Mali junta says will not talk with ‘terrorist’ groups

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Mali’s government refuses to talk to “terrorist” groups, the foreign minister has said, after jihadists and allied separatists mounted widespread attacks that have rocked the ruling junta.

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The coordinated deadly offensive by Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists and Tuareg separatists on April 25 and 26 targeted strategic towns and killed the country’s influential defence minister, while the jihadists have since imposed a blockade on the capital Bamako.

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“The government of Mali does not envisage any dialogue with the lawless terrorist armed groups that bear responsibility for the tragic events our people have been experiencing for years,” Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop said, meeting the country’s diplomats on Thursday.

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The junta-led west African country has grappled with more than a decade of violence and last month’s attacks were reminiscent of a crisis that rocked Mali in 2012.

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Under an alliance forged a year ago, Tuareg rebels of the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) teamed up with the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) to launch the latest assaults.

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“The FLA has freely chosen to take up the cause of an extremist group recognised as terrorist by the United Nations,” the minister said, referring to the JNIM.

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The key town of Kidal and other towns and villages in the north were captured and are now controlled by the FLA and the jihadists, who have since imposed a blockade on Bamako.

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Defence Minister Sadio Camara, the architect of Mali’s military alliance with Russia, was killed in an attack on Kati, a junta stronghold garrison town near the capital. Junta chief Assimi Goita has since taken on the defence brief.

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– Blockade burnings –

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With the junta reeling, several opposition figures and military personnel had been detained or abducted in the wake of the attacks, security, legal and family sources told AFP on Wednesday.

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Verification of the number and identity of those involved is difficult.

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Since being imposed on April 30, the jihadist blockade has imperilled travel into the capital of a landlocked country reliant on imports by road.

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In recent days, the jihadists have burnt several convoys transporting goods on the roads, a witness, a security source and a local elected official told AFP.

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A worker from an NGO in the Kayes region town of Kita told AFP that the roads to Bamako were paralysed by the jihadists, “creating increasingly urgent humanitarian needs”.

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“Hundreds of people who left their homes have not been able to reach Bamako. They remain packed together here and sleep directly on the ground,” he added.

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A civil servant posted in Segou, central Mali, told AFP he had spent “two days” travelling between Bamako and his workplace, a journey that normally takes three hours.

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According to one driver, several vehicles and buses were however able to enter Bamako on Thursday, under escort from the Malian army and its Russian allies from the Africa Corps.

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Since 2012, Mali has faced a deep security crisis fuelled in particular by violence from fighters affiliated with Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group, as well as local criminal gangs and pro-independence groups.

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The unrest fed a political crisis, leading to two military coups in 2020 and 2021.

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AFP

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