Temoust

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Month: July 2026

  • Azawad-Mali: is the UN finally waking up?

    Azawad-Mali: is the UN finally waking up?

    The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has broken its silence to address events in Northern Mali (Azawad). It is demanding clarification following the Malian military command’s announcement that around thirty soldiers were killed and some sixty others wounded during clashes around Anéfif in early July. These battles pitted the Malian army and Russian paramilitaries from Africa Corps against an ad hoc coalition formed by the Front for the Liberation of Azawad (FLA) and Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). In its press release, the UN mentions Malian soldiers who reportedly surrendered before being tortured and executed, and calls for an independent fact-finding investigation, notably into incidents shown in videos circulated on social media.

    The summary execution of captured soldiers constitutes a war crime, if proven, regardless of the perpetrator or the side involved. On this specific point, the UN is right to want an investigation, and those responsible must answer for their actions if the facts are confirmed. However, it is precisely the speed and clarity of this reaction that raises questions when compared to the prolonged silence, and even obstruction, that has long surrounded far more massive violations committed against civilian populations in northern and central Mali.

    A questionable contrast

    The most emblematic case remains the Moura massacre. Between March 27 and 31, 2022, the Malian army and “foreign” fighters—whom the UN report itself associates with the Wagner Group—detained, screened, and summarily executed over 500 people within five days in this village in central Mali, with indications of crimes against humanity. It took more than a year for that report to see the light of day, as Russia had blocked any Security Council request for an independent investigation into these events in the meantime. Since then, impunity remains total: no Malian official has been tried.

    This pattern is not isolated. In Tinzawaten, in August 2024, a Malian army drone strike killed seven civilians, including five children. A father described his son, wounded in the head, dying on the way to the hospital due to a lack of assistance. Human Rights Watch documented that between May and December 2024, the Malian armed forces and the Wagner Group deliberately killed at least 32 civilians, made 4 others disappear, and burned down at least 100 homes during operations in the center and north of the country. These violations primarily target Tuareg and Arab communities in the North, and Peul communities in the Center—three communities that government forces too often collectively assimilate with armed group combatants.

    There is also the case of Enaderfé Ag Mohamed Elmoctar, coordinator of a humanitarian NGO based in the Central African Republic, who came to spend his holidays in his native country. In January 2025, while driving with his family to the M’Bera refugee camp in Mauritania, he was killed along with his pregnant wife, their three-year-old son, and several relatives during executions attributed by numerous witnesses to the Malian army and the Wagner Group. A humanitarian worker, his wife, and their young child: no UN press release naming a perpetrator followed.

    More recently still, in late June 2026, four young herders—two Tuaregs and two Songhais with no ties to any armed group—were killed near Zarho and Abakoïra, between Timbuktu and Gao, by a patrol of the Malian army and the Russian Africa Corps, which replaced Wagner. One of the bodies was found decapitated and dismembered, with its arms and legs arranged in the shape of a swastika around the head, a macabre staging intended, according to local human rights organizations, to terrorize the population. Here again: no emergency press release, no responsible party named by the United Nations, and no request for an independent investigation.

    Faced with this accumulation of facts documented by such established organizations as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN Human Rights Office itself, appeals to the international community went unheeded for a long time: no binding resolution, no monitoring mechanism, and a United Nations mission (MINUSMA) that eventually left the country without the perpetrators of the worst abuses being held accountable.

    The same standard for everyone

    No one is asking the UN to turn a blind eye to Malian soldiers executed after surrendering, if that is indeed what happened. The issue is one of consistency. If this renewed interest in human rights in the Sahel now extends, with the same rigor and speed, to all violations—whether committed by armed groups, the Malian army, or its Russian handlers—then this is to be welcomed. The UN should demonstrate this by pushing with equal energy for the ongoing investigations concerning Moura and the dozens of other documented abuses against unarmed civilians.

    However, if this mobilization were to remain selective—prompt when state soldiers are targeted, but hesitant or blocked when Tuareg, Arab, or Peul civilians are massacred—then it would constitute yet another injustice and proof that double standards, rather than the protection of populations, continue to guide the actions of the United Nations in the Sahel.

    Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB

    Consultant

    Lyon (France), July 24, 2026

  • The Battle of Anéfis: When weapons give way to the war of narratives

    The Battle of Anéfis: When weapons give way to the war of narratives

    Decoding a six-day clash in northern Mali, between field realities and crossed propagandas.

    The capture of the strategic town of Anéfis gave rise to a dual confrontation: a violent six-day battle on the ground between the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) on one side, and the Malian armed forces allied with the Africa Corps on the other, immediately followed by a fierce war of communication.

    1. The Chronology of Operations: From the Tabrichat trap to the breakthrough The analysis of the facts makes it possible to retrace the precise course of the military operations that took place on the Gao-Kidal axis. On July 4, the coalition formed by the FLA and JNIM seized Anéfis, a strategic gateway located at the intersection of the roads serving Gao, Kidal, and Aguelhok, while diversionary attacks shook other localities. Regular forces and Russian mercenaries managed to retreat into the local military camp.

    On July 5, a first relief convoy of forty vehicles left Gao but suffered a heavy ambush at Tabrichat, losing several vehicles and causing the destruction of a Russian Mi-24 helicopter, while other aircraft gave up landing. From July 7 to 8, a second large-scale convoy was formed, bringing together approximately 200 Africa Corps men, 100 Malian soldiers, around sixty vehicles, as well as loyalist Tuareg auxiliaries from Gatia and MSA. On July 9, attacked near Tabankort, the convoy forced its way through after about ten hours of combat to finally enter Anéfis around 8 PM.

    Operational Sequence Indicators

    • Duration of combat: Six intense days on the Gao-Kidal axis.
    • Geographical stake: Control of the strategic gateway of Anéfis.
    • Forces present: FLA-JNIM coalition facing Fama, Africa Corps, and Tuareg auxiliaries.
    • Material outcome: Entry of the supply convoy on the evening of July 9 after heavy losses.
    1. Propaganda strategies and lies by omission Each belligerent camp shaped its own narrative to conceal its setbacks and amplify its successes. The FLA’s press release strategically stops on July 9 to proclaim the “defeat” of the enemy convoy, completely omitting to mention its actual arrival in Anéfis that same evening. However, this text implicitly concedes the difficulty of holding a position sustainably against the aerial supremacy of drones and Sukhoi aircraft, while officializing an unprecedented operational fusion between JNIM units led jointly by Iyad Ag Ghali and Alghabass Ag Intalla.

    Opposite, Africa Corps channels opted for symmetrical inflation by describing a massive enemy coalition of 5,000 fighters supported by foreign instructors, while minimizing their own material and human losses despite the documented destruction of the Mi-24 helicopter. Bamako thus comes to outsource the broadcast of its victory images to Moscow channels.

    1. The Fragility of a territory under tutelage At the end of this sequence, the reality of Anéfis highlights the precariousness of the Malian state’s position. To resupply a garrison located a hundred kilometers from Gao, the army required a deployment combining Russian mercenaries and local auxiliaries with a thorough knowledge of the terrain. This configuration illustrates the structural limits of a state forced to hold its territory by proxy — aerial with Moscow and terrestrial with its Tuareg allies against an insurgent and jihadist coalition capable of interdicting roads without being able to sustainably keep conquered areas.

    References and Transparency: Article initially published by Sahel Horizon and relayed by Courrier International under the title “In Anéfis, in northern Mali, a military battle as much as a communication one.” Original analysis reformulated in accordance with intellectual property requirements.

  • Northern Mali: Bloody rainy season in Anéfis, a major tactical setback for the General Staff

    Northern Mali: Bloody rainy season in Anéfis, a major tactical setback for the General Staff

    Decoding a historic ambush marking a critical turning point in Malian military strategy and its Russian alliances.

    The joint offensive led by the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) against a convoy of the Malian Armed Forces stands as one of the heaviest operational failures of the past fifteen years in the country’s north, revealing deep flaws in tactical coordination.

    A rigorous examination of the reported raw facts allows for the mapping of the operational sequence that led to the tragedy of Saturday, July 18. The strategic town of Anéfis, the epicenter of acute geopolitical tensions, has been the subject of fierce fighting over recent weeks. In early July, an unprecedented tactical alliance between the Tuareg independence fighters of the FLA and the jihadist network JNIM (affiliated with Al-Qaeda) resulted in the temporary capture of the locality, encircling the entrenched camp held jointly by the Malian Armed Forces (Fama) and the Russian auxiliaries of Africa Corps.

    On July 18, as a military convoy began its withdrawal toward Gao, the column fell into an ambush of unprecedented violence. Unofficial and local reports indicate more than 50 soldiers killed, some of whom were summarily executed according to sources within the army, and at least 24 prisoners in the hands of the coalition belligerents.

    Numerical breakdown and operational indicators

    • Date of the attack: Saturday, July 18.
    • Location: Route from Anéfis to Gao (Northern Mali).
    • Human toll: More than 50 Malian soldiers killed, 24 prisoners recorded.
    • Forces present (Assailants): Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM).
    • Forces engaged (Defense): Malian Armed Forces (Fama) and Africa Corps paramilitaries (Russia).

    This debacle is part of a multidimensional cycle of crises that has shaken Mali since 2012. Politically, the authorities resulting from the military transitions of 2020 and 2021 derive their legitimacy from the absolute promise of restoring territorial sovereignty and pacification. However, enhanced cooperation with Russian mercenaries, meant to reverse the balance of power against terrorist and independence-seeking armed groups, is encountering severe failures in coordination and common military doctrine.

    Original sources and documentary references: Basic information derived from Agence France-Presse (AFP) dispatches relayed by Jeune Afrique. Original analysis drafted in accordance with standards of journalistic integrity and the protection of intellectual property.

  • Niger refoundation: sovereignty begins from within

    Niger refoundation: sovereignty begins from within

    To be useful and genuinely contribute to advancing our debates on the situation in Niger and the Sahel in general, these discussions must start from an inescapable reality: the ongoing recomposition of political governance systems comprises several closely intertwined dimensions that it would be futile, and even counterproductive, to try to treat in isolation.

    Sovereignty, legitimacy, and the relationship to territories are not three distinct tasks that can be addressed one after the other; they are the three facets of a single process, and it is precisely their articulation—or the lack thereof—that will determine the outcome of the ongoing refoundation.

    In Niger, this refoundation can only be effective if it genuinely stems from a national consensus around the constitutive elements of the societal project we collectively carry. The CNSP displays a desire for a total break with everything that may have hindered the country’s development. The intention is commendable, but it first requires a deep national introspection before even turning outward: you do not refound a country by first settling scores with the outside world; you refound it by first resolving your own internal contradictions. Ideological fervor, when it ignores the constraints of reality, risks leading to a dead end and causing more damage than the expected benefits, because a discourse of rupture that is not accompanied by a real capacity to act on reality always ends up turning against those who carry it.

    On sovereignty

    This is where the question of sovereignty must be reframed in concrete terms: not as a slogan, but as the demonstrated affirmation of the country’s capacity to pragmatically define its strategic choices in international relations. Too often, the debate on sovereignty is reduced to a rhetorical posture, a display intended to galvanize public opinion, without specifying the concrete instruments through which this sovereignty must be exercised: control over strategic resources, genuine diversification of economic and security partnerships, strengthening of national administrative and military capacities, and the building of a regional diplomacy capable of carrying weight in negotiations. Sovereignty cannot be decreed merely by denouncing one partner in favor of another; it is built patiently through the accumulation of one’s own capacities that reduce dependency, regardless of the direction it comes from. Proclaimed but uninstrumented sovereignty is merely a façade of sovereignty, and it is precisely this trap that the country must avoid.

    Niger is free to choose its partners and negotiate the terms of its partnerships, provided, however, that this choice stems from a rational evaluation of long-term national interests, and not from a simple inversion of alliances that would replace one dependency with another under the guise of a rhetoric of rupture. There is no need to endlessly rehash resentments related to the behavior of this or that country: in this world, every actor defends its interests and mobilizes the means at its disposal to achieve them, whether they be Western powers, emerging powers, or new partners presented as saviors. There is nothing surprising in this, nor anything that should divert us from what is essential: the real question is not who is exploiting us, but what capacity we collectively give ourselves to negotiate from a position of strength and to make our own interests respected, regardless of the interlocutor. Mature diplomacy is judged by its ability to defend interests, not to designate culprits.

    On popular legitimacy

    Yet this capacity to negotiate from a position of strength presupposes a prerequisite that is too often forgotten: no authority can sustainably carry a project of sovereignty if it is not itself solidly legitimized from within. The real challenge facing the CNSP is therefore to emerge from this defensive posture, which generates unnecessary tension in the management of public affairs. Such a posture, if prolonged, risks transforming a hopeful moment of rupture into a simple authoritarian continuation of the flaws of the system it claims to fight. It must understand that an authority can only deeply reform if it is rooted in popular legitimacy—a legitimacy that is neither confused with circumstantial media support nor with the constrained silence that a given security or institutional context might impose.

    However, in Africa more than elsewhere, this legitimacy is conceived only on the basis of respect for and the effective association of the country’s socio-cultural references: customary and religious authorities, community structures, and traditional mechanisms of mediation and social regulation, which continue to organize the daily lives of the majority of the population much more effectively, in many regions, than the institutions inherited from the post-colonial state. Ignoring these references, or instrumentalizing them without truly involving them in decisions that commit the country’s future, amounts to building a refoundation on sand, despite its desire to be durable.

    Respect for communities and territories should therefore constitute the primary starting point of any national refoundation—not an afterthought added later to legitimize decisions already made at the top, but a structuring principle right from the design of reforms. Failing this, we would merely be superficially retouching a post-colonial system that continues to curb vital energies and prevent the flourishing of populations: excessive centralization of power, marginalization of certain components of society, and the confiscation of decision-making by a self-centered elite cut off from local realities. A mere superficial facelift, without any real transformation of inherited power relations or of the relationship between the State and the territories that compose it.

    A lesson that extends beyond Niger alone

    This articulation between external sovereignty and internal legitimacy is not unique to Niger; more broadly, it sheds light on the trajectory of all Sahelian countries engaged in similar processes of breaking with the old order. A country always begins by building itself internally before it can hope to command respect abroad. It is an almost universal law of international relations: external predators of all stripes rarely rely on a force of their own; they rely on internal fragilities—social fractures, distrust between the state and communities, flawed governance—too often neglected out of intellectual laziness or communitarian selfishness.

    This is why sovereignist slogans, however mobilizing they may be in the moment, will go nowhere until they are understood, appropriated, and carried by all citizens, in their territorial and sociological diversity. Yet, today—here as elsewhere in the region—everything happens as if the people’s will were reduced to the activism of a few loudly speaking voices in the capitals, to the point of stifling any other form of national expression: that of the regions, rural communities, and traditional actors, whose adherence is nonetheless the very condition for the project’s success. Until this equation is solved, proclaimed sovereignty will remain fragile, and the refoundation, unfinished.

    Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB

    Consultant

    Lyon (France), July 21, 2026

  • Niger: Azawad-Mali, neutrality as a political imperative

    Niger: Azawad-Mali, neutrality as a political imperative

    Failing to play a mediating role, wisdom dictates that Niger should resolutely keep its distance from the conflict opposing Bamako to Azawad. This is not merely one diplomatic option among others: it is a crucial condition for the internal cohesion of Niger itself.

    A conflict older than the Malian state itself

    The conflict currently setting northern Mali ablaze is far from a cyclical crisis. Its roots plunge into the first Tuareg rebellion of 1916-1917, deepened during the uprisings of 1962-1964 and 1990-1996, and resurfaced with the proclamation of Azawad’s independence in 2012. Each cycle has followed the same pattern: a central state responding with force to a political demand, a peace agreement signed under constraint—such as the 2015 Algiers Accords—and an agreement that then bogs down for lack of genuine implementation. The coordinated offensive of April 25, 2026, jointly carried out by the Front for the Liberation of Azawad and JNIM against Bamako, Kati, Kidal, Gao, Sévaré, and Mopti, is therefore not an isolated event: it is the reappearance, in a more violent form, of an unresolved issue—the political status of the populations of the North and their place in the architecture of the Malian state. Imagining that Niger can meddle in such a dispute without suffering the blowback is sheer blindness. What Bamako fights under the label of terrorism is also, at its core, a matter of political and territorial recognition—an issue Niger knows intimately, having faced it during its own rebellions.

    A cross-border community, a risk of direct contagion

    This is where the danger becomes concrete. The communities targeted in Azawad are not confined to Malian borders: they are distributed across Mali, Niger, Algeria, Burkina Faso, and Libya. A war waged against Azawad is therefore never strictly a Malian war; it crosses the borders inherited from colonization and directly impacts Niger’s community balance.

    Engaging militarily alongside Bamako would amount, for Niamey, to importing the fracture lines of a conflict that is not its own into its domestic sphere, turning alliance solidarity into a factor of internal destabilization.

    Yet this is precisely the line Niger has started to cross. Following the attacks of April 25, the joint force of the Alliance of Sahel States, of which Niger is a major pillar, reportedly carried out aerial campaigns in Malian territory against FLN positions. The spokesperson for the Front for the Liberation of Azawad immediately called on Niger and Burkina Faso to stay out of Malian events. This call should not be dismissed as a mere rhetorical posture: it signals that the population itself perceives Niger’s involvement as a red line, and that every aerial sortie against Azawad brings Niger a step closer to the risk it claims to avoid.

    The mirage of an aes policy “without ethnicity”

    No one is fooled by sovereignist discourses claiming that an AES policy exists outside of any community consideration. Beneath the veneer of the anti-terrorist fight lies a much older logic: that of preserving power balances inherited from French colonization, where the groups that captured the state apparatus at independence continue to define the terms of security and legitimacy on their own. Treating the FLN—an Azawadi political movement with long-standing political demands—and JNIM—a transnational jihadist coalition affiliated with al-Qaeda—as a single bloc serves this confusion: it makes it possible to rebrand a demand for political recognition as terrorism, and to justify through weapons what called for negotiation.

    It is precisely this framework that must be transcended today so that the peoples of the sub-region can build, by themselves, a truly inclusive governance based on institutions emanating from their shared aspirations rather than on the perpetuation of power relations inherited from a colonial order that was never settled.

    Refounding security on governance, not on force

    The return to power struggles as the sole compass for regional stabilization has never, in sixty years, produced lasting peace in the Sahel—only precarious truces between two cycles of violence. Each military intervention has bought time without ever addressing the fundamental question: what the communities of the North consider is due to them in terms of political recognition, economic inclusion, and land rights. To bypass this question once again is to prepare the next rebellion.

    For Niger, the stake thus goes beyond the simple realpolitik of regional alliance. It is about preserving, at home, the possibility of a political, rather than a security-based, treatment of its own community issues. It is this demand, more than any other diplomatic consideration, that must guide Niamey toward restraint.

    Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB

    Consultant

    Lyon (France), July 8, 2026

  • Azawad-Mali: when the reality principle finally catches up with the ground

    Azawad-Mali: when the reality principle finally catches up with the ground

    Since the spectacular attack of April 25 in Mali, which targeted multiple cities simultaneously, the question of Azawad has taken a new turn. The military regime sees one of its main pillars of legitimation crumbling in the eyes of its supporters, while the political horizon darkens further. The death, during the attack on Bamako, of Defense Minister Sadio Camara has precipitated the Transition into a point of no return, already weakened by internal tensions and the growing pressure of non-state armed groups (NSAGs).

    Considered the number two of the regime and above all the main ideologue and architect of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Sadio Camara embodied ideological choices that have largely contributed to isolating the central Sahel and plunging the three member countries (Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso) into an impasse that is both existential and geopolitical. His passing reshapes the board: the priority is now to limit the damage and attempt a return to realistic governance, centered on the interests of the populations before any other consideration. The populism that has prevailed since the advent of these military regimes has deeply disoriented citizens, many of whom can no longer follow hazardous choices whose limits are now coming to light.

    This disorientation found a ready outlet on social networks, where the bravado of a few figures claiming to champion pan-Africanism has flourished, with the complacency of certain media outlets in search of an ideological positioning. The Sahelian juntas thought they had found thought leaders in them; today, they are discovering opportunistic charlatans at the service of interests foreign to the region, and even to the entire continent. These influencers have fed on the fragilities of the military regimes and on a climate of paranoia that they themselves helped maintain—a climate that has long stifled the constructive dimensions likely to give greater credibility to their political project for the sub-region.

    Beyond this ideological drift, it is on the ground that the record is most damning. The current military regime bears responsibility for ethnic pogroms, and the generals in power must answer for abominable crimes committed on community bases. The modus operandi of the armies during the abuses perpetrated against Tuareg, Peul, and Arab civilians corresponds in every respect to the generally accepted definition of terrorism. The political and military leaders responsible for these abuses belong more properly before the International Criminal Court than at the head of their states.

    Denouncing the suicidal and irresponsible policy of the current authorities does not mean attacking Mali; quite the contrary. The Malian state and its institutions are held hostage by a self-centered system whose policy threatens to complete the dislocation of the national project. The diversion consisting of focusing attention on Kidal and on pastoral communities globally lumped together with terrorism cannot serve as a political project. Those who rush into this reading grid contribute to the chaos and the decomposition of the still embryonic fabric of a “one and indivisible” Mali that they claim to defend elsewhere.

    The principle must nevertheless be simple: a national army that attacks a part of its population on ethnic grounds de facto becomes a militia in the service of particular interests, and cannot claim any monopoly on legitimate violence. As soon as it departs from its regalian mission of protecting citizens and territory, it loses all legitimacy in the eyes of the international community. This drift finds its extension in a Malian diplomacy marked by radical rhetoric, strangely out of step with the posture that realpolitik would have dictated, given the country’s geography, its history, and above all, an objective assessment of its capabilities in the face of regional and international geopolitical realities.

    So that the issue of state injustice and violence does not remain the sole manifestation of poor governance driven by a power-hungry elite devoid of vision for the future of these countries, it is essential that solidarity between communities finds expression outside the circles associated with the regime in place. Yet, some have deemed it relevant to qualify Azawad as a “fabrication,” implying that Mali itself is not one. This liberty with intellectual honesty speaks volumes about the bias of certain “specialists,” whose posture and legitimacy truly raise questions.

    Others, in the same vein, continue to relay the argument of the Malian military power that France was wrong not to accompany the Malian army to Kidal during the reconquest of Azawad during Operation Serval. These specialists seem to forget or ignore how the Malian army has behaved since the 1990s in the Kidal region and in Azawad in general. Why do they not speak of the thousands of civilians massacred by this same army in Léré, Gossi, and elsewhere? What sovereign and legitimate state are we talking about when it regularly massacres civilians and conducts operations frequently described as ethnic cleansing? Overtly concealing this aspect of the situation, out of conformity or opportunism, considerably weakens analyses that might otherwise prove relevant.

    Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB

    Consultant

    Lyon (France)