Mali airport attack: Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists expose fragile security

Of course, these are far from the first images of conflict in Mali.

The country has been deep in crisis since at least late 2011, when northern ethnic Tuareg separatists and radical Islamist factions allied to them, took over Timbuktu, Gao and other towns across the north.

Bamako has suffered attacks before. In 2015 an assault on the upmarket Radisson Blu hotel claimed 20 lives and five more died in a shooting at a restaurant in the buzzy Hippodrome district.

In 2017, an attack on a tourism complex on the outskirts of the city killed at least four people.

In 2020 Col Assimi Goïta, an experienced combat commander, staged a coup criticising the elected government’s failure to effectively tackle the security crisis.

A civilian-led transition was soon established, but in May 2021 Col Goïta staged a second coup, to put himself and fellow officers firmly back in control.

But despite a reinforced focus on security, and the hiring of Russian mercenary outfit Wagner to provide extra military support – provoking a row with France that led eventually to the withdrawal of the several thousand strong French anti-terror force Barkhane – the new regime proved no more effective than its civilian predecessor in ending the violence.

Open conflict was mainly confined to the desert in the north and the more fertile central regions, where tensions were fuelled by competition between farming villagers from the Dogon ethnic group and livestock herders from the Peul (Fulani) community over precious land and water resources.

But there were occasional reminders of the jihadists’ capacity to range further south in this vast country, to Bamako and its environs.

In July 2022 militants staged two small attacks near the city and then attempted a big raid – trying to ram their way into the Kati barracks complex, the junta’s base just 15km (9.3 miles) north of the capital.

This showed the insurgents’ ability to stage high-profile raids far beyond the more northerly regions, where their presence is an influential fact of everyday life.

However, the army managed to contain this assault, reporting two dead militants as the only casualties. And ultimately the Goïta regime was able to shrug off any wider impact from the incident.

Although the attack was attributed to Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the al-Qaeda affiliated coalition of armed groups that is Mali’s largest jihadist force, it did not substantially weaken the junta’s self-confidence and capacity to set the domestic political and diplomatic agenda.

Just weeks later, the French completed the withdrawal of their troops, having been driven out by the regime’s political hostility and the ever-tightening rules through which it stifled the operational capacity of the Barkhane force.

And the next year the junta felt sufficiently emboldened to demand the winding up of the United Nations 14,000-strong peacekeeping force, known by the acronym Minusma.