Mali: fighting erupts in key northern area as army closes on Tuareg rebel town

Fighting resumed Sunday (12 November) between Mali’s armed forces and Tuareg separatist rebel groups in the country’s northern region, after the soldiers reportedly closed in on the strategic town of Kidal.

Malian army’s clashes with with Tuareg separatist and rebel groups could signal the start of fighting for the strategically important northern crossroads. The Kidal desert area is a key site on the road to Algeria and a historic hotbed of insurrection. Since seizing power in a coup in 2020, Mali’s military rulers have made a priority of re-establishing sovereignty over all regions and Kidal could become a key battleground. Military, political and rebel sources all reported the clashes, but details could not be confirmed independently in the remote region. One senior military officer has been reported as saying that the Mali army has “resumed operations on the ground to secure the entire national territory.”

Meanwhile, the Permanent Strategic Framework (CSP), an alliance of predominantly Tuareg armed groups has said it had been involved in “vigorous combat” against a convoy of army soldiers and mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner group. The Tuaregs previously launched an insurgency in 2012, inflicting humiliating defeats on the army before agreeing to a ceasefire in 2014 and a peace deal in 2015.

But residents in the area have been braced for a confrontation since the Tuareg rebellion took up arms again in August. The 2012 Tuareg uprising coincided with insurgencies by radical Islamist groups that has plunged Mali into a political, security and humanitarian crisis, further aggravated by the withdrawal of a UN peacekeeping mission, which has since spread to neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger.