New Islamic terror group sprouts in northwest Africa

A new Islamic terror group is taking root in Mali, terrorizing the central and southern parts of the country in a spate of attacks.

Macina Liberation Front (MLF) emerged in 2015 and is imitating other terror groups in the Middle East and Africa. Its fighters destroyed a mausoleum slated to become a UN World Heritage site and have threatened anyone who doesn’t adhere to their strict interpretation of Islamic law, according to International Business Times (IBT). MLF has “committed serious abuses in the course of military operations against Mali’s security forces” including executions, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“[T]his group dragged a chief of a village near Dioura from his home and executed him, and gunned down another man on a village market day near Nampala,” HRW reported in April. “The group also burned several local government buildings and downed a communication tower.” The group threatened people not to collaborate with French forces, UN peacekeepers, or Mali’s government.

Since then, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported the group is believed to be responsible for several attacks, including a deadly hostage-taking in a hotel near the capital, Bamako.IBT reported MLF’s actions could undermine the UN-brokered peace deal between the government and Taureg rebel groups signed in June.

No one knows how big the group is, said Michael Shurkin, a senior political scientist at RAND Corporation. But its existence is a serious problem “because it shows a broadening” of Islamic radicalization among Malians themselves, Shurkin said. For many years, foreign terrorists used northern Mali as a staging ground for action against Algeria and other countries, but Islamic terror groups “indigenous” to Mali are a more recent development, he said.

The terror group’s name comes from the Macina region of central Mali, hearkening back to a 19th century Islamic regime there. The region extends from the border with Mauritania to the border with Burkina Faso.

According to AFP, one of the group’s leaders is radical Islamist preacher Amadou Koufa. He is linked to Ansar Dine, one of several Islamist groups that seized control of northern Mali in 2012 before French-led troops intervened to drive them out.

“He’s a classic Salafist trying to co-opt the old Macina empire,” Shurkin said of Koufa. “He’s trying to identify himself with this Islamic empire, but theologically speaking he’s at war with the Islam of that 19th century empire.”

Although the group has not yet wreaked as much havoc, Shurkin said MLF reminds him of Nigeria’s Boko Haram because both groups combine “ethno-nationalism” with radical Islam. Northern Nigeria, south east of Mali, also has a history and memory of a past Islamic regime, which the Salafist group tapped into.

“The MLF is more than simply a security threat, meaning that more than ‘security measures’ are required to defeat it,” Shurkin warned in a commentary for Newsweek. “So while there is a need for stepped-up military and police efforts against it, Mali's policymakers and their international partners need to focus on countering revivalist Islam, ideally by promoting Mali’s other Islamic traditions, while finding ways to calm the inter-communal competition.”