Tag: Mokhtar Belmokhtar

Any jihadist “proto-state” will attract attention from a superior military power, which will destroy the proto-state and force jihadists into remote areas. Belmokhtar and his fellow field commander Abdelhamid Abu Zayd cultivated new relationships, for example with the Tuareg politician and rebel leader Iyad ag Ghali. Timbuktu was an important node in AQIM’s operations, not just because it witnessed an assassination and a kidnapping, but also because it became a base for Abu Zayd’s men, and because ethnic ties had helped AQIM and its predecessor organization establish a foothold there. It is a bridge between northern and central Mali, not just logistically but politically — the jihadists in northern Mali are more elite socially and politically, whereas central Malian jihadism is a more grassroots affair that involves widespread community-level violence as opposed to the more targeted terrorism in the north. Meanwhile, Abu al-Hammam has tried to grow local political coalitions with tribes, especially around Timbuktu. For his part, Abu al-Hammam and battalion commanders such as Abu Talha al-Libi have continued to cultivate relations with Arabs and Tuareg in the Timbuktu region — particularly with the Awlad Idriss, the tribe into which Belmokhtar married, and with the Awlad Ich, another tribe. Killing M’Begui made sense as political sabotage, but it threatened JNIM’s relations with M’Begui’s Awlad Idriss tribe. It was one thing, many years ago, for AQIM emir Abdelmalik Droukdel to advise his Mali-based field commanders to cultivate good relations with Malian tribes; it is another thing to put that advice into practice and calculate the various tradeoffs involved in each act of either outreach or violence. Meanwhile, when AQIM takes sides with one militia over another, it risks eroding its image as an actor above the ethnic and tribal fray. The question is whether AQIM/JNIM can build political influence in a way that allows them to rule without ruin.