### The rise of jihad in the Sahara

As has been argued, the Tuareg rebellion of 2012 was much more than a simple revival of previous insurgencies. It was different not only militarily – doped as it was by Libyan arms – but also ideologically. In the first months of 2012, divisions between the MNLA and the jihadist coalition of Ansar Dine and its allies had been temporarily subordinated to their shared desire to push the Malian army out of the North. Once that task was accomplished, with no small help – albeit unintended – from Mali's mutinous soldiers, rebels and mujahideen quickly fell to fighting one another. Within a few short months of the collapse of the Malian army, the MNLA lost control of virtually all of northern Mali to a militarily superior alliance of Ansar Dine, AQIM, and MUJAO. Rich in weapons and flush with cash from trafficking narcotics and seizing European hostages for ransom, these movements soon publicly discarded the MNLA's nationalist claims to the Azawad and competed politically and militarily with the MNLA on the ground.

The possible alliance between the MNLA and the different Jihadi–Salafi movements unravelled quickly, but it considerably clouded the analysis of both outside observers and regional actors. Several factors indicate that such an alliance existed, whether or not one actually obtained. Ironically, most important among those factors were the active media campaigns of the MNLA, which claimed attacks and victories in the north that were not theirs. Assaults on Aguelhok, Tessalit and Kidal were all carried out by an alliance of Jihadi–Salafi movements – Ansar Dine and various AQIM units – who did not directly claim their victories. MNLA participation in them remains unclear; the strongest evidence for it remains the statements of the MNLA itself. All witnesses concur, however, on the sizable presence of mujahideen, while AQIM elements circulated among the population to herald the arrival of jihad in the Azawad. The MNLA's own military fortunes were more mixed. For instance, the MNLA spent months in the Timbuktu area without being able to take the city. Before the MNLA could launch its final assault, local Berabish Arab militia leaders essentially handed the city over to AQIM to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Tuareg separatists. Likewise, despite being active in the conquest of Gao – when rape was widespread and the pillaging of medical facilities systematic – the MNLA did not control the city centre, which fell into the hands of mujahideen. It now appears that the only battle the MNLA fought and won alone was in Ménaka. The confusion around the relation between the MNLA and the mujahideen was enhanced by the media strategy of Ansar Dine leader Iyad ag Aghali, who used the MNLA's media outreach as a curtain to hide his own politically toxic alliance with AQIM (by the same token, the MNLA declared AQIM its primary enemy, even though the Malian army was its first target). Only in March 2012 did Ansar Dine release a video on YouTube claiming their victories in Tessalit, Aguelhok and Kidal, and explaining their goals to the world.5 Ansar Dine's military victories led to the defection of a core of experienced MNLA fighters from the Kidal Region to Ansar Dine, and the MNLA appeared ever weaker on the ground. MUJAO fighters chased the MNLA from its strongholds at the edge of the city of Gao in June 2012. An attempt to recapture Gao from the mujahideen in November 2012 failed dramatically, and defections continued. Throughout the second half of 2012, the MNLA was increasingly strapped for cash, but the movement still had a number of fighters – especially from Tuareg tribes from the area between Tin Zawaten and Ménaka – and some support among populations in the Kidal Region and parts of the Gao Region.

While Tuareg nationalism has been a force in Saharan politics for decades, the rise of political Islam with a Salafist orientation is much more recent. Major factors of political–religious transformation include the arrival in the late 1990s of the South Asian Islamist movement Tablighi Jama'at – which strongly condemns recourse to jihad in a Muslim society in the absence of certain necessary legal conditions, the emergence of AQIM's ancestor, the Algeria-based Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) in 2003, and reaction to the launching of US counter-terrorism programmes focused on military training in the region. Over the last decade or more, long-standing practices of international smuggling and migration have become more intense, complex, and profitable, while the technological infrastructure has been transformed. All these factors complement the previous experience of many Malian Arab and Tuareg as migrants in the Maghreb, Libya and West Africa. The subsequent socio-political changes have reshaped their perception of their political situation according to the new global position of their homeland. The Tuareg organised in Ansar Dine were convinced that only their Salafi ideology could unify the various Tuareg clans, the different ethnic groups in the region, and even the whole of Mali. These political convictions proposed an alternative to both the Malian nation state, riddled with corruption and nepotism, and the political ideal of Tuareg independence, which has been unable to overcome the divisive clan structures within Tuareg society. Iyad ag Aghali, the leader and founder of Ansar Dine, has personal experience with these political realities. His initial adherence to the Tablighi Jama'at can be partly explained by his disappointment in the failure of nationalist political projects and armed rebellion in the 1980s and 1990s. Nevertheless, many Ansar Dine members may have fought not so much for shari'a but due to their personal or tribal loyalty, and Iyad himself has a history of pragmatic adaptation to political developments.

The Saharan conflict of 2012 differed from earlier episodes of rebellion in the sheer scale of resources available to the mujahideen, quite apart from the Libyan factor. With money won over the last decade by holding European hostages for ransom, as well as by ‘taxing’ or offering ‘protection’ to smugglers of narcotics and other commodities, the mujahideen were able to procure and maintain firepower and mobility superior to both the Malian army and the MNLA. AQIM in particular has received millions of euros in ransoms over the last decade, and while its relation to smuggling and narco-trafficking is not clear – some analysts insist it is not at all involved – MUJAO in particular is thought to be deeply implicated in the latter. Both groups could readily afford the expensive illegally trafficked supplies needed to sustain their effort. Early in the conflict the mujahideen offered high salaries to new recruits, thus attracting both inexperienced youths from all the Northern ethnic groups and experienced fighters from the MNLA. The mujahideen's superior equipment partly explains their initial victories on the battlefield, and the ease with which they routed the MNLA in June and July 2012. The mujahideen also used their cash reserves to pay for food relief aid, fuel and medicines to run local hospitals and power stations, thereby creating some goodwill among the local population. Early in their occupation of northern towns and cities, they increased their popularity still further by compensating merchants for their losses when they were forbidden to sell cigarettes or alcohol, by financing marriage ceremonies for young couples too poor to wed, and by offering high bride prices to marry local women, at least some of whom accepted the offer, thereby embedding the organisation deeper in the local community. The focus on AQIM and its allied movements the MUJAO and Ansar Dine has long been on their involvement in criminal activities in the Sahara. The question of what the Jihadi–Salafi movements needed the criminally obtained money for is now answered: to occupy a large territory in West Africa and to rule it according to their concept of shari'a.