Imam
Elhadji Sekou Ba was one of the few people in his village of Barkerou
who dared to speak out against the rise of Islamist militants in central
Mali, denouncing in his sermons the young men taking up arms in the
name of religion.
Last Thursday, shortly after dinner, he was gunned down on his doorstep.
Locals
suspect the killing was carried out by the Massina Liberation Front
(MLF), a new group blamed for a wave of attacks that is shifting Mali's
three-year-old Islamist conflict from the remote desert north ever
closer to its populous south.
The
emergence of the new group, recruiting among central Mali's
marginalized Fulani ethnic minority, has sown panic among residents,
forced some officials to flee, and undermined the efforts of a
10,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission to stabilize the West African
state.
Inspired by veteran
jihadist Amadou Koufa, a radical preacher from the central Malian town
of Mopti, the MLF has introduced a volatile new ethnic element to the
Islamist conflict in a nation riddled with tribal tensions.
Security
experts fear that the rise of a jihadist group among the Fulani - whose
20 million members are spread across West and Central Africa - could
regionalize the violence.
"The
risk is that links develop between Fulanis throughout the region and it
could be the next major regional conflict," said Aurelien Tobie, a
conflict adviser formerly based in the Malian capital Bamako.
"Everywhere Fulanis are marginalized, they have a strong identity and there are connections between them.”
The
assassination was the latest in a wave of killings in the Mopti region
targeting those opposed to Mali's array of Islamist groups. Many of the
militants come from the ranks of jihadist fighters that seized the
northern two-thirds of Mali in 2012 alongside Tuareg rebels.
A
French-led military intervention in early 2013 scattered the
insurgents, after Paris said the Islamist enclave could become a
launchpad for terror attacks on Europe. Some militants have since gone
to Mali's center belt to regroup and recruit, using it as a staging post
to strike at areas in the south once considered safe
During
the Islamist occupation of northern Mali, Mopti was the last bastion of
government power before the lawless desert. That image was destroyed
this month when armed men attacked a hotel in nearby Sevare and killed
at least 12 people, including five United Nations contractors.
One of the attackers wore an explosive belt that did not detonate, in the first suicide attempt outside the north.
The
army blames the MLF for the siege and at least two other attacks in
Mali's center and south which are hindering attempts by the government
and the U.N. peacekeeping force to restore order.
The Sevare
attack has also been claimed by a group led by veteran Algerian
jihadist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, which has rebranded itself as Al Qaeda in
West Africa. Experts say the claims are not mutually exclusive and there
are fluid relations between Mali's Islamist cells.
"The
strategy of those loyal to Koufa appears to be to empty the region of
administrative leaders, government officials and others collaborating
with the army to both establish their authority and, perhaps, recruit
more easily," said Corinne Dufka, West Africa Director at Human Rights
Watch.
ISLAMIC EMPIRE
To achieve this, Dufka said, the Islamists are employing tactics of intimidation and targeted killings.
She
documented five summary executions of people accused of collaborating
with the army this year. A resident said several other village leaders
had fled to Bamako, fearing reprisals.
Military
sources say MLF is formed partly from local fighters who went north to
fight three years ago but then returned to Mopti as French military
pressure increased.
Its
leaders have been able to exploit local grievances among the locally
dominant, semi-nomadic Fulani population to swell their ranks.
Some
Fulani, who represent 9 percent of Mali's population, have obtained
weapons from long-established militias set up to protect grazing lands.
Similar Fulani militia exist across much of the arid Sahel belt
stretching across west to east across Africa, from Senegal to Sudan.
The
MLF is believed to be closely allied with Malian Islamist rebel group
Ansar Dine, whose leader Iyad Ag Ghali fought alongside Koufa during the
northern occupation.
Ansar
Dine also has a group of fighters called the Massina brigade - a
reference to the 19th century Fulani empire of Massina - and has claimed
a series of attacks against U.N. peacekeepers and Malian army targets
in Bamako and the border areas near Ivory Coast and Mauritania.
Andrew
Lebovich, visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign
Relations, says Mopti is an appealing area for radical groups' expansion
because of its historical importance as a center for Islamic
governance.
Koufa's
speeches evoke the jihad led by Fulanis against the rival Bambara ethnic
group to create the vast Massina Empire which spread across Mali,
Senegal and Nigeria. Its capital Hamdallaye, near present day Mopti, now
lies in ruins.
Residents
say there are few outwards signs of support for Koufa, whose
whereabouts are unknown, although one local said cassettes of his
sermons sell well in the market.
Dufka says
support for radical groups has been stirred by the army's summary
executions army of Fulanis accused of being jihadists. A U.N. human
rights report documented signs of dried blood on the side of wells in
Sevare in 2013. Mali never investigated the killings.
FULANI REBELLION?
Mali's
former defense minister, Soumeylou Boubeye Maiga, said the army was
struggling to contain the rapid emergence of the militants. The
government needed to improve intelligence gathering in the region and
check on mosques.
Aba
Ibrahim Ba, a Fulani mayor from the commune where the imam was
assassinated, said the government had done little to respond to the
recent assassinations and the local population was in panic. He said he
had been forced into hiding.
"Besides reaching people by word of mouth, I cannot do anything else to stop this as it would be too risky," he said.
Reprisals seen to be targeting the Fulani community could play into the hands of extremists.
Guillaume
Ngefa, director of human rights in the U.N. mission MINUSMA, said at
least 50 people had been arrested with alleged ties to MLF since
December.
This prompted complaints from a Fulani organization that they were being targeted indiscriminately, he added.
Alghabass
Ag Intalla, a senior member of the Tuareg-led rebel coalition
Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA) and a former leader of Ansar
Dine, said there was reason to fear the radicalization of some Fulanis.
"We see Fulanis as very marginalized in Mali, even from their own leaders," he told Reuters. "They are forming a rebellion."
(Writing by Emma Farge; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Giles Elgood)
Source Reuters