France was, in a sense, attacked twice this month.
Apart from the horrific massacre in Paris on November 13, the jihadi attack one week later on the Radisson Blu Hotel in Bamako, the capital of the former French colony of Mali in northern Africa, was also to a large extent aimed at France.
The posh establishment is in an upscale area, frequented by many westerners. Aid workers, diplomats and United Nations officials — not to mention Air France flight crews — all stay there.
The hotel was, ironically, hosting meetings meant to stabilize the country’s volatile north. Peace negotiations have been dragging on between the central government and northern separatist groups for more than two years in an effort to end the disputes that turned large sections of the country into a haven for radical Islamic militants.
“The attack was targeting the peace agreement,” said Sidi Brahim Ould Sidati, a representative of the Coordination of Azawad Movements, a coalition of groups that include ethnic Arabs and Tuaregs seeking autonomy in northern Mali.
Entering the premises, the gunmen shouted, “Allahu akbar” as they sprayed bullets at guests who were gathered for breakfast, killing at least 22 people, including six Russians, three Chinese, two Belgians, an American and an Israeli.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and its affiliate, al-Murabitoun, have said they were responsible for the attack. Al-Mourabitoun, a group located in northern Mali and made up mostly of Tuaregs and Arabs, was formed around two years ago and is headed by former Al-Qaeda fighter Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian.
In January 2013, Belmokhtar’s terrorists took more than 800 people hostage at the Tigantourine gas facility in Algeria. They executed 39 hostages before the facility was recaptured by Algerian forces.
Al-Murabitoun claimed responsibility for the death of five people last March in an attack on a restaurant in Bamako, a suicide attack on a group of UN peacekeepers in northern Mali in April in which at least three people died, and an attack on a hotel in Sévaré in central Mali in August in which 17 people were killed.
Jihadis controlled the northern two-thirds of the vast country for a time. Though secular separatist groups first wrested northern Mali, an area known as Azawad, from the government in March 2012, using weapons looted from arsenals in neighbouring Libya, they were soon overtaken by Al-Qaeda-allied radicals.
France intervened in January 2013. That lightning operation succeeded in breaking their grip on northern Mali and liberating more than a million people from their rule.
But Operation Serval, as the French intervention was called, didn’t end the terrorist threat. The African Union and UN forces that largely replaced French troops in much of the country have been less effective.
A new group, the Macina Liberation Front, came to prominence in January 2015, when it began claiming responsibility for attacks in central and southern Mali. Led by the radical Muslim cleric Amadou Koufa, a strong proponent of strict Islamic law in Mali, it draws most of its support from the Fulani ethnic group, who are found across the Sahel region of Africa.
Koufa is a close ally of Tuareg jihadist Iyad Ag Ghali, who leads the powerful group Ansar Dine. It implemented Sharia law in towns it captured during the 2012 uprising, including the ancient city of Timbuktu.
Ghali had recently called for attacks on France and its interests in Mali. Terrorist Amedy Coulibaly, who was of Malian origin, was overheard blaming French military action in Mali, Syria and the Islamic State during his bloody Jewish supermarket siege in Paris last January.
France now has 3,000 forces operating in the Sahel as part of an anti-terror operation known as Operation Barkhane. Established in August 2014, it is targeting five former French colonies — Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Mali.
In response to the latest attack, France has now deployed its Special Forces unit to Bamako, including the National Gendarmerie Intervention Group (GIGN) that was involved in countering the recent Paris attacks.
The timing of the Bamako attack could have been an attempt by AQIM and its allies to assert its relevance following the Paris attacks by the rival Islamic State group that killed 130 people a week earlier.
Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island.
