The French Foreign Ministry confirmed on Wednesday the "disappearance" in Mali of French journalist Olivier Dubois, who cooperates with media such as Point or the daily Liberation.
In a video of undetermined origin circulating on social networks, revealed today, the reporter claims to have been kidnapped in early April in Mali by jihadists affiliated with Al-Qaeda, the GSIM, or JNIM in Arabic.
Who is this small terrorist group whose influence continues to grow in this immense territory that is the Sahel?
“It is the subsidiary in the Sahel of Al-Qaïda (Aqmi), it is headed by a notable Tuareg Lyad Ghaly.
He is assisted by Amadou Koufa who is a Fulani preacher, who gives the movement a geographical attachment further south ", explains Wassim Nasr, journalist specializing in jihadist movements in France 24." This group was formed by uniting four jihadist factions scattered.
It gives Barkhane a hard time and the military authorities across the region, ”adds the specialist.
VIDEO.
In the hell of a jihadist sanctuary with French soldiers
These two pillars of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), a rival jihadist nebula of the Islamic State (IS) organization, are held responsible for numerous attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso against local or French forces, in particular , but not only. The most recent, the death of two Spanish journalists in Burkina Faso is attributed to them. Their influence in the region, particularly in Mali, means that they have also been identified as possible interlocutors by successive governments in Bamako.
As a reminder, in 2017, several groups united under the same banner of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims: Ansar Dine (created in 2012 by Iyad Ag Ghaly), Katiba Macina (created by Amadou Koufa in 2015) , and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqmi, led by the Algerian Droukdal until his death in June 2020 in Mali, under fire from the French army, and whose current leader is a figure of the Algerian jihad, Abu Oubaïda Youssef al-Annabi).
"He is not a man who thinks about terrorism, he is a man who practices it on a daily basis"
The GSIM is formally led by Lyad Ag Ghaly. This member of the Tuareg tribe of Ifoghas, originally from Kidal (northern Mali), has been essential for several decades on the Sahelian chessboard: first at the head of a Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s, he then retired to doing business before returning to the front of the stage in 2012. It was during this time that this charismatic figure created Ansar Dine, a jihadist group which first collaborated with the independence rebel movement MNLA to take control of large swathes from northern Mali.
But he quickly ousted the latter and asserted himself as one of the main actors in the conflict in the north of the country.
Several cities there remained under jihadist domination until the French military intervention Barkhane in 2013. “Lyad Ag Ghaly embodies the strategy of Al-Qaeda in the Sahel.
He is not a man who thinks about terrorism, he is a man who practices it on a daily basis.
[…] He does not hesitate to take up arms himself, ”said Bernard Emié, the head of French foreign intelligence, on February 1, in a rare public intervention.
"They have a French hostage again and this is fundamental for them"
Within the GSIM, the Fulani preacher Amadou Koufa is certainly "subordinate" to Ag Ghaly, but he has continued to grow in importance.
Capitalizing on the ancient antagonisms linked to the land, fertile but disputed, between herders and farmers, between ethnic groups and even within these communities, Koufa has embraced all in the center of Mali in recent years.
Initially marginal, the conflict in central Mali has continued to grow, until today it has become one of the key points of the Sahelian crisis.
Jihadist attacks are now incessant.
Koufa was given for dead at the end of 2018 by Paris and Bamako after a French military operation, before Aqmi denied this claim and reappeared in a video a few months later.
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"For Paris, these two and the GSIM are enemies and by no means interlocutors," French President Emmanuel Macron said last February. "They are terrorist leaders" who have "responsibility" for the "death of thousands of civilians" and that "of our Sahelian, European and international soldiers," he insisted. The idea of negotiation in this new context of hostage-taking should therefore be banned.
The capture of Olivier François is therefore of strategic interest for this terrorist group whose influence is exponential in the region both geographically and politically.
“They have a French hostage again and this is fundamental for them.
If they formulate official requests, they will obviously ask for the withdrawal of French troops.
It will be propaganda.
It is a powerful means of pressure which France could have done without, ”concludes Wassim Nasr.
Recall that in the case of the last French hostage in the Sophie Pétronin region, France has always refused to pay a ransom.
His release only took place during negotiations by the Malian authorities directly.
It is therefore difficult to know what the Elysee will decide with this new hostage.