has been pulled into the Arab-Iranian dispute in the Middle East and relations with Iran have suffered as a result.

Iran’s ambassador to Mauritania was called into the Mauritanian foreign ministry on May 25, where he was informed the government would not accept any activities by the Iranian embassy intended to “change the doctrine or creed of Mauritanian society.” The ambassador was further informed that the state was appointing a new imam for the Shiite Imam ‘Ali mosque in Dar Naim (a suburb of Nouakchott), where scholarships were arranged for young Mauritanians to study at Shiite institutions in Iran and Lebanon (Sahara Media [Nouakchott], May 29). For its part, Iran denied the meeting ever took place, claiming Saudi Arabia was behind the “rumors” published in Mauritanian media (Fars News [Tehran], May 30).

In early June, Mauritania was one of several Arab nations to join the anti-Qatar “Quartet” of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in cutting diplomatic ties with Qatar over its alleged support for terrorism and religious extremism. A Mauritanian government spokesman, Mohamed Ishaq al-Kenti, claimed that Qatar was funding both Tewassoul and the Mauritanian Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt Today, September 8). UPR chief Sidi Mohamed Maham stated in October that “all Qatari attempts at intervention in [Mauritania] have failed… their bad intentions are clear towards the state of Mauritania” (al-Arabiya, October 5).

The Military Dimension

Mauritania’s military struggle with modern jihadism began in June 2005, when militants belonging to Algeria’s Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC) crossed the border and attacked the Lemgheity military camp in Mauritania’s far north, killing 17 soldiers before withdrawing with prisoners, weapons and vehicles.

Only weeks after the 2008 military coup, gunmen from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) captured a Mauritanian patrol at Tourine. All 12 members of the patrol were decapitated and mutilated (Reuters, September 20, 2008; Tahilil [Nouakchott], March 21, 2011). The incident spurred General Ould Abd al-Aziz (then President of the High Council of State) and his old comrade, General Ould al-Ghazouani, to embark on an energetic program of reforms in the military designed to increase its efficiency, skills and operational capability. The two officers first met in 1980 at the Meknes military academy in Morocco and have operated closely ever since.

The most important step in the military reforms was to create small but highly autonomous and mobile Groupements spéciaux d’Intervention (GSI) led by energetic junior officers. The GSIs, each consisting of about 200 men, are capable of finding and destroying jihadist groups from advanced positions. Arms that were once directed to presidential security units were diverted to increase the firepower of the GSIs (Jeune Afrique, November 8, 2017; Le Point Afrique, July 18). American weapons and coordination with the Mauritanian Air Force’s Brazilian-made A-29 Super Tucano light attack aircraft gave Mauritanian counter-insurgency operations a new punch.

According to General Ould al-Ghazouni, military action in not enough: “We need development, to fight against the extreme poverty of a population that has no water, no food… There cannot be a rich army and a poor population” (Jeune Afrique, November 8, 2017). The general has identified several areas where military efficiency could be improved, including the provision of updated maps, a computerized operations room and technological training for recruits (Jeune Afrique, November 8, 2017).

General Hanena Ould Sidi (NordSudJournal)

General Hanena Ould Sidi, who was also heavily involved in the post-2009 military restructuring, has noted it was also necessary to simultaneously strengthen the judiciary, promote development and intervene in Islamic education to discourage extremism and “to disseminate the good teaching of Islam” (Le Point Afrique, July 18).

Improvements in military performance became visible in June 2011, when the army destroyed an AQIM base in Mali’s Wagadou Forest (70 km from the border) in an attack that left 15 militants dead. [2] AQIM followed up with a retaliatory raid on the Mauritanian military base at Bassiknou, in the southeast corner of the country in July 2011, but a decisive Mauritanian air-strike the following October on the Wagadou Forest destroyed two vehicles loaded with explosives in preparation for another attack on Mauritanian positions. Local AQIM commander Tayyib Ould Sid Ali was also killed and AQIM operations against Mauritania tapered off after that.

The G5 Sahel

Though Mauritania’s military is still short of funding, training and advanced arms, it is fully committed to participation in the French-backed G5S anti-terrorist alliance. The total force consists of seven battalions; two each from Niger and Mali, and one each from Mauritania, Chad and Burkina Faso. France provides intelligence and logistical assistance through its Operation Barkhane, a French counter-terrorist operation in the Sahara-Sahel region. Unlike its G5S partners, Mauritania does not allow French troops on its soil.

The GS5 has three zones of operation. The first is the Mali-Mauritania border region, the second is the triangular border region shared by Mali, Niger and Burkina Fase, while the third zone is along the Niger-Chad border. Mauritania and Mali each contribute a battalion to the G5S’s Western Zone of operations. Mauritania has a history of cross-border military operations in northern Mali, endured with varying degrees of acquiescence from the weak Malian government.

After a series of successful jihadi attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso (including a suicide bombing that destroyed the G5S headquarters), Mauritanian general Hanena Ould Sidi succeeded Mali’s General Didier Dacko as the G5S Joint Force commander in July. Ould Sidi studied at the Meknes military school in Morocco, commanded Mauritanian units in Cöte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic (CAR) and is a former director of military intelligence in Mauritania (RFI, July 18). The new G5S second-in-command is American-educated Chadian general Oumar Bikimo, who has commanded Chadian troops in northern Chad, Mali and the CAR.

General Oumar Bikimo of Chad

After the attack on its HQ, the G5S decided to move its headquarters from Sévaré to Bamako, but is still awaiting an exact location from the Malian government. Funds pledged to the G5S have been slow to arrive and the force is still short of vitally needed equipment (L’Indicateur du Renouveau [Bamako], November 14).

Conclusion

Typical of a career military man, President Ould Abd al-Aziz is taking a direct approach to the problem of political Islam, attempting to eliminate armed Islamists beyond Mauritania’s borders while forcing domestic Islamists to the political and religious sidelines of Mauritanian society. Meanwhile, the nation’s economic weakness, high unemployment and deep Islamic traditions make it attractive to extremists. The combination of a potential state-wide ban of the Muslim Brotherhood, an aggressive military stand against jihadism and uncertainty over the presidential succession could make Mauritania a target for exploitation from regional jihadist groups such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin, which is highly active just across the border with Mali.

However, there are reasons why Mauritania might survive this period of uncertainty. There appears to be little internal support for armed Islamism at this time and regional jihadists do not appear to consider Mauritania a priority since their 2011 defeat in the Wagadou Forest.  Much will depend on how far the president or his successor will go in attempting to root out Islamist influence in politics and education. The emergence of a significant degree of religiously-based internal dissent could act like a beacon for the region’s armed jihadists.

Notes

  1. United States Department of State, International Religious Freedom Report for 2017, https://www.state.gov/documents/organization/281008.pdf.
  2. See “Mali and Mauritania Conduct Joint Operations against al-Qaeda Base,” Terrorism Monitor, July 7, 2011, https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=692

This article first appeared in the December 19, 2018 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.

War in the Tibesti Mountains – Libyan-Based Rebels Return to Chad

AIS Special Report, November 12, 2018

Andrew McGregor

Tibesti (SVS Chad)

Relative peace has reigned in northern Chad’s arid Borku-Ennedi-Tibesti (BET) region since 2009, when most of the insurgents seeking to end President Idris Déby Itno’s 28-year rule were driven north across the border into Libya. Some 11,000 Chadian rebels have worked as mercenaries for both sides of the Libyan conflict, accumulating arms, cash and military experience as they prepared to make their eventual return to Chad.

Dissident general Mahamat Mahdi Ali gathered many of these groups together under his leadership in the Front pour l’alternance et la concorde au Tchad (FACT – Front for Alternation and Concord in Chad). [1] The first formation to return to Chad is the Conseil de Commandement Militaire pour le Salut de la République (CCMSR – Military Command for the Salvation of the Republic), founded in March 2016 as a split from FACT. The CCMSR claims to have 4500 fighters, mostly Daza Tubu, with smaller numbers of Zaghawa, Arabs and Maba (the latter hailing from the east Chadian province of Wadai).

Chad, with Tibesti in the North-West (Ezilon.com)

President Déby, a skillful desert fighter and former Chadian Army commander, took power in a coup in 1990 and has been re-elected five times in disputed elections. Rebellions have been frequent, but in recent years Chad has become a major regional ally of France and the United States in the struggle against terrorism in the Sahara/Sahel region. It is a member of the French-sponsored G5S counter-terrorism alliance along with Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, as well as the Multi-National Joint Task Force (MNJTF), fighting Boko Haram terrorists in the Lake Chad region. With its headquarters in the Chadian capital of N’Djamena, other MNJTF members include Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin and Niger. On October 10, Boko Haram elements crossed the border into Chad and attacked an ANT base at Kaiga Kindji, killing eight soldiers before being driven off with a reported loss of 48 militants.

In a November 2016 statement, CCMSR secretary-general Mahamat Hassane Boulmaye described the Déby regime as “a perfect illustration of clan despotism in its most pernicious and most abject form.” After outlining the administration’s corruption and use of violence against its opponents, Boulmaye justified the CCMSR’s insurrection: “Ours is the armed struggle. The vulgar despot of Chad maintains power by force; why is it so bad to drive him away by force? The path of armed struggle is the only one left, and it will overcome by the grace of God.” As for Déby, “He will have a double choice, the grave or the prison” (Lepythonnews, November 27, 2016).

The rebel leader also noted that many Zaghawa (Déby’s ethnic group) were abandoning the president; Boulmaye’s strategy was to encourage other Zaghawa to do the same by creating “a situation of insecurity” for members of the ethnic group. [2]

Return to Chad

CCMSR Column in Northern Chad (Tchad Convergence)

The CCMSR began to probe Chadian defenses in April 2017 with an attack inside Chad that killed 12 soldiers (RFI, August 14, 2018). A further clash with the Armée National du Tchad (ANT) took place on August 18, 2017, when a CCMSR column moving from Libya to Darfur ran into a Chadian Special Forces patrol at Tekro in the Ennedi region of northern Chad. Though small and without a permanent population, Tekro’s wells and airstrip make it strategically important. The Chadian unit suffered casualties, including the deaths of two colonels, while the survivors fled into the mountains (TchadConvergence, October 19, 2017).

Imprisoned Leadership

The movement has managed to survive despite the arrest of three leading members in Niger in October 2017, allegedly at the request of N’Djamena. Boulmaye, CCMSR spokesman Ahmat Yacoub Adam and CCMSR external affairs secretary Dr. Abderahman Issa Youssouf were extradited to Chad, where they were charged with the capital offense of terrorism and transferred to the notorious desert prison at Koro Toro. Supporters of the men appealed unsuccessfully for France to intervene against the extradition. France had previously granted refugee status to Boulmaye and Youssouf. Adam has refugee status in Egypt.

Mahamat Hassane Boulmaye (left), Ahmat Yacoub Adam (center) and Dr. Abderahman Issa Yousouf (right) (Tchad Convergence)

Fearing the three would meet “certain death” if extradited to Chad, the CCMSR threatened to attack Niger in an October 25, 2017 statement, though the promised strike did not materialize (Tchad Convergence/Deutsche Welle, October 27, 2018).

Boulmaye’s temporary replacement as secretary general was Colonel Mahamat Tahir Acheick. The colonel was succeeded in 2018 by Hissène Habré loyalist Michelot Yogogombaye (a.k.a. Kingabé Ogouzeïmi de Tapol), who works from exile in Paris (Tchad Convergence, August 17, 2018; Tchad Convergence, April 3, 2018).

The Battle of Kouri Bougoudi

Chad closed its border with Libya in January 2018, but stood little chance of avoiding infiltration by the CCMSR along a lengthy and lightly inhabited stretch of inhospitable desert.

CCMSR militants attacked a military outpost at Kouri Bougoudi (35 km from the Libyan border) in the volcanic Tibesti region of northeastern Chad on August 11, 2018. The Tibesti Mountains, a picturesque but physically challenging area, is regarded as the ancestral homeland of the Tubu people of northern Chad, southern Libya and northeastern Niger. The discovery of gold in Tibesti has brought artisanal gold miners from Niger, Sudan and other parts of Chad. Many are based around Kouri Bougoudi.

CCMSR Fighters

Arriving in over one hundred trucks at 2:23 AM, the assailants were armed with DShK “Dushka” 12.7 mm heavy machine guns and ZPU-4 quadruple barrel anti-aircraft weapons systems, using 14.5 mm KPV heavy machine guns. Both these Soviet-era designs are commonly mounted on the beds of 4×4 pick-up trucks in Libya and Chad.

A CCMSR statement released after the battle claimed 73 government troops killed and 45 taken prisoner (including three officers) against a cost of four CCMSR dead and seven wounded (Al Wihda [N’Djamena], August 19, 2018).

The attack was initially denied by the Minister of the Interior and Security, Ahmat Mahamat Bachir, who mocked CCMSR claims: “No attack on our position took place. I don’t know – did they attack the pebbles, the mountains?” (RFI, August 24, 2018). N’Djamena eventually acknowledged the death of Colonel Tahir Oly and two other soldiers in the clash (Al-Wihda [N’Djamena], August 12, 2018; Le Monde, September 14, 2018).

Reluctant to admit the political context of the attack on the village and its garrison, a Chadian security source told French media only that the army had been confronted by “coupeurs de route” (highwaymen) and “drug traffickers” (RFI, August 11, 2018). Two days later, the government ordered all gold miners to leave Kouri Bougoudi within 24 hours or face removal by force (Tchad Convergence/Xinhua, August 13, 2018). Chadian forces were ordered to destroy all the miners’ goods and equipment in land and air attacks (AFP, August 16, 2018).

A CCSMR statement released on August 17 suggested that the movement was willing to consider releasing their prisoners (including three officers identified by rank and name) to the Red Cross or Red Crescent once the three imprisoned CCSMR leaders were released “immediately, unconditionally [and] safe and sound” (RFI, August 17, 2018). According to the statement, three columns of CCSMR forces were now in Chad to end “its economic crisis and dictatorship” (Tchad Convergence, August 12, 2018). Minister of Public Security Ahmat Mahamat Bachir in turn rejected the possibility of making any kind of deal with “savage mercenaries, bandits [and] thugs” (Tchad Convergence, August 22, 2018).

The Tibesti Mountains (Sakhalia.net)

The CCMSR claimed to have routed Chadian troops in a second attack in the same area on August 22, but local sources claimed the government forces had evacuated quietly, leaving the region open for the return of illegal gold-miners (Tchad Convergence, August 22, 2018). Reports of this second attack were again refuted by the Interior Minister, who described them as “the false reports of mercenaries” (TchadInfo, August 22).

President Idriss Déby declared on August 20 that “the era of seizing power by arms” was forever over, adding that “clinging to warlike rhetoric” was “a suicidal option” (RFI, August 23, 2018). The CCMSR’s spokesman responded by noting that Chad had enjoyed ten years of relative peace since the last major effort to overturn Déby’s regime, but in that time the president had done nothing to establish an effective administration or improve the lot of Chadians: “[The president] thinks himself powerful, invincible, untouchable. But we will prove the opposite to him” (RFI, August 23, 2018).

On September 13, two Chadian helicopters bombed Kouri Bougoudi, where a number of miners had failed to obey the evacuation order (Le Monde, September 14, 2018). Retaliatory government bombing raids in Tibesti are alleged to have killed civilians while cluster bombs are reported to have been used to devastate the camel herds on which the traditional local economy is based (La Croix, September 6, 2018). The bombing did not prevent another attack on ANT forces at Tarbou on September 21.

Battle at Miski

The ANT clashed with insurgents again on October 24 at a place called Miski, which has only recently been administratively detached from Tibesti region and made part of the Borku region, to the great displeasure of many of Miski’s residents (Jeune Afrique/AFP, October 25, 2018). Responding to reports of civilian casualties, Chad’s Defense Minister, Bishara Issa Jadallah, insisted that there were no civilians left in Miski and that the attack had been entirely initiated by “drug traffickers” and “traffickers of human beings” (RFI, October 25, 2018).

In reaction, CCMSR spokesman Kingabé Ogouzeïmi de Tapol said his movement was “determined to drive these Mafia criminals [i.e. the Déby regime] out of Chad” and called for “a total and widespread popular insurgency” in Chad (CCMSR Press Release no. 0033, Facebook, October 24, 2018).

Driving the CCMSR from Libya

Residents of southern Libya Fezzan region have grown impatient with promises to clean up the south from both the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), its Tobruk-based rival, the House of Representatives (HoR) and “Field Marshal” Khalifa Haftar’s so-called Libyan National Army (LNA). Armed locals have at times joined under-manned security operations in the south, most recently in mid-September when they joined an attack by the Salafist Khalid bin Walid Brigade on Chadian militants, freeing two hostages and killing six Chadians (Libya Herald, October 24, 2018; October 15, 2018).

The Khalid ibn al-Walid Brigade (aka the 104th Brigade), a mostly Tubu unit under the command of Yusuf Hussein Salah, has suffered recent losses fighting the Chadians; four fighters were killed in a clash on October 14, while a further six fighters who had been abducted were found dead four days later (Libya Observer, October 18, 2018; Libya Herald, October 15, 2018). In late October, the brigade was forced to abandon a siege of Chadian militant groups at a Chinese-built factory in the Fezzan’s Umm al-Aranib district, conceding that without further support from the LNA, the brigade was outmatched by the Chadians’ superior manpower and weaponry (Libya Observer, October 28, 2018).  Qatar, a supporter of anti-Khalifa Haftar militias in Libya, has been accused of helping to finance the CCMSR (RFI, August 14, 2018).

Shortly after discussing security cooperation with President Déby in N’Djamena on October 16, Haftar launched a new LNA operation in the Fezzan’s Murzuq Basin in October to “cleanse the south of the country from criminal gangs and terrorist groups.” To accomplish this, he assembled a joint force of LNA units that included the 10th Infantry Brigade under Colonel Muhammad Baraka, the 181st Infantry Battalion under Tariq Hasnawi, the 116th Infantry Battalion and the Kufra-based Subul al-Salam Brigade (mostly Salafist Zuwaya Arabs) (Libya Herald, October 24, 2018; Libyan Address, October 19, 2018). A UN Security Council report recently claimed Subul al-Salam has defied its mandate to control human trafficking on the southern border to engage in the traffic themselves, holding migrants at the Himmaya forced-labor camp in Kufra. [3]

Logo of the CCMSR

Forecast

Chad is undergoing a massive economic crisis based on the decline in oil prices in recent years. Opposition leaders are regularly detained, as are the leaders of a civil opposition movement, “Iyina” (Arabic – “We are tired”). While the defense budget was largely untouched, there have been cutbacks nearly everywhere else and civil servants have gone for months without wages. With Chad’s citizens asking what happened to all the oil revenues already received in what remains one of the world’s most poorly developed nations, Déby’s regime may find itself vulnerable to an armed movement seeking an end to the Déby government. Should the CCMSR gain traction in the north, a desperate N’Djamena might be forced to withdraw MNJTF forces from the Lake Chad Basin to tackle a more immediate threat to the capital.

Notes

  1. For Mahamat Mahdi Ali, see: “Rebel or Mercenary? A Profile of Chad’s General Mahamat Mahdi Ali,” Militant Leadership Monitor, September 7, 2017, https://www.aberfoylesecurity.com/?p=4010
  2. Blog of Mahamat Hassane Boulmaye, “Peuple tchadien meurtrie et inoffensive,” November 27, 2016, http://lepythonnews.over-blog.com/2016/11/peuple-tchadien-meurtrie-et-inoffensif.html
  3. UNSC: “Letter dated 5 September 2018 from the Panel of Experts on Libya established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011) addressed to the President of the Security Council,” September 5, 2018, p.15.

 

Europe’s True Southern Frontier: The General, the Jihadis, and the High-Stakes Contest for Libya’s Fezzan Region

November 27, 2017

Andrew McGregor

AbstractLibya’s relentless post-revolution conflict appears to be heading for a military rather than a civil conclusion. The finale to this struggle may come with an offensive against the United Nations-recognized government in Tripoli by forces led by Libya’s ambitious strongman, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar. However, the conflict will continue if Haftar is unable to consolidate control of the southern Fezzan region, the source of much of the oil and water Libya’s coastal majority needs to survive. Contesting control of this vital region is an aggressive assortment of well-armed jihadis, tribal militias, African mercenaries, and neo-Qaddafists. Most importantly, controlling Fezzan means securing 2,500 miles of Libya’s porous southern desert borders, a haven for militants, smugglers, and traffickers. The outcome of this struggle is of enormous importance to the nations of the European Union, who have come to realize Europe’s southern borders lie not at the Mediterranean coast, but in Libya’s southern frontier. 

Libya (Rowan Technology)

As the territory controlled by Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli and its backers shrinks into a coastal enclave, the struggle for Libya appears to be entering into a decisive phase. Libyan strongman Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar claims his forces are now in control of 1,730,000 square kilometers out of Libya’s total of 1,760,000 square kilometers.1 However, to control Tripoli and achieve legitimacy, Haftar must first control its southern approaches through the Fezzan region. Europe and the United Nations recognize the Tripoli-based Presidential Council/Government of National Accord (PC/GNA) as the official government of Libya, but recognition has done nothing to limit migrant flows to Europe. Whoever can control these flows will be the beneficiary of European gratitude and diplomatic approval.

Securing Tripoli means preventing armed elements supporting the PC/GNA from fleeing into the southern desert. Haftar must control water pipelines (the “Man-Made River Project”) and oil pipelines from the south, secure the borders, and prevent Islamic State fighters, pro-Qaddafists, Islamist militias, and foreign mercenaries from turning Fezzan into a generator for continued instability in Libya.

Fezzan is a massive area of over 212,000 square miles with a mostly tribal population of less than 500,000 living in isolated oases or wadi-s (dry riverbeds, often with subsurface water). Hidden by sand seas and rocky desert are the assets that make Fezzan so strategically desirable: vital oil fields, access to massive subterranean freshwater aquifers, and a number of important Qaddafi-era military airbases. A principal concern is the ability of radical Islamists to exploit Fezzan’s lack of security to further aims such as territorial control of areas of the Sahara/Sahel region or the facilitation of potential terrorist strikes on continental Europe. Many European states are closely watching the outcome of this competition due to the political impact of the large number of sub-Saharan African migrants passing through Fezzan’s unsecured borders on their way to eventual refugee claims in Europe.

Competing Governments, Competing Armies 

The security situation in Fezzan and most other parts of Libya became impossibly complicated by the absence of any unifying ideology other than anti-Qaddafism during the 2011 Libyan revolution. Every attempt to create a government of national unity since has been an abject failure.

At the core of this political chaos is the United Nations-brokered Libyan Political Agreement (LPA) of December 17, 2015, which called for a tripartite government consisting of a nine-member Presidency Council (PC) to oversee the functions of head-of-state, a Government of National Accord (GNA) as the executive authority, and a House of Representatives (HoR) as the legislative authority with a High Council of State as a consultative body. In practice, most of these bodies are in conflict with each other or enduring high levels of internal dissension, leaving the nation haphazardly governed by scores of well-armed ethnic, tribal, and religious militias, often grouped into unstable coalitions. Contributing to the disorder is Khalifa Ghwell’s Government of National Salvation (GNS), which claims to be the legitimate successor of Libya’s General National Congress government (2014-2016) and makes periodic attempts to seize power in Tripoli, most recently in July 2017.2

The most powerful of the military coalitions is the ambitiously named Libyan National Army (LNA), a coalition of militias nominally under the Tobruk-based HoR and commanded by Khalifa Haftar, a Cyrenaïcan strongman who lived in Virginia after turning against Qaddafi but is now supported largely by Russia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It is this author’s observation that Haftar has a habit of speaking for the HoR rather than taking direction from it.

The Tripoli-based PC, which has military authority under the LPA, is still trying to organize a national army. In the meantime, it is backed by various militias based in Misrata and Tripoli. Together with the GNA, it forms the internationally recognized government of Libya but still requires a majority vote from the Tobruk-based HoR to be fully legitimate under the terms of the LPA. There are even divisions within the seven-member PC, with three members now opposing PC chairman Fayez Serraj and supporting the HoR and Haftar.3

Fezzan’s Tribal Context 

Fezzan’s human dimension consists of a patchwork of often-overlapping tribal and ethnic entities prone to feuds and shifting alliances. These might broadly be said to belong to one of four groups:

  • Arab and Arab-Berber, consisting of the Awlad Buseif, Hasawna, Magarha, Mahamid, Awlad Sulayman, Qaddadfa, and Warfalla groups. The last three include migrants from the Sahel, descendants of tribal members who fled Ottoman or Italian rule and returned after independence. These are known collectively as Aïdoun (“returnees”);4
  • Berber Tuareg, being the Ajjar Tuareg (a Libyan-Algerian cross-border confederation) and Sahelian Tuareg (typically migrants from Mali and Niger who arrived in the Qaddafi era);
  • Nilo-Saharan Tubu, formed by the indigenous Teda Tubu, with smaller numbers of migrant Teda and Daza Tubu from Chad and Niger. These two main Tubu groups are distinguished by dialect;
  • Arabized sub-Saharans known as Ahali, descendants of slaves brought to Libya with little political influence.

The LNA’s Campaign in Jufra District

The turning point of Haftar’s attempt to bring Libya under his control came with his takeover of the Jufra district of northern Fezzan, a region approximately 300 miles south of Tripoli with three important towns in its northern sector (Hun, Sokna, and Waddan), as well as the Jufra Airbase, possession of which brings Tripoli within easy range of LNA warplanes.

Al-Wahat Hotel in Hun after LNA airstrikes (Libya Observer)

The campaign began with a series of airstrikes by LNA and Egyptian aircraft in May 2017 on targets in Hun and Waddan belonging to Abd al-Rahman Bashir’s 613th Tagreft Brigade (composed of Misratans who had fought the Islamic State in Sirte as part of the Bunyan al-Marsous [“Solid Structure”] coalition)5 and the Benghazi Defense Brigades (BDB),a the latter allegedly supported by a group of Chadian mercenaries. In early June 2017, the LNA’s 12th Brigade swept into the Jufra airbase with the help of local tribal leaders.6 Opposition was slight after the Misratan 13th Brigade and the BDB pulled out toward Misrata.

This allowed the LNA to take the town of Bani Walid, an important center in Libya’s human trafficking network strategically located 100 kilometers southwest of Misrata and 120 kilometers southeast of Tripoli. The site offers access by road to both cities and will be home to the new 27th Light Infantry Brigade commanded by Abdullah al-Warfali (a member of the Warfala tribe) as part of the LNA’s Gulf of Sidra military zone under General Muhammad Bin Nayel.7 Possession of Bani Walid could allow the LNA to separate the GNA government in Tripoli from its strongest military supporters in Misrata.

An Opening for Islamist Extremists

North African jihadis are likely to use the political chaos in Fezzan to establish strategic depth for operations in Algeria, Niger, and Mali. Those militants loyal to al-Qa`ida united in the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin (JNIM) on March 2, 2017, as a merger of Ansar al-Din, al-Mourabitoun, the Macina Liberation Front, and the Saharan branch of al-Qa`ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The group’s Tuareg leader, Iyad ag Ghali, will look to exploit Libyan connections in Fezzan already established by al-Mourabitoun chief Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who mounted his attack on Algeria’s In Amenas gas plant in 2013 from a base near al-‘Uwaynat in Fezzan.b For now, it appears Ag Ghali can count on only minimal support from the Sahelian Tuareg community in Fezzan, which largely favors Qaddafism over jihadism.c

The rival Islamic State announced the establishment of the wilaya (province) of Fezzan as part of its “caliphate” in November 2014.d Since their expulsion from Sirte last December by al-Bunyan al-Marsous and intensive U.S. airstrikes, Islamic State fighters now range the rough terrain south of the coast, presenting an elusive menace.8 Following the interrogation of a large number of Islamic State detainees, the Attorney General’s office in Tripoli announced that Libyans were a minority in the group, with the largest number having come from Sudan, while others came from Egypt, Tunisia, Mali, Chad, and Algeria.9

Masa’ad al-Sidairah (Sudan Tribune)

Some Sudanese Islamic State fighters are disciples of Sudanese preacher Masa’ad al-Sidairah, whose Jama’at al-I’tisam bil-Quran wa’l-Sunna (Group of Devotion to the Quran and Sunna) publicly supported the Islamic State and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi until a wave of arrests forced it to pledge to abandon Islamic State recruitment in Sudan for the Libyan and Syrian battlefields.10 Sudanese authorities state that at least 20 Sudanese Islamic State recruits have been killed in Libya.11 Many of these entered Libya via the smugglers’ route passing Jabal ‘Uwaynat at the meeting point of Egypt, Sudan, and Libya.12

Other Islamic State fighters fleeing Sirte headed into Fezzan, where they were reported to have concentrated at the town of al-‘Uwaynat, just north of Ghat and close to the Algerian border. This group was believed responsible for the February 2017 attacks on Great Man-Made River facilities and electricity infrastructure, including the destruction of almost 100 miles of electricity pylons between Jufra and Sabha.13 e On May 6, 2017, Islamic State militants mounted an ambush on a Misratan Third Force convoy on the road between Jufra and Sirte, killing two and wounding three.14 Libyan investigators claim the Islamic State has rebuilt a “desert army” of three brigades under the command of Libyan Islamist al-Mahdi Salem Dangou (aka Abu Barakat).15

Islamic State fighters shattered any thought their Sirte defeat left the group in Libya incapable of mounting operations on August 23, 2017 with an attack on the LNA’s 121st Infantry Battalion at the Fugha oasis (Jufra District). Nine soldiers and two civilians were apparently killed after capture by close range shots to the head or by having their throats slit. Most of the soldiers were former members of Qaddafi’s elite 32nd Mechanized Brigade from Surman and may have been targeted due to the role of Surmani troops in wiping out Islamic State terrorists who had briefly occupied the town of Sabratha, in between Tripoli and the border with Tunisia, in February 2016.16

Securing the Southern Borders

Control of the trade routes entering Fezzan was based on the midi-midi (friend-friend) truce of 1893, which gave the Tuareg exclusive control of all routes entering Fezzan west of the Salvador Pass (on the western side of Niger’s Mangueni plateau), while the Tubu controlled all routes from Niger and Chad east of the Toumou Pass on the eastern side of the plateau.17 The long-standing agreement collapsed during the Tubu-Tuareg struggles of 2014, fueled by clashes over control of smuggling operations and the popular perception of the Tuareg as opponents of the Libyan revolution.

Today, both passes are monitored by American drones operating out of a base north of Niamey and by French Foreign Legion patrols operating from a revived colonial-era fort at Madama, 60 miles south of Toummo.18 Chad closed its portion of the border with Libya in early January 2017 to prevent Islamic State militants fleeing Sirte from infiltrating into north Chad, but has since opened a single crossing.19

On a September 2017 visit to Rome, Haftar insisted the international arms embargo on Libya must be lifted for the LNA, adding that he could provide the manpower to secure Libya’s southern border, but needed to be supplied with “drones, helicopters, night vision goggles, [and] vehicles.”20 Haftar said earlier that preventing illegal migrants from crossing the 2,500-mile southern border would cost $20 billion.21

Some southern militias have proven effective at ‘policing’ the border when it is in their own interest; a recent fuel shortage in southern Fezzan was remedied when the Tubu Sukour al-Shara (“Desert Eagles”) militia, which is based in Qatrun some 200 kilometers south of Sabha, closed the borders with Chad and Niger on September 7, 2017, and began intercepting scores of tanker trucks smuggling fuel and other goods across the border into Niger, where they had been fetching greater prices, but leaving Fezzan with shortages and soaring prices.22

Sukour al-Sahra leader Barka Shedemi

Sukour al-Sahra is led by a veteran Tubu warrior from Niger, Barka Shedemi, and has support from the HoR.23 Equipped with some 200 vehicles ranging over 400 miles of the southern borders, Shedemi is said to have strong animosity toward the Qaddadfa tribe after he was captured by them in the 1980s and turned over to the Qaddafi regime, which punished him as a common brigand by cutting off a hand and a leg.24 Shedemi has reportedly asked for a meeting with Frederica Mogherini, the European Union’s top diplomat, to discuss compensation for his brigade in exchange for halting migrant flows across Libya’s southern border.25

Foreign Fighters in Fezzan 

Since the revolution, there has been a steady stream of reports concerning the presence of Chadian and Darfuri fighters in Libya, especially those belonging to Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). JEM leaders were once harbored by Qaddafi in their struggle against Khartoum, and took refuge in Libya after the revolution as pressure from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) forced the rebels across the border. Khartoum backs the PC/GNA and has complained of JEM’s presence in Libya to the United Nations’ Libyan envoy.26

Haftar sees the hand of Qatar behind the influx of foreign fighters: “The Libyan army has recorded the arrival in Libya of citizens from Chad, Sudan, and other African and Arab states. They got into Libya because of the lack of border controls. They received money from Qatar, as well as other countries and terrorist groups.”27 Haftar’s statement reflects the deteriorating relations between Qatar and much of the rest of the Arab world as well as Haftar’s own indebtedness to his anti-Qatar sponsors in Egypt and the UAE. Haftar and HoR spokesmen have also claimed Qatar was supporting what it called terrorist groups (including the Muslim Brotherhood, Ansar al-Sharia, and the defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group) and carrying out a campaign of assassinations that included an unsuccessful attempt on Haftar’s life.28 f

Notwithstanding his complaints about JEM and other foreign fighters, Haftar is accused of employing JEM and Darfuri rebels of the Zaghawa-led Sudan Liberation Army-Minni Minnawi (SLA-MM), which arrived in Fezzan in 2015. Acting as mercenaries, these fighters participated in LNA campaigns in Benghazi and the oil crescent alongside members of SLA-Unity and the SLA-Abd al-Wahid, largely composed of members of the Fur ethnic group for which Darfur is named.29 When the SLA-MM returned to Darfur in May 2017, they were badly defeated by the RSF.30

Foreign fighters are alleged to have played a part in the June 2017 Brak al-Shatti airbase massacre of 140 LNA soldiers and civilians by the BDB and their Hasawna tribal allies, with a spokesman for the LNA’s 166th Brigade asserting the presence of “al-Qa`ida associated” Chadian and Sudanese rebels with the BDB.31 In the days after the Brak al-Shatti combat, the LNA’s 12th Brigade spokesman claimed that his unit had captured Palestinian, Chadian, and Malian al-Qa`ida members, adding that 70 percent of the fighters they had killed or taken prisoner were foreign.32 The claims cannot be verified, but many BDB commanders have ties to factions of al-Qa`ida and/or the Islamic State.

While Arab rivals of the Tubu in southern Libya often delegitimize local Tubu fighters by referring to them as “Chadian mercenaries,” there are actual Tubu fighters from Chad and Niger operating in various parts of Libya. Fezzan’s Tubu and Tuareg ethnic groups often take advantage of their ability to call upon their cross-border kinsmen when needed.33 Tubu leaders in Niger’s Kawar region complain that most of their young men have moved to Libya since 2011.34

Chadian rebels opposing the regime of President Idriss Déby Itno have established themselves near the Fezzan capital of Sabha as they build sufficient strength to operate within Chad.35 In mid-June 2017, artillery of the LNA’s 116th Infantry Battalion shelled Chadian camps outside Sabha (including those belonging to Mahamat Mahdi Ali’s Front pour l’alternance et la concorde au Tchad [FACT]) after accusing them of fighting on behalf of the PC/GNA. A U.N. report suggests that FACT fought alongside the BDB during the latter’s operations in the Libyan oil crescent in March 2017, losing a prominent commander in the process.36 A FACT splinter group, the Conseil de Commandement Militaire Pour le Salut de la Republique (CCMSR), also has a base near Sabha, which was attacked by LNA aircraft in April 2016.37

Efforts to Restore Border Security in Fezzan 

Alarmed by the rising numbers of migrants trying to reach Europe from Libya and Libya’s inability to police its own borders, Italy and Germany called in May for the establishment of an E.U. mission to patrol the Libya-Niger border “as quickly as possible.”38 Ignoring its colonial reputation in Libya, Rome suggested deploying the Italian Carabinieri (a national police force under Italy’s Defense Ministry) to train southern security forces and help secure the region from Islamic State terrorists fleeing to Libya from northern Iraq.39

European intervention of this type is a non-starter for the PC/GNA government, which has made it plain it also does not see Libya as a potential holding tank for illegal migrants or have interest in any plan involving their settlement in Libya.40

In Fezzan, migrants are smuggled by traffickers across the southern border and on to towns such as Sabha and to its south Murzuq, ‘Ubari, and Qatrun in return for cash payments to the Tubu and Tuareg armed groups who control these passages. In 2017, the largest groups of migrants were from Nigeria, Bangladesh, Guinea, and Côte d’Ivoire.41 The main center of the trade is Sabha, where members of the Awlad Sulayman are heavily involved in human smuggling.42 The Tubu and Tuareg also run profitable but dangerous operations smuggling narcotics, tobacco, alcohol, stolen vehicles, state-subsidized products, and other materials across Libya’s borders. Street battles in Sabha are common between competing factions of traffickers.43

Italy has signed a military cooperation agreement with Niger that will allow it to deploy alongside Sahel Group of Five (SG5) forces (an anti-terrorist and economic development coalition of five Sahel nations with support from France and other nations) and French and German contingents with the objective of establishing control over the border with Libya.g On the Fezzan side of the border, Italy will support a border guard composed of Tubu, Tuareg, and Awlad Sulayman tribesmen as called for in a deal negotiated in Rome last April.44 Rome will, in turn, fund development projects in the region. Local leaders in Fezzan complain national leaders have been more interested in border security than the lack of development that fuels border insecurity, not realizing the two go hand-in-hand.45 Italian Interior Minister Marco Minniti noted his conviction that “the southern border of Libya is crucial for the southern border of Europe as a whole. So we have built a relationship with the tribes of southern Sahara. They are fundamental to the south, the guardians of the southern border.”46

A Failed Experiment

Proof that the migrant crisis cannot be solved on Libya’s coast came in September/October 2017 in the form of a 15-day battle in the port city of Sabratha (78 kilometers west of Tripoli) that killed 39 and wounded 300. The battle marked the collapse of an Italian experiment in paying militias to prevent migrants from boarding boats for Italy.47

Fighting in Sabratha, September 2017 (Libya Observer)

The Italian decision to select the GNA-aligned Martyr Anas Dibbashi Brigade (aka 48th Infantry Brigade) to cut off migrant flows from Sabratha (which it did with some success) angered the Wadi Brigade (salafist followers of Saudi shaykh Rabi’ bin Hadi al-Madkhali who are aligned with the LNA)48 and the (anti) Islamic State-Fighting Operations Room (IFOR, consisting of pro-GNA former army officers, though some have ties to the Wadi Brigade). Like the Anas Dibbashi Brigade, both groups had made great sums of cash from human trafficking. With the southern border still unsecured, migrants continued to pour into Sabratha but could not be sent on to Europe, creating a trafficking bottleneck.49 Suddenly, only Anas Dibbashi was making money (in the form of millions of Euro from Italy),50 leading to a fratricidal struggle to restore the old order as members of Sabratha’s extensive Dibbashi clan fought on both sides of the conflict.h Both LNA and GNA forces claimed victory over the Anas Dibbashi Brigade, with Haftar claiming IFOR was aligned with his LNA.51 Following the battle, migrant flows resumed while Haftar warned his forces in Sabratha to be ready for an advance on Tripoli.52

The Fezzan Qaddafists 

A challenge to Haftar’s efforts (and one he has tried to co-opt) is the strong current of Qaddafism (i.e., support of the Jamahiriya political philosophy conceived by Muammar Qaddafi) in Fezzan, the last loyalist area to be overrun in the 2011 revolution. Support for Qaddafi was especially strong in the Sahelian Tuareg, Qaddadfa, and parts of the Awlad Sulayman communities.

Fezzan’s Qaddafists were no doubt inspired by the release of Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi in early June 2017 after six years of detention.53 Saif, however, is far from being in the clear; he remains subject to a 2015 death sentence issued in absentia in Tripoli and is still wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes committed in 2011.54 On October 17, 2017, the Qaddafi family lawyer announced Saif was already visiting tribal elders as he began his return to politics.55 The announcement followed a statement from the United Nations Special Envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salamé, that Libyan elections must be open to all, including Saif and other unreformed Qaddafists.56

General Ali Kanna Sulayman, a Tuareg Qaddafi loyalist, fled to Niger after the fall of Tripoli in 2011, but was reported to have returned to Fezzan in 2013.57 His former comrade, Qaddafi-era Air Force commander Ali Sharif al-Rifi, also returned from Niger to his Fezzan home of Waddan in June 2017.58 Thirty Qaddafi-era prisoners, mostly military officers, were released in early June 2017 by the Tripoli Revolutionaries’ Brigade (TRG) under orders from the HoR.59

General Ali Kanna took control of the massive Sharara oil field in Fezzan after the Misratan 13th Brigade pulled out in the last week of May 2017. As leader of a neo-Qaddafist militia, Ali Kanna has spent his time trying to unite local forces in a “Fezzan Army” that would acknowledge the legitimacy of the Qaddafist Jamahariya.60 In October 2016, there were reports that former Qaddafist officers had appointed Ali Kanna as the leader of the “Libyan Armed Forces in Southern Libya,” a structure apparently independent of both the GNA and Haftar’s LNA.61

The effort to promote armed Qaddafism in Fezzan has faltered under pressure from the LNA’s General Muhammad Bin Nayel.62 LNA spokesman Colonel Ahmad al-Mismari downplayed the threat posed by Ali Kanna, claiming his “pro-Qaddafi” southern army is composed mostly of foreign mercenaries with few professional military officers.63

In mid-October, an armed group of Qaddafists (allegedly including 120 members of the Darfuri JEM) attempted to take control of the major routes in and out of Tripoli before clashing with Islamist Abd al-Rauf’s Rada (Deterrence) force, a semi-autonomous police force operating nominally under the GNA’s Ministry of the Interior.64

Two alleged leaders of the Qaddafist group, Libyan Mabruk Juma Sultan Ahnish (aka Alwadi) and Sudanese Rifqa al-Sudani, were captured and detained by Rada forces.65 Ahnish is a member of the Magraha tribe from Brak al-Shatti, while Rifqa (aka Imam Daoud Muhammad al-Faki) is supposedly a Sudanese member of JEM, though other accounts claim he may be Libyan.66 According to Rada, the rest of the JEM group refused to surrender and presumably remains at large. It was claimed the Darfuri mercenaries were working on behalf of exiled Qaddafists belonging to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya (PFLL).67 i

The fragility of Tripoli’s water supply became apparent on October 19, 2017, when Mabruk Ahnish’s brother, Khalifa Ahnish, made good on his threat to turn off the Great Man-Made River if Mabruk was not released within 72 hours. Khalifa also threatened “kidnapping and murder,” cutting the Sabha-Tripoli road, and blowing up the southern gas pipeline leading to Italy via the Greenstream pipeline.68 Khalifa claimed to be working under the command of General Ali Kanna, though the general denied having anything to do with Khalifa or his brother.69

Conclusion 

Haftar’s apparent military strategy is to secure the desert airbases south of Tripoli and insert LNA forces on the coast west of Tripoli, cornering his opponents in the capital and Misrata before mounting an air-supported offensive, similar to the tactics that enabled the capture of Jufra.j Haftar is trying to sell the conquest of Tripoli as a necessary (and desirable) step in ending illegal migration from Libyan ports to Europe.70 The strategy has political support; HoR Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni has consistently rejected international proposals for a mediated settlement to the Libyan crisis, insisting, as a former professional soldier, that only a military effort can unite the country.71

The LNA’s prolonged effort to take and secure Benghazi points to both the difficulty of urban warfare and the weakness of the LNA relative to its ambition to bring Libya’s largest cities under its control. The pullback of the PC/GNA-allied Misratan militias from Jufra may be preparation for a consolidated stand against Haftar, but it also weakens security in the south, offering room for new actors. Fezzan remains an attractive and long-term target for regional jihadis who may find opportunities to exploit or even hijack the direction of a protracted resistance in Fezzan to the imposition of rule by a new Libyan strongman. With no single group strong enough to resist Haftar’s LNA (whose ultimate victory is by no means certain), all kinds of anti-Haftar alliances are possible between Qaddafists, Islamists, Misratans, and even jihadis, with the added possibility of eventual foreign intervention by the West or Haftar’s assertive Middle Eastern or Russian partners.

In a study of the 2014-2016 fighting in ‘Ubari (a town in between Sabha and al-‘Uwaynat) released earlier this year, Rebecca Murray noted her Tuareg and Tubu sources “overwhelmingly dismissed the possibility that radical IS [Islamic State] ideology could take root in their communities, which they described as traditional, less religiously conservative, rooted in local culture, and loyal to strong tribal leaders.”72

The perspective of her sources might be optimistic. Unfortunately, the situation strongly resembles that which existed in northern Mali before well-armed Islamist extremists began moving in on existing smuggling networks, using the existence of “militarized, unemployed and marginalized youths” (as Murray describes their Libyan counterparts) to create new networks under their control while simultaneously undermining traditional community and religious leadership. While tribal leaders may still command a certain degree of loyalty, they are nonetheless unable to provide social services, employment, reliable security, or economic infrastructure to their communities, leaving them susceptible to those who claim they can, whether religious radicals or would-be strongmen.     CTC

Dr. Andrew McGregor is the director of Aberfoyle International Security, a Toronto-based agency specializing in the analysis of security issues in Africa and the Islamic world.

Substantive Notes

[a] The BDB is a coalition of Islamists and former Qaddafi-era army officers, which includes some fighters who were in the now largely defunct Ansar al-Sharia group. See Andrew McGregor, “Libya’s Military Wild Card: The Benghazi Defense Brigades and the Massacre at Brak al-Shatti,” Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor 15:11 (2017).

[b] The town of al-‘Uwaynat in southwest Fezzan is not to be confused with Jabal ‘Uwaynat, a mountain in southeast Cyrenaïca. According to Malian and Mauritanian security sources, Belmokhtar was replaced in early May 2017 by his Algerian deputy, Abd al-Rahman al-Sanhaji, whose name suggests he is a Berber. Belmokhtar’s presence in southern Libya, far away from operations in Mali, was cited as a major reason for the change. Malek Bachir, “Exclusive: Notorious leader of Saharan al-Qaeda group loses power,” Middle East Eye, May 9, 2017.

[c] The ‘Ubari-based Maghawir Brigade, created from Sahelian Tuareg as a Libyan Army unit in 2004, split during the revolution with those favoring the revolution forming the new Ténéré (Tamasheq – “desert”) Brigade, while the Qaddafi loyalists were forced to flee to Mali and Niger. Many of the latter returned after the collapse of the Azawad rebellion in northern Mali (2012-2103) and regrouped around Tuareg General Ali Kanna Sulayman as the Tendé Brigade, though others rallied around Ag Ghali’s cousin, Ahmad Omar al-Ansari, in the Border Guards 315 Brigade. Mathieu Galtier, “Southern borders wide open,” Libya Herald, September 20, 2013; Rebecca Murray, “In a Southern Libya Oasis, a Proxy War Engulfs Two Tribes,” Vice News, June 7, 2015; Nicholas A. Heras, “New Salafist Commander Omar al-Ansari Emerges in Southwest Libya,” Jamestown Foundation Militant Leadership Monitor 5:12 (2014); Rebecca Murray “Southern Libya Destabilized: The Case of Ubari,” Small Arms Survey Briefing Paper, April 2017, fn. 23.

[d] The Islamic State declared the division of Libya into three provinces of its self-proclaimed caliphate on November 10, 2014, based on the pre-2007 administrative divisions of Libya: Wilayah Barqa (Cyrenaïca), Wilayah Tarabulus (Tripolitania), and Wilayah Fezzan. See Geoff D. Porter, “How Realistic Is Libya as an Islamic State ‘Fallback’?” CTC Sentinel 9:3 (2016).

[e] The Great Man-Made River is a Qaddafi-era water project that taps enormous aquifers under the Sahara to supply fresh-water to the cities of the Libyan coast. Cutting the pipelines is a relatively cheap and efficient way of applying pressure to the urban areas on the coast where most of the Libyan population lives.

[f] Military sources in the UAE claimed on October 23, 2017, that Qatar was assisting hundreds of defeated Islamic State fighters to leave Iraq and Syria for Fezzan, where they would create a new base to threaten the security of Europe, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. However, this alarming news must be tempered by recognition of the ongoing propaganda war being waged on Qatar by the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Amal Abdullah, “Hamdeen Organization moves hundreds of armed ‘Daesh’ to Libyan territory,” Al-Ittihad, October 22, 2017.

[g] The SG5 is a multilateral response to terrorism and other security issues in the Sahel region. Created in 2014 but only activated in February 2017, the SG5 consists of military and civil forces from Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso, with logistical and financial assistance from France and other Western partners.

[h] The Italian government maintains that the estimated €5 million payment was issued only to the GNA government or Sabratha’s local council and not directly to a militia. However, the route payments took is largely irrelevant to the outcome. Patrick Wintour, “Italy’s Deal to Stem Flow of People from Libya in Danger of Collapse,” Guardian, October 3, 2017.

[i] The founding declaration of the PFLL declares its intent is to build a sovereign state and “liberate the country from the control of terrorist organizations that use religion as a cover and are funded by foreign agencies.” “Founding Declaration of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Libya,” Jamahiriya News Agency, December 25, 2016.

[j] Of concern to Tripoli are reports that Haftar forces have repeatedly struck civilian targets (especially in Hun) as displayed in the LNA’s Jufra air offensive. Abdullah Ben Ibrahim, “A night of airstrikes in Hun town,” Libya Observer, May 24, 2017.

Citations

[1] “Majority of Libya now under national army control, says Haftar,” Al Arabiya, October 14, 2017.

[2] “Tripoli Revolutionaries Brigade controls Garabulli after three days of clashes,” Libyan Express, July 11, 2017; Waleed Abdullah, “Cautious calm east of Tripoli after clashes: Official,” Anadolu Agency, July 10, 2017; “Pro-Ghwell forces halt advance on Tripoli after Serraj calls for international allies to attack,” Libya Herald, July 7, 2017.

[3] “Former PC loyalist Majbri joins Gatrani and Aswad in fresh challenge to Serraj,” Libya Herald, September 3, 2017.

[4] Wolfram Lacher, “Libya’s Fractious South and Regional Instability,” Small Arms Survey Dispatch no. 3, February 2014.

[5] “Brigade 613 calls for response to Dignity Operation airstrikes in central Libya,” Libya Observer, May 23, 2017; “A night of airstrikes in Hun town,” Libya Observer, May 24, 2017; “Haftar’s warplanes conduct airstrikes on Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous locations in central Libya,” Libyan Express, May 24, 2017.

[6] “Haftar forces capture strategic Libya airbase after ‘secret deals,’” The New Arab, June 4, 2017; “Operation Dignity seizes Jufra airbase in central Libya,” Libyan Express, June 3, 2017; “Haftar’s forces seize Hun town in Jufra, a dozen killed,” Libyan Express, June 3, 2017; Jamie Prentis, “Waddan taken by LNA in fierce fighting,” Libya Herald, June 2, 2017; “Clashes in Waddan town leave a dozen killed,” Libya Observer, June 3, 2017.

[7] “LNA sets up new force in Bani Walid,” Libya Herald, October 19, 2017.

[8] Lamine Ghanmi, “ISIS regroups in Libya amid jihadist infighting,” Middle East Online, October 15, 2017.

[9] “Islamic State set up Libyan desert army after losing Sirte – prosecutor,” Reuters, September 28, 2017; “IS cameraman involved in 2015 Sirte massacre of Egyptian Christians in custody says Assour,” Libya Herald, September 28, 2017.

[10] “Sudanese Jihadist killed in eastern Libya,” Sudan Tribune, February 10, 2016; “Sudanese security releases three ISIS sympathizers,” Sudan Tribune, January 1, 2016.

[11] “Sudanese twin sisters arrested in Libya over ISIS connections,” Sudan Tribune, February 7, 2017.

[12] “9 Sudanese migrants found dead near Libyan border, 319 rescued: SAF,” Sudan Tribune, May 1, 2014; Andrew McGregor, “Jabal ‘Uwaynat: Mysterious Mountain Becomes a Three Border Security Flashpoint,” AIS Special Report, June 13, 2017.

[13] Aidan Lewis, “Islamic State shifts to Libya’s desert valleys after Sirte defeat,” Reuters, February 10, 2017; John Pearson, “Libya sees new threat from ISIL after defeat at Sirte,” National [Abu Dhabi], February 10, 2017.

[14] “IS slays two in ambush on Third Force convoy,” Libya Herald, May 8, 2017; “Libyan Rivals Rumored to Meet Again in Cairo This Week,” Geopoliticsalert.com, May 10, 2017.

[15] Ahmed Elumami, “Islamic State set up Libyan desert army after losing Sirte – prosecutor,” Reuters, September 28, 2017; “Libya Dismantles Network Involved in Beheading of Copts,” Al-Sharq al-Awsat, September 29, 2017.

[16] See Andrew McGregor, “Islamic State Announces Libyan Return with Slaughter of LNA Personnel in Jufra,” AIS Special Report, August 24, 2017.

[17] Hsain Ilahiane, Historical Dictionary of the Berbers (Imazighen), 2nd ed., (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), pp. 146-147.

[18] Nick Turse, “The US Is Building a $100 Million Drone Base in Africa,” Intercept, September 29, 2016; “France: The Saharan Policeman,” BBC, March 19, 2015.

[19] “Chad shuts border with Libya, deploys troops amid security concerns,” Reuters, January 5, 2017.

[20] Lorenzo Cremonesi, “Migranti, Haftar: Vi aiutiamo a fermarli, dateci gli elicotteri,” Corriere della Sera, September 28, 2017.

[21] Lorenzo Cremonesi, “Haftar e le minacce alle navi italiane: ‘Senza il nostro accordo, è un’invasione,’” Corriere della Sera, August 11, 2017.

[22] Jamal Adel and Hadi Fornaji, “Massive rise in petrol prices in south, but convoys of tankers from Misrata expected to start rolling this weekend,” Libya Herald, September 23, 2017.

[23] Jamal Adel, “Qatrun Tebu brigade clamps down on southern border smuggling,” Libya Herald, September 11, 2017.

[24] “Southern border reported blockaded as Qatrun leader confirms ‘big’ drop in migrants coming from Niger,” Libya Herald, September 7, 2017.

[25] “Barka Shedemi crée la panique à Niamey et maitrise la frontière,” Tchad Convergence/Le Tchadanthropus-Tribune, October 23, 2017.

[26] Jamie Prentis, “Sudan reiterates support for Presidency Council but concerned about Darfuri rebels in Libya,” Libya Herald, May 1, 2017.

[27] “Hafter praises the PC and says Qatar is arming Libyan terrorists,” Libya Herald, May 30, 2017.

[28] “Libya Army Spokesman Says Qatar Involved in Number of Assassinations,” Asharq al-Awsat, June 8, 2017; “Libyan army reveals documents proving Qatar’s interference in Libya,” Al Arabiya, June 8, 2017; “Libyan diplomat reveals Qatari ‘involvement’ in attempt to kill General Haftar,” Al Arabiya, June 6, 2017; “Haftar accuses Qatar of supporting terrorism in Libya,” Al Arabiya, May 29, 2017.

[29] “Sudanese rebel group acknowledges fighting for Khalifa Haftar’s forces in Libya,” Libya Observer, October 10, 2016; “Intelligence Report: Darfur Mercenaries Pose Threat on Peace in the Region,” Sudan Media Center, May 22, 2017; “Darfur Groups Control Oilfields in Libya,” Global Media Services-Sudan, July 27, 2016.

[30] “Final report of the Panel of Experts on Libya established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011), S/2017/466,” June 1, 2017, p. 115; “Sudan: Rebel Commander Killed, Chief Captured in Darfur Battles,” Radio Dabanga, May 23, 2017; “Sudan, rebels resume heavy fighting in North Darfur,” Sudan Tribune, May 29, 2017.

[31] “East-based Libyan army says al-Qaeda attacked airbase,” Channel TV [Amman], May 22, 2017.

[32] Maha Elwatti, “LNA claims many Brak al-Shatti attackers were foreign, says it is fighting al-Qaeda,” Libya Herald, May 20, 2017.

[33] “Letter Dated 4 March 2016 from the Panel of Experts on Libya Established Pursuant to Resolution 1973 (2011), Addressed to the President of the Security Council,’” S/2016/209, United Nations Security Council, March 9, 2016; Rebecca Murray “Southern Libya Destabilized: The Case of Ubari,” Small Arms Survey Briefing Paper, April 2017, fn. 57.

[34] Lacher.

[35] “Libya militia to halt attack on Chadian fighters in south,” Facebook via BBC Monitoring, June 15, 2017; Célian Macé, “Mahamat Mahad Ali, la rose et le glaive,” Libération, May 29, 2017.

[36] “Final report of the Panel of Experts on Libya established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011), S/2017/466,” June 1, 2017, p. 18. See also Andrew McGregor, “Rebel or Mercenary? A Profile of Chad’s General Mahamat Mahdi Ali,” Jamestown Foundation Militant Leadership Monitor, September 2017.

[37] “Final report of the Panel of Experts on Libya established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011), S/2017/466,” June 1, 2017, p. 116.

[38] Beata Stur, “Germany, Italy propose EU patrols along Libya’s border with Niger,” New Europe, May 15, 2017; May 15, 2017; “Italy and Germany call for EU mission on Libyan border,” AFP, May 14, 2017.

[39] Paolo Mastrolilli, “A Plan for Carabinieri in Mosul After Caliph’s Militiamen Take Flight,” La Stampa [Turin], April 21, 2017.

[40] Sami Zaptia, “Libya refused international requests to strike migrant smuggling militias: GNA Foreign Minister Siala,” Libya Herald, April 29, 2017.

[41] Gabriel Harrison, “EU parliament head says Libya should be paid €6 billion to stop migrants,” Libya Herald, August 28, 2017.

[42] “Final report of the Panel of Experts on Libya established pursuant to resolution 1973 (2011), S/2017/466,” June 1, 2017, p. 63.

[43] Jamie Prentis, “LNA airstrikes again hit Tamenhint and Jufra,” Libya Herald, April 29, 2017; “Deadly Clashes in Sebha over Car Robbery,” Libya Herald, May 5, 2017.

[44] Francesco Grignetti, “L’Italia studia una missione in Niger per controllare la frontiera con la Libia,” La Stampa [Turin], October 15, 2017.

[45] “Tebu, Tuareg and Awlad Suleiman make peace in Rome,” Libya Herald, March 30, 2017.

[46] Patrick Wintour, “Italian minister defends methods that led to 87% drop in migrants from Libya,” Guardian, September 7, 2017.

[47] “Salafists loyal to Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar control Sabratha, declare war on Tripoli,” Libyan Express, October 6, 2017; “Libya pro-GNA force drives rival out of Sabratha,” AFP, October 7, 2017.

[48] Abdullah Ben Ibrahim, “Khalifa Haftar: Libyan Army is launching legitimate war in Sabratha,” Libya Observer, October 3, 2017. See also Andrew McGregor, “Radical Loyalty and the Libyan Crisis: A Profile of Salafist Shaykh Rabi’ bin Hadi al-Madkhali,” Jamestown Foundation Militant Leadership Monitor, January 2017.

[49] “ISIS Fighting Operation Room declares victory in Sabratha,” Libya Observer, October 6, 2017.

[50] Francesca Mannocchi, “Guerra di milizie a Sabratha, ecco perché dalla città libica riparte il traffico dei migrant,” L’Espresso, September 19, 2017; Nello Scavo, “Tripoli. Accordo Italia-Libia, è giallo sui fondi per aiutare il Paese,” Avvenire, September 1, 2017.

[51] Khalid Mahmoud, “Libya: Serraj, Haftar Share the ‘Liberation’ of Sabratha,” Asharq al-Awsat, October 7, 2017.

[52] Cremonesi, “Migranti, Haftar: Vi aiutiamo a fermarli, dateci gli elicotteri;” “Salafists loyal to Libyan strongman Khalifa Haftar control Sabratha, declare war on Tripoli.”

[53] “Saif al-Islam Gaddafi freed from Zintan, arrives in eastern Libya,” Libyan Express, June 10, 2017; Jamie Prentis, “ICC chief prosecutor demands handover of Saif Al-Islam,” Libya Herald, June 14, 2017.

[54] Chris Stephen, “Gaddafi son Saif al-Islam ‘freed after death sentence quashed,” Guardian, July 7, 2016; Raf Sanchez, “Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam at large in Libya after being released from death row, lawyer says,” Telegraph, July 7, 2016.

[55] AMN al-Masdar News, October 18, 2017.

[56] Marc Perelman, “Ghassan Salamé: le processus politique en Libye est ouvert ‘à tout le monde sans exception,’” France 24, September 23, 2017.

[57] Lacher. For General Kanna, see Andrew McGregor, “General Ali Kanna Sulayman and Libya’s Qaddafist Revival,” AIS Special Report, August 8, 2017.

[58] “Qaddafi’s air force chief flies home from exile: report,” Libya Herald, June 18, 2017.

[59] “Tajouri releases Qaddafi people imprisoned for six years,” Libya Herald, June 11, 2017.

[60] Mathieu Galtier, “Libya: Why the Gaddafi loyalists are back,” Middle East Eye, November 11, 2016; Vijay Prashad, “Don’t Look Now, But Gaddafi’s Political Movement could be Making a Comeback in Libya,” AlterNet.org, December 29, 2016; François de Labarre, “Libye, le general Ali Kana veut unifier les tribus du Sud,” Paris Match, May 22, 2016.

[61] Ken Hanly, “Southern army leaders try to change leaders unsuccessfully,” Digital Journal, October 9, 2016; Abdullah Ben Ibrahim, “Armed groups in southern Libya abandon Dignity Operation,” Libya Observer, October 9, 2016.

[62] Jamie Prentis, “LNA resumes airstrikes on Tamenhint as Misratans target Brak Al-Shatti: report,” Libya Herald, April 13, 2017.

[63] “’We are the LNA, we are everywhere in Libya’ says LNA spokesman,” Libya Herald, February 2017.

[64] “Tripoli-based Special Deterrent Force apprehends Gaddafi-loyal armed group,” Libya Observer, October 16, 2017.

[65] “Libya on brink of water crisis as armed group closes main source,” Libyan Express, October 23, 2017; “Water stops in Tripoli as Qaddafi militants now threaten to blow up gas pipeline,” Libya Herald, October 19, 2017.

[66] Hadi Fornaji, “Now Tripoli port as well as Mitiga airport closed as Ghararat fighting continues,” Libya Herald, October 17, 2017.

[67] “Tripoli-based Special Deterrent Force apprehends Gaddafi-loyal armed group;” “Rada says it has broken up Tripoli attack plot,” Libya Herald, October 16, 2017.

[68] “Gunmen block Tripoli-Sebha road in new bid to force release of Mabrouk Ahnish,” Libya Herald, October 23, 2017.

[69] “Armed Group Threatens to Blow Up Pipeline that Transmits Libya’s Gas to Italy,” Asharq al-Awsat, October 19, 2017; “Gaddafis threaten Tripoli residents with water cut,” Libya Observer, October 17, 2017; “Water stops in Tripoli as Qaddafi militants now threaten to blow up gas pipeline.”

[70] “Eastern forces already devised plan to control Tripoli, says spokesman,” Libyan Express, July 11, 2017.

[71] Hadi Fornaji, “Thinni spurns calls for political dialogue, says ‘military solution’ is only answer to Libya crisis,” Libya Herald, April 8, 2017.

[72] Rebecca Murray, “Southern Libya Destabilized: The Case of Ubari,” Small Arms Survey Briefing Paper, April 2017.