2y ago

UN experts say Islamic State group almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in under a year

Islamic State extremists have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, and their al-Qaida-linked rivals are capitalizing on the deadlock and perceived weakness of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement, United Nations experts said in a new report.

The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” they said.

22 comments

They're still a thing?
- Lack of awareness is probably why their influence has grown.
- Feels like trump came along and American/western media focused on him instead. I also thought ISIS was irrelevant
  
  Conflict in the Sahel has been heating up over the past decade but it's a lot of small groups.
  The reason Americans are likely seeing this in their news cycles all of a sudden is the recent coup in Niger.
  The US has a military base in Niger.
  Mali and Burkina Faso are now aligned with Niger - and Mali has Wagner forces.
  Niger is mineral rich and also a big supplier of uranium, particularly for France.
  
  ISIS is irrelevant. This is a splinter group in Mali. Closely related, but ISIS itself (as in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has been entirely forced back into the underground
- Power hungry assholes with guns are always a thing
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The panel of experts said in the report that the impasse in implementing the agreement — especially the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of combatants into society — is empowering al-Qaida-linked Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin known as JNIM to vie for leadership in northern Mali.
Sustained violence and attacks mostly by IS fighters in the Greater Sahara have also made the signatories to the peace deal “appear to be weak and unreliable security providers” for communities targeted by the extremists, the experts said.
The panel said the armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement expressed concern that the peace deal could potentially fall apart without U.N. mediation, “thereby exposing the northern regions to the risk of another uprising.”
The U.N. force, or MINUSMA, “played a crucial role” in facilitating talks between the parties, monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the agreement, and investigating alleged violations, the panel said.
The panel said it remains particularly concerned with persistent conflict-related sexual violence in the eastern Menaka and central Mopti regions, “especially those involving the foreign security partners of the Malian Armed Force” – the Wagner Group.
“The panel believes that violence against women, and other forms of grave abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law are being used, specifically by the foreign security partners, to spread terror among populations,” the report said.
The original article contains 577 words, the summary contains 222 words. Saved 62%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The french or the US are going to use this as pretext for military intervention, aren't they?
Ok... And?
Is this one of those posts?
You know which ones.
The kind where America is expected to go solve everyone's problems because no one else will. But the same people who would love to see the US solve the world's problems, also condemns the US every time it interferes in some other country's internal affairs.
- Nowhere on the article is mentioned the United States. You're the one bringing an America centric discourse and acting like you're the victim.
  
  That's because everyone loooooves to beg and plead the US to solve all their problems, pay all their bills, fix this, dethrone that.
- Ok… And?
  And nothing. It's a world news sub. Articles about world news.
  There doesn't have to be a hidden message to you.
- What the other guy said, but also, last time Mali had this problem flair up just a few years ago France did the intervention.
- No we want America to stay at home. The last time they funded radical groups in Syria, in their illegal and failed attempt to unseat the Asad regime, the result was a deluge of refugees in Europe. Nobody wants this kind of help.
  
  We WANT to stay home but that doesn't stop every mistreated and spoiled group out there begging for American intervention. Lord knows no one can count on the UN or any of the European countries to do anything. They can barely help their own fellow European neighbor after it was invaded. With friends like that...
- The US should never have involved itself in Syria.
  
  We should never have gotten involved in anything in the Middle East. We did because of oil and Israel.
- The kind where America is expected to go solve everyone’s problems
  Well, the current government in Mali is the result of a military coup. The previous, elected government was friendly with France, and the new, military coup crowd is friendly with Russia.
  Then when the coup guys decided that they didn't need to hold elections when they said they would, they got condemned by the US.
  https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20220112-un-security-council-falls-short-of-imposing-new-sanctions-on-mali-after-elections-delay
  Russia, China block UN Security Council from supporting new sanctions on Mali
  Russia and China blocked the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday from supporting new sanctions on Mali for its military leaders’ decision to delay next month’s elections until 2026, a blow to the restoration of democracy in the troubled West African nation.
  So I vaguely imagine that said government probably isn't asking the US to become involved, because the US's position is that they should have held elections.

22 comments