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Category: The Sahel

English section covering news, security, and humanitarian issues in the Sahel.

  • Niger: ethnocentrism that dare not speak its name

    Niger: ethnocentrism that dare not speak its name

    Whenever major political events shake the foundations of the State and its institutions, the issue of community balances resurfaces beneath the surface. The persistence of this reflex speaks volumes about the country’s difficulties in moving beyond clan-based selfishness to build citizenship finally free from ethnic considerations.

    The ethnocentrism of the dominant classes fatally hinders the emergence of a shared national narrative, without which no republican project can take shape.

    This ethnic question thus constantly returns to the Nigerien public debate, yet it always struggles to find a true place within it. Some view it as a rear-guard battle, an instrumentalization inherited from imperialist logic; others as a convenient denial, intended to preserve post-colonial advantages that are themselves founded on an ethnic essentialization. Between these two stances, a reality imposes itself and resists all denials: our countries are composed of a mosaic of socio-cultural communities. Whether they are called ethnicities, tribes, regions, or peoples changes nothing about this constitutive diversity. To deny it is to refuse to look at the country as it is, and it matters little whether yesterday’s colonizer or today’s predators, both internal and external, have instrumentalized this reality for political purposes: this does not authorize erasing it.

    For in our African societies, the individual identifies first through their family, tribe, or ethnicity. Their fulfillment, like their conception of development, comes through the recognition of this historical and cultural heritage, which is also their own contribution to the common heritage of humanity. To deny them this right amounts, in effect, to imposing another identity upon them—an identity that draws its legitimacy not from sharing, but from the ethnocentrism of those who define it for them.

    This is the whole paradox: those who most loudly denounce the ethnocentrism of others are generally those whose own ethnicity has monopolized the country’s political and cultural system to the point of imprinting only its own reference points upon it. They themselves are steeped in an ocean of exclusion toward everything outside their own framework, but the habit is so deeply rooted that they no longer even perceive the extent of the contradiction. Their ethnocentrism, never named as such, thus boils down to contesting any ethnocentrism that is not their own, and to the certainty that their symbolic domination does not need to be debated.

    The same blindness runs through part of the African intelligentsia, still incapable of freeing itself from a conception of development that requires abandoning one’s own socio-cultural framework. For these minds, accessing modernity and the universal presupposes denying one’s specificity and adopting values coming from elsewhere, imposed in reality by force as much as by the manipulation of minds. To accept this interpretation is to accept an alienation that persuades us a little more each day that there is only one path toward progress: the one that others have charted in our place. Ultimately, it is also to prove right those who claim that we have no history of our own and that we would be incapable of reaching modernity on our own.

    Why, however, should the Republic be by nature unsuited to enabling communities that have lived together for centuries to coexist with respect for their diversity? Why should this diversity be erased, most often for the benefit of a single community, to conform to the injunctions of a standardization presented as universal, when it is merely the conformism of a particular domination? Who has ever truly looked into the definition of Nigerien identity: its history, language, heritage, values? The very people who castigate the ethnocentrism of others are not surprised that Tifinagh is still not recognized as a national alphabet, a source of shared pride. Nor do they denounce the use of a common good—the State—put at the service of promoting only certain languages and certain identity traits to the detriment of others. This silence is not neutral: it organizes a tacit hierarchy among citizens whose language and culture are deemed worthy of making a Republic, and the others.

    The real subject, almost never posed in these terms, is therefore this: how to manage this diversity with respect for all its components? Answering this first requires facing a glaring imbalance, too often contested by ignorance or bad faith. It suffices to examine the composition of the senior administration, the military hierarchy, the diplomatic corps, access to study scholarships, or the formation of major fortunes largely backed by state public procurement contracts to measure it.

    The defenders of the current system often take refuge behind an argument that is none at all: they put forward the fact that Nigerien families are frequently composed of individuals from multiple communities, as if the debate were situated at that level. Yet the question is not about individuals’ identity choices; everyone remains free to define themselves as they see fit, whether or not this corresponds to their ethno-cultural origins. The question lies elsewhere: how does the State manage the diversity of communities that each have their language, their cultural reference points, their own history? To confuse the two is to shift the debate onto terrain that is not its own, so as to better avoid answering it.

    More insidiously still, this imbalance shapes the ordinary Nigerien’s perception of their own identity, forged by the way the State occupies the public space and by the image it projects of the country, both internally and externally.

    The national melting pot cannot remain the prerogative of a few communities that would alone set its content, relegating others to the rank of components ordered to align themselves with it, under pain of being labeled as subversives, irredentists, or secessionists. A truly shared national narrative, integrating the most significant contributions of each specific heritage, is on the contrary the only path toward a truly inclusive Nigerien identity, one that would allow the country to focus its energy on the harmonious development of all its regions and territories.

    What is the solution, then? First, to recognize that we still live within a state architecture designed and maintained by the former colonial power to preserve, for as long as possible, its interests in the country, and that the successive regimes since independence have not deemed it useful to refound it to make it conform to our realities and our diversity. Second, to lay the foundations for this refoundation by lifting the taboos that currently block the debate, and by unleashing a discourse allowing all national components to truly participate in defining the common country. This will require enlisting traditional legitimacies as much as national experts in history, law, and social sciences, in order to propose a state organization capable of supporting the fulfillment of all territories in a spirit of unity, cohesion, and solidarity. It is from this approach, and not from a blueprint inherited from the former colonizer, that a fully embraced Nigerien identity will be born—it being understood that we must retain at least this much from the colonial endeavor: having brought our communities together into an entity recognized by the international community, thereby laying the foundations of a State capable of equipping itself with modern governance.

    It is in these terms that the Refoundation led by the CNSP could have been understood, and fully deserved its name. Yet the methodological approximations observed during the convening of the national conferences and the formation of the Consultative Council for Refoundation immediately revealed the limits of the approach, limits stemming, at best, from a deficit of vision, and at worst, from an absence of a true will to overturn the system in place. The tensions recently appearing within the Defense and Security Forces serve as a reminder of the fragility of this process and the risk of even more marked weakening, at a time when insecurity and geopolitical disorder are worsening across the entire sub-region.

    Nevertheless, the CNSP has opened an ambitious project that could constitute an authentic turning point in nation-building. But such a project demands courage, a clear vision, and appropriate tools, enabling the truly inclusive involvement of all citizens, without a priori bias or exclusion. Only under this condition—that of a Republic capable of organizing its diversity and opening to everyone the hope of fulfillment rooted in their own history, will the Refoundation be able to take shape and become, for Niger, a true renaissance.

    Unification is not homogenization.

    Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB

    Lyon (France), September 16, 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: 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)

  • Central Sahel: impunity, central pillar poor governance

    The fight against impunity is not just one option among others: it is the prerequisite for any lasting peace

    The Central Sahel has become one of the regions in the world where violence is becoming commonplace most rapidly, progressively embedding itself in people’s minds as an ordinary mode of interaction between the various components of the social body. To structural violence, historically linked to socio-economic tensions, there is now added violence of another order, even more insidious: that resulting from the state’s withdrawal from its fundamental regulatory functions, which guarantee the stability and peace of mind of the populations.

    A missing state facing an arming society Failing credible alternative solutions to contain the expansion of non-state armed groups and banditry—which thrive in the disorder of increasingly failing political governance—entire communities and territories are sinking into a logic of self-defense that the authorities struggle to supervise, let alone stem. According to many astute observers, this dynamic constitutes one of the most immediate threats to the stability and institutional future of the Sahelian space.

    The loss of control of the situation by public authorities is manifested by initiatives that are often hazardous, likely to aggravate tensions rather than resolve them. The creation of militias with vague mandates and insufficient oversight fuels a feeling of fragmentation and community withdrawal that runs counter to national unity, which is nevertheless more necessary than ever for these states to justify their viability in the eyes of their populations and the international community.

    Alarming signals of the state’s unraveling Examples of this drift are now too numerous and too serious to be ignored. In Niger, high-ranking figures have publicly called on populations to take justice into their own hands—an undeniably alarming signal of the unraveling of state authority and the loss of bearings by those supposed to embody its values. In Mali, notorious criminals belonging to an army proclaimed as republican have been decorated and celebrated for massacring citizens on ethnic grounds—an official consecration of impunity that represents a profound break with the elementary principles of the rule of law. These facts are not isolated accidents. They reveal a systemic logic in which impunity is no longer merely tolerated; it is institutionalized.

    The urgency of individual accountability It has become imperative that the perpetrators of acts of barbarism—whether targeting individuals or entire communities—be clearly identified, individually implicated, and brought before competent national or international jurisdictions capable of trying them. Only under this condition can the red lines be reaffirmed that no governance should cross in the treatment of the populations it is responsible for protecting.

    The perpetrators of crimes and the instigators of speeches calling for hatred and violence must measure the concrete personal risks they are taking. Exemplary, swift, and visible sanctions constitute the only language capable of restoring meaning to the state and its institutions. Without this, the spiral of vengeance and counter-violence will remain endless.

    This issue is also crucial for the credibility of the international community: its commitment to peace rings hollow as long as it continues to turn a blind eye to proven atrocities in the Sahel. The demand for stability can only be legitimately justified if it is accompanied by a real guarantee of respect for the rights of individuals and communities, ensured by the same mechanisms it claims to promote elsewhere in the world.

    Refounding living together beyond legacies To successfully achieve its profound recomposition, the Central Sahel will have to break free from the blockages inherited from colonization and its aftermath, which continue to structure relations of domination, mistrust, and frustration between communities and between them and their states. This is not about denying history, but about no longer letting it dictate the future.

    Imagining new conditions for living together, rebuilding inclusive social pacts, and restoring trust between rulers and the ruled: these are the foundational challenges that the Central Sahel must tackle, with or without the support of an international community that must itself clarify its commitments and assume its responsibilities.

    Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB

    Consultant, May 22, 2026

    Lyon (France)

  • Azawad-Mali – Central Sahel: arguments and counter-arguments

    Some fundamental elements for a better understanding of the question of Azawad and… the Tuaregs

    These questions and arguments are invitations to think with rigor and honesty about a reality that state propaganda, media simplifications, and ideological stances have too long distorted.

    To those who reduce the question of Azawad to an exclusive Tuareg claim: have they even consulted the founding texts and public statements of the FLN and the movements that preceded it? None defines itself as an ethnically Tuareg organization. Azawad is claimed as a plural political space, bringing together Tuaregs, Arabs, Peuls, and Songhais sharing a common destiny.

    To those who assert that Azawad has never historically existed: do they know that the borders of current African states were drawn between 1885 and 1960 by foreign colonial administrations, which partitioned or merged pre-existing political entities according to their sole interests? Azawad corresponds to a coherent geographical, cultural, and economic space, structured by centuries of human presence, caravan routes, and autonomous social organizations, long predating colonization.

    To those who wonder about the etymology of the word “Azawad”: do they ask themselves the same question about the origin of the names “Mali,” “Niger,” or “Burkina Faso”? All these names have a history, some borrowed from rivers, others from bygone empires or local languages. Azawad derives its name from an ancient geographical and pastoral reality: it designates an area of clay depression favorable for grazing, known and named as such by its inhabitants for generations.

    To those who argue that Tuaregs are a minority in certain areas of Azawad: the right to self-determination and sovereignty over a territory is not proportional to the number of inhabitants. Indigenous peoples and communities historically established in a space have rights that the demographic criterion alone cannot erase; this is moreover recognized by international law, notably the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

    To those who lump Azawad’s demands together with jihadist terrorism: let them cite a single terrorist act—suicide bombing, massacre of sedentary civilians, ideological hostage-taking—claimed by the Azawad Movements. The confusion maintained between secular nationalist movements and jihadist groups is a deliberate political manipulation. In contrast, the abuses committed by the Malian army and its auxiliary militias against the civilian populations of Azawad are documented by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and MINUSMA.

    To those who contest the historical legitimacy of the Tuaregs over Azawad: let them study the toponymy of this space. The names of the mountains, valleys, wells, caravan routes, and grazing sites are in Tamasheq, Hassaniya, Songhai, and Peul, the languages of those who have populated these lands for centuries. Geography itself testifies to who shaped this space.

    To those who wave the slogan “One and Indivisible Mali”: this principle of intangible national unity is itself a direct legacy of the French Jacobin conception of the state, imported during decolonization. Those who denounce colonialism on one hand while sacralizing its institutional constructions on the other should question this contradiction.

    To those seeking historical legitimacy for present-day Mali: without French colonization, an inhabitant of Kayes and an inhabitant of Kidal would never have lived under the same political institutions. They belonged to distinct entities with profoundly different social organizations, economies, and cultures. The Malian state is a 20th-century creation—a political reality that must be managed and transformed, not sacralized.

    To those who reduce the Tuareg question to a racial or skin color issue: Tuareg identity is defined by language (Tamasheq), culture, territory, and social organization, not by a pigmentary classification. Reducing this question to race means projecting foreign reading grids onto a reality that they distort and instrumentalize.

    To those who wish to impose a predominantly Mandinka national narrative: Mali is a multi-ethnic and multicultural state. Songhais, Peuls, Tuaregs, Arabs, Dogons, Senufos, and many others are custodians of millennia-old histories, languages, and civilizations. A state that does not embrace this plurality and imposes a hegemonic national history condemns itself to fracture and bears direct responsibility for the conflicts it claims to deplore.

    To those who doubt the viability of an Azawadian state: have they seriously evaluated the viability of Sahelian states in their current form? States incapable of ensuring security, basic services, and the equitable representation of all their components across their entire territory cannot invoke “viability” as an argument against self-determination.

    To those who demonize federalism and regional autonomy: have they measured the scale of the failure of Sahelian states in their current form? These centralized states, inherited from French colonial partitioning, were confiscated at independence by a few privileged communities, while others—equally legitimate, equally rooted in these lands—were deliberately excluded. Not by chance, but by political choice.

    To those who proclaim themselves guardians of stability in the Central Sahel: Can they honestly look this fundamental question in the face: How can one pretend to build peace by crushing the peoples who have inhabited these lands for centuries? The Tuaregs, the Peuls, the Arabs, the Toubous are not obstacles to stability. They are essential actors in any lasting solution. To ignore them, marginalize them, and repress them militarily is not only a historical injustice; it is a major strategic blunder.

    To those demanding a prior referendum: do they have a single historical example of a national liberation movement that began with an electoral consultation organized by the power it is fighting? Algeria, Vietnam, and Eritrea conquered their right to self-determination through struggle.

    To those who believe the Malian army can impose the status quo by force: do they know that since the first rebellions of the 1960s, the Malian army has never won a decisive military victory alone against Azawadian fighters? In 2012, within weeks, armed movements recaptured the entire North without significant resistance. It was only with the French military intervention (Operation Serval) and Algerian diplomatic pressures that the collapse of the Malian state was halted. Brute force, without a political solution, produces only cycles of violence.

    To those who still believe in a purely military solution: the balance of power is not a fixed given. It is built over time through multiple parameters—political, diplomatic, demographic, economic, and media-related—which are the monopoly of no single actor. Recent Sahelian history shows that military victories without a political settlement only displace crises.

    To those who think France supports Azawad: if Paris had truly supported Azawad, even in 2012, the latter would probably be in a different reality today. Exactly the opposite happened: France intervened militarily to save the Malian state from collapse. France has its interests in the region; they have historically advocated for the stability of states, not for the dismemberment of the systems France itself created.

    To those who consider Modibo Keïta an unreserved national hero: do they know that he is responsible for the bloody repression of the 1960s Tuareg rebellion, during which hundreds, if not thousands, of Azawadian civilians were massacred? Do they know that the Malian state has to this day neither recognized these crimes nor condemned a single political or military leader for the abuses committed over sixty years against the populations of Azawad, despite them being extensively documented?

    To those who point to the presence of Tuareg cadres within Malian institutions as proof of integration: all emancipation struggles in history have known collaborators, rallyists, or traitors from the concerned people. Their existence does not invalidate the legitimacy of the collective claim; it is often one of its inherent complexities.

    To those who believe they can delegitimize Tuareg aspirations by equating nomadism with an absence of territorial ties: let them first question the political reality of the Sahel and Central Sahara at the dawn of colonization. They will discover sophisticated governance structures, political confederations with well-delimited territorial competencies, and communities maintaining relationships with their pastoral spaces of a depth and continuity that sedentary life cannot claim as a monopoly. Confusing mobility with a lack of anchorage means projecting a sedentary-centered conception of territory onto Saharan societies—a conception that is itself historically situated rather than universal.

    To those who think Tuaregs “have war in their blood”: every human being aspires to live in peace, security, and dignity on the land of their ancestors. If men and women take up arms generation after generation, it is because they have found no other way to defend this fundamental right. Resistance is not a character trait; it is a response to injustice. It so happens that living conditions and an environment shaped by centuries of mobility and survival have developed among the Tuaregs, as among other peoples of the Sahara-Sahel, a warrior culture and a relationship with arms that enables them today to stand up, with few resources, to the regular armies of the central states.

    To those who sincerely campaign for peace and stability in the Central Sahel: one question stands above all else: have you made justice, respect for life, and the rights of communities the true foundation of your commitment? Without this fundamental anchorage, the most noble fight is reduced to hollow rhetoric—a catalog of slogans detached from the realities on the ground. Peace cannot be decreed. It is built, patiently, on foundations of recognized dignity, delivered justice, and restored trust between citizens and their communities.

    Abdoulahi Attayoub

    May 8, 2026

  • Situation in Kidal: statement by ODTE-TANAT

    The Organization of the Tuareg Diaspora in Europe (ODTE)/TANAT expresses its deepest concern regarding the recent events in Kidal and the various human rights violations observed on the territory of Azawad. ODTE-TANAT wishes to express its full solidarity with the bereaved families and presents them with its most heartfelt condolences.

    The crisis currently sweeping through Azawad, particularly in Kidal, calls for a thoughtful and appropriate reaction to push back those who seek through cunning and manipulation to prevent the emergence of a political entity that nonetheless constitutes the legitimate aspiration of local populations. Everyone will understand that this is by no means a tribal conflict in Kidal, but rather a coalition of interests with multiple objectives. The Tuaregs who allow themselves to be instrumentalized against their own interests and those of their community do not realize the extent of the trap and will be the first victims of this machination. History is peppered with examples across the world. Already in the 1990s, the same type of instrumentalization led to serious events that constituted a precedent whose aftereffects still hinder the building of a lasting cohesion among the various sensitivities of Azawad.

    The emancipation of Azawad is an irreversible process because it corresponds both to an aspiration widely shared by the populations concerned and to a decisive imperative in the stability and securing of the Sahelo-Saharan space. The ethnolinguistic communities of Azawad understand today that their interests are linked and that only their unity will weigh against Mali and the International Community. Experience has shown that those who go against the current of History always end up paying the price.

    The Tuareg community of Azawad must take the measure of the stakes being played out in this part of the world. The maneuvers orchestrated by local and international actors clearly show that the future will be built essentially with forces structured on a military and political level—forces capable of developing a consistent political agenda, pursued with determination and responsibility. Misunderstandings and internal rivalries within the Community should not serve as leverage for forces seeking to diminish the role of the Tuareg people in the sub-region.

    Moral, religious, and customary authorities should get involved and contribute to smoothing over any dispute whose source lies in the survival of certain archaisms that are now outdated.

    Since the collapse of the Malian state in 2012 and the placing of this country under international tutelage, things can no longer be as they were before. Only a culpable narrow-mindedness could lead one to think otherwise.

    ODTE-TANAT reminds France and the International Community of their responsibility in protecting civilian populations and asks them to create the conditions for a rapid return to political dialogue between the Malian authorities and the Azawad Movements.

    For the ODTE Bureau

    Paris, August 2, 2016

    Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB

    President

  • In the footsteps of the MFUA, and the struggle of Azawad continues…

    Azawad-Mali

    The CMA in the footsteps of the MFUA, and the struggle of Azawad continues…

    France and Algeria know that they are continuing to “braid over lice”

    Despite clear opposition expressed by the population concerned, the international community, impatient to resolve a problem it must have judged too insignificant to devote the necessary time to, chose to force the issue in order to compel the leaders of the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) to sign agreements that clearly constitute a setback in the process intended to lead to a definitive peace between Azawad and Mali.

    In view of the texts and the beginning of their implementation process, these agreements are very likely to fall into the oblivion of history, like the previous ones, once the current actors have been closely neutralized by the integration system set up by international mediation.

    The repetition of the pattern of the 1990s, which led to the disarmament and disappearance of the movements, should once again generate a fairly similar process. Moreover, sensitive as well to a presentation conforming to their vision of a world very distant from them, Mali’s financial partners will not fail to show up to bail out bodies invented for the occasion, impeccable on paper, very classic in their operating mode, but bizarrely quite distant from the ground in their conception. These same partners will moreover launch development plans whose effectiveness no one will care about when the lights go out, nor their real influence on the living conditions of the populations supposed to be the beneficiaries. The use of the funds thus collected must respond to the immediate imperatives of integrating the Movements into the process of “implementing” the agreements. Without any real requirement for success, except on paper, this “implementation” of the agreements will likely have one consequence, and alas, it may be its sole success: it could, if we are not careful, foster the disappearance of any possibility of carrying forward the demands of local populations. Without imperative vigilance, it is not excluded to imagine that certain leaders of the Movements will themselves take charge of doing the work in place of the Malian state and the international community to muzzle any hint of protest. The goal sought for many actors, like in any good comedy.

    The absence of references to Azawad at the Paris meeting on October 22, 2015, is troubling and indicates in this regard the state of advanced decomposition of the Azawadi spirit among certain leaders of the Movements.

    Putting the evolution of this issue since the 1990s into perspective, one is forced to note that the methods used to neutralize the MFUA (Unified Movements and Front of Azawad) are still working wonderfully with the CMA. Will a flame of peace still be necessary to drive the point home, much to the dismay of the civilian victims of the repression of the 1990s, who are still waiting for the international community to transfer their executioners to the ICC to answer for their responsibility during the multiple massacres nevertheless well-documented by human rights defense associations and organizations.

    Taking into account both the evolution of the international context and the weight of other threats weighing on the sub-region, it is hard to understand the choices of the International Community and the zeal of certain leaders of the Azawad Movements. A zeal undoubtedly driven by a desire to get it over with as quickly as possible, whereas it would be necessary above all to restore power to those who have demonstrated their determination to live at their own pace and not under the thumb of civil servants coming from the South behaving as under some kind of colonization—a desire that also encourages consolidating the positions of the Malian state in its constant will to reduce all the advances obtained in recent years by the fighters and populations of Azawad.

    The political cadres of Azawad are victims of the weakness of their strategy vis-à-vis the Malian state and above all the International Community, which invariably succeeds in drowning the most enlightened ones in a pseudo-inclusive rhetoric whose purpose is to make the real objectives disappear and occupy them all with leadership quarrels and other ethnic or tribal considerations.

    Several profiles can be observed among these cadres, despite the shifting nature of certain postures and the influence of occult forces maneuvering to undermine the unity of the Movements: the fatalists, who think they have no other choice than to yield to pressures and participate despite themselves in the destruction of achievements obtained at the cost of unheard-of sacrifices for generations, and the opportunists, whose only motivations are access to dividends and a material situation that must be reached as quickly as possible.

    The distress of hundreds of thousands of Azawadi refugees, scattered throughout the sub-region and further still, should impose a great deal of caution on leaders who wish to make commitments in their name.

    The aspirations of the populations of Azawad, legitimate and inalienable, will find their way in the respect of each people’s right to determine its choice of organization to strive toward a better future. The leaders of the Azawad Movements, beyond the CMA, know that “One and Indivisible Mali” exists for now only in the slogans of extremists who ride the wave of the International Community’s goodwill. In this matter, one should always keep in mind that the security and geopolitical agenda takes precedence over other considerations in the jungle of international relations.

    In the end, the biggest losers could be Mali, Azawad, and the populations of these two entities.

    More than ever before, the International Community will bear the responsibility for what is happening today, because the Malian state is no longer capable of posing as a credible interlocutor for the populations of Azawad. Above all, it would be necessary to devote time, resources, and deeply mobilize the men and women of this territory to reverse the feeling of abandonment or despair that every Azawadi permanently carries within them. The Malian state has been behaving like a perfect schizophrenic since independence, because while fiercely clinging to this territory to assert its power, it forgets its educational duty which should have consisted in making the people of the South accept these new Malians—very different, but Malians all the same—and sends its civil servants to “administer” Azawad as if this territory were populated by simpletons incapable of managing themselves, whereas the latter have been proving for centuries that they can live without external intervention and possess social structures as complete and competent as those governing the societies of the South themselves. Furthermore, the Malian state has failed in its governance, notably by treating populations in a differentiated manner. It does not have, and will not have anytime soon, the human and material means to ensure the security of populations for whom it represents, moreover, the main threat given the abuses committed against them since the country’s independence.

    Abdoulahi ATTAYOUB