By Ejiroghene Barrett
The impact of the September 17 attack by the Islamists group, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), on the international airport and Gendarmerie training and education centre in Bamako, the Malian capital, is still being felt across the country.
The Malian government announced a swift response to the attacks, claiming it had captured many of the perpetrators and their accomplices only 48 hours after and it had restored normalcy.
Among a plethora of questions that the Malian authorities would have to find answers to in their investigations is how it was possible for these Islamists elements to find their way so close to the seat of government and clearly obstructing military logistics for even a brief period.
The attack has led to heightened security alert across the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), even if the authorities assert their preparedness against insurgent threats. In Ouagadougou, the Burkinabè capital, the government announced a strengthening of security controls in anticipation of potential terrorist threats.
They say the decision follows the assessment of the current security situation in Burkina Faso, but reports from Bamako clearly prompted steps to forestall similar threats.
If the aim of the attack was to show that the Jihadists could still penetrate Malian government defences, then the mission was accomplished. They managed to penetrate the airport, considered the best protected area in the Malian capital after the presidential palace.
They reached the presidential pavilion, used to receive foreign official delegations visiting the country, and damaged several aircraft parked on the runway, including a presidential plane. They also attacked a Malian Air Force facility inside the airport compound and made attempts to attack a nearby military drone platform.
While the airport was under attack, another set of Jihadists attacked the Gendarmerie training and education centre, causing loss of life and material damage to the facility.
A video that circulated online, which has not been authenticated, showed sleeping quarters with around two dozen bunk beds in tight formation that had been torched, with several charred bodies, some under the bed.
Even more disturbing for the authorities was the fact that a daredevil operation of this scale could be executed with such effect, considering the significant advances the military claims to have recorded in its operations to take back large swaths of territory from the insurgents.
The attack clearly questions the Malian military’s ability to sustain its recent successes. If the Jihadists have reached the doors of Bamako, no one can tell if a second, more deadly, assault is imminent and how prepared the Malian forces are to repel it.
Criticisms
Some assessments of the attacks have been very critical of the Malian forces and, by extension, the entire AES military machine as it faces stiff resistance across the Sahel, calling to question the effectiveness of the region’s military organisational structure.
One commentator described the entire military operation against the Jihadists in the Sahel as “a fiasco”, saying “We have reached a level of disintegration of these three countries that is absolutely dramatic. We realise that the whole strategy is a fiasco, a complete fiasco. We are on the way to Somalisation.”
In spite of the bleak outlook that the current situation paints for some security analysts, this assessment is quite unfair as it ignores the weight of the challenges that these states are dealing with.
With the region’s serious financial limitations, unchecked exploitation of its resources, the proliferation of small arms following the collapse of the Gaddafi regime in Libya, the absence of the necessary human resources to man its vast open and largely uninhabitable desert lands, the new military leadership could be judged to have been considerably successful in the current conflict.
State authorities have had to deal with this complex security situation triggered by the combination of an aggressive Tuareg rebellion and its infiltration by Islamist elements in the Liptako-Gourma area, around the shared borderlands of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger.
This is not made any easier by the political distractions caused by military coup d’états in their arduous efforts to reconstruct political administration in the three states.
Hard as the military juntas in these three states have tried, they continue to face serious obstacles in eliminating an insurgency that appears heavily financed and promoted by faceless forces determined to match the meagre financial resources of these states.
Admittedly, as the Malian Army chief, Oumar Diarra, said, the attacks could not have been carried out without accomplices. The Malian press reported that members of the Jihadist group who were captured and interrogated said they had been promised 2 billion FCFA. Video footage on Malian television showed scenes from what was described as a hiding place where money was kept.
A vital question is, how were the insurgents able to be transported with large cache of weapons through vast areas of the country and beat an extensive security cordon around Bamako while they were all dressed up like soldiers?
Some security experts believe there are two possibilities; either there was significant help from within, or the joint intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance of the Malian armed forces was weak. This second opinion takes into consideration the effects of limited financial and human resources.
A comment by an analyst on the French media platform, France24, emphasised this point, saying “The AES is mainly focused on protecting military bases, rather than on increased surveillance of terrorist groups, for whom it is a godsend…It is therefore easy for jihadists to settle in the tri-border area located in the Sahel or to go down to Bamako.”
The French connection
Some have, however, included the possibility of strong external support from more advanced forces, pointing to France in hushed tones.
Corroborating this claim was a photo that appeared on social media on September 12 showing one of the alleged leaders of the JNIM group meeting with an official at a French embassy building in a yet undisclosed country. It is not clear when the photo was taken or even if it is authentic.
On a more realistic note, France takes a huge portion of the blames in the deterioration, according to the military juntas, because of the poor handling of its earlier operations in the Sahel.
After the initial advances recorded under Operation Serval, the French military came under harsh criticism for its shift in focus from the “semi-conventional” war to intelligence operations during Operation Barkhane, which came after Serval.
Barkhane seemed more of a stalled operation, which allowed the insurgents free rein in the Sahel and worsened security conditions in Mali and Burkina Faso. The situation instigated the string of coups witnessed in the affected states by military actors who expectedly demanded France’s exit from the region.
As a French academic, Jonathan Guiffard, describes it, “Barkhane was established with ambitious objectives that were based on a flawed and optimistic assessment of the political dynamics in the Sahel.
However, the operation was hindered by the ineptitude of the political leaders in the region. This does not absolve the French political and administrative system of its own errors in analysis, assessment, or communication…”
Increased military operations; between statistics and reality
Following the Bamako attack, head of the Malian military government, Colonel Assimi Goïta, called an emergency meeting with the top brass of the Malian army. The goal; to thoroughly reassess the country’s security system and take immediate measures to prevent future tragedies.
Goïta’s statement after the attack revealed how much of a surprise the whole operation was, even for the authorities, as he stressed on the need to maintain an increased vigilance and promising better equipment and improved conditions for the defence and security forces.
Despite the increasing military expenditure, the President highlighted the State’s efforts to manage public finances and ensure the supply of basic necessities. He also discussed important reforms, such as the rewriting of the penal code and the fight against impunity.
Goïta insists that the goal of his government remains the total annihilation of the insurgents, reaffirming, during his independence day speech, his commitment to combat terrorism with total determination.
He emphasised that the objective is to completely rid the three countries in the AES of this threat, assuring that all means will be mobilised to track down the armed groups, “day and night”, in order to ensure peace and harmony in the region.
To his credit, military operations have been increased, but the statistical reports about the military achievements appear bleak.
Regarding the current statistics on the level of insecurity in the Sahel, it is difficult to judge the efforts of the security forces based simply on available statistical figures, and the reason is that the figures speak mostly about casualties but do not give reasons for these casualties.
One report that gives some clarity is the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) Conflict watch list 2024 report, titled “The Sahel: A Deadly New Era in the Decades-Long Conflict.”
While it speaks of an exponential increase in casualties from conflicts between military forces in the Sahel and insurgents since 2023, it however, accepts that the high levels of violence in all three central Sahel states are due to “increasing counter-insurgency efforts to meet the insurgency’s increasingly aggressive tactics.”
The ACLED report, speaking about the Burkinabè army, however, claims that, despite its efforts, “launching several ground offensives supported by the use of unmanned drones and helicopters, it has failed to rein in militants and suffered setbacks in many regions.” This is not completely true.
Key successes have been recorded by the Burkinabè and Malian armed forces, who have increasingly carried out joint operations as a result of the agreement for mutual military assistance reached under the AES treaty.
The acquisition of new weapons and the recapture of the northern Malian towns of Ber, Tessalit, Anefis, Kidal and Aguelhoc, with the help of the controversial Russian military contractor, Wagner group, has tilted the balance in favour of the military forces to some extent, and this, several Pan-African voices say, has been intentionally ignored by the prevalent Western security think-tank narrative.
For example, if the western media narrative is taken, you will be forgiven for not knowing that 673,500 displaced Burkinabès have been returned to their homes due to military successes since September 2022, and over 1100 schools reopened.
An event in Nigeria in March 2023 reinforced this belief of a coordinated attempt to continually paint regional military efforts as incompetent and unproductive when, in July 2023, the governor of Nigeria’s north-eastern state of Borno countered Chad’s UN Humanitarian coordinator, Violet Kakyomya, for saying that the security situation in the North East is worsening when, in fact, local assessment showed the opposite.
Many see this approach by these agencies and research organisations as another front in the geopolitical war that has emerged from the new political reality created by an aggressive “Pan-Sahelian” push against France and its other Western allies.
The bitter irony for the authorities is that the same geopolitics that has largely defined their security policy direction has also opened up a new front in the ongoing conflict with the Tuareg rebels and insurgents. This highlights a broader conversation about the implications of the new geopolitical race between global powers in the Sahel region.
Sadly, calls by regional security experts for a security mechanism that would lead to a military alliance, using the ECOMOG model, has been nullified by the break of the Sahel States from the regional alliance.
The hope is that ongoing negotiations, led by the Senegalese president, Bassirou Diomaye Faye, will result in a resolution of the current impasse and eventually provide a platform for a coordinated West African approach that would find lasting solutions to the insurgency scourge.
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