3 top militants dominate Sahel after al-Qaeda leader death

BAMAKO: Three leaders have been left dominating the insurgency in the Sahel, following the death of a top al-Qaeda commander in the West African state of Mali this week.

French forces killed Algerian national Abdelmalek Droukdel, the head of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), in a raid in northern Mali on Wednesday. The move will strike a blow to the organisation, but other powerful al-Qaeda-linked leaders already operate in the semi-desert Sahel. Droukdel´s death also comes at a time of increasing jihadist infighting, between al-Qaeda affiliates and Islamic-State-aligned militants. Three jihadist leaders now loom large over the central Sahel: Iyad Ag Ghaly and Amadou Koufa — who are both linked to al-Qaeda — and Adnan Abou Walid Sahraoui, who leads the region´s Islamic State group franchise. Iyad Ag Ghaly, who heads the powerful GSIM jihadist alliance, is a veteran of Mali´s internecine conflicts. An ethnic Tuareg from northern Mali, he first leapt onto the stage during a Tuareg rebellion during the 1990s.

After it subsided he went into business, before publically returning to militancy again in 2012, with a newly created group called Ansar Dine. That year, Tuareg separatists launched a rebellion in northern Mali, which was quickly commandeered by jihadists. The event triggered a bloody conflict, which has now spread to the centre of the country, and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.