While fighting has resumed in the North between the Malian army and the Permanent Strategic Framework (CSP), divisions are appearing within this coalition of armed groups signatories to the 2015 peace agreement.
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It has been two weeks since the CSP, accusing the Malian army of having violated the peace agreement, took up arms again and attacked the Fama base in Bourem, then that of Léré, eight days ago. But on Sunday, in a press release, the Movement for the Salvation of Azawad (MSA) distanced itself from this strategy and announced that it was leaving the CSP. The MSA had already dissociated itself from previous attacks and CSP press releases.
From now on, the rupture is complete: this armed group from the Ménaka region, near Niger, in the three border zone, slams the door of the coalition. The MSA has been on the front line for a year and a half facing the bloody offensives of the Islamic State group, which have left several hundred dead. Today, the MSA’s stated priority is therefore to fight against the jihadist group. The MSA “ cannot be engaged in a conflict other than that which it leads against the perpetrators of mass massacres of civilian populations », Estimates Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, its secretary general. Who deplores in passing that the other armed groups members of the CSP did not respond to his call to fight the Islamic State organization in Ménaka.
The MSA recalls its commitment to the implementation of the 2015 peace agreement and therefore chooses to remain the ally of the Malian Armed Forces and the “loyalist” wing of Gatia, that of General Gamou who created this group armed forces also present in the Ménaka and Gao regions.
Another wing of Gatia, that of its historic general secretary, Fahad Ag Almahmoud, has on the contrary resolutely committed itself to the side of the CSP, in a war that it considers “ wanted by the junta in power in Bamako “.