Quran and Kalashnikov. War Bulletin From the Sahel Front

Remember the Abu Dhabi Declaration? 'This too is Islam. It would be well for the Vatican to take note of it.'

From Settimo Cielo

By Sandro Magister

Idriss Deby, a Muslim of Zaghawa ethnicity, had come to power in 1990, the same year as a tranquil visit by John Paul II to his country, Chad, when as yet no war correspondent could find reason to venture there, or to neighboring countries. But three decades later, on April 21 2021, just re-elected for the sixth time, the gendarme president died fighting on the front line, between Lake Chad and the capital, N'Djamena, in a firefight with the guerrillas of the Front pour l'Alternance et la Concorde au Tchad, of the Daza ethnic group, also Muslims, one of the many jihadist formations that today infest the region of the great lake where Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, and Chad meet.

After thirty years everything has changed, in the immense strip of the Sahel, between the forest and the Sahara desert. Still in 2004 the “Wall Street Journal” was promoting Mali, 90 percent Muslim, as a model of democracy and peaceful coexistence with other religions, as well as a destination for refined tourism for “tea in the desert,” in Timbuktu and its surroundings. But the striking new Report on religious freedom in the world just published by the international Catholic organization Aid to the Church in Need now singles out as the two most fearful African epicenters of Islamist violence precisely the region of Lake Chad a vast area between Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, in the middle of the Sahel.

Two epicenters which in turn are linked, according to the Report, to “a transnational Islamist network that extends from Mali to Mozambique, from the Comoros in the Indian Ocean to the Philippines in the South China Sea, whose purpose is to create a self-styled transcontinental caliphate.”

In fact, it often happens that one or the other of the Muslim armed formations takes on a better-known transnational label such as Boko Haram, Al Shabab, Al Qaeda or ISIS, the Islamic State. But it is doubtful that all correspond to a hierarchical pyramid and a coordinated plan of conquest.

The reality on the ground is much more complicated and is reconstructed in detail by by a book also released in recent days: “Guerre nere. Guida ai conflitti nell’Africa contemporanea,”  authored by Mario Giro, professor of international relations at the University of Perugia, international coordinator of the Community of Sant'Egidio, and Italian deputy minister of foreign affairs between 2013 and 2018.

The chapter on Boko Haram and its geographical extension from northeast Nigeria to the Lake Chad region is worth reading. But here it is enough to focus attention on that “Sahelian Afghanistan” - the author's definition - which extends from Mali to the neighboring countries, Niger and Burkina Faso.

*

At first it is a story of secession. The semi-nomadic Tuareg clans that live in Mali north of Timbuktu want to break away from the control of the capital of Bamako, which does not try very hard to hold onto them, in part because of an ancestral contempt for those tribes.

In 2007, however, the most substantial secessionist segment changed its name to Al Qaeda du Maghreb Islamique, AQMI, and became part of the most feared world jihadist network of the time, under pressure from its own supreme leader, Osama Bin Laden.

With the fall of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya in 2011, the Tuareg mercenary militias that had supported him return to Mali and transform into open warfare their plans for secession, allying themselves with the radical Islamists of the AQMI and with another new jihadist formation, the Ansar Dine, or defenders of the faith. The Islamists, better armed and organized, quickly take control - including ideological - of the offensive and in 2012 conquer the entire north of the country, with the cities of Timbuktu, Gao, Kidal.

Their rule is not only territorial. Around the world go news and images of thieves’ hands amputated, adulterers stoned, public beheadings, women forced to wear full veils, devastated libraries, tombs of Muslim saints destroyed.

A counteroffensive with the decisive contribution of France and Chad reconquers Timbuktu and other cities in 2013, while the secessionist Tuareg clans are fighting each other, disputing pieces of territory. But the jihadist formations are not so much as scratched.

The GSIM, Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, still headed by the elusive Iyad ad Ghali, a Tuareg of noble lineage, onetime creator of the Ansar Dine, endowed with charisma and political talent as well as guerrilla skill, converted to radical Islam by Arab and Pakistani preachers.

Further south, however, on both sides of the porous borders between Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, operates the ISWAP,  Islamic State’s West African Province.

The former is part of the Al Qaeda galaxy, while the latter refers to the neocaliphate founded by Al Baghdadi. And the differences are not small, to the point of causing armed clashes between the two formations, with hundreds of victims, despite the geographical separation.

This is how Mario Giro distinguishes their respective profiles:

“The former are Salafist-jihadists, that is, they condemn as apostates only the leaders of Muslim states who do not follow their vision of Islam, but not the peoples. The latter, on the other hand, are Takfiris, that is, they argue that the people too are apostate and are to be condemned. Therefore, civilians can also be killed. They are also fiercely anti-Shia, while Al Qaeda is not. ‘Takfir’ in Arabic means excommunication. Salafi comes from the Arabic ‘salaf,’ old, meaning the religion of the fathers of the golden age. Salafists and Takfirists represent the two wings of contemporary jihadism, from the Arabic ‘jihad,’ holy war.”

In February 2017, a Colombian nun, Sister Gloria Argoti, was kidnapped. Her fate, after a video of January 2019 showed her alive, is still unknown.

A new counteroffensive launched in 2019, even with elite French troops, has no effect. On the contrary. In Bamako comes a series of military coups, the last of which, in 2020, is led by the imam Dicko, former president of the council of the ulema and a representative of a rigorist application of Islamic law, as if in a contest to be the most radical.

In short, Giro concludes: “The whole Sahel is contaminated by the endemic jihadist presence, which has been able to solder together its ideological claims - Islamic purity - and those of the local tribes.” All the more so since the tribes of the north have shown their appreciation of the jihadists’ leadership ability and immunity from corruption: the opposite of the misrule of the hated capital.

But there is more. The author of “Guerre nere” goes on to observe:

“The Mali crisis has become a danger for Europe: a kind of Afghanistan much nearer at hand. The conflict shows us that the new border of Italy and Europe has been moved further south of the Mediterranean coast, pushing into the heart of the Sahel and into the Sahara, where war is raging and where the routes of human and arms traffickers run.”

This too is Islam. It would be well for the Vatican to take note of it.