The Malian army claims on November 14, 2023 to have taken a position in Kidal (north), stronghold of successive independence rebellions that Mali has experienced throughout its history. Control of this city represents both a strategic and symbolic issue. Decryption.
Kidal is a small town and a huge symbol. Nestled on the borders of the northern Malian desert, between the sandy expanses dotted with acacias and the mountain ranges of the Adrar des Ifoghas, this city is the stronghold of the successive independence rebellions that Mali has experienced throughout its history. The northern regions of Mali are referred to by the separatists as Azawad.
Emptied of its inhabitants
The city of Kidal has nearly 30,000 inhabitants and the eponymous region 68,000, according to the last official census in 2009. The population of Kidal is predominantly Tuareg, although many communities are present there.
In addition to normal demographic developments, the population of Kidal has increased considerably in recent months with the influx of several thousand internally displaced persons, fleeing in particular the massacres of the Islamic State in the Ménaka region or the advance of the army. Malian and its auxiliaries of Wagner – accused of abuses against civilians – in the Kidal region.
But in recent days, the probable imminence of fighting and the army’s bombardments on the city have prompted many departures. The city has today, according to many local sources, been largely emptied of its inhabitants.
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Immediate objective: the Minusma camp
The Malian transitional authorities have made the recovery of the former UN Minusma camp both a military and political objective.
Minusma left Kidal on October 31, as part of its final withdrawal from Mali, which must be completed by the end of the year. The handover of its camps by Minusma is done with the Malian political authorities. For the Malian transitional authorities, the national army is intended to invest these camps “ everywhere on the national territory “. The rebels of the Permanent Strategic Framework (CSP), which mainly bring together armed groups from the North, signatories of the 2015 peace agreement, oppose it and invoke this peace agreement: Kidal (like Tessalit, Aguelhoc and Anefis, in the Kidal region) was under the control of rebel groups when the peace agreement was signed, and the return of the army to Kidal was to take place in these localities according to the terms provided for in the agreement: implementation place of a reconstituted national army integrating combatants from the signatory armed groups, installation of decentralized territorial authorities.
In summary, the Malian transitional authorities have made the entry of the army into Kidal a question of national sovereignty, while the CSP rebels denounce a violation of the peace agreement.
The international mediation for monitoring the peace agreement, led by Algeria, did not comment on the resumption of the war and on the responsibilities involved.
Symbolic objective: the historical cradle of rebellions
Beyond the immediate issue of recovering the military camp left free by Minusma, the capture of Kidal is an immense symbol.
This city, stronghold of the CSP, is also the cradle of the independence rebellion of 2012 and all those that Mali has known in its history (1916, 1963-1964, 1990-1996, 2012).
Today, the CSP rebels are only demanding the application of the 2015 peace agreement and, despite the resumption of hostilities, have not reactivated the independence demand abandoned when the peace agreement was signed. . But many of their fighters and residents of Kidal see the resumption of the war as a new opportunity to seize.
The Malian transitional authorities have not officially withdrawn from the agreement either. But many soldiers and ordinary citizens in southern Mali see the resumption of war as the long-awaited moment to take revenge after the military defeat of 2012.
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A political settlement therefore remains possible, on paper, but very unlikely in the immediate future.
Both camps seem convinced of their legitimacy, sure of their strength and determined to fight. The return to dialogue will undoubtedly only occur when the new balance of power has been established, through arms.
Signatory groups, rebels, jihadists and terrorists
When it was created in April 2021, the CSP brought together all the armed groups in the North that had signed the 2015 peace agreement, namely the ex-independence rebels of the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA, which brings together -even the MNLA, the HCUA and a branch of the MAA) and the Platform groups having always defended the unity of Mali (notably the MSA and Gatia). Today, the Platform groups have mostly withdrawn from the CSP, which is no longer made up of the CMA movements and a minority of the elements that formed the Platform.
Finally, the Malian transitional authorities, in their press releases, claim to be waging a war in Kidal against “ terrorist groups “. A term used for several months by Bamako to designate, indistinctly, the armed groups signatories to the 2015 peace agreement belonging to the CMA, such as the jihadist groups of Jnim (Support Group for Islam and Muslims) , linked to al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State.
The “erasing” of this distinction between armed groups carrying political demands recognized by the peace agreement, and jihadist groups which are not involved in this agreement, is an additional way for the Malian transitional authorities to legitimize the offensive in progress. And a form of internal contradiction, since the Malian transitional authorities assure that they remain committed to the 2015 peace agreement.
For their part, the CSP rebels assure that jihadist groups are also their enemies. The porosity between the signatory groups and the jihadist groups is an established fact: certain fighters have moved from one to the other in recent years; the HCUA, a member of the CSP, emerged from a split from Ansar Dine, linked to al-Qaeda. Above all, in the current situation, the forces of rebel groups and those of al-Qaeda are both concentrated, at the same time, against the Malian armed forces. But the CSP rebels, although they cannot deny this convergence of interests, deny any coordination with jihadist groups. The CSP and the Jnim claim their actions separately. In 2012, Malian forces were defeated by cumulative attacks from independence groups and jihadist groups. But al-Qaeda and its allies then ousted the independence groups, by force, to occupy the northern regions alone for more than ten months. Until the reconquest in 2013, by the Malian forces and their allies at the time, the French soldiers of Operation Serval.