Lighting
Mali: Kidal, a small city and a huge symbol
The Malian army claimed on November 14, 2023 to have taken up positions in Kidal (north), the stronghold of successive independence rebellions that Mali has experienced throughout its history. The control of this city is both a strategic and a symbolic issue.
An aerial view of the city of Kidal, August 27, 2022. © SOULEYMANE AG ANARA/AFP
By: David Baché
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Kidal is a small city and a huge symbol. Nestled on the edge of the northern Malian desert, between the sandy expanses dotted with acacia trees and the mountain ranges of the Adrar des Ifoghas, this city is the stronghold of the successive independence rebellions that Mali has experienced throughout its history. The northern regions of Mali are referred to by the separatists as Azawad.
Emptied of its inhabitants
The city of Kidal has nearly 30,000 inhabitants and the eponymous region 68,000, according to the last official census in 2009. The population of Kidal is predominantly Tuareg, although there are many communities there.
In addition to normal demographic trends, the population of Kidal has increased considerably in recent months with the influx of several thousand internally displaced people, fleeing in particular the massacres of the Islamic State in the Menaka region or the advance of the Malian army and its Wagner auxiliaries – accused of abuses against civilians – in the Kidal region.
But in recent days, the likely imminence of fighting and the army's bombardment of the city have prompted many departures. Today, according to many local sources, the city has largely emptied itself of its inhabitants.
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Immediate objective: the MINUSMA camp
The Malian transitional authorities have made the recovery of the former UN MINUSMA camp both a military and a political objective.
MINUSMA left Kidal on 31 October, as part of its final withdrawal from Mali, which is due to be completed by the end of the year. The handover of its camps by MINUSMA is done with the Malian political authorities. For the Malian transitional authorities, the national army is intended to occupy these camps "everywhere on the national territory". The rebels of the Permanent Strategic Framework (PSC), which mainly bring together armed groups from the north, signatories of the 2015 peace agreement, oppose it and invoke this peace agreement: Kidal (like Tessalit, Aguelhoc and Anefis, in the Kidal region) was under the control of the rebel groups when the peace agreement was signed, and the return of the army to Kidal was to take place in these localities in accordance with the modalities provided for in the agreement: the establishment of a reconstituted national army integrating combatants from the signatory armed groups, the installation of decentralized territorial authorities.
In summary, the Malian transitional authorities have made the army's entry into Kidal a matter of national sovereignty, while the CSP rebels denounce a violation of the peace agreement.
The international mediation for the follow-up of the peace agreement, led by Algeria, has not commented on the resumption of the war and the responsibilities involved.
Map of the disputed withdrawal of MINUSMA from Mali. © FMM Graphic Studio
Symbolic objective: the historical cradle of the rebellions
Beyond the immediate issue of recovering the military camp left vacant by MINUSMA, the capture of Kidal is a huge symbol.
This city, a stronghold of the CSP, is also the cradle of the independence rebellion of 2012 and all those that Mali has known in its history (1916, 1963-1964, 1990-1996, 2012).
Today, the PSC rebels are only demanding the implementation of the 2015 peace agreement and, despite the resumption of hostilities, have not reactivated the demand for independence that was abandoned when the peace agreement was signed. But many of their fighters and residents of Kidal see the resumption of war as a new opportunity.
Mali's transitional authorities have also not officially withdrawn from the agreement. But many soldiers and ordinary citizens in southern Mali see the resumption of war as a long-awaited moment to take revenge for the 2012 military defeat.
Read alsoMALI, THE STORY OF A CRISIS
A political settlement is therefore still possible, on paper, but very unlikely in the immediate future.
Both sides seem convinced of their legitimacy, confident in their strength, and determined to fight. A return to dialogue will probably only come when the new balance of power has been established, by force of arms.
Signatory groups, rebels, jihadists and terrorists
When it was created in April 2021, the CSP brought together all the armed groups in the north that had signed the 2015 peace agreement, namely the former separatist rebels of the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA, which itself brings together the MNLA, the HCUA and a branch of the MAA) and the groups of the Platform that have always defended the unity of Mali (notably the MSA and Gatia). Today, the majority of the Platform's groups have withdrawn from the CSP, which is now composed only of the CMA movements and a minority of the elements that formed the Platform.
Finally, the Malian transitional authorities, in their communiqués, claim to be waging a war in Kidal against "terrorist groups". A term used for several months by Bamako to designate, indiscriminately, the armed groups that signed the 2015 peace agreement belonging to the CMA, such as the jihadist groups of JNIM (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims), linked to al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State.
The "erasing" of this distinction between armed groups with political demands recognized by the peace agreement, and jihadist groups that are not involved in this agreement, is an additional way for the Malian transitional authorities to legitimize the ongoing offensive. And a form of internal contradiction, since the Malian transitional authorities assure that they remain committed to the 2015 peace agreement.
For their part, the CSP rebels insist that jihadist groups are also their enemies. The porosity between the signatory groups and the jihadist groups is an established fact: some fighters have passed from one to the other in recent years; The HCUA, a member of the CSP, emerged from a split from the al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine. Above all, in the current situation, the forces of the rebel groups and those of al-Qaeda are both, at the same time, concentrated against the Malian armed forces. But the CSP rebels, while they cannot deny this convergence of interests, deny any coordination with jihadist groups. The CSP and JNIM claim responsibility for their actions separately. In 2012, Malian forces were defeated by cumulative attacks by separatist and jihadist groups. But al-Qaeda and its allies then ousted the pro-independence groups by force of arms to occupy the northern regions alone for more than a decade. Until the reconquest in 2013, by the Malian forces and their allies at the time, the French soldiers of Operation Serval.
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