U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy Sailors and Naval Construction Forces personnel board a U.S. Air Force C-130 in Rota, Spain, April 15, 2021 for a joint forces readiness exercise in Mali, Africa. Since a May 2021 coup, Mali has shifted away from its military partnership with France and the U.S., and has turned instead to Russia’s Wagner Group. (Sgt. William Chockey/U.S. Marine Corps)
DAKAR, Senegal — Following an attack by one of al-Qaeda’s most powerful affiliates that killed dozens in Mali’s capital, the group’s message was clear: Its target had been Mali’s junta government — and the Russian mercenaries meant to be serving as its protectors.
When militants struck Bamako before dawn last month, filming much of their assault, they ambushed a military training school and set fire to planes at the international airport, where Russia’s Wagner Group is reported to have one of its bases in Mali. The al-Qaeda affiliate released a statement afterward declaring the attack had been driven by vengeance — a punishment for “massacres and slaughters committed by this ruling clique and its Russian allies against our Muslim people.”
The bloody strike by Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) — which is estimated to have killed at least 77 people in Bamako, the majority of them young gendarme recruits — marked the first attack inside the capital since 2016. It followed a catastrophic assault by Tuareg rebels, who have long been pushing for their own state in northern Mali, and JNIM militants on Wagner and Malian troops in July.
Western and Malian officials and analysts say the Bamako attack underscored both Wagner’s inefficacy in countering Islamist violence and a strategic shift by JNIM, which has used Wagner’s abuses to win support and increase its attacks in Mali’s south, potentially threatening coastal West African nations long considered stable.
Security in neighboring capitals has already increased in the wake of the Bamako attack. There have been two dozen incidents linked to militants within about 30 miles of Mali’s borders with Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal and Mauritania in the past year — after virtually no such events in previous years.
“Wagner has committed so many atrocities against civilians that JNIM is focusing on them in an effort to win hearts and minds,” said Wassim Nasr, a Sahel specialist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center who has researched how Wagner’s tactics inflame violence. “And why wouldn’t they? It’s easy. It will help them recruit, and it is already helping them recruit.”
In 2015, some of JNIM’s predecessor groups launched an attack at the Radisson Blu in Bamako, taking 170 people, almost all civilians, hostage and killing 20. JNIM’s choice of military targets during the attack last month was specific, Nasr said, making clear that the group had chosen to concentrate attacks in urban areas against Mali’s government and foreign forces — not civilians.
So far, Mali’s military leaders, who seized power in a 2020 coup, have largely ignored the Sept. 17 attack. Assimi Goïta, Mali’s interim president, mentioned it only briefly in a speech a few days later. Mali’s government did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
When Goïta and other military officers launched their coup, they blamed Mali’s civilian leaders for failing to curb rising violence linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates. The new military government asked French troops to leave and in late 2021 welcomed forces from Wagner, which had previously helped the government in the Central African Republic improve its security situation.
But the situation in Mali proved more complicated and intractable. Increasing attacks by Islamist groups have made this region a new epicenter for extremist violence, according to the Global Terrorism Index.
At the same time, civilian fatalities linked to the Malian army and the Russian outfit have soared. Analysis by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), a nonprofit that tracks conflict-related deaths, shows there were 924 civilian fatalities connected to Malian armed forces and Russian mercenaries last year — up from fewer than 100 in 2021.
As violence by Wagner has increased, so has hostile rhetoric by JNIM — a coalition of groups formed in 2017 that now controls vast swaths of territory in Mali and Burkina Faso. At one point in 2020, JNIM called on Mali’s government to kick out French forces and seemed willing to come to the table to negotiate, so long as foreign forces were not involved. But after the junta’s decision to work with Russia — Mali has never officially acknowledged Wagner’s presence, referring to a state-to-state partnership — JNIM’s leader said in a speech that the government had “learned nothing from lessons of the past.”
Daniel Eizenga, a research fellow focused on the Sahel at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said there has been a “pivot” by JNIM from “demonizing the French to demonizing Wagner” that is in some ways justified by Wagner’s tactics — which are often more brutal than that of JNIM.
But Wagner, which is estimated to have between 1,000 and 2,000 troops on the ground, has helped Mali make some military gains, said Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim, deputy director of the International Crisis Group’s Sahel project, including reinforcing positions held by the Malian army in central and northern Mali.
Support from Wagner, in terms of both personnel and drones, allowed Mali’s army last year to accomplish its long-held goal of retaking Kidal — a town in the country’s north that Tuareg rebels had held for about a decade.
But recent attacks have undermined the military-mercenary partnership, Ibrahim said, and reports are emerging about tensions between Mali’s army and Wagner troops. In late July, an attack by Tuareg rebels and JNIM militants on a convoy of Malian and Wagner troops in Tinzaouaten left dozens dead, marking what is believed to be the deadliest assault to date on Russian mercenaries in Africa.
Then the Bamako attack showed that “JNIM is capable at hitting at the heart of power,” Ibrahim said, and “undermines the official rhetoric about turning the tide against jihadists.”
There appears to be at least some disappointment within Mali’s government about the recent performance of Russian forces. “Tinzaouaten might have been the beginning of the end when it comes to that relationship,” a foreign official said, adding that Wagner’s role during the Bamako attack is still being analyzed but that it is clear the group was partly responsible for a “serious breach in security.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Héni Nsaibia, a senior researcher with ACLED, said the fact that just 13 militants were able to assault military targets in Bamako, filming and posting videos before they were killed, has sent “the credibility of the state plummeting.” In one video, a young man dressed in camouflage sets fire to the engine of the presidential plane.
“The attack revealed how fragile the capital is,” Nsaibia said.
The Malian government has not yet released an official death toll, but ACLED put the total at 90, including the deaths of all 13 militants. The young gendarme recruits killed had been sleeping when the attack began, Nsaibia said.
For some Bamako residents, the attack deepened concerns about the country’s direction, while for others it served as a push to get involved in the fight.
Djeneba Dolo, 31, who owns a restaurant close to the gendarmerie camp that was attacked, said that she could hear gunshots and sirens and no longer feels safe. “The situation of this country is something else,” she said, adding that it is not mercenaries who will improve Mali’s security.
Hasseye Moctar, 29, who is in the process of applying to join Mali’s military, said he is motivated by a combination of economic necessity and love for his country.
“Mali needs all its children,” said Moctar, adding that lines at recruitment centers are “completely full.”
Mohamed Ag Hamaleck in Bamako contributed to this report.
