JSOU Report 15-5 Countering Violent Extremism in Mali Moyar

Countering Violent 

Extremism in Mali

Mark Moyar

JSOU Report 15-5

November 2015

Joint Special Operations University

7701 Tampa Point Boulevard

MacDill AFB FL 33621

https://jsou.socom.mil
Joint Special Operations University

Brian A. Maher, Ed.D., SES, President

Kenneth H. Poole, Ed.D., Director, Center for Special Operations Studies and Research

Robert Nalepa, Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force, Ret., Editor in Chief

Will Irwin, MMAS, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.; 

Peter McCabe, Ph.D., Political Science, Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret.; Gregory Salomon, Colonel, U.S. Army; 

Paul Lieber, Ph.D., Mass Communication & Public Affairs; Resident Senior Fellows

Anna-Marie Wyant, M.A., English, JSOU Press Editor 

Frederick Zimmerman, Master Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, Ret., JSOU Press Editor

Editorial Advisory Board

Roby C. Barrett

Ph.D., Middle Eastern & South Asian History 

Public Policy Center Middle East Institute and 

JSOU Senior Fellow

James J.F. Forest 

Ph.D., Higher Education Administration

Associate Professor, School of Criminology and 

Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts 

Lowell and JSOU Senior Fellow

Mario Forestier

Chief Warrant Officer, U.S. Army, Ret.

Director, Joint Special Operations Command 

Center for Counterterrorism Studies

Thomas H. Henriksen

Ph.D., History, Hoover Institution 

Stanford University and JSOU Senior Fellow

Bernd Horn

Colonel, Canadian Dept. of National Defence 

Ph.D., War Studies

Director, CANSOFCOM Professional 

Development Centre

Russell D. Howard

Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Ret.

Senior Research Fellow and adjunct professor, 

Middlebury Institute of International Studies at 

Monterey and JSOU Senior Fellow

John D. Jogerst

Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret.

James Kiras

Ph.D., History, School of Advanced Air and Space 

Studies, Air University and JSOU Associate Fellow

William W. Mendel

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret. 

JSOU Senior Fellow

Alvaro de Souza Pinheiro

Major General, Brazilian Army, Ret.

JSOU Associate Fellow

Louis Alberto Ordóñez Rubio,

Vice Admiral, Colombian Navy, Ret.,

Ph.D., Education, Director, Centro Regional de 

Estudios Estrategicos en Seguridad

James F. Powers, Jr.

Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.

JSOU Senior Fellow 

Bryan C. Price

Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army

Ph.D., Political Science

Director, Combating Terrorism Center at 

West Point

Richard H. Shultz, Jr.

Ph.D., Political Science

Director, International Security 

Studies Program, The Fletcher School, 

Tufts University and JSOU Senior Fellow

Robert G. Spulak, Jr.

Ph.D., Physics/Nuclear Engineering

Sandia National Laboratories 

and JSOU Associate Fellow 

Jessica Glicken Turnley

Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology

Galisteo Consulting Group 

and JSOU Senior Fellow 

Rich Yarger

Ph.D., History 

JSOU Senior Fellow

Joint Special Operations University

and the Center for Special Operations Studies and Research

The Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) provides its publications 

to contribute toward expanding the body of knowledge about joint special 

operations. JSOU publications advance the insights and recommendations 

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JSOU is the educational component of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. The JSOU 

mission is to educate SOF executive, senior, and intermediate leaders and 

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On the cover. Malian army soldiers engage in heavy fighting against insurgents in Gao, Mali. Photo used by permission of Newscom.

JSOU Press Report 15-5

The JSOU Press

MacDill Air Force Base, Florida

2015

Countering Violent 

Extremism in Mali

Mark Moyar
This monograph and other JSOU publications can be found at https://jsou.

socom.mil. Click on Publications. Comments about this publication are 

invited and should be forwarded to the Director of the Center for Special 

Operations Studies and Research, Joint Special Operations University, 7701 

Tampa Point Blvd., MacDill AFB FL 33621.

*******

The JSOU Center for Special Operations Studies and Research (CSOSR) is currently 

accepting written works relevant to special operations for potential publication. For 

more information, please contact the CSOSR Director at jsou_research@socom.mil. 

Thank you for your interest in the JSOU Press. 

*******

This work was cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

ISBN 978-1-941715-03-1
The views expressed in this publication are entirely those of the 

author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position 

of the United States Government, Department of Defense, United 

States Special Operations Command, or the Joint Special Operations 

University.

Authors are granted academic freedom provided their work does not 

disclose classified information, jeopardize operations security, or 

misrepresent official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers 

authors to offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the 

interest of furthering debate on key issues.
Recent Publications of the JSOU Press

The 2005 Iraqi Sunni Awakening: The Role of the Desert Protectors Program, 

October 2015, William Knarr

2016 Special Operations Research Topics

Saudi Arabia: Modernity, Stability, and the Twenty-First Century Monarchy, 

June 2015, Roby C. Barrett

Special Operations Forces Reference Manual, Fourth Edition, 2015

2015 Special Operations Essays, May 2015

Building Partner Capacity, February 2015, Harry R. Yarger

Islam: Ideology and Conflict, December 2014, Roby C. Barrett

Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police, October 2014, Mark 

Moyar

Challenges in the Asia-Pacific Theater for U.S. and Partner Nation Special 

Operations Forces, October 2014, Robert Haddick

Counterinsurgency in Somalia: Lessons Learned from the African Union 

Mission in Somalia, 2007-2013, September 2014, Bronwyn E. Bruton, Paul D. 

Williams
vii

Contents

Foreword ......................................................................................ix

About the Author ..........................................................................xi

Introduction .................................................................................. 1

1. Historical Background............................................................... 5

2. The Rise of Violent Extremism .................................................... 9

3. The United States and Mali...................................................... 13

4. SOF Engagement in Mali ......................................................... 17

5. Extremists on the Offensive...................................................... 21

6. Sanogo in Power...................................................................... 25

7. The January Offensive and Counteroffensive ............................ 33

8. After the Storm ........................................................................ 43

9. Conclusion and Implications for SOF ...................................... 51

Appendix A: Acronyms................................................................ 59

Endnotes...................................................................................... 61

ix

Foreword 

In this monograph, Dr. Mark Moyar analyzes U.S. and international efforts 

to counter Mali’s panoply of extremist organizations. Violent opposition to Mali’s government has deep roots, which include historic tensions 

between the Tuaregs and other ethnic groups, as well as the emergence of 

Salafist extremist groups in Algeria. Although the United States began to 

take interest in Malian extremists after the 9/11 attacks, Mali did not attract 

widespread attention until the fall of Libyan chief of state Muammar Ghadafi 

in October 2011, which led to an influx of fighters and weapons into Mali and 

the use of Mali as a staging ground for attacks across the region.

As Dr. Moyar explains, extremist attacks on Mali’s democratic government in late 2011 and early 2012 led to military setbacks and internal dissension, culminating in a military coup that allowed rebels to take control 

of northern Mali. Because Mali had received extensive military and nonmilitary assistance from the United States and other foreign countries in 

the preceding years, these disasters led to the questioning of aid practices, 

including those of United States Special Operations Forces (USSOF). The 

author navigates the debates over the effectiveness of foreign assistance and 

assesses the competing positions based on the available evidence.

Mali’s neighbors and other allies believed that northern Mali had to be 

retaken from the extremists, with some advocating diplomacy and others 

recommending military action. Their deliberations were superseded by a 

rebel offensive in January 2013 that overran key defensive positions in central Mali and opened the way for a rebel advance on the national capital, 

Bamako. Dr. Moyar examines the French-led intervention that turned the 

rebels back and subsequently forced the rebels from the north, an episode 

that highlights major opportunities and challenges in multinational and 

interagency operations.

This study adds to a growing body of knowledge on special operations 

and counterterrorism in Africa, a continent on which USSOF have become 

much more active in recent years. It also contributes to the general understanding of the troubling events in Mali, where the government continues 

to confront violent extremism and other forms of rebellion. Perhaps most 

significantly for USSOF, the monograph offers insights into the building of 
x

partner capacity. In light of ongoing problems of instability and extremism 

in much of the world, U.S. Special Operations Command and the rest of the 

U.S. Government are likely to remain heavily engaged in capacity building 

activities for years to come, and Mali’s lessons should be of value to anyone 

participating in those activities.

Kenneth H. Poole, Ed.D.

Director, Center for Special Operations Studies and Research
xi

About the Author 

Dr. Mark Moyar is a Visiting Scholar at the Foreign Policy Initiative. He 

served previously as a Senior Fellow at the Joint Special Operations 

University, and as a professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University, where 

he held the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism. He has 

also taught at Texas A&M University, the Ohio State 

University, Cambridge University, and the Foreign 

Service Institute. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude 

from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Cambridge. 

A frequent visitor to Afghanistan and other foreign 

conflict zones, Dr. Moyar has served as a consultant to 

the senior leadership of the Special Operations Joint 

Task Force-Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command, U.S. 

Special Operations Command, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and the NATO 

Training Mission-Afghanistan. He has lectured at numerous military and 

civilian educational institutions in the United States and abroad. A historian 

by training, he also writes and speaks frequently on subjects of contemporary 

national security as well as the relationship between past and present security 

issues. He is a member of the Hoover Institution Working Group on the Role 

of Military History in Contemporary Conflict.

Dr. Moyar’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington 

Post, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. His 2009 book, A 

Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq (Yale 

University Press, 2009) ranks among the most original and influential theoretical works on counterinsurgency, presenting an alternative approach to 

counterinsurgency that is focused on empowering the right people rather than 

on implementing the right methods. Dr. Moyar’s book Triumph Forsaken: 

The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is one of the 

most acclaimed and controversial histories of the past decade, having been 

the subject of an academic conference at Williams College, several academic 

forums, and the book Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam 

War (Routledge, 2010). In 2007, Bison Books published a new edition of Dr. 

Moyar’s first book, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and 
xii

Counterterrorism in Vietnam, which included a new chapter offering lessons 

for the contemporary practitioner. 

Dr. Moyar’s most recent book is Strategic Failure: How President Obama’s 

Drone Warfare, Defense Cuts, and Military Amateurism Have Imperiled America (Threshold, 2015). His next book, to be published by Cambridge University 

Press, is titled Aid for Elites: Building Partner Nations and Ending Poverty with 

Human Capital. At present, he is writing a history of USSOF for Basic Books. 

His prior JSOU Press publications include Persistent Engagement in Colombia 

(2014) and Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police (2014).
1

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

Introduction 

Prior to 2012, Mali was all but unknown in the United States. To international development experts, Mali served as an exemplar for other 

countries to emulate. To governance experts, it served as a paragon of democratization, having enjoyed more than two decades of stable democracy. A few 

counterterrorism and counternarcotics experts warned that malign actors 

were using Mali’s thinly populated and politically fractious north as bases 

or transit areas, but those threats seemed minor in comparison with the 

instability and violence sweeping over much of North Africa and the Middle 

East in 2010 and 2011, and some observers doubted whether the threats were 

more than trifles.

Figure 1. Map of Mali. Source: worldatlas.com.
2

JSOU Report 15-5

An unexpected military coup on 21 March 2012 brought Mali to the attention of the international news media. Such a collapse, in a nation considered 

to be one of Africa’s most prosperous and democratic, came as a shocking 

disappointment to those familiar with Africa. The military overthrow of an 

elected government was interpreted in many quarters as regression to a dark 

era of military domination of African politics.

What captured the most foreign attention, however, was the subsequent 

cataclysm in northern Mali. The coup precipitated the defection and disintegration of government security forces in northern Mali, paving the way 

for Islamists and separatists to seize control of the population centers. Led 

by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), extremists imposed draconian punishments on the northern population and desecrated holy sites. For 

eight months, the United States and other foreign actors attempted to restore 

democracy in Mali and negotiate a political settlement, hoping to strike a 

deal with Tuareg separatists at the expense of the Islamists.

The separatists and Islamic extremists refused to be split apart, and chose 

instead to invade southern Mali in January 2013. Their initial victories over 

the debilitated Malian forces portended a rebel victory over all of Mali. 

France, which had a large number of its citizens in southern Mali, decided 

that it could not tolerate such a victory. It intervened with military advisers 

and aircraft, followed by a more active role in the conflict in order to halt 

the enemy onslaught and retake the north.

In the space of a few weeks, French intervention saved southern Mali and 

drove the rebels from northern Mali cities. The French intended to hand the 

country over to Malian and other African security forces within a matter of 

months, but ended up staying much longer after realizing that the African 

forces were not equal to the task. As of this writing, the French retain a 

sizable military presence in Mali, which provides protection against major 

attacks and permits surgical operations against enemy leaders. Efforts to 

produce African forces that can replace the French forces have yet to bear 

fruit, and will likely require additional time and resources.

This monograph begins with historical analysis of rebellion, extremism, 

and the countering of violent extremism in Mali, in order to illuminate the 

context in which more recent events have taken place. It chronicles the rise 

of Islamic extremism in Mali, and explains how the Malian government 

and United States perceived and attempted to address that rise. Included 

in the explanation of the American response is the growing role of Special 
3

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

Operations Forces (SOF) in building the capacity of Malian forces. The 

monograph then examines the extremist military gains that began in 2011, 

the military coup of March 2012, the Islamist offensive in January 2013, and 

the French intervention. The narrative concludes with French efforts to hold 

stubborn enemies at bay while multiple international actors attempt to build 

local capacity. The final chapter analyzes the most important issues and challenges in countering Mali’s violent extremists, particularly in terms of SOF, 

and explains how they might be relevant in confronting violent extremism 

elsewhere in Africa or other regions.

Figure 2. Africa Map showing Mali’s geographic position. A 

landlocked country, Mali borders seven other African nations: 

Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal, and 

Mauritania. Source: Central Intelligence Agency.

5

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

1. Historical Background

In territorial terms, modern Mali is as large as Afghanistan and twice the 

size of France. Its borders are twice as long as the border separating the 

United States and Mexico. Mali is landlocked, though it does possess a major 

waterway, the Niger River, next to which most of the major population centers are located. Its southern zone, which has a subtropical climate, is home 

to 80 percent of the population and most of the agricultural production and 

other economic output. 

Muslims comprise approximately 90 percent of Mali’s population, and 

nearly all of the Muslims are Sunnis. The Mandé ethnic group, accounting 

for half of Mali’s population, is the dominant group in the south. The best 

educated of Mali’s ethnic groups, the Mandé, comprise most of the nation’s 

political elite. Northern Mali, consisting of the Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu 

regions, lies within the Sahara and the Sahel, the latter constituting the 

transition zone between the Sahara desert to the north and the Savannah to 

the south. Northern Mali is populated by four main ethnic groups: Tuareg, 

Arab, Songhai, and Fula. According to a 2009 census, more than 95 percent 

of the people of northern Mali lived in either Timbuktu or Gao.1

Of the northern groups, the one most resistant to outside authority has 

been the Tuaregs, who are concentrated in the Kidal region. Descendants 

of Arabs and Berbers, the Tuaregs have lived as nomads throughout their 

history, moving across the Sahel with livestock according to the seasons.2 

Their nomadic existence and their familiarity with the terrain have made 

them into deft smugglers, an increasingly profitable profession in recent 

centuries with the rise in international commerce and transnational crime. 

Attempts by distant Malian governments or foreign powers to curb smuggling in northern Mali have been a leading cause of conflict between the 

Tuaregs and neighboring populations. Most effective at suppressing Tuareg 

smuggling were the French, who incorporated Mali into the colony of French 

Sudan in 1890 and asserted control over government and commerce in the 

Tuareg areas, vanquishing several Tuareg revolts in the process.

Racial differences also account for conflict between the Tuaregs and other 

Malians. The Tuaregs once helped enslave the Mandé, and they have since 

continued to view the Mandé as inferior. Tuareg resistance to the Mandé 
6

JSOU Report 15-5

has been undercut in recent times by the numerical inferiority of the Tuareg 

population and by internal divisions among the Tuaregs. The low population sizes of the Tuaregs and the other northern groups have left the north 

with little clout in democratic elections. It has also allowed politicians to 

neglect the north without suffering adverse electoral consequences. Rulers 

in southern Mali have played Tuareg factions off against one another to keep 

control over the north without having to occupy it with large military forces. 

When Mali gained its independence from France in 1960, its ethnically 

and politically heterogeneous groups shared no common sense of nationalism. When democratic elections took place at the dawn of independence, 

Mali’s citizens voted for candidates based on ethnicity rather than ideology or policy. The Mandé majority voted in Mali’s first president, Modibo 

Keita, to the general dissatisfaction of the minority groups in the north. 

The Tuaregs rebelled against the new government almost immediately. The 

Malian army put their insurrection down and maintained a large presence 

in northern Mali thereafter to keep the Tuaregs under control.

Keita, a socialist by persuasion, rejected the tenets of liberal democracy. Following his initial electoral victory in 1960, he rigged all subsequent 

elections and imprisoned political oppositionists. A young military officer 

named Moussa Traoré overthrew Keita in 1968, and for the next two decades, 

ran Mali as a military dictatorship.

In the 1970s and 1980s, rising oil prices spurred a migration of Tuaregs 

from Mali to Libya, whose chief of state Muammar Gadhafi was promising them economic opportunities and military training. Malians fought in 

Gadhafi’s expeditionary corps in Chad and Lebanon, and some returned to 

Mali in the early 1990s to join the Popular Movement for the Liberation of 

Azawad (MPLA), a Tuareg rebel group that had entered into open rebellion 

against the Malian government in June 1990.3

The Malian government countered MPLA attacks with harsh measures 

that alienated the Tuareg and Arab populations of northern Mali, driving 

more young men into the ranks of the rebels. President Traoré negotiated 

a peace treaty in early 1991 that removed the Malian army from the north, 

gave greater political authority to local communities, and promised more 

development funds to the north. But the treaty, like many peace treaties in 

Mali’s history, did not halt the bloodshed. The army continued its repressive 

actions, while the government did not deliver the promised funds to the 

north, inciting the rebels to strike back.4
7

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

In March of 1991, President Traoré ordered troops to open fire on student 

protesters in the capital. The order so disgusted a number of Malian military 

officers that they chose to oust Traoré.5 The military officers who led the 

coup and political oppositionists who opposed the Traoré regime formed a 

new ruling entity, the Comité de Transition pour le Salut du Peuple, which 

governed Mali for the next year while endeavoring to prepare the country for 

democracy. During the summer, the committee convened a National Conference of Mali, inviting nearly 2,000 Malians representing all the country’s 

political, ethnic, religious, and regional groups. The participants drafted a 

new constitution, according to which the centralization of the state authority was diminished in an effort to accommodate the preferences of diverse 

population groups. Elections held in April 1992 returned Alpha Oumar 

Konaré as president.6

This democratization did not lead to the good governance that democracy 

advocates had forecast. Konaré and other newly elected politicians employed 

the state as a means of patronage, dispensing jobs to their followers without regard for merit. Exploiting the state’s resources for private gains, they 

deprived most of the population of governmental services. “The politicization 

of the civil service in Mali in the context of democratization had a catastrophic effect on the democratization and development process in Mali,” 

asserted Marietou Macalou in a study of the Malian civil service. The party 

in power “permeated and used the civil service to control and take advantage 

of state resources. In addition, the civil service has been transformed into a 

funding agency for the ‘dominant’ party as well as coercion and exclusion 

machinery.”7

In 1996, Tuareg rebels and the government reached a peace agreement 

whereby 12,000 Tuareg fighters joined the Malian armed forces or government. This time, the peace held. Impressed by the return of peace in northern 

Mali, Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) flocked to the area 

to engage in development activities. Islamic NGOs arrived as well, some of 

them inspired by the desire to spread their version of Islam.8

9

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

2. The Rise of Violent Extremism

Less conspicuous during the 1990s was the emergence of Islamic extremist organizations in Mali. Most of these groups originated in neighboring Algeria and continued to take direction from their Algerian branches. 

Chief among the Algerian Islamist groups at this time was the Salafist Group 

for Preaching and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, 

or GSPC).9 The GSPC adhered to the jihadi variant of Salafism, which differed from other Islamic schools of thought in that it did not automatically 

accept the authority of the ruler and was willing to use armed struggle to 

overthrow the existing political order.10 The GSPC ingratiated itself with the 

population of Timbuktu in the late 1990s by buying goods at high prices, 

providing cellular phone service, intermarrying with local families, and 

dispensing medical care.11

In the first years of the new millennium, the GSPC took advantage of a 

burgeoning cocaine trade in the Sahel, which increased sixtyfold from 2002 

to 2007 in response to increased international policing of Western Africa’s 

coastline.12 According to United Nations (UN) estimates, one quarter of the 

approximately 140 tons of cocaine consumed annually in Europe during this 

period transited western Africa. The GSPC colluded with Latin American 

drug traffickers to move drugs through the Sahel, obtaining funds and weapons from the traffickers in exchange for smuggling services.13

At the same time, the Algerian government was becoming increasingly 

proficient in counterinsurgency operations against the GSPC, which diminished the organization’s ability to recruit supporters in its traditional base 

areas of northern Algeria. As a consequence, GSPC leader Mokhtar Belmokhtar decided to shift the emphasis of recruiting to the Sahara. Beginning 

in 2004, the GSPC stepped up recruitment in southern Algeria, northern 

Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad.14 Further military setbacks in southern 

Algeria during 2006 compelled GSPC to shift still further south, into the 

Sahel, which was sufficiently distant for the Algerian government, which 

did not see a need to assist Sahelian countries such as Mali in combating 

the GSPC.15

At this same juncture, the GSPC rebranded itself. Becoming a franchise 

of al-Qaeda, the organization changed its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic 
10

JSOU Report 15-5

Maghreb.16 On 11 September 2006, in commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri 

proclaimed in a radio address: 

Osama Bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the GSPC 

has joined al-Qaeda. This should be a source of chagrin, frustration, 

and sadness for the apostates [of the regime in Algeria], the treacherous sons of France ... We pray to God that our brothers from the 

GSPC succeed in causing harm to the top members of the crusader 

coalition, and particularly their leader, the vicious America.17

The GSPC leadership issued a statement that read, “We pledge allegiance 

to Sheikh Osama Bin Laden ... Our soldiers are at his call so that he may 

strike who and where he likes.”18 Setting their sights beyond the African 

continent, AQIM leaders vowed to support al-Qaeda affiliates in their efforts 

to attack targets in Western Europe.19

Soon after the rebranding, a new emir, Yahia Djaouadi, took charge of 

AQIM operations in the Saharan theater. He orchestrated the kidnapping 

of Europeans for ransom, which proved an exceedingly lucrative business.20

According to one estimate, AQIM hauled in a total of $90 million from 

kidnapping between 2002 and 2012.21 While most of AQIM’s targets for kidnapping and terrorism were from Western European countries known for 

their willingness to pay high ransoms, AQIM occasionally targeted North 

Americans. In December 2008, they kidnapped Canadian diplomat Robert 

Fowler, an event that ultimately led Canada to contribute SOF to the training 

of Mali’s armed forces. In June 2009, a botched AQIM kidnapping attempt 

in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott ended in the death of U.S. citizen 

Christopher Leggett.22 While Algeria remained a high long-term priority for 

AQIM, the organization’s leadership focused in the near term on developing 

safe havens among the Tuaregs of Mali, Niger, and Mauritania. As a result, 

AQIM made Kidal its main base for its southern theater of operations.23

Mali’s Tuareg separatists were, in the meantime, fighting another war 

against the central government. It began in March 2006, when 60 Tuaregs 

deserted from the Malian army and plundered weapons from government 

outposts in northeastern Mali. Establishing a stronghold in the Tigharghar 

Mountains of the Kidal region near the border with Algeria, the rebels built 

a force of nearly 1,000 fighters.24 Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré 

chose to negotiate with the rebels, and in July they reached a peace deal that 
11

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

entailed the withdrawal of the government’s security forces from northern 

Mali.25 Tuareg rebels nonetheless continued to fight pro-government Tuareg 

tribes and Arab militias until 2009. Foreign diplomats complained that the 

Arab militias were collaborating with AQIM and participating in drug trafficking and kidnapping, but President Touré appeared unconcerned, content 

to condone smuggling by both the Arabs and AQIM since he could take fees 

from both groups.26

The Tuareg rebels generally avoided collaboration with AQIM, claiming 

that their form of Islam was incompatible with AQIM’s Salafist worldview. 

Historically, most Tuaregs practiced a form of Sunni Islam that contained 

elements of animism from the pre-Islamic era.27 They rejected the Salafist 

practice of takfirism—the denunciation of theologically incorrect Muslims 

and the use of coercive force to eliminate theological deviance. Like other 

mainstream Sunni Muslims, most Tuaregs believed that incorrect views 

should be countered with teaching and consensus-building. On the main 

rebel website, separatists wrote that because their version of Islam was “tolerant and knowledgeable,” it would be “dangerous and truly evil to try to connect it to the GPSC Salafists, who are banished from the land that spawned 

them and rejected by their own brothers in arms in Algeria.”28

During this same period, however, Salafist preachers were making 

inroads with elements of Mali’s Tuareg population.29 AQIM members were 

strengthening their ties with Tuaregs through marriages and business relationships.30 These developments would prove critical assets to AQIM in allying with Mali’s Tuaregs in the coming years.

13

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

3. The United States and Mali

Islamic extremism in Mali and elsewhere held the attention of few people 

in the U.S. Government prior to 11 September 2001. Following the 9/11 

attacks, the surging American interest in Islamic extremism reached into 

every country with a significant Muslim population, to include those in the 

Sahel. From 2002 to 2004, the United States underwrote the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which equipped 150-man rapid-reaction companies in Niger, Mali, 

Mauritania, and Chad, and trained them using United States Special Operations Forces (USSOF).31 Within Mali, soldiers from the 1st battalion, 10th 

U.S. Special Forces Group trained elements of the Malian 33rd Parachute 

Commando Regiment (RCP). Administered at Bamako, Gao, and Timbuktu, 

the training covered marksmanship, planning, communications, land navigation, patrolling, and medical care.32

The United States also began to develop capabilities for unilateral counterterrorism operations in the region. In 2003, American military officers 

proposed a plan to fire missiles at Mokhtar Belmokhtar at a camp in northern Mali where he was reported to be located. The American Ambassador 

to Mali, Vicki Huddleston, vetoed the operation, arguing that Belmokhtar 

was only a minor figure and that action against him would fuel resentment 

of the United States. She also vetoed a plan to help Malian and Algerian 

forces capture Belmokhtar. Ambassador Huddleston’s refusals infuriated 

Air Force General Charles F. Wald, the senior U.S. military officer in the 

region at the time. Belmokhtar “was well within reach,” Wald remembered. 

“It would have been easy.” The United States “allowed Belmokhtar to become 

larger than life.”33

In early 2004, the Pan-Sahel Initiative gave way to the Trans-Sahara 

Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), for which the United States earmarked $500 million over five years. The main military arm of TSCTP, Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans Sahara, funded the training and equipping 

of security forces and a periodic regional military exercise called Flintlock.34

It also underwrote “whole-of-government” approaches to counterterrorism, 

which included economic development programs, governance programs, 

and “public diplomacy programs” aimed at “preserving the traditional tolerance and moderation displayed in most African Muslim communities and 
14

JSOU Report 15-5

countering the development of extremism, particularly in youth and rural 

populations.”35

In 2006, a small number of USSOF officers formed the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara (JSOTF-TS) to orchestrate all Department 

of Defense counterterrorism initiatives under the TSCTP umbrella. Those 

initiatives spanned 10 northern and western African countries, including 

Mali. In October 2008, the newly formed combatant command U.S. Africa 

Command (AFRICOM) took control of JSOTF-TS, and seven months later 

it moved again, becoming a subordinate element of the Special Operations 

Command Africa (SOCAFRICA).36

Given the relatively modest amounts of funding and U.S. personnel 

assigned to the TSCTP, American capacity-building efforts were restricted 

to a small set of elite forces in the recipient countries. The military deficiencies of the rest of the armed forces received little attention from the United 

States or other nations. In light of past military interference in politics in 

Mali and neighboring countries, Mali’s political leaders wanted to keep the 

military weak, a position accepted by a large number of foreign donors who 

were similarly suspicious of the military. The political leadership meddled 

with recruitment, promotion, and command in the military, to the detriment 

of the military’s competence, organization, and morale.37 Because of low 

levels of defense spending as well as high levels of corruption, most Malian 

units were short on basic equipment and supplies. Lacking in aircraft or 

tactical wheeled vehicles, they could not seek out the enemy in the country’s 

vast expanses.38

Under the Obama administration, emphasis on social and economic 

development in Mali and other Trans-Saharan countries received a further 

boost. “Underdevelopment in key areas represents a critical security challenge in the Sahel,” remarked Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs 

Johnnie Carson in November 2009.

In Northern Mali, for example, insecurity in isolated border areas 

and along traditional smuggling routes is perpetuated by unmet 

economic expectations and the lack of legitimate alternatives to 

smuggling or opportunistic commerce with criminal networks 

... [Mali’s] efforts to address insecurity in the northern part of 

the country are severely hampered by poor infrastructure and the 
15

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

inability to provide adequate service delivery and educational and 

vocational opportunities to isolated areas.39

Carson attributed AQIM’s recruiting successes in the region to its ability 

to provide food in areas where the government could not offer any services.

The Obama administration asserted that the TSCTP would “address the 

drivers of violent extremism” in northern Mali. It earmarked funds for 10 

FM radio stations, “interactive radio instruction” for 200,000 students at 

madrasas, basic education, vocational training, microenterprise development, governance, and “conflict prevention.”40 The U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation also spent heavily on development projects in Mali. It 

concentrated its efforts near Bamako, at least in part for security reasons, 

though that geographic focus kept it far from the areas of unrest.

Because of doubts about the value of assisting foreign militaries, the 

Obama administration reduced funding for security sector programs.41 But 

insecurity in the north turned out to be a leading obstacle to development 

programs. “Development is critical in dealing with the north,” Ambassador 

Gillian Milovanovic said in January 2011. “So long as security is unstable, it 

is hard to get those projects going.” U.S. embassy personnel could not travel 

to Northern Mali except with the express permission of the ambassador, 

which Milovanovic rarely granted.42

The Obama administration chose not to allocate significant resources to 

combating corruption in Mali, a position consistent with the theory, popularized by Jeffrey Sachs, that corruption was not a major cause of national 

economic weakness.43 U.S. aid to Mali for programs related to governance 

totaled less than $1 million per year. The suitability of this approach would 

come under question with new revelations of poor governance and its consequences. In 2009, for instance, an internal audit by the Malian government found that the government had suffered a loss of $224 million in the 

past year because of mismanagement or theft of government funds for rural 

development, infrastructure, public administration, health, and justice.44

17

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

4. SOF Engagement in Mali

On 31 May 2009, militants in Mali executed British tourist Edwin Dyer, 

who had been kidnapped several months earlier near the border 

between Mali and Niger. Malian Colonel Lamana Ould Cheikh arrested 

two men in the killing, but then was himself assassinated. President Touré 

blamed the killings on AQIM and told the U.S. that this violence demonstrated the need for greater U.S. support for his security forces.45

The U.S. Department of Defense wanted to respond to Touré’s request for 

more assistance by increasing the number of U.S. military personnel in Mali 

for training purposes. AFRICOM and SOCAFRICA recommended allowing U.S. military advisers to accompany Malian forces on counterterrorism 

operations. The State Department, the lead U.S. agency for foreign policy, 

rejected these proposals. It did, however, grant the Defense Department 

permission to boost the number of short-term SOF training sessions in Mali 

to seven, up from two in 2008. During 2009, the 3rd Special Forces Group, 

3rd Marine Special Operations Battalion, 6th Air Force Special Operations 

Squadron, and U.S. Navy SEALs provided short training events to Mali’s 

armed forces.46

The 10th Special Forces Group began training units called Echelon Tactique Inter-Armée (ETIA), company-sized motorized infantry units with 

approximately 160 men. The ETIAs were the Malian government’s main 

weapon for use against AQIM in the north. Ethnically mixed, with a significant representation of Tuaregs, the ETIAs had been formed by pulling 

men from other army regiments.

American advisers were appalled by the condition of the ETIAs’ equipment. Many AK-47s lacked stocks or other vital parts. Some soldiers had old 

SKS rifles, which were no match for the AK-47s that AQIM’s fighters carried. 

When the U.S. Special Forces advisers pleaded with the Malian Ministry of 

Defense to provide new rifles and rifle stocks, none were forthcoming. The 

American advisers then ordered some rifle stocks on their own initiative, but 

when the shipments arrived it was learned that they were the wrong stocks.47

Malian soldiers rotated in and out of the ETIAs in six-month intervals, 

rather than staying together for sustained periods. USSOF discovered this 

fact through biometric testing of trainees, as the Malian military had not 
18

JSOU Report 15-5

divulged that it was sending different troops in for each training cycle. 

Malian military personnel, moreover, rotated between the south to the north 

every three years, giving them time off in the relatively peaceful south after 

several years of hardship and danger in the north. In the view of one USSOF 

officer, these rotation policies created “essentially insurmountable problems 

for those attempting to assist the Malians to improve their capabilities.”48

The first USSOF training of the ETIAs, a 30-day Joint Combined 

Exchange Training (JCET) event, led the Americans to conclude that the 

ETIA capabilities were so low that they would need much more than short 

training programs. “Due to extreme deficiencies displayed at the basic level 

and beyond, a full 30-day period would need to be devoted to just one or two 

aspects of training, such as rifle marksmanship or squad dismounted movement,” concluded Simon J. Powelson, a U.S. Special Forces officer responsible 

for ETIA training. The Americans extended the next two JCETs to 45 days. 

During those two events, the Malian soldiers again evidenced a startling 

inability to perform the most basic military tasks, such as firing and disassembling a rifle.49 They also displayed, in Powelson’s words, “a culture overrun by apathy.” Individual soldiers and officers demonstrated no initiative, 

acting only when commanded. Infantry officers “did not attempt to conduct 

daily training to ensure unit competence and readiness.”50 Much longer 

training of individuals, and perhaps fundamental changes in rotation policies, would be required to change this culture.

Further complicating American assistance to Mali’s security forces was a 

lack of commitment from the top of Mali’s government. President Touré was 

talking of getting tough with AQIM, vowing to wage a “total struggle,” but in 

practice he was not vigorous in combating AQIM. Other countries suspected 

that Touré had a “non-aggression” pact with AQIM in order to augment his 

personal wealth and avoid attacks in Bamako and other cities that would 

undermine the image of a great leader he was seeking to cultivate.51 In early 

2010, Mauritania recalled its ambassador from Mali for eight months following the Malian government’s release of four Mauritanian AQIM detainees. In 

August 2010, Touré again thumbed his nose at the Mauritanian government 

by releasing an AQIM fighter who had been extradited from Mauritania.52

During 2010 and 2011, the United States again extended the duration of 

JCETs to three months. But even events of that duration proved insufficient 

to raise the capabilities of the ETIAs satisfactorily. At the conclusion of 
19

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

the JCETs, Powelson observed, the Malians’ “proficiency at performing any 

semblance of a coordinated assault on a fixed position was nonexistent.”53

Because of the frequent rotation of Malian personnel and the limitation 

of JCETs to one for each of the four ETIAs per year, all ETIA personnel 

were rotated before a second JCET took place. The trainers thus had to start 

at square one with each new JCET, necessitating that they cover only basic 

skills, such as rifle marksmanship, individual movement, driver’s training, 

and crew-served weapons familiarization. In frustration, the Americans 

urged the Ministry of Defense to change its six-month personnel rotation 

policy for the ETIAs, but to no avail.54 A small number of USSOF were 

working with the Ministry of Defense at this time, in coordination with the 

U.S. State Department, but they were focused on operational planning, not 

personnel.55

AFRICOM provided some episodic support to the ETIAs for intelligence, 

with training taking place in three-week rotations. Malian intelligence capabilities were modest, and they were more focused on preventing coups and 

other internal problems than defeating the enemy. Convincing the Malian 

military whom to train was also problematic, since the black African leaders 

wanted the training recipients to be black Africans, not Tuaregs, whom they 

distrusted. When the AFRICOM trainers returned to visit their pupils after 

a break in training, they checked to see whether the Malians were making 

use of the prior training; if they were not, then the Malians would have to 

go back and start over with the prior training modules. The effectiveness of 

this approach would be cut short by events, as only two ETIAs had received 

intelligence training when American aid abruptly ceased.56

In June 2010, an Operational Detachment–Alpha (ODA) from the 10th 

Special Forces Group that had been assigned to the newly formed Joint Planning Assistance Team (JPAT) decided to seek alternatives to the existing SOF 

training program. Their analysis had led them to conclude that Malian forces 

needed the ability to attack fortified positions in the Tigharghar mountains, 

which would require coordinated use of indirect fire, mounted fire, and 

maneuver. Achieving the necessary military proficiency would require prolonged SOF engagement with a Malian unit that retained its personnel. The 

ODA asked the Malian Ministry of Defense if it could work continuously 

with a Malian unit that would not rotate its soldiers on a routine basis. The 

Malians agreed to let the Americans work with a new company of the 33rd 

RCP, composed of personnel from the regiment’s four existing companies. 
20

JSOU Report 15-5

Designated the Special Forces Company (CFS), it was to consist of 152 men 

and would be organized like a U.S. Army Ranger company.57 To provide 

continuity on the American side, SOF teams were to rotate into the JPAT at 

six month intervals.

The 33rd RCP was already an elite unit, and it was much better organized, 

trained, and motivated than the ETIAs and other Malian units. Until this 

point, it had kept one of its companies in the north, while two companies 

concentrated on security for the president and the fourth was in a down 

cycle. Although the regiment had received periodic training from U.S. and 

French forces, its skills had not developed to the point that the Americans 

deemed necessary for effective operations in the mountains. Much of the 

training the troops had received from American and French forces had 

been concentrated on advanced skills, some of which were not very useful 

for operations in northern Mali. Many soldiers were deficient in the most 

elementary skills, such as zeroing their rifles. The paratroopers were also 

very short on equipment and supplies.58

The initial training that the American ODA administered to the CFS 

covered basic skills like marksmanship, first aid, and land navigation. USSOF 

taught the officers and the noncommissioned officers (NCOs), and then the 

officers and NCOs taught the skills to the enlisted men. To obtain additional equipment for the CFS, the Americans used a peacekeeping operations 

account from which they could draw funds more easily and quickly than 

from other funding streams.59

Prolonged and continuous training permitted SOF to concentrate on a 

task as long as it took the Malians to master it, rather than having to end at 

an arbitrary date as had been necessary with the JCETs. The progress was 

sufficiently promising that the CFS began training with the Malian air force 

in combined air-ground operations in 2011. Whereas all of Mali’s forces 

had ranked near the bottom of African forces in competence during the 

Flintlock regional military exercise in 2010, the CFS ranked near the top at 

the 2011 exercise.60
21

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

5. Extremists on the Offensive

Mali, for all its problems, was considered a model of African success 

until the eve of the cataclysm. International commentators praised 

Mali as an exemplar of liberal democracy and good governance in Africa. 

From the mid-1990s to 2010, noted the admirers, Mali had achieved gross 

domestic product growth of 5.5 percent per year, reduced poverty by 33 

percent, cut infant mortality by 25 percent, and increased access to primary 

education from 20 percent of children to 80 percent.61 As late as March 

2012, the Millennium Challenge issued a publication entitled “Prosperity 

Takes Root in Mali,” which asserted that “the region is being transformed 

into a thriving hub of rice and vegetable production that will improve the 

lives of farmers and strengthen the country’s food security.”62 Numerous 

foreign observers did not comprehend the magnitude of Mali’s weaknesses 

in governance and security, or else did not consider them an obstacle to 

Mali’s betterment.

During 2011 and early 2012, some academic and policy experts, including the U.S. ambassador to Mali, downplayed the possibility that extremist 

organizations such as AQIM posed a threat to Mali and its neighbors. Mali’s 

government was said to be too strong and AQIM too weak and unpopular 

with local populations to endanger the Malian state. Several groups reportedly were breaking off from AQIM, including the Movement for Unity and 

Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), which appeared to be focused mainly on 

Africa, and hence were cited as evidence that Malian extremists did not 

pose a threat to Western homelands.63 The contention that Mali was safe 

and secure served as a key debating point for those who maintained that 

security assistance to Mali was too large, or too focused on the military at 

the expense of civil governance.64 It was also invoked by the ambassador in 

turning down the U.S. military’s recommendations to allow SOF to accompany Malian forces into the field.65

However, other experts and other elements of the U.S. mission in Bamako 

rated the extremist threat to be much greater. They attached considerable 

weight to reports that extremists were migrating from Libya to Mali and that 

the Tuaregs were gravitating toward an alliance with AQIM. The extremist 

migration included an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 armed Tuaregs who had 
22

JSOU Report 15-5

fought on Gadhafi’s side in Libya. Americans who deemed the extremists to 

be a dire threat to Mali noted that AQIM had developed deep roots in local 

communities through intermarriage and had also gained the cooperation of 

government officials.66 They also pointed to AQIM’s ability to raise revenue 

through drug trafficking in cahoots with Tuareg smugglers.67 Much of the 

threat information came from the open-source reporting of the Americansponsored Native Prospector program, which relied on Malian nationals to 

cull information from local sources.68

Of the Tuareg migrants who were deemed most dangerous, a large fraction hailed from the Ifogha tribe, the Tuareg tribe most hostile to the government of Mali. On 16 October 2011, an Ifogha who had served as a colonel in 

the Libyan Army, Ag Mohamed Najem, formed a Tuareg separatist movement called the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), 

which included members of most of the Tuareg communities of northern 

Mali. For those who considered the Malian extremists a serious threat to 

U.S. interests, though, the greatest concern was the growth of Ansar Dine, an 

offshoot of AQIM with Malian Tuareg leadership. Western analysts believed 

that AQIM had helped form Ansar Dine to help put a Malian “face” on 

AQIM, knowing that a movement led by Malian Tuaregs would be much 

more effective in northern Mali than a foreign-led organization. By late 

2011, Ansar Dine vied with MNLA for the distinction of largest rebel group 

in the north.69

The Tuaregs who left Libya for northern Mali in 2011 brought with them 

weapons plundered from Gadhafi’s arsenals. Some Western security experts 

believed that the weaponry included portable antiaircraft missile launchers, 

though no such weapons were used or captured in the ensuing period.70

Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, recounted, 

“The weapons proliferation that we saw coming out of the Libyan conflict 

was of a scale greater than any previous conflict—probably 10 times more 

weapons than we saw going on the loose in places like Iraq, Somalia, and 

Afghanistan.”71 The loot from Gadhafi’s stocks left the Tuareg rebels and their 

allies far better equipped than nearly all of Mali’s forces. The experience 

and training they had received in Libya made them much more competent.

The MNLA and Ansar Dine stepped up their attacks in northern Mali 

near the end of 2011, and by early 2012 they were capturing significant prizes. 

On 17 January, rebels overran Menaka, a town in northeastern Mali. The 

Malian headquarters in Gao ordered the 33rd RCP to form a task force to 
23

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

retake Menaka. The CFS company, which was a component of the task force, 

spearheaded a convoy of task force vehicles that headed toward Menaka. 

When rebels ambushed the convoy, the CFS soldiers dismounted from their 

vehicles and used SPG-9 recoilless rifles to pour fire on the enemy, driving 

them off. The Task Force proceeded to Menaka, which they took with support 

from Malian reconnaissance aircraft and helicopter gunships. The task force 

camped out in the town, but was compelled to leave on 3 February because 

the military headquarters at Gao failed to deliver promised supplies. Once 

the task force returned to Gao, hostile forces retook Menaka.72

On 25 January 2012, rebels overran an isolated military garrison at the 

northern town of Aguelhok after a weeklong siege. The Malian soldiers had 

held off the attackers until they ran out of ammunition, their requests for 

resupply having gone unfulfilled. Upon taking the town, the rebels slaughtered nearly 100 people, including the wives and children of the defenders. 

In early February, hostile forces surrounded the Malian military base and 

airfield at Tessalit, in the Kidal region. Guarded by several hundred soldiers, 

Tessalit was critical to governmental control of northern Mali. On 25 February, the 33rd RCP Task Force fought its way from Gao to Tessalit, fending 

off the enemy for several days while evacuating its wounded by air. Again 

it ran low on supplies because of the inability of the military base at Gao to 

send what was needed. Eventually the paratroopers and their SOF advisers 

convinced the Malian air force and the U.S. Embassy to deliver supplies by 

air, but the supplies received were sufficient only to get the task force back to 

Gao, not to keep it at Tessalit. Shortly after the paratroopers departed Tessalit, the garrison they left behind negotiated a surrender whereby everyone 

at the military base was permitted safe passage to Gao.73

After the fall of Tessalit, discontent with the national leadership soared 

amid the ranks of the armed forces. Junior officers and enlisted men blamed 

the president, minister of defense, and senior military leaders for failing to 

keep the units in the north adequately supplied. Army widows blocked off 

streets in Bamako in protest of the government’s mishandling of the conflict.

On 21 March, Mali’s Minister of Defense Sadio Gassama received word 

that disgruntled soldiers at the Kati barracks were preparing to march on 

the capital in protest of the government’s mismanagement. Hoping to head 

off a stampede on downtown Bamako, Gassama had his chauffeur drive him 

the 20 kilometers from his office to the barracks. When Gassama arrived, 

he was relieved to find that the troops had not yet left the base. He took the 
24

JSOU Report 15-5

stage to address an assembly of troops, whose seething discontent could not 

have been difficult to discern. Overestimating the strength of his position, 

Gassama scolded the audience, which only enraged them. When the defense 

minister’s bodyguards attempted to keep angry soldiers back with shots in 

the air, the soldiers grabbed their rifles and fired them in the air. Gassama 

fled the scene in his car.74

Under the leadership of a disreputable captain named Amadou Sanogo, 

who had been dismissed from his prior job after five soldiers died in a hazing 

incident,75 a mob of soldiers marched to the presidential palace. Upon arrival, 

the unruly throng fired their weapons in the air and shouted taunts at the 

“Red Berets” guarding the palace, which belonged to the 33rd RCP. The Red 

Berets in turn fired their weapons in the air. The standoff gave President 

Touré time to slip away. Once the president had safely exited the palace, the 

Red Berets left too, allowing Sanogo and his men to occupy and ransack the 

premises. Touré, whose term in office was nearly over, did not attempt to 

organize military action against Sanogo, and instead chose to go into hiding, 

with protection from the 33rd RCP. Officers from the 33rd RCP asked their 

USSOF counterparts to provide ammunition for use in a countercoup, but 

these Americans had not received guidance from the embassy on the U.S. 

position toward the coup and therefore avoided providing assistance to the 

paratroopers.76 Touré later went into exile in the neighboring country of 

Senegal.

Sanogo, who had been a figure of no significance and little ambition on 

the morning of 21 March, decided to become chief of state that evening. 

The Malian people accepted the military’s overthrow of the democratic 

government with a readiness that shocked much of the democratic world. 

Dr. Christopher Fomunyoh of the U.S. National Democratic Institute commented, “the population in Bamako showed surprising indifference to the 

coup while it was in progress, and was willing to embrace the group of junior 

officers that staged the coup once President Touré agreed to step down.”77 To 

many Malians, the coup was a necessary antidote to a government that was 

irretrievably corrupt and ineffective.78
25

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

6. Sanogo in Power

Some U.S. military officers wanted to continue assistance to Mali’s security forces after the coup, but were overruled by the State Department, 

which decided that the continuation of U.S. assistance would constitute the 

sanctioning of a military coup, which was undesirable, and it would enmesh 

the United States in an internal conflict between Tuaregs and Malians of 

Mandé and other ethnic descent. On 23 March, USSOF discontinued all their 

activities in Mali. SOCAFRICA maintained a team of four to six troops at 

the embassy in Bamako on a standby basis, but they were not permitted to 

interact with the Malian military.79 The Flintlock exercise, which had been 

scheduled to take place in northern Mali later in the year, was aborted.

On 10 April 2012, the United States officially terminated assistance to 

Mali’s government in accordance with Section 7008 of the Department of 

State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2012. 

This legislation prohibited assistance to any country whose elected head 

of government had been removed by a military coup. Some humanitarian 

assistance was permitted to continue, as was assistance for elections.80

The suspension of U.S. aid bewildered and infuriated Malian military 

officers, who shared the general view of their countrymen that a military 

coup was preferable to the continuation of corrupt democracy. “The coup 

happens, we’re weaker than ever, and then you pull your aid?” said a Malian 

officer who enjoyed widespread respect among the foreign advisers. “We’re 

fighting the same enemies. Why should a coup be more important than 

defeating AQIM? It’s your enemy just as much as it’s ours.”81

The termination of U.S. aid was accompanied by a debilitating purge 

within the Malian military. On the heels of the coup, Sanogo arrested much 

of the senior military leadership and gave the senior army posts to colonels 

who had not been close to the deposed president.82 These changes paralyzed 

the central leadership and led promptly to disorder on the periphery. Within 

a few days of the coup, the commanders of three of the four ETIAs in the 

north defected with their entire units to the rebellion, leaving the government with few loyal forces in the north.83 The remaining loyalist forces abandoned the three northern regions of Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu, withdrawing 

to Sévaré, Ségou, and Bamako by the end of March.84
26

JSOU Report 15-5

Into the void stepped the MNLA, Ansar Dine, and AQIM, who took 

charge of local governance and plundered foreign-financed development 

projects.85 U.S. military officers warned that the extremists were strong 

enough and the Malian army weak enough that Bamako could fall in a day’s 

time, causing Western governments to plan for an emergency evacuation. 

For reasons that remain unclear, AQIM and the others chose not to push 

into southern Mali at this precarious time.86

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) responded 

to these developments swiftly and decisively. On 27 March, the heads of state 

of ECOWAS announced that they were activating a force of 3,000 ECOWAS 

troops for use against the rebels in northern Mali should they refuse to 

accept a peaceful resolution of the conflict.87 ECOWAS also pressured the 

military junta to agree to an interim government and democratic elections, 

which Sanogo did on 6 April. The military named the speaker of the National 

Assembly, Dioncounda Traoré, as interim president, and Cheick Modibo 

Diarra as interim prime minister. 

Although this agreement eased tensions in Bamako and reduced international criticism, it did not put an end to infighting among Mali’s elites. 

On April 30, the Red Berets of the presidential guard, still smarting from 

the deposing of the president, attempted a coup against Sanogo and his supporters in the regular army. Fighting raged that night at the airport, several 

military barracks in Bamako, and the national TV and radio stations. Forces 

loyal to the junta overran the Red Beret base at Djicoroni, outside Bamako, 

the next day, causing the ring leaders to flee and the coup to collapse. The 

fighting claimed a total of 14 lives and it wounded another 40. The forces 

loyal to Sanogo arrested 140 of the Red Berets, including 40 officers, of whom 

21 disappeared and may have been killed. Approximately 400 paratroopers 

from the 33rd RCP joined other units, while most of the remaining 800 

refused and insisted the paratroopers be kept together in a single unit.88

In northern Mali, the rebels enticed Malian refugees to return to their 

homes and join rebel fighting units by offering them high pay.89 The MNLA 

soon fell behind Ansar Dine in recruitment of fighters, because it did not 

have revenue sources comparable to AQIM’s hostage taking and drug trafficking activities. Ansar Dine soon took over some of the areas that MNLA 

had seized at the end of March. AQIM solidified its position as the brains 

of the rebellion in northern Mali, with Ansar Dine providing the arms and 

legs.90
27

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

Ansar Dine and AQIM also lured youth from foreign countries with 

promises of salaries greatly exceeding the average wages in poor countries. 

Islamists from many of Mali’s neighbors, including Tunisia, Burkina Faso, 

Algeria, Niger, and Togo went to Mali to join the jihad, as did Islamists from 

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and France. By the end of the year, according 

to French intelligence, the number of Islamist fighters in Mali stood between 

2,500 and 3,000.91

The multinational conglomeration of veteran jihadists ran training camps 

for aspiring extremists in northern Mali. According to Malian witnesses, 

hundreds of Boko Haram fighters came from Nigeria to Timbuktu in 2012 to 

receive weapons training at an AQIM training camp. Some of them returned 

to Nigeria to use newly acquired skills and weapons.92 In 2013, Islamists from 

Tunisia and Algeria were reported to be returning to their native countries 

after receiving terrorist training in Mali.93

Islamist efforts to govern northern Mali became the subject of much 

controversy among both their opponents and their own leadership. By some 

accounts, their draconian justice earned the respect of the citizenry because 

its impartiality and its lack of corruption contrasted favorably with the misdeeds of the previous government.94 The Islamic totalitarians of the Taliban 

had gained ground in Afghanistan in the 1990s by meting out punishments 

with similar impartiality and severity.

Other observers believed that the harsh governance measures of the 

extremists alienated the subject population. Abou Moussab Abdelwadoud, 

the head of AQIM, leveled this charge. The population had to be educated 

in Islam before harsh punishments could be imposed, he asserted in July. 

He said:

Our previous experience proved that applying Shariah this way, 

without taking the environment into consideration, will lead to 

people rejecting the religion, and engender hatred toward the Mujahideen, and will consequently lead to the failure of our experiment.95

The rebels needed to indoctrinate more of northern Mali’s people in order 

to gain their support for jihadi Salafism and mobilize them in defense of the 

area. To those who sought to win without careful cultivation of the population, he warned, “You are in danger of destroying our experiment, of killing 

off our baby, our beautiful tree.”96
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JSOU Report 15-5

Abou Moussab Abdelwadoud also warned against provocative actions 

that might induce foreign powers to intervene. MNLA and Ansar Dine had 

pillaged several Christian churches, a Christian school, and a Christian 

radio station, causing nearby Christian populations to flee their homes.97

Ansar Dine had also destroyed seven mausoleums of Muslim saints in Timbuktu, which it claimed represented polytheistic tendencies that had to be 

rooted out in accordance with the Salafist conception of strict monotheism. 

When the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) protested publicly that the world should not “allow vandals 

to wipe out historical monuments,” Ansar Dine responded by destroying 

the Sidi Yahya mosque, which dated back to 1400. “We don’t acknowledge 

UNESCO,” said Ansar Dine spokesman Sanda Ould Bouamama. “What is 

UNESCO? We don’t care about the words of any entity because God is one 

without partners.”98

Abou Moussab Abdelwadoud found particular fault with effrontery of 

this sort. “You must adopt mature and moderate rhetoric that reassures and 

calms,” he admonished. “To do so, you must avoid any statements that are 

provocative to neighboring countries and avoid repeated threats.” Evidently 

aware of the tendency of some Westerners to emphasize the local concerns 

of Islamic rebels and discount their international objectives, he advised, 

“Better for you to be silent and pretend to be a ‘domestic’ movement that has 

its own causes and concerns. There is no call for you to show that we have 

an expansionary, jihadi, Qaida or any other sort of project.” He also called 

for an end to provocations against other rebel groups, especially MNLA.99

At least some of the rebels appear to have heeded the AQIM leader’s 

rebuke. In the ensuing period, reports emerged of rebel organizers adopting a more lenient approach toward the population. The foreign extremist 

leaders in particular focused more on providing government services than 

on meting out punishments.100 They permitted international humanitarian 

organizations to distribute food and conduct other relief operations.101

During the second half of 2012, AQIM improved relations with MNLA 

and recruited more natives of northern Mali into AQIM and Ansar Dine. 

Mali’s government and its allies attempted to exploit differences between 

the “local” groups MNLA and Ansar Dine and the “global jihadist” groups 

AQIM and MUJAO. But AQIM’s recent proselytization among the Tuaregs 

and its ongoing outreach to the MNLA and other native Malians ensured 

that those efforts came to naught.102
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Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

In recent years, the United States had exploited its technical intelligence 

assets to locate violent Islamists, and then employed drones or surgical 

ground strikes to eliminate them.103 In the aftermath of the Malian coup, 

U.S. aircraft flew over Mali to obtain information, but the lack of friendly 

forces on the ground prevented the use of ground platforms and minimized 

the availability of human intelligence. The Islamists took aggressive countermeasures to technical collection, banning cell phones, dismantling cellular 

towers, and shutting down Internet cafes. “It’s tough to penetrate,” remarked 

General Carter Ham, then-commander of AFRICOM. “It’s tough to get 

access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries 

as well.”104

For most of the year, the Obama administration was cool to recommendations from ECOWAS to send their military forces into northern Mali, 

convinced that the problem did not merit such a risky solution. Senior U.S. 

officials expressed doubt as to whether AQIM posed a threat to the United 

States. “AQIM has always been way more talk than action,” asserted one 

senior U.S. counterterrorism official.105 This sort of skepticism also kept the 

U.S. Government from adding AQIM leaders to high-value targeting lists.106

American perceptions about Mali began to change in late September after 

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded AQIM may have used Mali as a staging 

ground for an attack in Benghazi on 11 September 2012, which killed four 

Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. At a special 

UN meeting on the Maghreb and the Sahel on 26 September, Secretary of 

State Clinton publicly linked AQIM’s Mali presence to the Benghazi attack.107

On 1 October, Carson said, “there will have to be at some point military 

action to push” the rebels out of northern Mali. According to Carson, the 

military action would have to be led by Mali’s forces and supported by Mali’s 

neighbors.108

In November, ECOWAS resolved to send a force of 3,000 to Mali, composed primarily of soldiers from Nigeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Ivory 

Coast President Alassane Outtara said that these soldiers could go to Mali as 

soon as the UN approved the plan, which he hoped would be in late November or early December. The plan envisioned a period of six months of training 

and developing bases in the south, followed by operations into the north.109

France, the European Union (EU), and most of the UN Security Council 

backed the ECOWAS plan.110 French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian 
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JSOU Report 15-5

warned that Mali would become a “terrorist sanctuary” if no actions were 

taken. “In Mali, it is our own security that is at stake: the security of France, 

the security of Europe,” he said. “If we don’t move, a terrorist entity will 

take shape which could hit this or another country, including France, and 

including Europe.”111

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was more muted in his support, 

asserting that a military operation “may be required as a last resort to deal 

with the most hardline extremist and criminal elements in the north.” First, 

he said:

the focus must be on initiating a broad-based and inclusive political 

dialogue aimed at forging national consensus around a road map 

for the transition and at addressing the long-standing grievances 

of the Tuaregs and other communities in the north.112

He also pointed out the difficulty of combating the heavily armed rebel 

groups in Mali, whose strength had risen to an estimated 3,000 core combatants. Mali’s military paled in comparison, as it was “highly politicized, 

bitterly divided and poorly trained and equipped.”113 Many of Mali’s highranking officers were still in jail.114

The specifics of the ECOWAS intervention plan came under fire from 

Western military experts, who deemed the text of the plan confused and 

inadequate.115 In early December, U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice 

was reported to be “highly skeptical” of the ECOWAS plan. According to 

one diplomat, Rice said that the plan was “crap.”116 Rice insisted that the 

intervening force must be a “credible” force that “must kick al-Qaeda hard,” 

said a second diplomat. She believed that the Malian and other West African 

troops did not meet that standard.117 AFRICOM sent military personnel to 

help develop the ECOWAS plan, but they would need time and cooperation 

to develop the plan to the point that it was acceptable to Western experts.118

In light of the weaknesses of the African forces and the ECOWAS military planning, the U.S. military offered to act unilaterally against the leaders 

of Ansar Dine and AQIM. Precision strikes by SOF could at least weaken 

the Islamist organizations and impede their terrorist plotting. The Obama 

administration rejected the offer, on the grounds that it would inspire Islamic 

militants to undertake new acts of violence, including terrorist strikes against 

Western targets.119
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Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

In early December, lack of confidence in the available military options led 

the Obama administration to call for a delay in military intervention until 

Mali had elected a new president. “Mali’s first challenge is the restoration 

of democratic governance,” Carson told the African Affairs Subcommittee 

of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on 5 December. Carson said:

The United States has made elections in Mali a priority because 

historically transitional governments that are not pressed to hold 

elections and restore constitutional order tend to hold on to power 

long beyond their mandate ... Elections are critical for ensuring 

that the Malian government has the legitimacy needed to negotiate 

with indigenous northern groups and effectively coordinate with 

regional and international partners to oust AQIM.120

France raised its voice in opposition to the American position. Malians 

living under Islamist domination, they pointed out, would be unable to vote. 

“Do you think that al-Qaeda will be securing voting booths for a fair election?” remarked one UN Security Council diplomat.121 The French sought to 

obtain American acquiescence to a military mission by offering a provision 

that would allow the Americans to review and approve the actual military 

plan prior to implementation.122

The French sweetener proved sufficient to gain American concurrence. 

On 20 December, the UN Security Council unanimously authorized an African-led security mission to Mali, called the International Support Mission 

in Mali (AFISMA), for a period of one year. Its principal objectives would 

be recovery of the areas held by the rebels and reunification of the country. 

The Security Council called on UN member states to provide financial support for the mission.123

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Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

7. The January Offensive and 

Counteroffensive

The enemy would render these deliberations moot by forcing the issue 

on the ground. On 5 January, military elements of Ansar Dine and 

MUJAO advanced southward toward Konna, the only government-held 

town north of Mopti, which was the main redoubt protecting southern Mali 

from the north. AQIM, along with local imams, marabout (holy men), and 

local notables, supported the jihadist groups. Those who had doubted that 

the “local” and “global jihadist” groups could be split from one another 

through negotiations cited the collaboration between Ansar Dine, MUJAO, 

and AQIM as vindication of their doubts.124

Riding all-terrain vehicles, the extremists ran into Malian army forces 

north of Konna on 8 January. The extremists got the better of the army, pushing the Malian soldiers back. Other extremist forces advanced in western 

Mali.125 Rebel forces captured Konna the next day and pressed on toward 

Mopti. On 10 January, the French ambassador in Bamako notified Paris that 

the enemy was on the verge of taking Mopti, and if Mopti fell then there 

would be nothing to stop the insurgents from advancing on Bamako itself.

French President François Hollande in turn declared that the extremists 

were “seeking to deal a fatal blow to the very existence of Mali.”126 Of special 

concern to Hollande were the more than 6,000 French citizens and 1,000 

other Europeans in Mali, most of them in Bamako, for the French could not 

evacuate so many people if the enemy attacked the capital. Were AQIM to 

take thousands of Europeans captive, it could demand thousands of ransoms 

or the release of thousands of Islamist prisoners.127 When Malian interim 

President Dioncounda Traoré called President Hollande on 10 January to 

request his help, Hollande agreed to take military action. Hollande then 

notified President Obama that the French were about to intervene militarily in Mali.128

On that same day, roughly three dozen French special operations troops 

landed at the Sévaré military base near Mopti, where they immediately began 

assisting Malian forces. The French troops at first served solely as spotters 

for air strikes by French aircraft. But on 11 January, as Malian forces came 

under fierce enemy attack, the French SOF took part in the ground action as 
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JSOU Report 15-5

well.129 From bases in Burkina Faso, French SOF Gazelle helicopters began 

to attack rebel columns in Mali, and French conventional forces began to 

arrive in the country hours later.130

The French special operators found the enemy to be much more formidable than anticipated. “What has struck us markedly is how modern their 

equipment is and their ability to use it,” commented one French official. “In 

Libya they picked up modern, sophisticated kit that is a lot more robust and 

effective than could have been imagined.”131

Enemy tactics also proved better than expected. The rebels employed a 

host of tactical innovations intended to offset Western technological advantage, many of which were spelled out in an al-Qaeda document found by an 

Associated Press correspondent after the fighting. The document’s purported 

author was a senior Yemeni member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, 

but Osama Bin Laden was believed to have provided some of the tips himself. 

Drawing upon lessons learned in other countries, the document enumerated 

a host of techniques for thwarting drones. “It is possible to know the intention and the mission of the drone by using the Russian-made ‘sky grabber’ 

device to infiltrate the drone’s waves and the frequencies,” one section read. 

“The device is available in the market for $2,595 and the one who operates 

it should be a computer know-how.” Another section recommended “using 

devices that broadcast frequencies or pack of frequencies to disconnect the 

contacts and confuse the frequencies used to control the drone.” The document called for vigilance against spies, noting that the spy “is the main pillar” 

of drone warfare. To deter would-be spies, a captured spy should be “hanged 

in public places with a sign hanging from his neck identifying him as an 

‘American Spy’ or any other deterrent means similar to that done to (Israeli 

spy hanged in Syria) Levy Cohen or (late Afghan president) Najibullah.”132

Islamist fighters deftly exploited the Western aversion to inflicting civilian casualties. They mounted antiaircraft weapons on the roofs of homes to 

discourage French aircraft from firing at them, and moved around in civilian 

clothing on scooters of the sort employed by the populace. They did their 

best to stick close to civilians and their dwellings, offering food and religious 

education to prevent the people from shunning them or ratting them out.133

Within the U.S. Government, military officers proposed committing 

SOF in support of the French. The State Department rejected the proposal. 

The number of U.S. military personnel was limited to 12 at the embassy in 

Bamako, and 10 others serving as liaisons with French forces.134
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Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

On 14 January, the Islamists attacked Diabaly in western Mali. Some 

Malian soldiers threw away their weapons, removed their uniforms, and tried 

to blend into the civilian population. “We thought the army would protect 

us,” said Gaoussou Keita, a radio repairman in Diabaly. “But they simply 

ran away.”135 Local resident Gaoussou Kone remarked, “We were surprised 

to learn that our soldiers ran away. There is no African country that is strong 

enough to fight these people on their own. They are too well-armed.”136

French aircraft arrived at Diabaly to rain destruction down on the attackers, in the hope that air power would suffice to stop the rebels before they 

took the whole town. But the rebels overran Diabaly and a nearby Malian 

Army outpost anyway.137 Acknowledging that ground forces would be 

required to blunt the enemy offensive, Hollande promptly decided to increase 

French troop strength from 800 to 2,500 and shift from defense to offense. 

He directed the French to attack quickly, in order to catch as many of the 

enemy as possible before they slipped away.138

To facilitate the expansion of French ground operations, French diplomats 

asked the Americans to provide refueling aircraft. France had only a few 

aging KC-135 refuelers, which were not up to a task of this magnitude. Years 

earlier, France had ordered 14 new Airbus 330 tankers, but the purchase had 

been put on hold in 2010, owing to shrinkage of the French defense budget.139

The French expected the American help to be readily forthcoming. 

According to French and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 

officials who attended the private meetings, then-Secretary of Defense Leon 

Panetta and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low 

Intensity Conflict Michael Sheehan had said at a NATO summit a few months 

earlier that the United States would provide “whatever it takes” to help the 

French in Mali. U.S. defense officials would later dispute that recounting, 

saying their messages to France might have been “lost in translation,” and 

during those private meetings “neither Mr. Panetta nor Mr. Sheehan directly 

urged France to use force and didn’t promise specific support.” Panetta’s 

aides said that “his comments were meant to convey general U.S. support 

for the aims of the French in Mali.”140

On 14 January, though, Panetta made additional comments that seemed 

to suggest the United States would back France to the hilt. In reference to 

Mali, Panetta said:
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JSOU Report 15-5

We have made a commitment that al-Qaeda is not going to find any 

place to hide ... We’re concerned that any time al-Qaeda establishes 

a base of operations, while they might not have any immediate plans 

for attacks in the United States and in Europe, that ultimately that 

still remains their objective.141

Two days later, Panetta remarked, “This is an al-Qaeda operation, and it 

is for that reason that we have always been concerned about their presence 

in Mali, because they would use it as a base of operations.”142

According to Adam Entous and Julian Barnes of the Wall Street Journal, Pentagon officials initially promised to meet the French requests for 

assistance, but White House officials countermanded the promises. It is not 

clear whether this turn of affairs resulted from a lack of coordination within 

the executive branch or a change of heart at the White House. The Obama 

administration informed the French that it needed more information about 

the targets of the French aircraft the American tankers would refuel. The 

French were taken aback, given their impressions from the previous discussions that the United States would back them unequivocally and without 

hesitation.143

The French also asked the United States to help transport troops into Mali 

and provide intelligence that could be used for targeting. The Americans 

informed the French government that it would have to pay for the services 

of the transport aircraft. This reply also appalled the French, who labeled it 

a “demand without precedent.”144 A senior U.S. official told the Washington 

Post that the U.S. Government was not immediately granting the request for 

intelligence because it first needed to understand “what the French objectives are and really how they intend to go about them and against whom.”145

As the days wore on with no change in the status of the French request, 

Obama administration figures discussed the threat of militants in Mali and 

whether aiding France’s efforts was an urgent priority. “No one here is questioning the threat that AQIM poses regionally,” an unnamed administration 

official commented. “The question we all need to ask is, what threat do they 

pose to the U.S. homeland? The answer so far has been none.”146 Another 

concern was that the French offensive might be harming elements of the 

rebel coalition that were not as radical as AQIM. Anonymous U.S. officials 

said, “the U.S. believes AQIM members are fighting in Mali alongside rebels 
37

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

whose affiliations and intentions are less clear-cut. Some of these less-radical 

factions may be open to negotiations.”147

The tendency of European nations to depend on the United States for 

military assets was cited as a further reason for inaction. One U.S. official said that it was practicing “tough love” with the French. According to 

this individual, “The message to France and other European allies was that 

Washington won’t foot the bill as global policeman at a time when European 

powers are cutting defense investments.”148 Administration officials also 

expressed a concern that providing any assistance would make the United 

States a “co-belligerent” and there would be a “slippery slope” that would 

draw the United States into Mali more deeply.149 A senior State Department 

official told reporters, “We do best if we are in a strong supporting and 

sustaining role, and not in a role in which we are taking the lead. This is 

primarily an African problem.”150 Still another explanation advanced by the 

U.S. Government was that legal considerations required a delay. U.S. officials were said to be conducting a review of the legalities of such assistance 

because of the ban on providing aid to the Malian government and the lack 

of a UN blessing for the French operation.151

Elsewhere on the diplomatic front, Western nations were urging Algeria 

to help resolve the Mali crisis. The strongest military power in the region, 

Algeria, had demonstrated an impressive ability to eliminate Islamist extremists, but the Algerian government disregarded the West’s pleas. Combating 

rebels in northern Mali did not appear to be in its interests, as operations 

in Mali might cause the rebels to move into Algeria, where many of them 

had caused trouble in the past. Just a few months earlier, Algerian forces 

had driven AQIM forces from the Kabylie Mountains into northern Mali.152

National pride may also have played a role in Algeria’s refusal. Some Algerian officials contended that their government was unwilling to send forces 

to Mali because no one had sent forces to help Algeria deal with Islamist 

rebels in the 1990s. In addition, Algerians were incensed at the United States 

and France over their intervention in Libya in 2011. NATO countries had 

used the pretext of humanitarian assistance to engineer Gadhafi’s fall, and 

then had done little to restore stability or secure weapons in the aftermath, 

leaving Libyan-based extremists free to run rampant across the region with 

heavy weapons. Some of those extremists were carrying out complex terror 

attacks in Algeria.153
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JSOU Report 15-5

Among the places where the militants showed up with heavy weapons was 

a gas plant in the Algerian desert, where a multinational staff was laboring 

on behalf of the Algerian state energy agency Sonatrach, Norway’s Statoil, 

and BP. Led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a group of armed Islamists seized the 

facility on 16 January, taking several hundred hostages, including a handful 

of Americans.154 Belmokhtar, who had split from AQIM a month earlier to 

form a new group called the “Masked Brigade,” claimed that he had ordered 

the attack as retaliation for the French intervention in Mali.155

The attackers intended to blow up the gas facility, creating a spectacular 

fireball that would kill all of the employees and send a message around the 

world. But they had made the mistake of blowing up the plant’s generators 

during the initial assault, which shut down the processes required to ignite 

a massive explosion. On 17 January, with the plant still out of operation, the 

militants decided to load some of the hostages into five vehicles and break 

out of the Algerian army’s encirclement. The Algerian forces opened fire 

on the vehicles, three of which exploded, killing some hostages as well as a 

militant leader.156

The Algerian government decided to send in military forces on 19 January 

without consulting the United States or other interested foreign nations.157 

The Algerian army stormed the facility, shooting most of the militants and 

some of the hostages before securing the plant. A total of 38 workers, including three Americans, perished during the siege.158

Despite the failure of the militants to blow the plant up, the international 

jihadist community deemed the event a success. And although Belmokhtar 

had reportedly split with AQIM a month earlier, AQIM received most of 

the credit for the attack. As word of the brazen attack spread across the 

Internet, AQIM was inundated with donations and offers to serve in their 

jihadist ranks.159

Back in Mali, the French sent a mechanized infantry force of 600 

from Niono toward Diabaly on 18 January, while Malian military forces 

approached separately.160 Before French and Malian forces reached Diabaly, 

French air strikes slammed into the town, which convinced the rebels to 

flee. When the Malians came close to the town, nevertheless, they halted and 

refused to go further, for fear the rebels still had fighters in the town or had 

left booby traps behind. “It’s not possible to say if they have left Diabaly 100 

percent,” said Lieutenant Colonel Seydou Sogoba, a Malian military commander. “It’s hard to tell who’s an Islamist. They don’t have ‘Islamist’ written 
39

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

on their faces.” Residents who had evacuated Diabaly during earlier fighting 

were hesitant to return for fear that the Islamists remained or would soon 

return.161 French forces finally took full control of Diabaly on 21 January.

During the first few weeks of the French intervention, the French government planned to secure Bamako and the rest of the south, then help prepare 

an African-led force to move into the north. Near the end of January, however, Hollande changed his mind, opting to use French troops to retake the 

north right away. On 26 January, French paratroopers conducted a night 

parachute landing near Timbuktu and headed into the city to catch fleeing 

rebels. The enemy chose not to fight, and nearly all enemy fighters were able 

to melt into the population or escape the area without getting caught. To 

take Gao, the French brought Chadian and Nigerien troops by air, entering 

Mali from Niger on the ground.162 At Gao, too, the rebels abandoned the city 

and evaded French attempts to ensnare them.163

As the French forces were taking the northern population centers, the 

U.S. Government remained unwilling to meet the French request for refueling aircraft. On 26 January, Karen DeYoung divulged in the Washington Post

that the administration’s legal review had concluded that the United States 

could provide the requested assistance, on the grounds that al-Qaeda posed 

a threat to the United States. The legal clearance, DeYoung further reported, 

had not led to action on the French request, owing to ongoing doubts within 

the administration of the strategic advisability of assistance. An unnamed 

U.S. official explained the delay in these terms:

What we’ve been working through is not viewing Mali as a oneoff but rather as part of a continuum of counterterrorism efforts 

and decisions that we’re making to address the situation in northern Africa [over the medium and long term] ... We need to think 

through what our engagement means—what the risk of getting 

further engaged could be to U.S. personnel abroad, [and] the duration of time that we’re being asked to get involved.164

On the evening of 26 January, the same day that the Washington Post

article appeared, the Pentagon announced that it would meet the French 

request for refueling aircraft.165 Three U.S. KC-135 tankers based in Moron 

Air Base in Spain began providing in-flight refueling to French aircraft 

flying from N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. On 18 January, the U.S. 

Air Force’s 818th Contingency Response Group moved from Joint Base 
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JSOU Report 15-5

McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey to an air base in Istres, France, where 

it loaded French vehicles onto U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft and flew them to 

Bamako. Several weeks later, the emphasis shifted to flying people and equipment within Mali, primarily with six C-130 airlifters that were assigned to 

AFRICOM and U.S. European Command. American airmen would remain 

in Mali to the end of the year and beyond because of the ongoing shortage 

of French logistical assets.166

French forces moved into the city of Kidal on 30 January. They cut a 

deal with the MNLA and an Ansar Dine splinter group called the Islamic 

Movement of Azawad (MIA), whereby the MNLA and MIA would allow the 

French to enter peacefully on the condition that the Malian army would not 

be allowed back into the city. The French were not prepared to govern Kidal, 

so the MNLA and MIA retained control of governance. Manning roadblocks 

and collecting taxes, they ran Kidal city until July when, under international 

pressure, they allowed the Malian military to assume control.167

At the beginning of February 2012, Chad deployed its Special AntiTerrorism Group to northern Mali for operations in support of the French 

counteroffensive. The unit had received prolonged training from USSOF, 

and had also received American equipment and logistical support.168 Other 

neighboring countries, including Nigeria and Senegal, said they would send 

forces to Mali, but their forces were slow in arriving, and once in Mali they 

did not participate in dangerous combat missions as the Chadians did.169

French and Chadian forces entered Aguelhok and Tessalit on 7 and 8 

February, bringing them into closer proximity to the Ifoghas and Tigharghar 

Mountains, where AQIM and other rebel groups were believed to have bases. 

The French and Chadian forces began patrolling the mountains with the 

assistance of friendly Tuareg militiamen, but without the Malian army, which 

the French wanted to keep away to prevent a rekindling of conflict with the 

MNLA.170 Only occasionally did the hunters manage to find and engage the 

rebels. In the middle of February, 1,200 French and 900 Chadian troops 

caught a large AQIM force in the Ametettai valley, in northeastern Mali. 

The French and Chadians killed more than 100 AQIM fighters and took five 

prisoners, at a cost of 26 Chadian and two French personnel.171

Large numbers of residents fled the northern cities when the French and 

their allies arrived. Some families fled merely to avoid the fighting, or to 

avoid retribution for their support of the rebels. Others, especially among 

the youth, were recruited by the militants to join them as they retreated to 
41

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

hidden base areas. Between 200 and 300 pupils were reported to have gone 

with the militants from Gao. “MUJAO took many of the students from the 

Quranic schools because they speak Arabic and are easier to convert and 

manipulate,” remarked Gao Mayor Sadou Diallo.172

African nations, which in the past had often condemned Western military 

action in Africa as a tool of neocolonialism, applauded the French intervention of January 2012. Many of Mali’s neighbors lined up to send troops for 

the follow-on mission. “All of the African continent, all its heads of state, is 

happy about the speed with which France acted and with France’s political 

courage,” said Thomas Boni Yayi, who was both the African Union Chairman and the president of Benin. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who 

offered to provide 1,200 troops, said of the Malian insurgency, “If it is not 

contained, definitely it will spill into West Africa ... It is one of the reasons 

we have to move fast.”173

Among the world’s violent Islamist groups, the French intervention provoked a torrent of vitriol. Jihadist websites advocated attacks on French citizens and the French homeland, including landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. 

“Carry out lone-wolf actions, capture and kill and slaughter, even if it is one 

Frenchman,” one posting read.174 U.S. Ambassador to Mali Mary Beth Leonard said she was worried that Malians with French passports would conduct 

terrorist attacks in Europe, since their passports would allow them to enter 

France and other European countries without extensive scrutiny. Once inside 

Europe, they could strike American embassies, schools, or military bases.175

43

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

8. After the Storm

Following the French re-conquest of the north, the U.S. Government 

did not resume training Malian forces. American troops did, however, 

train some African forces that were heading to Mali as peacekeepers. In May, 

Army Regionally Aligned Forces from 1-18 IN deployed a 22-person training 

team to Oullam, Niger, for 10 weeks to mentor and train Nigerien defense 

forces in preparation for their deployment to Mali.176

The United States also positioned two unarmed drones near the Nigerien 

capital of Niamey to gather information in Mali and Niger for the benefit 

of French forces. Nigerien President Issoufou Mahamadou said that he had 

asked Washington to send the drones to Niger because he was concerned 

that Niger on its own might not be strong enough to fend off Islamist fighters 

based in Mali, Libya, or Nigeria. According to U.S. officials, the drones were 

intended to conduct surveillance over Mali, but not to launch air strikes, 

although these individuals did not rule out the use of American air strikes in 

the future. One U.S. official commented, “Most of the surveillance missions 

are designed to track broad patterns of human activity and are not aimed 

at hunting individuals.”177

In February 2013, 500 EU military personnel arrived in Bamako to provide training to the Malian military. The EU planned to use them to train 

four battalions of 600-700 Malian soldiers each. The training regimen would 

include extensive emphasis on human rights, in part because of reports that 

Malian soldiers had executed Arab and Tuareg civilians suspected of aiding 

the enemy.178 The newly arrived head of the EU mission, French General 

François Lecointre, reported the Malian army to be “in a state of advanced 

disrepair,” its soldiers “badly trained, badly paid and under-equipped.”179 

General Lecointre asserted that the EU needed to provide weapons, transportation, and communications equipment, in addition to training. The EU 

mission would work through General Dembélé and Minister of Defense and 

Veterans’ Affairs Brigadier General Yamoussa Camara, not through Captain 

Sanogo, whom the Europeans wished to isolate and disempower. Sanogo had 

just put himself in charge of a military committee responsible for reform 

of the security forces, and some senior military officers continued to take 

direction from him.180
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On 2 April, the EU Training Mission began training the first of four 

Malian battalions at Koulikoro, a military base 37 miles from Bamako.181 The 

training turned out to be less impressive than advertised. Of the 550 “trainers” present in April, only 150 were trainers, the remainder being support 

staff and security.182 Malian soldiers received only two months of training, 

much too little to impart the skills and attitudes that make for capable and 

disciplined soldiers. In June, soldiers from the first battalion to complete 

EU training boycotted their graduation ceremony in protest against their 

commanders, whom they accused of stealing aid funds that were supposed 

to be spent on the battalion.183

France and the United States, meanwhile, took action to accelerate 

the transportation of ECOWAS forces to Mali and their integration into 

AFISMA. By late March, the ECOWAS representation in Mali consisted 

of 4,300 soldiers from Togo, Senegal, Benin, Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone, 

the Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso. Chad had another 2,000 troops in the 

country. The AFISMA forces were supposed to be self-sufficient for the first 

90 days of deployment, but some began experiencing shortages of food, fuel, 

and water well before that time, which compelled other foreign countries 

to provide them with logistical support.184 “If this war has shown one thing 

about our armies, it is our inability to project power beyond our borders,” 

said a West African chief of staff. “And it is not only a question of resources. 

We also lack skills.”185 In April, Assistant Secretary of Defense Sheehan told 

a Senate Armed Services subcommittee that the ECOWAS contingent “is a 

completely incapable force.”186

During the spring, the Malian government sent 1,200 troops to Gao 

and 650 to Timbuktu to reassert sovereign authority. The local populations 

accused the incoming Malian soldiers of human rights abuses, though the 

claims proved difficult to verify. French, Malian, and AFISMA forces conducted numerous operations in northern Mali, but seldom encountered 

armed opposition. The enemy occasionally employed suicide bombers against 

military forces and installations, and otherwise appeared content to stay 

hidden until the French departed.187

On 1 July 2013, the UN took control of the 6,000 West African troops in 

Mali under a new peacekeeping mission called Multidimensional Integrated 

Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Led by a Rwandan officer, Major 

General Jean Bosco Kazura, MINUSMA was slated to reach a total strength 

of 12,640 African troops by December. It was to provide security in the north 
45

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

for upcoming elections, and then ultimately take full responsibility for Mali’s 

security.188 The change in name and mission notwithstanding, the African 

forces did not appear to be capable of replacing the French forces as planned. 

President Hollande had said in March that the number of French troops in 

Mali would be reduced to 2,000 by the middle of the year, but France still 

had 3,200 troops in Mali in July, and the same number in August.189

In the summer elections, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won the presidential runoff with 78 percent of the vote. The most immediate threat to Keita 

appeared to come from Sanogo, who in August had managed to get himself 

promoted to the rank of general.190 On 30 September, Sanogo’s allies from 

the Committee for Reform of the Armed Forces organized a protest against 

the government at the Kati barracks, where the 2012 coup had begun. After 

firing the usual shots in the air, the protesters claimed that they had been 

denied promotions that had been promised previously. Six soldiers were 

killed during the incident, and a colonel disappeared.191

President Keita responded by ordering the dissolution of the committee. “I will not tolerate indiscipline and anarchy,” Keita said in a nationally 

televised speech. “Investigations are under way into the reasons and the 

individuals behind this slap in the face of the nation which comes at a time 

when soldiers from other nations have left their countries ... to come defend 

us.”192 The government arrested several military officers, including Malian 

army Colonel Youssou Traoré, who was accused of inciting the protest.193

Later in the fall, President Keita sacked the army chief of staff, the director of the national police, and the head of the military academies, all of 

whom were close to Sanogo.194 The critical opportunity presented itself in 

December, when a forensic team discovered the remains of 21 people in a 

mass grave where Sanogo loyalists were believed to have carried out a massacre. Seizing on the discovery, Keita arrested Sanogo and charged him with 

assassination.195

During the second half of 2013, Keita made some headway in moving the 

right military officers into the most important positions. In September, the 

officer in charge of Malian forces in the North was Colonel Didier Dacko, a 

man highly regarded by American and French officers. Dacko had attended 

the National Defense University in Washington in 2009, during which time 

he had absorbed Western counterinsurgency theories that emphasized winning over the population, and he was now putting those principles into 

practice. Dacko recounted: 
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JSOU Report 15-5

What I took away was that in dealing with insurgencies, the most 

important thing is to work with the population and win them over 

without using too much force ... We need the Tuareg on our side, 

or at least not as our enemies. We can’t win over the jihadis; we 

need to crush them. But we can’t do it if we’re fighting all of the 

Tuareg as well.196

In the fall, Hollande kept talking about reducing the French presence, 

but his withdrawal plans were continuously undercut by the shortcomings 

of MINUSMA. Instead of rising in numbers as planned, the UN peacekeeping force actually declined to 5,200 troops in October.197 The quality of those 

troops did not show an appreciable increase. The peacekeepers also continued to suffer from shortages of equipment and combat enablers.198

The security situation in northern Mali began to deteriorate in October. 

Rebel forces increased their terrorist attacks on international peacekeepers, 

Malian soldiers, and foreign journalists.199 The violence caused retrenchment 

among international aid organizations that had returned to northern Mali 

earlier in the year. A humanitarian worker, who did not wish to be named, 

said:

Insecurity is still critical in some areas, especially the areas bordering Kidal and Menaka ... Even local organisations cannot get 

access there. We are receiving information about the infiltration 

of jihadists in Gao – we believe that people who are recognised as 

active members of the Islamist groups are coming back, and planning attacks.200

On 2 November, AQIM kidnapped and killed French journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon of Radio France International, who had 

just finished interviewing a local leader in Kidal. AQIM released a statement 

saying, “The organisation considers that this is the least price that President 

François Hollande and his people will pay for their new crusade.”201 French 

Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced that the French army was redeploying 150 soldiers from the south to Kidal. He added, though, that the 

decrease in the French troop presence in Mali as a whole would continue 

unabated.202 At the end of 2013, nevertheless, France still had 2,800 troops in 

Mali, and the UN peacekeeping mission still had only half of its authorized 

strength of 12,600.203
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Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

The uptick in violence may have been the result of several changes within 

the constellation of rebel groups. In late summer, Mokhtar Belmokhtar 

had joined forces with MUJAO, announcing that they had decided to get 

together “to confront the Zionist campaign against Islam and Muslims” and 

to combat “the secular forces who reject all that is Islamist and who have 

forced the eviction of our Muslim brothers in Egypt.” The groups attested, 

further, that the ultimate “leaders of jihad” were al-Qaeda head Ayman alZawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.204

The Tuaregs of the MNLA made common cause with other separatist 

groups and spurned the government’s reconciliation efforts. On 4 November, 

MNLA announced a merger with the High Council for the Unity of Azawad 

and the Arab Movement of Azawad.205 Later in the month, an MNLA leader 

informed the French press that MNLA was ending its ceasefire with the 

government, vowing, “Wherever we find the Malian army we will launch 

the assault against them.”206

The first Malian battalion to undergo training by the EU deployed to 

Kidal in the spring of 2014 to combat resurgent rebels. The French negotiation of a truce in Kidal in January 2013 had revitalized hopes that the Malian 

Tuaregs could indeed be separated from the international extremists, but 

the Tuaregs of Kidal had subsequently welcomed the extremists back and 

abetted them in ejecting the Malian army. The Malian government sent 

its new battalion to Kidal without notifying its foreign allies, which many 

diplomats applauded as a sign of the government’s growing confidence and 

independence. But the move prevented those allies from lending support to 

the Kidal operation. The battalion suffered a humiliating defeat, and had to 

retreat without retrieving its dead.207

During the spring of 2014, Islamist and separatist rebels also defeated the 

Malian armed forces in battle at Tessalit, Menaka, Aguelhok, and Anefis. 

The setbacks compelled President Keita to agree to a ceasefire that provided 

for negotiations over the ultimate status of Tuareg areas.208 The MNLA and 

other Tuareg groups continued to fight the government after the ceasefire, 

taking possession of additional towns.209

The EU announced, in the meantime, that it would be providing 75 

experts to train Mali’s police, Gendarmerie, and National Guard.210 If properly organized and led, these forces could help provide lasting security in 

the north. The European trainers were slow in getting started, and daunted 

by their tasks. Albrecht Conze, the German diplomat who headed the police 
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JSOU Report 15-5

training mission, arrived in the summer to find the Malian police forces in 

abysmal shape. Leaders had been appointed without regard for merit, and 

the rank and file had received little training.211

French SOF continued to carry out precision attacks on extremists in 

Mali during 2014.212 Relying on sophisticated intelligence and operational 

capabilities to carry out high-value targeting, the French did not undertake 

counterinsurgency operations or prepare the Malians to undertake them. 

Nor was there much evidence that the French were helping Malians acquire 

surgical strike capabilities. The French inflicted significant losses on the 

extremist groups, but remained unable to cause serious harm to their leadership structures. Key leaders were well protected or were living outside of 

Mali.213 A particularly popular location was southwestern Libya, which had 

been beyond central control since the fall of Gadhafi. The population of 

southwestern Libya, of which a substantial fraction was Tuareg by ethnicity, 

sympathized with the extremists for ideological or commercial reasons. The 

small number of Libyan security forces in the area left them alone.214

The lack of French attention to Malian capacity was to some extent influenced by the growing recognition that France would not get out of Mali as 

soon as it had planned. In May, the French government announced that it 

planned to keep 1,000 French troops in Mali and 3,000 in the Sahel-Sahara 

for “as long as necessary.” The French intended to maintain four major military bases: in Gao, and in the capitals of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Chad.215

The U.S. military still lacked authorization to operate in either Mali or 

Libya, but it did have authorization to support activities in the infiltration 

corridor between Mali and Libya, and to provide a small amount of support 

to the EU Training Mission and the training of MINUSMA forces from 

other nations. By this time, Mali was a relatively low priority for the United 

States. The French, whose robust intervention had come as a surprise to most 

Americans, were believed to be containing Mali’s extremists, though it was 

far from clear how long they planned to stay. Larger numbers of extremists, 

moreover, were now located in other countries, such as Syria, Iraq, Libya, 

and Yemen. Furthermore, AFRICOM was preoccupied with fighting the 

Ebola virus in western Africa and Boko Haram in Nigeria.216

Neither the United States nor anyone else was doing much to address 

the ongoing drug trafficking in Mali and other West Africa countries. By 

November 2014, the United States had reported only two successful counternarcotics operation in West Africa, and European countries had not recorded 
49

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

a single success. Malian government officials—including drug enforcement 

officials appointed under foreign pressure—continued to collaborate with 

drug traffickers as in the past. Such conditions encouraged traffickers to 

make lavish use of these routes in lieu of riskier routes.217

By the fall of 2014, most of the Malian government’s security forces 

had been driven from northern Mali. Extremists periodically attacked 

MINUSMA, which was increasingly confined to its bases, and hence unable 

to interfere with the extremists and separatists roaming the north.218 The UN 

Secretary General reported: 

The withdrawal of the Malian Defence and Security Forces from 

most of northern Mali, the absence of effective control by the armed 

groups over the areas gained from the Malian Defence and Security 

Forces in May and the gradual drawdown and reconfiguration of 

French operation Serval/Barkhane have given way to a marked 

increase in the activities of extremist groups.219

On 8 October, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop asked the UN 

Security Council to send a “rapid-reaction force” to reinforce the UN peacekeeping mission, warning that Mali “again runs the risk of becoming the 

destination of hordes of terrorists who have been forced out of other parts 

of the world.”220

Instead of providing the military reinforcements requested by the Malian 

government, the UN decided to host negotiations. Malian officials and representatives from northern rebel groups gathered in Algiers to discuss an 

agreement that would permit the reintegration of the north into Mali. The 

negotiations dragged on for months without agreement, while the rebels 

continued to kill and wound the UN peacekeepers. As of the middle of 2015, 

a peace deal remained elusive.

51

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

9. Conclusion and Implications for SOF

Among the most striking features of the Malian experience was the disparity of opinion within the U.S. Government on the extremist threat. 

In 2010 and 2011, some U.S. officials warned that the extremist threat in Mali 

was growing rapidly, based upon a wide variety of information sources, many 

of them publicly available. Turmoil in Libya, the links between extremists 

in Libya and Mali, and collaboration between Islamists and Tuareg separatists provided ominous signs. Others, however, discounted the indicators 

of rising enemy strength, depicted the threats as purely local, or contended 

that the enemies could be contained by playing them off against one another. 

As a consequence, the U.S. Government avoided actions that might have 

weakened the extremists, such as deploying more U.S. resources to Mali or 

increasing support to Mali’s government and security forces. It took the killing of the U.S. ambassador in Libya and the execution of several Americans 

at an Algerian gas facility to convince skeptics that AQIM posed a 

significant threat to U.S. interests. The underestimation of the extremist 

threat in Mali is worth remembering in future debates about the 

magnitude of extremist threats.

The extremist offensives in 2011 and 2012 revealed that the North African 

Islamists had made dramatic advances in their military and political capabilities during and after the Libyan civil war. They fielded capable leaders 

and developed complex procedures for mitigating the West’s technological 

advantages. They also improved their ability to govern populations, resulting 

in greater assistance from the population and a greater ability to mingle with 

civilians who could provide cover from air strikes. The similarities between 

their operations and those of Sunni extremist groups in the Middle East 

provided disconcerting evidence that extremist groups were learning from 

experience and sharing their findings across continents.

Until 2011, some experts believed that Mali’s extremist problems, whatever their magnitude, could not be solved militarily. The problems could be 

solved instead through investment in social and economic development. 

Hence, aid to Mali ought to be concentrated on development and not on 

security. The U.S. Government and other donors adhered to this position 

in the period leading up to the coup of March 2012. But spending in those 
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JSOU Report 15-5

sectors failed to curb the extremists, because of weak Malian implementation of development and because of insecurity in the north that impeded 

implementation.

Another reason for low foreign assistance to Mali’s military was the 

belief that strong militaries are threats to civilian government. Mali’s case, 

however, showed that weak militaries can also overthrow civilian governments, and that starving military organizations of resources may increase 

their propensity for coups. Sanogo, who had a long record of ineptitude and 

indiscipline prior to the coup, would not have been an officer in Mali’s armed 

forces had the officer corps been as professional as those in other countries, 

and that lack of professionalism reflected a dearth of expenditures on the 

military. Although foreign military assistance cannot guarantee positive 

results, the United States does have a good record of improving the professionalism of the forces it trains, and one component of that professionalism 

is a respect for the legal prerogatives of civil authorities.

The U.S. Defense and State Departments differed sharply in their remedies to the problem of insufficient Malian capacity. The Defense Department 

advocated greater participation by USSOF in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations, but was overruled by the State Department, which 

was worried that American military action could exacerbate extremism and 

undercut efforts to achieve a political solution. The State Department forbade SOF from providing robust advisory assistance to the Malian military 

in 2012, and to the French military in 2013. Following the coup of March 

2012, the State Department focused on political negotiations as the solution 

to Mali’s extremist problems. That solution failed to remedy the situation, 

and led instead to the extremist offensive of January 2013, which appeared 

certain to conquer all of Mali until the French military intervened. Although 

greater U.S. military participation in such countries may not always be the 

best option, this episode should give the State Department and White House 

cause to give more serious consideration to the Defense Department when 

such controversies arise again, as they undoubtedly will.

Most of the disputes between State and Defense took place behind closed 

doors, where they are supposed to take place. The State Department listened 

to Defense’s concerns, but by and large decided on policies different from 

those advocated by Defense, which is the prerogative of the State Department 

as the nation’s principal agency for the conduct of foreign policy. On several 

occasions, particularly during the French intervention, Defense Department 
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Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

officials made statements that were subsequently rescinded by other Defense, 

State, or White House officials. This development suggests that either Defense 

did not adequately coordinate with State, or that the White House decided to 

change its policy as events unfolded. Whatever the case, inadequate coordination among executive agencies sent mixed messages to friends and foes, to 

the detriment of U.S. foreign policy. Greater care in communicating a single, 

consistent message is required.

U.S. policy also suffered from a lack of clarity over what the United States 

would give its French ally and what it expected in return. The Secretary of 

Defense led the French to believe that the United States would unequivocally 

assist a French military intervention in Mali. Whether the State Department 

and White House shared this view at the time is not certain, but subsequent 

statements from the French indicate that neither State nor the White House 

conveyed a contrary position to the French. Once the French intervened, 

they were informed that U.S. policy had changed to one of selective support, 

based upon a review of French objectives and plans. The United States often 

attaches conditions to its assistance to other nations, and can be expected to 

do so in the future, but it must communicate those conditions ahead of time 

if it wishes to facilitate effective planning and avoid accusations of bad faith.

Some U.S. officials soon acknowledged the damage caused by the failure 

to take the threat seriously enough and by the lack of appropriate assistance 

in the security sector. Among them was Amanda Dory, the Deputy Assistant 

Secretary of Defense for Africa. “We provided training and equip support 

for many years, but in relatively modest quantities,” Dory told a Senate subcommittee on 5 December 2012. “I don’t think that level of resourcing was 

commensurate with the threat.”221

U.S. military officers would also fault the subject matter of the training 

that the United States had administered to Mali’s security forces. In January 

2013, General Carter Ham told an audience at Howard University that the 

United States had erred by focusing the training solely on military tactics 

and techniques. “We didn’t spend, probably, the requisite time focusing on 

values, ethics, and military ethos,” General Ham said.222 Training individuals 

in values, ethics, and military ethos can do much to improve the competence 

of security forces and their respect for human rights. It can also increase the 

military’s respect for civil authority, although it cannot necessarily ensure 

respect for a dreadful government.
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Other U.S. military leaders asserted that Mali demonstrated the weakness of episodic training, in which the exposure of host-nation personnel to 

U.S. training was too inconsistent to impart skills and culture. In May 2013, 

Admiral William McRaven asserted:

What we have learned in working around the world in Colombia, 

Afghanistan and the Philippines is you’ve got to have that persistent 

presence. It has been difficult for us in some countries to have a 

persistent presence, and Mali is a case in point. We had an episodic 

presence in Mali.223

The superior performance of Mali’s CFS, the one unit exposed to continuous U.S. training, demonstrated the value of persistent SOF engagement. The 

CFS displayed superior tactical proficiency, and unlike many of the other 

units it did not side with Sanogo’s rebels or the insurgents in the aftermath of 

the coup. In fact, the huge disparity between the CFS and the other Malian 

units contributed to subsequent United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) decisions to shift to persistent training across Africa 

and other regions. This shift has been a welcome one, though it has meant 

that USSOCOM, with its fixed manpower numbers, is training fewer hostnation units and hence is increasingly limited to working with elite units. 

A focus on elite units is improving African counterterrorism capabilities, 

but it is also inhibiting the development of the broader capabilities required 

for counterinsurgency. The officers from the elite units may one day become 

leaders elsewhere in the armed forces, thus broadening the competence of 

the armed forces, as occurred in Colombia.224 But that outcome depends on 

leadership decisions by chiefs of state and ministers of defense, and requires 

decades to come to fruition.

External critics cited the coup by Mali’s military as evidence that SOF 

training of Malian forces had been an abject failure. Gregory Mann, a 

Columbia University history professor, wrote in Foreign Policy, 

a decade of American investment in Special Forces training, cooperation between Sahalien armies and the United States, and counterterrorism programs of all sorts run by both the State Department 

and the Pentagon has, at best, failed to prevent a new disaster in the 

desert and, at worst, sowed its seeds.
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Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

Mann contended that “military cooperation and training have not helped 

the army to hold the line in the north.”225

Vicki Huddleston, the former U.S. Ambassador to Mali, leveled similar 

charges. In the New York Times she wrote:

Years of training by United States Special Forces did not stop the 

Malian military from fleeing when the Islamist insurgency started 

last January. In fact, the military exacerbated the chaos by overthrowing Mali’s democratically elected government last March.226

Such critiques fail to take into account the shortcomings and limitations of the training. As noted above, most of the U.S. training in Mali was 

handicapped by its episodic nature. The training was confined to tactical 

units whose personnel rotated frequently, further diluting the exposure of 

any one individual to American training. Personnel rotation decisions were 

the responsibility of the host-nation ministry of defense, which SOF could 

not influence because it did not have the personnel to engage in ministerial 

development on a substantial scale.

Indeed, one of the most valuable lessons of Mali is that influencing partner nation ministries can be a critical, even essential component of capacity 

building. The government’s failure to resupply the elite 33rd RPC in early 

2012 demonstrated that tactical units, however well trained they may be, 

cannot stay in the field when higher echelons fail to provide adequate logistical support. Tactical training may influence ministries in the long run, by 

virtue of the fact that today’s company commander could one day become 

a senior ministry official. But such promotions will not happen in time to 

help solve immediate problems.

The case of Mali also demonstrates how bad national leadership can 

inhibit progress in the security sector. The corrupt practices of President 

Amadou Toumani Touré resulted in dire shortages of equipment and supplies for Mali’s security forces. Touré’s meddling in military recruitment, 

training, and promotion caused severe damage to the professionalism of 

the armed forces. It also squandered some of the U.S. military’s spending 

on training and education, as individuals of low aptitude—to include Captain Sanogo—were assigned to American programs instead of more capable 

individuals.

Addressing such problems of governance is primarily a mission for nonmilitary elements of the U.S. Government, especially the State Department. 
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JSOU Report 15-5

In the Malian case, the U.S. Government did not adequately appreciate the 

problems of bad governance, and did not take action to address them. The 

holding of elections and media commentary about the strength of Mali’s 

democracy helped obscure the ineffectuality and corruption that plagued 

Mali’s government.

Prior to the coup, less than 1 percent of the U.S. aid budget for Mali was 

spent on governance, and approximately 2 percent was spent on security. 

The other 97 percent funded programs in social or economic development.227

Allocating a greater portion of the aid pie to governance and security certainly would have made sense, and the earlier in time the better since the 

problems had their origins in decisions made well in the past. The State 

Department, it should be added, is not well prepared to provide assistance 

in governance; improving U.S. capabilities in governance assistance will 

require major changes in organization, personnel, and policy.

The U.S. Government’s concern about Malian governance spiked following the military coup, as the administration chose to terminate aid to 

the Sanogo regime because of its anti-democratic and military origins. The 

decision was attributed to Section 7008 of the Department of State, Foreign 

Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, although whether 

that law was actually binding would be cast into doubt by the later refusal 

of the U.S. Government to withhold aid from Egypt after a military coup in 

July 2013. The termination of aid to Mali proved to be counterproductive, as 

it undermined Mali’s security forces at a time of enemy military advances. 

While many in the West found a military coup troubling, the people of Mali 

supported it because of the weakness of the civilian government, a fact that 

called into question the viability of Mali’s democratic project. Unless Mali’s 

civil leaders can provide better governance than their predecessors, military 

coups are likely to recur, regardless of U.S. policy toward coups or U.S. training of military officers in the importance of civil control of the military. 

Given the negative effects of terminating aid in Mali the last time around, 

the policy of reflexive aid termination deserves reexamination.

After the coup, the U.S. Government emphasized the need for Mali and 

its neighbors to handle Mali’s security problems. But the planning effort 

for an ECOWAS intervention demonstrated that the African forces were 

not capable of solving these problems on their own. The French have since 

tried to turn matters over to MINUSMA and the Malian government, but 

have been compelled to remain in Mali because others lack the quantity and 
57

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

quality of troops to assume full responsibility for security. Of the African 

forces, only the Chadians have proven effective at securing territory and 

attacking the extremists.

Effective development of Malian and African forces will be essential 

to averting rebel advances when the last French troops leave. Most of the 

EU’s training effort has taken place in Bamako, which has been problematic 

because the people who could benefit most from capacity building are in 

the north and they are loathe to travel to the south for training. The first 

EU-trained Malian forces to be fielded suffered ignominious defeat, which 

can be traced to ineffectual leadership. Their failure should not have been 

surprising, for developing leaders takes decades, not a few months as the EU 

attempted. A much longer and more careful effort will likely be necessary if 

Mali is to survive. Whether the French and other Western nations are willing to stay in Mali that long remains to be seen.

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Appendix A: Acronyms

AFISMA International Support Mission in Mali

AFRICOM United States Africa Command

AQIM al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

CFS Malian Special Forces Company

ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States

ETIA Echelon Tactique Inter-Armée

EU European Union

GSPC Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat 

JCET Joint Combined Exchange Training

JPAT Joint Planning Assistance Team

JSOTF-TS Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara

MIA Islamic Movement of Azawad

MINUSMA Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali

MNLA National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad

MPLA Popular Movement for the Liberation of Azawad

MUJAO Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NCO noncommissioned officer

NGO nongovernmental organization

ODA Operational Detachment – Alpha

RCP Parachute Commando Regiment

SOCAFRICA Special Operations Command Africa
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SOF Special Operations Forces

TSCTP Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership

UN United Nations

UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural 

 Organization

USSOCOM United States Special Operations Command

USSOF United States Special Operations Forces
61

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

Endnotes

1. Michael Shurkin, France’s War in Mali: Lessons for an Expeditionary Army (Santa 

Monica: Rand, 2014), 16; and Dona J. Stewart, What is Next for Mali? The Roots 

of Conflict and Challenges to Stability (Carlisle: U.S. Army War College Press, 

2013), 25-27.

2. Sara Randall, “The Demographic Consequences of Conflict, Exile and Repatriation: A Case Study of Malian Tuareg,” European Journal of Population, vol. 21 

(2005), 296.

3. Angel Rabasa et al., From Insurgency to Stability, Volume II: Insights from Selected 

Case Studies (Santa Monica, Rand: 2011), 139.

4. Martin van Vliet, “The Challenges of Retaking Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel, 

vol. 5, no. 11-12 (November 2012), 2; and Rabasa et al., From Insurgency to Stability, 121-123.

5. Robert Pringle, “Miracle in Mali,” Wilson Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2 (spring 2006), 

31.

6. Susanna D. Wing, Constructing Democracy in Transitioning Societies of Africa: 

Constitutionalism and Deliberation in Mali (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 

2008).

7. Marietou Macalou, The Politicization of the Malian Civil Service in the Context 

of Democratization,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2010.

8. David Gutelius, “Islam in Northern Mali and the War on Terror,” Journal of 

Contemporary African Studies, vol. 25, no. 1 (January 2007), 63.

9. Camille Tawil, “The Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb: Expansion in the Sahel and Challenges from Within Jihadist Circles,” The Jamestown 

Foundation, April 2010, 8; and Ricardo René Larémont, “Al Qaeda in the Islamic 

Maghreb: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in the Sahel,” African Security, vol. 

4, no. 4 (October 2011), 243-244.

10. Baz Lecocq and Paul Schrivjer, “The War on Terror in a Haze of Dust: Potholes 

and Pitfalls on the Saharan Front,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol. 

25, no. 1 (January 2007), 147.

11. Morten Bøås, “Guns, Money and Prayers: AQIM’s Blueprint for Securing Control 

of Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 2014), 4.

12. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 251.

13. Stephen Ellis, “West Africa’s International Drug Trade,” African Affairs, vol. 108, 

no. 431 (April 2009), 171-172.

14. Tawil, “The al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb,” 13.

15. Juan C. Zarate and David A. Gordon, “The Battle for Reform with Al-Qaeda,” 

Washington Quarterly, Summer 2011, 106; and Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the 

Islamic Maghreb,” 258-259.
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JSOU Report 15-5

16. John Rollins, “Al Qaeda and Affiliates: Historical Perspective, Global Presence, 

and Implications for U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service, 25 January 

2011.

17. “Al-Qaeda ‘Issues France Threat’,” BBC News, 14 September 2006.

18. Ibid.

19. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 245-250.

20. Tawil, “The al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb,” 14.

21. Adam Nossiter, “Millions in Ransoms Fuel Militants’ Clout in West Africa,” New 

York Times, 12 December 2012.

22. Tawil, “The al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb,” 16.

23. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 245-250.

24. Stephen A. Emerson, “Desert Insurgency: Lessons from the Tuareg Rebellion,” 

Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 22, no. 4 (October 2011), 680-681.

25. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 259; and Emerson, “Desert Insurgency,” 673-674.

26. Martin van Vliet, “The Challenges of Retaking Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel, 

vol. 5, no. 11-12 (November 2012), 3; and Wolfram Lacher, “Organized Crime and 

Conflict in the Sahel-Sahara Region,” 13 September 2012, Carnegie Endowment 

for International Peace, accessed at: http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/09/13/

organized-crime-and-conflict-in-sahel-sahara-region/dtjm#.

27. Animism began to erode in the late twentieth century because of the rising 

popularity of “Arabism.” Jeremy Keenan, The Lesser Gods of the Sahara: Social 

Change and Indigenous Rights (London: Routledge, 2004), 94.

28. Lecocq and Schrivjer, “The War on Terror in a Haze of Dust,” 155.

29. Stephen A. Harmon, Terror and Insurgency in the Sahara-Sahel Region: Corruption, Contraband, Jihad and the Mali War of 2012-2013 (Farnham, Surrey and 

Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2014), 170. 

30. Rabasa et al., From Insurgency to Stability, 127-128.

31. Yahia H. Zoubir, “The United States and Maghreb-Sahel Security,” International 

Affairs, vol. 85, no. 5 (2009), 989-990; and United States Africa Command, “Trans 

Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership,” www.africom.mil/NEWSROOM/Document/7432, accessed August 12, 2013.

32. Phillip Ulmer, “Special Forces Support Pan Sahel Initiative in Africa,” American 

Forces Press Service, 8 March 2004.

33. Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts in Africa Defined by a Decade 

of Missteps,” Washington Post, 4 February 2013.

34. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 261-262.

35. Stewart, What is Next for Mali, 47; United States Africa Command, “Trans Sahara 

Counter Terrorism Partnership.”
63

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

36. Max R. Blumenfeld, JSOTF-TS Public Affairs, “Training in Trans-Sahara Africa,” 

13 December 2010, accessed at: http://www.africom.mil/newsroom/article/7896/

training-in-trans-sahara-africa.

37. United Nations Security Council Report S/2012/894, “Report of the SecretaryGeneral on the Situation in Mali,” 29 November 2012, 4.

38. Stew Magnuson, “Mali Crisis Officer Lessons for Special Operations Command,” 

National Defense, May 2013.

39. Johnnie Carson, “Opening Remarks for Hearing on Counterterrorism in Africa 

(Sahel Region),” Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 

Subcommittee on Africa, 17 November 2009, accessed at: http://www.state.gov/p/

af/rls/rm/2009/132062.htm.

40. Earl Gast, “Mali: Current Threats to Development Gains and the Way Forward,” 

Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee 

on African Affairs, 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/

usaid/201589.htm.

41. Interviews with U.S. Government officials, 2014. Hearing, Committee On Foreign Affairs, House of Representatives, “The Crisis in Mali: U.S. Interests and 

the International Response,” 113th Cong., 1st Sess., 14 February 2013.

42. Neil MacFarquhar, “Mali Tackles Al Qaeda and Drug Traffic,” New York Times, 

1 January 2011.

43. For Sachs’s view on corruption, see Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic 

Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin, 2005), 190-209.

44. Modibo Goita, “West Africa’s Growing Terrorist Threat: Confronting AQIM’s 

Sahelian Strategy,” Africa Center for Strategic Studies, February 2011; and “Mali 

Report Claims CFA 112 Billion Lost to Mismanagement in 2009,” African Press 

Agency, 4 August 2010. Some of the corruption that aroused ire in northern 

Mali originated with officials appointed by the central government in Bamako. 

Much of it, though, came from individuals native to northern Mali who had been 

empowered by the decentralization granted by the central government after the 

rebellions of the 1990s. They had not been selected by the central government, 

and were corrupt on their own initiative. See also: International Crisis Group, 

“Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,” 11 April 2013, 30.

45. “Malian al-Qaeda Hunter Shot Dead,” BBC, 11 June 2009. Mali’s army stepped 

up its attacks on AQIM in June, but then halted in July after an AQIM ambush 

on a poorly defended camp that killed several dozen soldiers. See also: Simon 

J. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No: Lessons for 

SOF from Mali,” Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2013, 

13-15.

46. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 2-18.

47. Ibid., 26-27.

48. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014-2015; and Powelson, “Enduring 

Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 18.
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JSOU Report 15-5

49. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 28-29.

50. Ibid., 31.

51. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Avoiding Escalation,” 18 July 2012, 5; interviews with U.S. government officials, 2014.

52. Goita, “West Africa’s Growing Terrorist Threat.”

53. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 30.

54. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2015; and Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 29-32.

55. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2015.

56. Interviews with AFRICOM personnel, 2014.

57. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014-2015; and Powelson, “Enduring 

Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 33-35.

58. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 34-36, 43-45.

59. Ibid., 39, 42.

60. Stephen Schnell, Trust As a Currency: The Role of Relationships in the Human 

Domain (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: School of Advanced Military Studies, 2014), 

41-42; and Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 

40-41.

61. Steven Radelet, Emerging Africa (Washington, DC: Center for Global Development, 2010), 10; and Gast, “Mali: Current Threats to Development Gains and 

the Way Forward.”

62. John T. Bennett, “Pentagon: All U.S. Elite Commandos in Mali ‘Accounted For,’” 

U.S. News, 23 March 2012.

63. Caitriona Dowd and Clionadh Raleigh, “The Myth of Global Islamic Terrorism 

and Local Conflict in Mali and the Sahel,” African Affairs, vol. 112, No. 448 (July 

2013), 5; Alexis Arieff, “Crisis in Mali,” Congressional Research Service, 14 January 2013, 11; and Andrew Lebovich, “The Local Face of Jihadism in Northern 

Mali,” CTC Sentinel, vol. 6, no. 6 (June 2013), 8.

64. Andre Le Sage, “The Evolving Threat of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Strategic Forum, no. 268 (July 2011); and Goita, “West Africa’s Growing Terrorist 

Threat.”

65. Interviews with SOCAFRICA and AFRICOM officials, 2014-2015.

66. Scott Stewart, “Mali Besieged by Fighters Fleeing Libya,” Stratfor, 2 February 

2012; Edward Cody, “In Mali, An Islamist Extremist Haven Takes Shape,” Washington Post, 7 June 2012; and International Crisis Group, “Mali: Avoiding Escalation,” 11.

67. In November 2009, the hulk of a burned out Boeing 727 that had flown 10 tons of 

cocaine from Venezuela was discovered in the Malian desert. An ensuing sting 

operation, involving DEA agents posing as members of the Colombian FARC, led 

to the arrest and prosecution of three AQIM members from Mali on drug trafficking and terrorism charges, providing the first undisputed link of al-Qaeda to 
65

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

Latin American drug trafficking organizations. Chris Hawley, “South American 

Gangs Flying Vast Quantities of Cocaine to Europe,” Guardian, 15 November 

2010; James Butty, “Three Malians to Soon Stand Trial in US Courts for Alleged 

Narco-Terrorism,” Voice of America, 10 January 2010; and Samuel Logan, “DEA 

Uncovers Drug-Terror Nexus,” International Relations and Security Network, 

21 January 2010, accessed at: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/

Detail//?id=111599.

68. Interviews with U.S. military officials, 2014.

69. Arieff, “Crisis in Mali,” Research Service, 14 January 2013, 11.

70. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Avoiding Escalation,” 9-10.

71. The U.S. government and other international parties sought to interdict some of 

the weapons, but they concentrated mainly on surface-to-air missiles. Abigail 

Hauslohner, “Weapons, Fighters From Libyan War May Be At Root Of Regional 

Unrest,” Washington Post, 19 January 2013.

72. Roger Kaplan, “War Comes to Mali,” Weekly Standard, 20 February 2012; and 

Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 50-51.

73. Roger Kaplan, “Tuareg Forces Take Tessalit,” Weekly Standard, 13 March 

2012; International Crisis Group, “Mali: Avoiding Escalation,” 13; Powelson, 

“Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 52; and interviews with 

SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014.

74. Serge Daniel, “Mali Soldiers Attack Presidency in Apparent Coup Bid,” Agence 

France Presse, 21 March 2012; and Rukmini Callimachi, “Amadou Haya Sanogo, 

Mali Coup Leader, Derails 20 Years Of Democracy,” Associated Press, 7 July 

2012.

75. Callimachi, “Amadou Haya Sanogo, Mali Coup Leader, Derails 20 Years Of 

Democracy.”

76. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014-2015.

77. Christopher Fomunyoh, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign 

Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://

www.ndi.org/files/Christopher%20Fomunyoh%20Senate%20Testimony%20

on%20Mali.pdf.

78. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,” 

16.

79. John Vandiver, “Small Team of U.S. troops Still in Mali, On ‘Stand-By’,” Stars 

and Stripes, 4 April 2012; and Amanda Dory, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, 5 December 2012, 

accessed at: http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Amanda_Dory_Testimony.pdf.

80. Gast, “Mali: Current Threats to Development Gains and the Way Forward.”

81. Yochi Dreazen, “Foreign Policy: Drug Palaces Show The Challenges Of War In 

Mali,” Foreign Policy, 6 April 2013.
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JSOU Report 15-5

82. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,” 

16.

83. Adam Nossiter, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, “French Strikes in Mali Supplant Caution of U.S.,” New York Times, 14 January 2013.

84. Derek Henry Flood, “Between Islamization and Secession: The Contest for Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel, vol. 5, no. 7 (July 2012), 1.

85. Nina Munk, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty (New York: 

Doubleday, 2013), 225.

86. Interviews with U.S. military officials, 2014.

87. United Nations Security Council Report S/2012/894, 2.

88. Jamestown Foundation, “Red Berets, Green Berets: Can Mali’s Divided Military 

Restore Order and Stability?” Terrorism Monitor, vol. 11, no. 4 (22 February 2013).

89. Alan Boswell, “Al Qaida-Linked Groups Cement Control In Northern Mali As 

Diplomats Ponder Intervention,” McClatchy Newspapers, 31 October 2012.

90. Cody, “In Mali, An Islamist Extremist Haven Takes Shape”; Flood, “Between 

Islamization and Secession,” 6; and “The Political Economy of Conflicts in 

Northern Mali,” ECOWAS Peace and Security Report, no. 2 (April 2013), 6.

91. Adam Entous and Drew Hinshaw, “U.S. Sets Sights On Al Qaeda In Mali,” Wall 

Street Journal, 27 July 2012; Eric Schmitt, “American Commander Details Al 

Qaeda’s Strength In Mali,” New York Times, 4 December 2012; Bruce Crumley, 

“Mali’s Crisis: Is the Plan for Western Intervention ‘Crap’?” Time, 18 December 

2012; and “Insight: Islamist Inroads in Mali May Undo French War on Al Qaeda,” 

Reuters, 13 March 2013.

92. Drew Hinshaw and Adam Entous, “On Terror’s New Front Line, Mistrust Blunts 

U.S. Strategy,” Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2013; and Sudarsan Raghavan, 

“Nigerian Militants Return From Mali With New Weapons,” Washington Post, 

1 June 2013.

93. Yochi Dreazen, “The New Terrorist Training Ground,” The Atlantic, 18 September 

2013.

94. Bruce Whitehouse, “The Malian Government’s Challenge to Restore Order in 

the North,” CTC Sentinel, vol. 7, no. 2 (February 2014), 14.

95. “AQIM Leader Condemns Destruction of Mali Mausoleums in Secret Papers 

Found by RFI Journalist,” Radio France Internationale, 25 February 2013.

96. Ibid.

97. Human Rights Watch, “Mali: War Crimes by Northern Rebels,” 30 April 2012.

98. Jemal Oumar, “Locals, UNESCO Condemn Destruction of Timbuktu Mosque,” 

Magharebia, 4 July 2012.

99. “Mali-Al-Qaida’s Sahara Playbook,” Associated Press, accessed at: http://hosted.

ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-manifesto.pdf.

100. Lebovich, “The Local Face of Jihadism in Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel, 9.
67

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

101. Gast, “Mali: Current Threats to Development Gains and the Way Forward.”

102. Lebovich, “The Local Face of Jihadism in Northern Mali,” 4-10; and International 

Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform.”

103. Jose A. Rodriguez, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9 /11 Saved 

American Lives (New York: Threshold Editions, 2012), 253-256.

104. Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Sees Hazy Threat From Mali Militants,” 

New York Times, 17 January 2013.

105. Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock, “Al Qaeda in Africa is Under Scrutiny,” Washington Post, 2 October 2012.

106. Siobhan Gorman, Adam Entous and Devlin Barrett, “Push to Expand U.S. ‘Kill 

List,’” Wall Street Journal, 9 February 2013.

107. Steven Lee Myers, “Clinton Suggests Link to Qaeda Offshoot in Deadly Libya 

Attack,” New York Times, 26 September 2012.

108. “US Would Back ‘Well Planned’ African-Led Force For Mali, Agence FrancePresse, 1 October 2012.

109. West Africa Bloc ECOWAS Agrees to Deploy Troops to Mali,” BBC News, 11 

November 2012.

110. Crumley, “Mali’s Crisis.”

111. “West Africa Bloc ECOWAS Agrees to Deploy Troops to Mali,” BBC News, 11 

November 2012.

112. United Nations Security Council Report S/2012/894, 3-4, 18-19. French media 

sources estimated the number of extremist combatants in Mali at between 4,000 

and 15,000. Arieff, “Crisis in Mali,” 2.

113. Ibid.

114. Baba Ahmed, “Malian Army Ill-Equipped to Fight Islamists,” Associated Press, 

23 January 2013.

115. Stewart, What is Next for Mali, 60.

116. Colum Lynch, “Rice: French Plan for Mali Intervention is ‘Crap’,” Foreignpolicy.

com, 11 December 2012.

117. Tim Witcher, “US Doubts African Military Intervention Plan for Mali,” Agence 

France-Presse, 7 December 2012.

118. Interviews with U.S. military officers, December 2014; and Amanda Dory, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on 

African Affairs, 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://www.foreign.senate.gov/

imo/media/doc/Amanda_Dory_Testimony.pdf.

119. Nossiter, Schmitt and Mazzetti, “French Strikes in Mali Supplant Caution of 

U.S.”

120. Johnnie Carson, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations 

Subcommittee on African Affairs, 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://www.

foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Hon_Johnnie_Carson.pdf.
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JSOU Report 15-5

121. Lynch, “Rice: French Plan for Mali Intervention is ‘Crap’.”

122. Colum Lynch, “U.S.- And European-Backed Force Will Try To Rebuild Mali’s 

Military,” Washington Post, 21 December 2012.

123. “UN Security Council authorizes African-led Intervention Force in Mali,” United 

Nations News Centre, 20 December 2012.

124. Lebovich, “The Local Face of Jihadism in Northern Mali,” 5.

125. “Official: Mali Islamists Closer to Gov’t Areas,” Associated Press, 7 January 

2013; and United Nations Security Council Report S/2013/189, “Report of the 

Secretary-General on the Situation in Mali,” 26 March 2013, 1.

126. Edward Cody, “France’s Hollande Intervenes in Mali,” Washington Post, 12 

January 2013.

127. Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 8.

128. Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria, “French Urgency, U.S. Caution Collide 

In Mali Operation,” Reuters, 26 January 2013; and Cody, “France’s Hollande 

Intervenes in Mali.”

129. Adam Nossiter and Neil Macfarquhar, “On the Ground in Mali, French and 

Local Troops Confront Islamist Forces,” New York Times, 16 January 2013; and 

International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,” 

6-7.

130. Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 13; and Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare, “French 

Airstrikes In Mali Deter Islamist Rebels,” New York Times, 13 January 2013.

131. “Mali Islamists Much Stronger Than Expected, France Says,” Agence FrancePresse, 13 January 2013. Photographs taken in Konna later in the month revealed 

finned projectiles, which were identified as NR-160 antitank rounds that had 

been sold to Ghadafi by a Belgian company in the 1970s and 1980s. See also: C. 

J. Chivers, “Looted Libyan Arms in Mali May Have Shifted Conflict’s Path,” New 

York Times, 7 February 2013.

132. “The Al-Qaida Papers—Drones,” accessed at: http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-papers-drones.pdf.

133. Sudarsan Raghavan, “Foreigners in a Leading Role,” Washington Post, 29 January 

2013.

134. Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Sends A Handful Of Troops To Mali,” Washington Post, 

1 May 2013.

135. Lydia Polgreen, “Mali Army, Riding U.S. Hopes, Is Proving No Match for Militants,” New York Times, 24 January 2013.

136. Ahmed, “Malian Army Ill-Equipped to Fight Islamists.”

137. Nossiter and Macfarquhar, “On the Ground in Mali.”

138. Jim Michaels, “USA Should Do More To Help France In Mali, Says House Chairman,” USA Today, 15 January 2013; and Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 9-12.

139. “Why France Can’t Fight,” Wall Street Journal, 28 January 2013.
69

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

140. Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, “Mali Exposes Flaws in West’s Security 

Plans,” Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2013.

141. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Leon Panetta Says U.S. Has Pledged To Help France In 

Mali,” New York Times, 14 January 2013.

142. Mazzetti and Schmitt, “U.S. Sees Hazy Threat From Mali Militants.” General 

Carter Ham told an interviewer that if Mali’s militants were not stopped, they 

“will obtain capability to match their intent—that being to extend their reach and 

control and to attack American interests.” See also: David S. Cloud, Shashank 

Bengali, and Ken Dilanian, “Mali Conflict Exposes White House-Pentagon 

Split,” Los Angeles Times, 19 January 2013.

143. Adam Entous, “U.S. Agrees to Support French in Mali with Plane Refueling,” 

Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2013.

144. Anne Applebaum, “A New Cop On The Beat?” Washington Post, 25 January 2013.

145. Anne Gearan, Karen DeYoung, and Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Weighs Military Aid 

For France In Mali,” Washington Post, 16 January 2013.

146. Cloud, Bengali, and Ken Dilanian, “Mali Conflict Exposes White House-Pentagon Split”; and Entous and Barnes, “Mali Exposes Flaws in West’s Security 

Plans.”

147. Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. Delays Support, Cites Legal Concerns,” 

Wall Street Journal, 16 January 2013.

148. Entous and Barnes, “Mali Exposes Flaws in West’s Security Plans.”

149. Siobhan Gorman and Adam Entous, “U.S. Moving To Broaden African Presence,” Wall Street Journal, 28 January 2013.

150. “With No End-Game in Sight U.S. Moves Cautiously on Mali,” Reuters, 17 January 2013.

151. Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Aid To France For Mali Operations Clears Legal Hurdles,” 

Washington Post, 26 January 2013.

152. Robert F. Worth, “Jihadists’ Surge In North Africa Reveals Grim Side Of Arab 

Spring,” New York Times, 20 January 2013.

153. Craig Whitlock, “Algerian Stance Spoils U.S. Regional Strategy,” Washington 

Post, 19 January 2013.

154. Joby Warrick, “Al-Qaeda Branch’s Image Soars After Hostage Drama in Algeria,” 

20 January 2013.

155. Adam Nossiter and Alan Cowell, “Hostages Dead In Bloody Climax To Siege 

In Algeria,” New York Times, 20 January 2013. Some speculated that the attack 

was intended to raise the new organization’s prestige above that of other Islamist 

groups in the region. See also: Paul Schemm and Karim Kebir, “Al-Qaida Flourishes in Sahara, Emerges Stronger,” Associated Press, 20 January 2013.

156. Adam Nossiter and Nicholas Kulish, “Militants’ Goal In Algeria Gas Plant Siege: 

A Giant Fireball,” New York Times, 3 February 2013.
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157. Michael R. Gordon and Mark Mazzetti, “Lack Of Warning On Rescue Effort 

Highlights Limits Of Algerian Cooperation,” New York Times, 18 January 2013.

158. Michael Birnbaum and Anthony Faiola, “Algerian Leader Ties 2 Canadians To 

Hostage Crisis,” Washington Post, 22 January 2013.

159. Warrick, “Al-Qaeda Branch’s Image Soars After Hostage Drama in Algeria.”

160. Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 16.

161. Sudarsan Raghavan, “Fear of Islamist Militants Lingers After They’ve Left,” 

Washington Post, 20 January 2013.

162. Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 16-19; and Drew Hinshaw and Sam Schechner, 

“In Strategic Shift, French Troops Step Up Role In Mali,” Wall Street Journal, 28 

January 2013.

163. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,” 

23; and Joseph Bamat, “US Slams African Force as French Begin Mali Pullout,” 

Agence France-Presse, 9 April 2013.

164. Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Aid To France For Mali Operations Clears Legal Hurdles,” 

Washington Post, 26 January 2013.

165. Ernesto Londono, “U.S. Broadens Aid To France In Mali,” Washington Post, 27 

January 2013.

166. “US Military Sending Air Tankers to Refuel French Jets Over Mali,” Associated 

Press, 27 January 2013; and Gabe Starosta, “Mission to Mali,” Air Force Magazine, 

November 2013.

167. Baba Ahmed, “Malian Military Enters Contested City of Kidal,” Associated Press, 

5 July 2013; and United Nations Security Council Report S/2014/1, “Report of 

the Secretary-General on the Situation in Mali,” 2 January 2014, 2.

168. Adam Entous, David Gauthier-Villars, and Drew Hinshaw, “U. S. Boosts War 

Role In Africa,” Wall Street Journal, 4 March 2013.

169. Eric Schmitt, “Terror Haven In Mali Feared After French Leave,” New York Times, 

18 March 2013.

170. Derek Henry Flood, “A Review of the French-Led Military Campaign in Northern Mali, CTC Sentinel, vol. 6, no. 5 (May 2013), 7-8.

171. Opération Serval au Mali : Une Centaine De Jihadistes Tués Dans La Vallée 

d’Ametettai,” La Voix du Nord, 7 March 2013.

172. Krista Larson, “Mali’s Islamic Radicals Recruiting Child Soldiers At Schools,” 

Associated Press, 23 February 2013.

173. “U.S., Africa Say Mali Action Counters Growing Islamist Threat,” Reuters, 23 

January 2013.

174. Warrick, “Al-Qaeda Branch’s Image Soars After Hostage Drama in Algeria.”

175. Dreazen, “The New Terrorist Training Ground.”

176. Kimberly Field, James Learmont, and Jason Charland, “Regional Aligned Forces: 

Business Not as Usual,” Parameters, vol. 43, no. 3 (Autumn 2013), 61-62.
71

Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali 

177. Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Troops Setting Up Drone Base in Niger,” Washington 

Post, 23 February 2013; Craig Whitlock, “Drone Base In Niger Is Key Asset,” 

Washington Post, 22 March 2013; and Craig Whitlock, “Pentagon Deploys Small 

Number of Troops to War-Torn Mali,” Washington Post, 30 April 2013.

178. French General Urges EU to Equip ‘Impoverished’ Mali Army, Reuters, 20 February 2013.

179. Jamestown Foundation, “Red Berets, Green Berets.”

180. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,” 

15-16.

181. United Nations Security Council Report S/2013/189, 8.

182. “Mali Crisis: EU Troops Begin Training Mission,” BBC, 2 April 2013.

183. Whitehouse, “The Malian Government’s Challenge to Restore Order in the 

North,” 13.

184. United Nations Security Council Report S/2013/189, 8; and Bamat, “US Slams 

African Force as French Begin Mali Pullout.”

185. Remi Carayol, “Guerre au Mali: La Misma, Faible Force,” Jeune Afrique, 14 April 

2013.

186. Bamat, “US Slams African Force as French Begin Mali Pullout.”

187. United Nations Security Council Report S/2013/338, “Report of the SecretaryGeneral on the Situation in Mali,” 10 June 2013, 5-8.

188. “UN’s Mali Peace Force Begins Operations,” BBC, 1 July 2013.

189. “U.N.’s Mali Task Is State-Building as Much as Peacekeeping,” Reuters, 23 August 

2013; “US Drone Crashed In Mali In April: Official,” Agence France-Presse, 12 

July 2013; and “U.N.’s Mali Task Is State-Building as Much as Peacekeeping,” 

Reuters, 23 August 2013.

190. Human rights groups protested against Sanogo’s continued politicking, noting 

that Sanogo had been implicated in the disappearance of twenty individuals after 

the unsuccessful countercoup of 2012. “Mali’s Coup Leader Promoted to Army 

General,” Associated Press, 14 August 2013.

191. “Mali’s President Replaces Junta-Linked Army Chief,” Reuters, 9 November 2013.

192. Tiemoko Diallo and Adama Diarra, “Mali President Dissolves Army Reform 

Committee,” Reuters, 2 October 2013.

193. “Arrests Made After Mali Military Camp Unrest,” Associated Press, 3 October 

2013.

194. “Mali’s President Replaces Junta-Linked Army Chief,” Reuters, 9 November 2013.

195. Baba Ahmed and Rukmini Callimachi, “Remains Of 21 People Found Near 

Barracks in Mali,” Associated Press, 4 December 2013.

196. Dreazen, “The New Terrorist Training Ground.”

197. Margaret Besheer, “UN: Recent Security Incidents in Mali ‘Wake-up Call’,” Voice 

of America, 16 October 2013.
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198. “U.N. Peace Force in Mali ‘Needs Troops and Equipment,’” BBC, 16 October 

2013.

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