A column of black smoke rises above buildings as traffic passes the Africa Tower monument in Bamako, Mali, in April. Coordinated attacks by Tuareg rebels and an al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group shocked the country.-/AFP/Getty Images
An affiliate of al-Qaeda used a US$50-million ransom payment from a Gulf state to finance an unprecedented rebel offensive that captured a military base in northern Mali, a United Nations report says.
The report by the UN monitoring team, released this week, discloses details of how Islamist militants orchestrated a wave of kidnappings to finance an expansion of their operations in the Sahel region of West Africa.
The al-Qaeda affiliate, known as JNIM, collected the huge ransom payment from the Gulf state after kidnapping a member of its royal family, the UN team found. It did not identify the Gulf state, but the hostage was widely reported to be a prince from the United Arab Emirates who was involved in the gold trade.
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“These funds played a key role in financing the group’s offensive across Mali,” the report says, estimating that JNIM now has 7,000 to 8,000 members in the Sahel region and continues to escalate its operations.
In April, for the first time, JNIM allied with a northern separatist group to co-ordinate assaults on military targets across Mali. They captured an army base in the northern town of Kidal, forced hundreds of Russian troops to withdraw, attacked several other strategic sites in central and southern Mali and assassinated the country’s defence minister, Sadio Camara, with a powerful car bomb.
The rebel offensive, the biggest in 14 years, shocked Mali and raised fears that the Islamist militants could advance far beyond their northern strongholds and overrun large swathes of the country.
Their objective was “to increase pressure on the authorities, unify opposition forces and consolidate its influence in northern and central Mali,” the UN report says.
While there had been “tactical coordination” between JNIM and the northern separatists in the past, “these operations marked a significant deepening of their collaboration,” it says.
The Islamist group has demonstrated its influence in southern Mali by organizing frequent blockades of the capital, Bamako, and halting fuel deliveries to the city.
Mali’s military regime, which expelled French and United Nations forces in the country after seizing power in coups in 2020 and 2021, has become increasingly reliant on Russian troops to defend itself. But the estimated 1,500 to 2,000 Russian soldiers in Mali, backed by warplanes, drones and armoured vehicles, have failed to halt the rise of the insurgents.
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In an earlier report this year, the UN monitoring team said JNIM had conducted 22 kidnapping operations from May to October last year, nearly twice as many as in any previous year, with expatriate workers often targeted. “The increase in scale and scope was likely to increase the operational capability of JNIM,” it warned.
The revenue from ransom payments has helped Islamist groups forge alliances with local leaders in West Africa, according to a recent analysis by two scholars, Olivier Walther and Alexander M. Laskaris of the University of Florida.
The ransom funds “have also made the recruitment of young combatants from Mali, Niger, Mauritania and Burkina Faso easier for extremist organisations, by offering significant financial incentives,” they said.
The Sahel region has become the epicentre of global terrorism, accounting for about half of all terrorism-related deaths worldwide in recent years. In Burkina Faso, for example, JNIM has claimed more than 130 attacks this year and has expanded its operations closer to the capital, Ouagadougou, according to the UN report.
An affiliate of another Islamist group, Islamic State, has significantly increased its operational capabilities in Niger and launched an assault on the country’s main international airport in January, destroying four aircraft, the report said.
The audacious airport raid “demonstrated its ability to conduct complex urban operations,” the UN monitoring team said. “Around 40 fighters organized into two assault groups attacked the airport using motorbikes, pick-up trucks, reconnaissance drones, small arms and mortars.”