JSOU Report 15-5

Countering Violent
Extremism in Mali

Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

Joint Special Operations University

7701 Tampa Point Boulevard
MacDill AFB FL 33621

https://jsou.socom.mil Mark Moyar

JSOU Report 15-5
November 2015
Moyar
 Joint Special Operations University
Brian A. Maher, Ed.D., SES, President
Kenneth H. Poole, Ed.D., Director, Center for Special Operations Studies and Research
Robert Nalepa, Lt. Col., U.S. Air Force, Ret., Editor in Chief
Will Irwin, MMAS, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.;
Peter McCabe, Ph.D., Political Science, Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret.; Gregory Salomon, Colonel, U.S. Army;
Paul Lieber, Ph.D., Mass Communication & Public Affairs; Resident Senior Fellows
Anna-Marie Wyant, M.A., English, JSOU Press Editor
Frederick Zimmerman, Master Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, Ret., JSOU Press Editor

Editorial Advisory Board

Joint Special Operations University
and the Center for Special Operations Studies and Research
Roby C. Barrett Alvaro de Souza Pinheiro
The Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) provides its publications Ph.D., Middle Eastern & South Asian History Major General, Brazilian Army, Ret.
Public Policy Center Middle East Institute and JSOU Associate Fellow
to contribute toward expanding the body of knowledge about joint special JSOU Senior Fellow
operations. JSOU publications advance the insights and recommendations Louis Alberto Ordóñez Rubio,
James J.F. Forest Vice Admiral, Colombian Navy, Ret.,
of national security professionals and the Special Operations Forces (SOF) Ph.D., Higher Education Administration Ph.D., Education, Director, Centro Regional de
students and leaders for consideration by the SOF community and defense Associate Professor, School of Criminology and Estudios Estrategicos en Seguridad
Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts
leadership. Lowell and JSOU Senior Fellow James F. Powers, Jr.
JSOU is the educational component of the United States Special Opera- Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.
Mario Forestier JSOU Senior Fellow
tions Command (USSOCOM), MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. The JSOU Chief Warrant Officer, U.S. Army, Ret.
mission is to educate SOF executive, senior, and intermediate leaders and Director, Joint Special Operations Command Bryan C. Price
Center for Counterterrorism Studies Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army
selected other national and international security decision makers, both Ph.D., Political Science
Thomas H. Henriksen
military and civilian, through teaching, outreach, and research in the Ph.D., History, Hoover Institution
Director, Combating Terrorism Center at
science and art of joint special operations. JSOU provides education to the West Point
Stanford University and JSOU Senior Fellow
men and women of SOF and to those who enable the SOF mission in a joint Bernd Horn Richard H. Shultz, Jr.
Colonel, Canadian Dept. of National Defence Ph.D., Political Science
and interagency environment.
Ph.D., War Studies Director, International Security
JSOU conducts research through its Center for Special Operations Director, CANSOFCOM Professional Studies Program, The Fletcher School,
Studies and Research (CSOSR) where effort centers upon the USSOCOM Development Centre Tufts University and JSOU Senior Fellow
mission: Russell D. Howard Robert G. Spulak, Jr.
Brigadier General, U.S. Army, Ret. Ph.D., Physics/Nuclear Engineering
USSOCOM mission. USSOCOM synchronizes the planning of Special Senior Research Fellow and adjunct professor, Sandia National Laboratories
Operations and provides Special Operations Forces to support persistent, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at and JSOU Associate Fellow
Monterey and JSOU Senior Fellow
networked, and distributed Global Combatant Command operations in Jessica Glicken Turnley
John D. Jogerst Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology
order to protect and advance our Nation’s interests. Colonel, U.S. Air Force, Ret. Galisteo Consulting Group
James Kiras and JSOU Senior Fellow
Press publications are available for download from the JSOU Library Ph.D., History, School of Advanced Air and Space Rich Yarger
web page located at https://jsou.libguides.com/jsoupublications. Studies, Air University and JSOU Associate Fellow Ph.D., History
William W. Mendel JSOU Senior Fellow
Colonel, U.S. Army, Ret.
JSOU Senior Fellow
On the cover. Malian army soldiers engage in heavy fighting against insur-
gents in Gao, Mali. Photo used by permission of Newscom.
Countering Violent
Extremism in Mali

Mark Moyar

JSOU Press Report 15-5

The JSOU Press
MacDill Air Force Base, Florida
2015
This monograph and other JSOU publications can be found at https://jsou.
socom.mil. Click on Publications. Comments about this publication are
invited and should be forwarded to the Director of the Center for Special
Operations Studies and Research, Joint Special Operations University, 7701
Tampa Point Blvd., MacDill AFB FL 33621.

*******

The JSOU Center for Special Operations Studies and Research (CSOSR) is currently
accepting written works relevant to special operations for potential publication. For
more information, please contact the CSOSR Director at jsou_research@socom.mil.
Thank you for your interest in the JSOU Press.

*******

This work was cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

ISBN 978-1-941715-03-1
The views expressed in this publication are entirely those of the
author and do not necessarily reflect the views, policy, or position
of the United States Government, Department of Defense, United
States Special Operations Command, or the Joint Special Operations
University.

Authors are granted academic freedom provided their work does not
disclose classified information, jeopardize operations security, or
misrepresent official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers
authors to offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives in the
interest of furthering debate on key issues.
Recent Publications of the JSOU Press

The 2005 Iraqi Sunni Awakening: The Role of the Desert Protectors Program,
October 2015, William Knarr
2016 Special Operations Research Topics
Saudi Arabia: Modernity, Stability, and the Twenty-First Century Monarchy,
June 2015, Roby C. Barrett
Special Operations Forces Reference Manual, Fourth Edition, 2015
2015 Special Operations Essays, May 2015
Building Partner Capacity, February 2015, Harry R. Yarger
Islam: Ideology and Conflict, December 2014, Roby C. Barrett
Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police, October 2014, Mark
Moyar
Challenges in the Asia-Pacific Theater for U.S. and Partner Nation Special
Operations Forces, October 2014, Robert Haddick
Counterinsurgency in Somalia: Lessons Learned from the African Union
Mission in Somalia, 2007-2013, September 2014, Bronwyn E. Bruton, Paul D.
Williams
Contents
Foreword .......................................................................................ix

About the Author ...........................................................................xi

Introduction ................................................................................... 1

1. Historical Background................................................................ 5

2. The Rise of Violent Extremism..................................................... 9

3. The United States and Mali....................................................... 13

4. SOF Engagement in Mali.......................................................... 17

5. Extremists on the Offensive....................................................... 21

6. Sanogo in Power....................................................................... 25

7. The January Offensive and Counteroffensive............................. 33

8. After the Storm......................................................................... 43

9. Conclusion and Implications for SOF....................................... 51

Appendix A: Acronyms................................................................. 59

Endnotes....................................................................................... 61

vii
Foreword

I n this monograph, Dr. Mark Moyar analyzes U.S. and international efforts
to counter Mali’s panoply of extremist organizations. Violent opposi-
tion to Mali’s government has deep roots, which include historic tensions
between the Tuaregs and other ethnic groups, as well as the emergence of
Salafist extremist groups in Algeria. Although the United States began to
take interest in Malian extremists after the 9/11 attacks, Mali did not attract
widespread attention until the fall of Libyan chief of state Muammar Ghadafi
in October 2011, which led to an influx of fighters and weapons into Mali and
the use of Mali as a staging ground for attacks across the region.
As Dr. Moyar explains, extremist attacks on Mali’s democratic govern-
ment in late 2011 and early 2012 led to military setbacks and internal dis-
sension, culminating in a military coup that allowed rebels to take control
of northern Mali. Because Mali had received extensive military and non-
military assistance from the United States and other foreign countries in
the preceding years, these disasters led to the questioning of aid practices,
including those of United States Special Operations Forces (USSOF). The
author navigates the debates over the effectiveness of foreign assistance and
assesses the competing positions based on the available evidence.
Mali’s neighbors and other allies believed that northern Mali had to be
retaken from the extremists, with some advocating diplomacy and others
recommending military action. Their deliberations were superseded by a
rebel offensive in January 2013 that overran key defensive positions in cen-
tral Mali and opened the way for a rebel advance on the national capital,
Bamako. Dr. Moyar examines the French-led intervention that turned the
rebels back and subsequently forced the rebels from the north, an episode
that highlights major opportunities and challenges in multinational and
interagency operations.
This study adds to a growing body of knowledge on special operations
and counterterrorism in Africa, a continent on which USSOF have become
much more active in recent years. It also contributes to the general under-
standing of the troubling events in Mali, where the government continues
to confront violent extremism and other forms of rebellion. Perhaps most
significantly for USSOF, the monograph offers insights into the building of

ix
partner capacity. In light of ongoing problems of instability and extremism
in much of the world, U.S. Special Operations Command and the rest of the
U.S. Government are likely to remain heavily engaged in capacity building
activities for years to come, and Mali’s lessons should be of value to anyone
participating in those activities.

Kenneth H. Poole, Ed.D.

Director, Center for Special Operations Studies and Research

x
About the Author

D r. Mark Moyar is a Visiting Scholar at the Foreign Policy Initiative. He

served previously as a Senior Fellow at the Joint Special Operations
University, and as a professor at the U.S. Marine Corps University, where
he held the Kim T. Adamson Chair of Insurgency and Terrorism. He has
also taught at Texas A&M University, the Ohio State
University, Cambridge University, and the Foreign
Service Institute. He holds a B.A. summa cum laude
from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Cambridge.
A frequent visitor to Afghanistan and other foreign
conflict zones, Dr. Moyar has served as a consultant to
the senior leadership of the Special Operations Joint
Task Force-Afghanistan, U.S. Central Command, U.S.
Special Operations Command, the International Secu-
rity Assistance Force in Afghanistan, and the NATO
Training Mission-Afghanistan. He has lectured at numerous military and
civilian educational institutions in the United States and abroad. A historian
by training, he also writes and speaks frequently on subjects of contemporary
national security as well as the relationship between past and present security
issues. He is a member of the Hoover Institution Working Group on the Role
of Military History in Contemporary Conflict.
Dr. Moyar’s articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington
Post, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. His 2009 book, A
Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq (Yale
University Press, 2009) ranks among the most original and influential theo-
retical works on counterinsurgency, presenting an alternative approach to
counterinsurgency that is focused on empowering the right people rather than
on implementing the right methods. Dr. Moyar’s book Triumph Forsaken:
The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (Cambridge University Press, 2006) is one of the
most acclaimed and controversial histories of the past decade, having been
the subject of an academic conference at Williams College, several academic
forums, and the book Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam
War (Routledge, 2010). In 2007, Bison Books published a new edition of Dr.
Moyar’s first book, Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and

xi
Counterterrorism in Vietnam, which included a new chapter offering lessons
for the contemporary practitioner.
Dr. Moyar’s most recent book is Strategic Failure: How President Obama’s
Drone Warfare, Defense Cuts, and Military Amateurism Have Imperiled Amer-
ica (Threshold, 2015). His next book, to be published by Cambridge University
Press, is titled Aid for Elites: Building Partner Nations and Ending Poverty with
Human Capital. At present, he is writing a history of USSOF for Basic Books.
His prior JSOU Press publications include Persistent Engagement in Colombia
(2014) and Village Stability Operations and the Afghan Local Police (2014).

xii
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

Introduction

P rior to 2012, Mali was all but unknown in the United States. To inter-
national development experts, Mali served as an exemplar for other
countries to emulate. To governance experts, it served as a paragon of democ-
ratization, having enjoyed more than two decades of stable democracy. A few
counterterrorism and counternarcotics experts warned that malign actors
were using Mali’s thinly populated and politically fractious north as bases
or transit areas, but those threats seemed minor in comparison with the
instability and violence sweeping over much of North Africa and the Middle
East in 2010 and 2011, and some observers doubted whether the threats were
more than trifles.

Figure 1. Map of Mali. Source: worldatlas.com.

1
JSOU Report 15-5

An unexpected military coup on 21 March 2012 brought Mali to the atten-

tion of the international news media. Such a collapse, in a nation considered
to be one of Africa’s most prosperous and democratic, came as a shocking
disappointment to those familiar with Africa. The military overthrow of an
elected government was interpreted in many quarters as regression to a dark
era of military domination of African politics.
What captured the most foreign attention, however, was the subsequent
cataclysm in northern Mali. The coup precipitated the defection and disin-
tegration of government security forces in northern Mali, paving the way
for Islamists and separatists to seize control of the population centers. Led
by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), extremists imposed draco-
nian punishments on the northern population and desecrated holy sites. For
eight months, the United States and other foreign actors attempted to restore
democracy in Mali and negotiate a political settlement, hoping to strike a
deal with Tuareg separatists at the expense of the Islamists.
The separatists and Islamic extremists refused to be split apart, and chose
instead to invade southern Mali in January 2013. Their initial victories over
the debilitated Malian forces portended a rebel victory over all of Mali.
France, which had a large number of its citizens in southern Mali, decided
that it could not tolerate such a victory. It intervened with military advisers
and aircraft, followed by a more active role in the conflict in order to halt
the enemy onslaught and retake the north.
In the space of a few weeks, French intervention saved southern Mali and
drove the rebels from northern Mali cities. The French intended to hand the
country over to Malian and other African security forces within a matter of
months, but ended up staying much longer after realizing that the African
forces were not equal to the task. As of this writing, the French retain a
sizable military presence in Mali, which provides protection against major
attacks and permits surgical operations against enemy leaders. Efforts to
produce African forces that can replace the French forces have yet to bear
fruit, and will likely require additional time and resources.
This monograph begins with historical analysis of rebellion, extremism,
and the countering of violent extremism in Mali, in order to illuminate the
context in which more recent events have taken place. It chronicles the rise
of Islamic extremism in Mali, and explains how the Malian government
and United States perceived and attempted to address that rise. Included
in the explanation of the American response is the growing role of Special
2
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

Operations Forces (SOF) in building the capacity of Malian forces. The

monograph then examines the extremist military gains that began in 2011,
the military coup of March 2012, the Islamist offensive in January 2013, and
the French intervention. The narrative concludes with French efforts to hold
stubborn enemies at bay while multiple international actors attempt to build
local capacity. The final chapter analyzes the most important issues and chal-
lenges in countering Mali’s violent extremists, particularly in terms of SOF,
and explains how they might be relevant in confronting violent extremism
elsewhere in Africa or other regions.

Figure 2. Africa Map showing Mali’s geographic position. A

landlocked country, Mali borders seven other African nations:
Algeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Senegal, and
Mauritania. Source: Central Intelligence Agency.

3
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

1. Historical Background

I n territorial terms, modern Mali is as large as Afghanistan and twice the

size of France. Its borders are twice as long as the border separating the
United States and Mexico. Mali is landlocked, though it does possess a major
waterway, the Niger River, next to which most of the major population cen-
ters are located. Its southern zone, which has a subtropical climate, is home
to 80 percent of the population and most of the agricultural production and
other economic output.
Muslims comprise approximately 90 percent of Mali’s population, and
nearly all of the Muslims are Sunnis. The Mandé ethnic group, accounting
for half of Mali’s population, is the dominant group in the south. The best
educated of Mali’s ethnic groups, the Mandé, comprise most of the nation’s
political elite. Northern Mali, consisting of the Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu
regions, lies within the Sahara and the Sahel, the latter constituting the
transition zone between the Sahara desert to the north and the Savannah to
the south. Northern Mali is populated by four main ethnic groups: Tuareg,
Arab, Songhai, and Fula. According to a 2009 census, more than 95 percent
of the people of northern Mali lived in either Timbuktu or Gao.1
Of the northern groups, the one most resistant to outside authority has
been the Tuaregs, who are concentrated in the Kidal region. Descendants
of Arabs and Berbers, the Tuaregs have lived as nomads throughout their
history, moving across the Sahel with livestock according to the seasons.2
Their nomadic existence and their familiarity with the terrain have made
them into deft smugglers, an increasingly profitable profession in recent
centuries with the rise in international commerce and transnational crime.
Attempts by distant Malian governments or foreign powers to curb smug-
gling in northern Mali have been a leading cause of conflict between the
Tuaregs and neighboring populations. Most effective at suppressing Tuareg
smuggling were the French, who incorporated Mali into the colony of French
Sudan in 1890 and asserted control over government and commerce in the
Tuareg areas, vanquishing several Tuareg revolts in the process.
Racial differences also account for conflict between the Tuaregs and other
Malians. The Tuaregs once helped enslave the Mandé, and they have since
continued to view the Mandé as inferior. Tuareg resistance to the Mandé

5
JSOU Report 15-5

has been undercut in recent times by the numerical inferiority of the Tuareg
population and by internal divisions among the Tuaregs. The low popula-
tion sizes of the Tuaregs and the other northern groups have left the north
with little clout in democratic elections. It has also allowed politicians to
neglect the north without suffering adverse electoral consequences. Rulers
in southern Mali have played Tuareg factions off against one another to keep
control over the north without having to occupy it with large military forces.
When Mali gained its independence from France in 1960, its ethnically
and politically heterogeneous groups shared no common sense of national-
ism. When democratic elections took place at the dawn of independence,
Mali’s citizens voted for candidates based on ethnicity rather than ideol-
ogy or policy. The Mandé majority voted in Mali’s first president, Modibo
Keita, to the general dissatisfaction of the minority groups in the north.
The Tuaregs rebelled against the new government almost immediately. The
Malian army put their insurrection down and maintained a large presence
in northern Mali thereafter to keep the Tuaregs under control.
Keita, a socialist by persuasion, rejected the tenets of liberal democ-
racy. Following his initial electoral victory in 1960, he rigged all subsequent
elections and imprisoned political oppositionists. A young military officer
named Moussa Traoré overthrew Keita in 1968, and for the next two decades,
ran Mali as a military dictatorship.
In the 1970s and 1980s, rising oil prices spurred a migration of Tuaregs
from Mali to Libya, whose chief of state Muammar Gadhafi was promis-
ing them economic opportunities and military training. Malians fought in
Gadhafi’s expeditionary corps in Chad and Lebanon, and some returned to
Mali in the early 1990s to join the Popular Movement for the Liberation of
Azawad (MPLA), a Tuareg rebel group that had entered into open rebellion
against the Malian government in June 1990.3
The Malian government countered MPLA attacks with harsh measures
that alienated the Tuareg and Arab populations of northern Mali, driving
more young men into the ranks of the rebels. President Traoré negotiated
a peace treaty in early 1991 that removed the Malian army from the north,
gave greater political authority to local communities, and promised more
development funds to the north. But the treaty, like many peace treaties in
Mali’s history, did not halt the bloodshed. The army continued its repressive
actions, while the government did not deliver the promised funds to the
north, inciting the rebels to strike back.4
6
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

In March of 1991, President Traoré ordered troops to open fire on student

protesters in the capital. The order so disgusted a number of Malian military
officers that they chose to oust Traoré.5 The military officers who led the
coup and political oppositionists who opposed the Traoré regime formed a
new ruling entity, the Comité de Transition pour le Salut du Peuple, which
governed Mali for the next year while endeavoring to prepare the country for
democracy. During the summer, the committee convened a National Con-
ference of Mali, inviting nearly 2,000 Malians representing all the country’s
political, ethnic, religious, and regional groups. The participants drafted a
new constitution, according to which the centralization of the state author-
ity was diminished in an effort to accommodate the preferences of diverse
population groups. Elections held in April 1992 returned Alpha Oumar
Konaré as president.6
This democratization did not lead to the good governance that democracy
advocates had forecast. Konaré and other newly elected politicians employed
the state as a means of patronage, dispensing jobs to their followers with-
out regard for merit. Exploiting the state’s resources for private gains, they
deprived most of the population of governmental services. “The politicization
of the civil service in Mali in the context of democratization had a cata-
strophic effect on the democratization and development process in Mali,”
asserted Marietou Macalou in a study of the Malian civil service. The party
in power “permeated and used the civil service to control and take advantage
of state resources. In addition, the civil service has been transformed into a
funding agency for the ‘dominant’ party as well as coercion and exclusion
machinery.”7
In 1996, Tuareg rebels and the government reached a peace agreement
whereby 12,000 Tuareg fighters joined the Malian armed forces or govern-
ment. This time, the peace held. Impressed by the return of peace in northern
Mali, Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) flocked to the area
to engage in development activities. Islamic NGOs arrived as well, some of
them inspired by the desire to spread their version of Islam.8

7
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

2. The Rise of Violent Extremism

L ess conspicuous during the 1990s was the emergence of Islamic extrem-
ist organizations in Mali. Most of these groups originated in neighbor-
ing Algeria and continued to take direction from their Algerian branches.
Chief among the Algerian Islamist groups at this time was the Salafist Group
for Preaching and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat,
or GSPC).9 The GSPC adhered to the jihadi variant of Salafism, which dif-
fered from other Islamic schools of thought in that it did not automatically
accept the authority of the ruler and was willing to use armed struggle to
overthrow the existing political order.10 The GSPC ingratiated itself with the
population of Timbuktu in the late 1990s by buying goods at high prices,
providing cellular phone service, intermarrying with local families, and
dispensing medical care.11
In the first years of the new millennium, the GSPC took advantage of a
burgeoning cocaine trade in the Sahel, which increased sixtyfold from 2002
to 2007 in response to increased international policing of Western Africa’s
coastline.12 According to United Nations (UN) estimates, one quarter of the
approximately 140 tons of cocaine consumed annually in Europe during this
period transited western Africa. The GSPC colluded with Latin American
drug traffickers to move drugs through the Sahel, obtaining funds and weap-
ons from the traffickers in exchange for smuggling services.13
At the same time, the Algerian government was becoming increasingly
proficient in counterinsurgency operations against the GSPC, which dimin-
ished the organization’s ability to recruit supporters in its traditional base
areas of northern Algeria. As a consequence, GSPC leader Mokhtar Bel-
mokhtar decided to shift the emphasis of recruiting to the Sahara. Beginning
in 2004, the GSPC stepped up recruitment in southern Algeria, northern
Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Chad.14 Further military setbacks in southern
Algeria during 2006 compelled GSPC to shift still further south, into the
Sahel, which was sufficiently distant for the Algerian government, which
did not see a need to assist Sahelian countries such as Mali in combating
the GSPC.15
At this same juncture, the GSPC rebranded itself. Becoming a franchise
of al-Qaeda, the organization changed its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic

9
JSOU Report 15-5

Maghreb.16 On 11 September 2006, in commemoration of the fifth anni-

versary of the 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri
proclaimed in a radio address:
Osama Bin Laden has told me to announce to Muslims that the GSPC
has joined al-Qaeda. This should be a source of chagrin, frustration,
and sadness for the apostates [of the regime in Algeria], the treach-
erous sons of France … We pray to God that our brothers from the
GSPC succeed in causing harm to the top members of the crusader
coalition, and particularly their leader, the vicious America.17

The GSPC leadership issued a statement that read, “We pledge allegiance
to Sheikh Osama Bin Laden ... Our soldiers are at his call so that he may
strike who and where he likes.”18 Setting their sights beyond the African
continent, AQIM leaders vowed to support al-Qaeda affiliates in their efforts
to attack targets in Western Europe.19
Soon after the rebranding, a new emir, Yahia Djaouadi, took charge of
AQIM operations in the Saharan theater. He orchestrated the kidnapping
of Europeans for ransom, which proved an exceedingly lucrative business.20
According to one estimate, AQIM hauled in a total of $90 million from
kidnapping between 2002 and 2012.21 While most of AQIM’s targets for kid-
napping and terrorism were from Western European countries known for
their willingness to pay high ransoms, AQIM occasionally targeted North
Americans. In December 2008, they kidnapped Canadian diplomat Robert
Fowler, an event that ultimately led Canada to contribute SOF to the training
of Mali’s armed forces. In June 2009, a botched AQIM kidnapping attempt
in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott ended in the death of U.S. citizen
Christopher Leggett.22 While Algeria remained a high long-term priority for
AQIM, the organization’s leadership focused in the near term on developing
safe havens among the Tuaregs of Mali, Niger, and Mauritania. As a result,
AQIM made Kidal its main base for its southern theater of operations.23
Mali’s Tuareg separatists were, in the meantime, fighting another war
against the central government. It began in March 2006, when 60 Tuaregs
deserted from the Malian army and plundered weapons from government
outposts in northeastern Mali. Establishing a stronghold in the Tigharghar
Mountains of the Kidal region near the border with Algeria, the rebels built
a force of nearly 1,000 fighters.24 Malian President Amadou Toumani Touré
chose to negotiate with the rebels, and in July they reached a peace deal that
10
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

entailed the withdrawal of the government’s security forces from northern

Mali.25 Tuareg rebels nonetheless continued to fight pro-government Tuareg
tribes and Arab militias until 2009. Foreign diplomats complained that the
Arab militias were collaborating with AQIM and participating in drug traf-
ficking and kidnapping, but President Touré appeared unconcerned, content
to condone smuggling by both the Arabs and AQIM since he could take fees
from both groups.26
The Tuareg rebels generally avoided collaboration with AQIM, claiming
that their form of Islam was incompatible with AQIM’s Salafist worldview.
Historically, most Tuaregs practiced a form of Sunni Islam that contained
elements of animism from the pre-Islamic era.27 They rejected the Salafist
practice of takfirism—the denunciation of theologically incorrect Muslims
and the use of coercive force to eliminate theological deviance. Like other
mainstream Sunni Muslims, most Tuaregs believed that incorrect views
should be countered with teaching and consensus-building. On the main
rebel website, separatists wrote that because their version of Islam was “toler-
ant and knowledgeable,” it would be “dangerous and truly evil to try to con-
nect it to the GPSC Salafists, who are banished from the land that spawned
them and rejected by their own brothers in arms in Algeria.”28
During this same period, however, Salafist preachers were making
inroads with elements of Mali’s Tuareg population.29 AQIM members were
strengthening their ties with Tuaregs through marriages and business rela-
tionships.30 These developments would prove critical assets to AQIM in ally-
ing with Mali’s Tuaregs in the coming years.

11
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

3. The United States and Mali

I slamic extremism in Mali and elsewhere held the attention of few people
in the U.S. Government prior to 11 September 2001. Following the 9/11
attacks, the surging American interest in Islamic extremism reached into
every country with a significant Muslim population, to include those in the
Sahel. From 2002 to 2004, the United States underwrote the Pan-Sahel Ini-
tiative, which equipped 150-man rapid-reaction companies in Niger, Mali,
Mauritania, and Chad, and trained them using United States Special Opera-
tions Forces (USSOF).31 Within Mali, soldiers from the 1st battalion, 10th
U.S. Special Forces Group trained elements of the Malian 33rd Parachute
Commando Regiment (RCP). Administered at Bamako, Gao, and Timbuktu,
the training covered marksmanship, planning, communications, land navi-
gation, patrolling, and medical care.32
The United States also began to develop capabilities for unilateral coun-
terterrorism operations in the region. In 2003, American military officers
proposed a plan to fire missiles at Mokhtar Belmokhtar at a camp in north-
ern Mali where he was reported to be located. The American Ambassador
to Mali, Vicki Huddleston, vetoed the operation, arguing that Belmokhtar
was only a minor figure and that action against him would fuel resentment
of the United States. She also vetoed a plan to help Malian and Algerian
forces capture Belmokhtar. Ambassador Huddleston’s refusals infuriated
Air Force General Charles F. Wald, the senior U.S. military officer in the
region at the time. Belmokhtar “was well within reach,” Wald remembered.
“It would have been easy.” The United States “allowed Belmokhtar to become
larger than life.”33
In early 2004, the Pan-Sahel Initiative gave way to the Trans-Sahara
Counterterrorism Partnership (TSCTP), for which the United States ear-
marked $500 million over five years. The main military arm of TSCTP, Oper-
ation Enduring Freedom-Trans Sahara, funded the training and equipping
of security forces and a periodic regional military exercise called Flintlock.34
It also underwrote “whole-of-government” approaches to counterterrorism,
which included economic development programs, governance programs,
and “public diplomacy programs” aimed at “preserving the traditional toler-
ance and moderation displayed in most African Muslim communities and

13
JSOU Report 15-5

countering the development of extremism, particularly in youth and rural

populations.”35
In 2006, a small number of USSOF officers formed the Joint Special Oper-
ations Task Force-Trans Sahara (JSOTF-TS) to orchestrate all Department
of Defense counterterrorism initiatives under the TSCTP umbrella. Those
initiatives spanned 10 northern and western African countries, including
Mali. In October 2008, the newly formed combatant command U.S. Africa
Command (AFRICOM) took control of JSOTF-TS, and seven months later
it moved again, becoming a subordinate element of the Special Operations
Command Africa (SOCAFRICA).36
Given the relatively modest amounts of funding and U.S. personnel
assigned to the TSCTP, American capacity-building efforts were restricted
to a small set of elite forces in the recipient countries. The military deficien-
cies of the rest of the armed forces received little attention from the United
States or other nations. In light of past military interference in politics in
Mali and neighboring countries, Mali’s political leaders wanted to keep the
military weak, a position accepted by a large number of foreign donors who
were similarly suspicious of the military. The political leadership meddled
with recruitment, promotion, and command in the military, to the detriment
of the military’s competence, organization, and morale.37 Because of low
levels of defense spending as well as high levels of corruption, most Malian
units were short on basic equipment and supplies. Lacking in aircraft or
tactical wheeled vehicles, they could not seek out the enemy in the country’s
vast expanses.38
Under the Obama administration, emphasis on social and economic
development in Mali and other Trans-Saharan countries received a further
boost. “Underdevelopment in key areas represents a critical security chal-
lenge in the Sahel,” remarked Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
Johnnie Carson in November 2009.
In Northern Mali, for example, insecurity in isolated border areas
and along traditional smuggling routes is perpetuated by unmet
economic expectations and the lack of legitimate alternatives to
smuggling or opportunistic commerce with criminal networks
… [Mali’s] efforts to address insecurity in the northern part of
the country are severely hampered by poor infrastructure and the

14
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

inability to provide adequate service delivery and educational and

vocational opportunities to isolated areas.39

Carson attributed AQIM’s recruiting successes in the region to its ability

to provide food in areas where the government could not offer any services.
The Obama administration asserted that the TSCTP would “address the
drivers of violent extremism” in northern Mali. It earmarked funds for 10
FM radio stations, “interactive radio instruction” for 200,000 students at
madrasas, basic education, vocational training, microenterprise develop-
ment, governance, and “conflict prevention.”40 The U.S. Millennium Chal-
lenge Corporation also spent heavily on development projects in Mali. It
concentrated its efforts near Bamako, at least in part for security reasons,
though that geographic focus kept it far from the areas of unrest.
Because of doubts about the value of assisting foreign militaries, the
Obama administration reduced funding for security sector programs.41 But
insecurity in the north turned out to be a leading obstacle to development
programs. “Development is critical in dealing with the north,” Ambassador
Gillian Milovanovic said in January 2011. “So long as security is unstable, it
is hard to get those projects going.” U.S. embassy personnel could not travel
to Northern Mali except with the express permission of the ambassador,
which Milovanovic rarely granted.42
The Obama administration chose not to allocate significant resources to
combating corruption in Mali, a position consistent with the theory, popu-
larized by Jeffrey Sachs, that corruption was not a major cause of national
economic weakness.43 U.S. aid to Mali for programs related to governance
totaled less than $1 million per year. The suitability of this approach would
come under question with new revelations of poor governance and its con-
sequences. In 2009, for instance, an internal audit by the Malian govern-
ment found that the government had suffered a loss of $224 million in the
past year because of mismanagement or theft of government funds for rural
development, infrastructure, public administration, health, and justice.44

15
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

4. SOF Engagement in Mali

O n 31 May 2009, militants in Mali executed British tourist Edwin Dyer,

who had been kidnapped several months earlier near the border
between Mali and Niger. Malian Colonel Lamana Ould Cheikh arrested
two men in the killing, but then was himself assassinated. President Touré
blamed the killings on AQIM and told the U.S. that this violence demon-
strated the need for greater U.S. support for his security forces.45
The U.S. Department of Defense wanted to respond to Touré’s request for
more assistance by increasing the number of U.S. military personnel in Mali
for training purposes. AFRICOM and SOCAFRICA recommended allow-
ing U.S. military advisers to accompany Malian forces on counterterrorism
operations. The State Department, the lead U.S. agency for foreign policy,
rejected these proposals. It did, however, grant the Defense Department
permission to boost the number of short-term SOF training sessions in Mali
to seven, up from two in 2008. During 2009, the 3rd Special Forces Group,
3rd Marine Special Operations Battalion, 6th Air Force Special Operations
Squadron, and U.S. Navy SEALs provided short training events to Mali’s
armed forces.46
The 10th Special Forces Group began training units called Echelon Tac-
tique Inter-Armée (ETIA), company-sized motorized infantry units with
approximately 160 men. The ETIAs were the Malian government’s main
weapon for use against AQIM in the north. Ethnically mixed, with a sig-
nificant representation of Tuaregs, the ETIAs had been formed by pulling
men from other army regiments.
American advisers were appalled by the condition of the ETIAs’ equip-
ment. Many AK-47s lacked stocks or other vital parts. Some soldiers had old
SKS rifles, which were no match for the AK-47s that AQIM’s fighters carried.
When the U.S. Special Forces advisers pleaded with the Malian Ministry of
Defense to provide new rifles and rifle stocks, none were forthcoming. The
American advisers then ordered some rifle stocks on their own initiative, but
when the shipments arrived it was learned that they were the wrong stocks.47
Malian soldiers rotated in and out of the ETIAs in six-month intervals,
rather than staying together for sustained periods. USSOF discovered this
fact through biometric testing of trainees, as the Malian military had not

17
JSOU Report 15-5

divulged that it was sending different troops in for each training cycle.
Malian military personnel, moreover, rotated between the south to the north
every three years, giving them time off in the relatively peaceful south after
several years of hardship and danger in the north. In the view of one USSOF
officer, these rotation policies created “essentially insurmountable problems
for those attempting to assist the Malians to improve their capabilities.”48
The first USSOF training of the ETIAs, a 30-day Joint Combined
Exchange Training (JCET) event, led the Americans to conclude that the
ETIA capabilities were so low that they would need much more than short
training programs. “Due to extreme deficiencies displayed at the basic level
and beyond, a full 30-day period would need to be devoted to just one or two
aspects of training, such as rifle marksmanship or squad dismounted move-
ment,” concluded Simon J. Powelson, a U.S. Special Forces officer responsible
for ETIA training. The Americans extended the next two JCETs to 45 days.
During those two events, the Malian soldiers again evidenced a startling
inability to perform the most basic military tasks, such as firing and disas-
sembling a rifle.49 They also displayed, in Powelson’s words, “a culture over-
run by apathy.” Individual soldiers and officers demonstrated no initiative,
acting only when commanded. Infantry officers “did not attempt to conduct
daily training to ensure unit competence and readiness.”50 Much longer
training of individuals, and perhaps fundamental changes in rotation poli-
cies, would be required to change this culture.
Further complicating American assistance to Mali’s security forces was a
lack of commitment from the top of Mali’s government. President Touré was
talking of getting tough with AQIM, vowing to wage a “total struggle,” but in
practice he was not vigorous in combating AQIM. Other countries suspected
that Touré had a “non-aggression” pact with AQIM in order to augment his
personal wealth and avoid attacks in Bamako and other cities that would
undermine the image of a great leader he was seeking to cultivate.51 In early
2010, Mauritania recalled its ambassador from Mali for eight months follow-
ing the Malian government’s release of four Mauritanian AQIM detainees. In
August 2010, Touré again thumbed his nose at the Mauritanian government
by releasing an AQIM fighter who had been extradited from Mauritania.52
During 2010 and 2011, the United States again extended the duration of
JCETs to three months. But even events of that duration proved insufficient
to raise the capabilities of the ETIAs satisfactorily. At the conclusion of

18
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

the JCETs, Powelson observed, the Malians’ “proficiency at performing any

semblance of a coordinated assault on a fixed position was nonexistent.”53
Because of the frequent rotation of Malian personnel and the limitation
of JCETs to one for each of the four ETIAs per year, all ETIA personnel
were rotated before a second JCET took place. The trainers thus had to start
at square one with each new JCET, necessitating that they cover only basic
skills, such as rifle marksmanship, individual movement, driver’s training,
and crew-served weapons familiarization. In frustration, the Americans
urged the Ministry of Defense to change its six-month personnel rotation
policy for the ETIAs, but to no avail.54 A small number of USSOF were
working with the Ministry of Defense at this time, in coordination with the
U.S. State Department, but they were focused on operational planning, not
personnel.55
AFRICOM provided some episodic support to the ETIAs for intelligence,
with training taking place in three-week rotations. Malian intelligence capa-
bilities were modest, and they were more focused on preventing coups and
other internal problems than defeating the enemy. Convincing the Malian
military whom to train was also problematic, since the black African leaders
wanted the training recipients to be black Africans, not Tuaregs, whom they
distrusted. When the AFRICOM trainers returned to visit their pupils after
a break in training, they checked to see whether the Malians were making
use of the prior training; if they were not, then the Malians would have to
go back and start over with the prior training modules. The effectiveness of
this approach would be cut short by events, as only two ETIAs had received
intelligence training when American aid abruptly ceased.56
In June 2010, an Operational Detachment–Alpha (ODA) from the 10th
Special Forces Group that had been assigned to the newly formed Joint Plan-
ning Assistance Team (JPAT) decided to seek alternatives to the existing SOF
training program. Their analysis had led them to conclude that Malian forces
needed the ability to attack fortified positions in the Tigharghar mountains,
which would require coordinated use of indirect fire, mounted fire, and
maneuver. Achieving the necessary military proficiency would require pro-
longed SOF engagement with a Malian unit that retained its personnel. The
ODA asked the Malian Ministry of Defense if it could work continuously
with a Malian unit that would not rotate its soldiers on a routine basis. The
Malians agreed to let the Americans work with a new company of the 33rd
RCP, composed of personnel from the regiment’s four existing companies.
19
JSOU Report 15-5

Designated the Special Forces Company (CFS), it was to consist of 152 men
and would be organized like a U.S. Army Ranger company.57 To provide
continuity on the American side, SOF teams were to rotate into the JPAT at
six month intervals.
The 33rd RCP was already an elite unit, and it was much better organized,
trained, and motivated than the ETIAs and other Malian units. Until this
point, it had kept one of its companies in the north, while two companies
concentrated on security for the president and the fourth was in a down
cycle. Although the regiment had received periodic training from U.S. and
French forces, its skills had not developed to the point that the Americans
deemed necessary for effective operations in the mountains. Much of the
training the troops had received from American and French forces had
been concentrated on advanced skills, some of which were not very useful
for operations in northern Mali. Many soldiers were deficient in the most
elementary skills, such as zeroing their rifles. The paratroopers were also
very short on equipment and supplies.58
The initial training that the American ODA administered to the CFS
covered basic skills like marksmanship, first aid, and land navigation. USSOF
taught the officers and the noncommissioned officers (NCOs), and then the
officers and NCOs taught the skills to the enlisted men. To obtain addi-
tional equipment for the CFS, the Americans used a peacekeeping operations
account from which they could draw funds more easily and quickly than
from other funding streams.59
Prolonged and continuous training permitted SOF to concentrate on a
task as long as it took the Malians to master it, rather than having to end at
an arbitrary date as had been necessary with the JCETs. The progress was
sufficiently promising that the CFS began training with the Malian air force
in combined air-ground operations in 2011. Whereas all of Mali’s forces
had ranked near the bottom of African forces in competence during the
Flintlock regional military exercise in 2010, the CFS ranked near the top at
the 2011 exercise.60

20
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

5. Extremists on the Offensive

M ali, for all its problems, was considered a model of African success
until the eve of the cataclysm. International commentators praised
Mali as an exemplar of liberal democracy and good governance in Africa.
From the mid-1990s to 2010, noted the admirers, Mali had achieved gross
domestic product growth of 5.5 percent per year, reduced poverty by 33
percent, cut infant mortality by 25 percent, and increased access to primary
education from 20 percent of children to 80 percent.61 As late as March
2012, the Millennium Challenge issued a publication entitled “Prosperity
Takes Root in Mali,” which asserted that “the region is being transformed
into a thriving hub of rice and vegetable production that will improve the
lives of farmers and strengthen the country’s food security.”62 Numerous
foreign observers did not comprehend the magnitude of Mali’s weaknesses
in governance and security, or else did not consider them an obstacle to
Mali’s betterment.
During 2011 and early 2012, some academic and policy experts, includ-
ing the U.S. ambassador to Mali, downplayed the possibility that extremist
organizations such as AQIM posed a threat to Mali and its neighbors. Mali’s
government was said to be too strong and AQIM too weak and unpopular
with local populations to endanger the Malian state. Several groups report-
edly were breaking off from AQIM, including the Movement for Unity and
Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), which appeared to be focused mainly on
Africa, and hence were cited as evidence that Malian extremists did not
pose a threat to Western homelands.63 The contention that Mali was safe
and secure served as a key debating point for those who maintained that
security assistance to Mali was too large, or too focused on the military at
the expense of civil governance.64 It was also invoked by the ambassador in
turning down the U.S. military’s recommendations to allow SOF to accom-
pany Malian forces into the field.65
However, other experts and other elements of the U.S. mission in Bamako
rated the extremist threat to be much greater. They attached considerable
weight to reports that extremists were migrating from Libya to Mali and that
the Tuaregs were gravitating toward an alliance with AQIM. The extremist
migration included an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 armed Tuaregs who had

21
JSOU Report 15-5

fought on Gadhafi’s side in Libya. Americans who deemed the extremists to

be a dire threat to Mali noted that AQIM had developed deep roots in local
communities through intermarriage and had also gained the cooperation of
government officials.66 They also pointed to AQIM’s ability to raise revenue
through drug trafficking in cahoots with Tuareg smugglers.67 Much of the
threat information came from the open-source reporting of the American-
sponsored Native Prospector program, which relied on Malian nationals to
cull information from local sources.68
Of the Tuareg migrants who were deemed most dangerous, a large frac-
tion hailed from the Ifogha tribe, the Tuareg tribe most hostile to the govern-
ment of Mali. On 16 October 2011, an Ifogha who had served as a colonel in
the Libyan Army, Ag Mohamed Najem, formed a Tuareg separatist move-
ment called the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA),
which included members of most of the Tuareg communities of northern
Mali. For those who considered the Malian extremists a serious threat to
U.S. interests, though, the greatest concern was the growth of Ansar Dine, an
offshoot of AQIM with Malian Tuareg leadership. Western analysts believed
that AQIM had helped form Ansar Dine to help put a Malian “face” on
AQIM, knowing that a movement led by Malian Tuaregs would be much
more effective in northern Mali than a foreign-led organization. By late
2011, Ansar Dine vied with MNLA for the distinction of largest rebel group
in the north.69
The Tuaregs who left Libya for northern Mali in 2011 brought with them
weapons plundered from Gadhafi’s arsenals. Some Western security experts
believed that the weaponry included portable antiaircraft missile launchers,
though no such weapons were used or captured in the ensuing period.70
Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, recounted,
“The weapons proliferation that we saw coming out of the Libyan conflict
was of a scale greater than any previous conflict—probably 10 times more
weapons than we saw going on the loose in places like Iraq, Somalia, and
Afghanistan.”71 The loot from Gadhafi’s stocks left the Tuareg rebels and their
allies far better equipped than nearly all of Mali’s forces. The experience
and training they had received in Libya made them much more competent.
The MNLA and Ansar Dine stepped up their attacks in northern Mali
near the end of 2011, and by early 2012 they were capturing significant prizes.
On 17 January, rebels overran Menaka, a town in northeastern Mali. The
Malian headquarters in Gao ordered the 33rd RCP to form a task force to
22
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

retake Menaka. The CFS company, which was a component of the task force,
spearheaded a convoy of task force vehicles that headed toward Menaka.
When rebels ambushed the convoy, the CFS soldiers dismounted from their
vehicles and used SPG-9 recoilless rifles to pour fire on the enemy, driving
them off. The Task Force proceeded to Menaka, which they took with support
from Malian reconnaissance aircraft and helicopter gunships. The task force
camped out in the town, but was compelled to leave on 3 February because
the military headquarters at Gao failed to deliver promised supplies. Once
the task force returned to Gao, hostile forces retook Menaka.72
On 25 January 2012, rebels overran an isolated military garrison at the
northern town of Aguelhok after a weeklong siege. The Malian soldiers had
held off the attackers until they ran out of ammunition, their requests for
resupply having gone unfulfilled. Upon taking the town, the rebels slaugh-
tered nearly 100 people, including the wives and children of the defenders.
In early February, hostile forces surrounded the Malian military base and
airfield at Tessalit, in the Kidal region. Guarded by several hundred soldiers,
Tessalit was critical to governmental control of northern Mali. On 25 Febru-
ary, the 33rd RCP Task Force fought its way from Gao to Tessalit, fending
off the enemy for several days while evacuating its wounded by air. Again
it ran low on supplies because of the inability of the military base at Gao to
send what was needed. Eventually the paratroopers and their SOF advisers
convinced the Malian air force and the U.S. Embassy to deliver supplies by
air, but the supplies received were sufficient only to get the task force back to
Gao, not to keep it at Tessalit. Shortly after the paratroopers departed Tes-
salit, the garrison they left behind negotiated a surrender whereby everyone
at the military base was permitted safe passage to Gao.73
After the fall of Tessalit, discontent with the national leadership soared
amid the ranks of the armed forces. Junior officers and enlisted men blamed
the president, minister of defense, and senior military leaders for failing to
keep the units in the north adequately supplied. Army widows blocked off
streets in Bamako in protest of the government’s mishandling of the conflict.
On 21 March, Mali’s Minister of Defense Sadio Gassama received word
that disgruntled soldiers at the Kati barracks were preparing to march on
the capital in protest of the government’s mismanagement. Hoping to head
off a stampede on downtown Bamako, Gassama had his chauffeur drive him
the 20 kilometers from his office to the barracks. When Gassama arrived,
he was relieved to find that the troops had not yet left the base. He took the
23
JSOU Report 15-5

stage to address an assembly of troops, whose seething discontent could not

have been difficult to discern. Overestimating the strength of his position,
Gassama scolded the audience, which only enraged them. When the defense
minister’s bodyguards attempted to keep angry soldiers back with shots in
the air, the soldiers grabbed their rifles and fired them in the air. Gassama
fled the scene in his car.74
Under the leadership of a disreputable captain named Amadou Sanogo,
who had been dismissed from his prior job after five soldiers died in a hazing
incident,75 a mob of soldiers marched to the presidential palace. Upon arrival,
the unruly throng fired their weapons in the air and shouted taunts at the
“Red Berets” guarding the palace, which belonged to the 33rd RCP. The Red
Berets in turn fired their weapons in the air. The standoff gave President
Touré time to slip away. Once the president had safely exited the palace, the
Red Berets left too, allowing Sanogo and his men to occupy and ransack the
premises. Touré, whose term in office was nearly over, did not attempt to
organize military action against Sanogo, and instead chose to go into hiding,
with protection from the 33rd RCP. Officers from the 33rd RCP asked their
USSOF counterparts to provide ammunition for use in a countercoup, but
these Americans had not received guidance from the embassy on the U.S.
position toward the coup and therefore avoided providing assistance to the
paratroopers.76 Touré later went into exile in the neighboring country of
Senegal.
Sanogo, who had been a figure of no significance and little ambition on
the morning of 21 March, decided to become chief of state that evening.
The Malian people accepted the military’s overthrow of the democratic
government with a readiness that shocked much of the democratic world.
Dr. Christopher Fomunyoh of the U.S. National Democratic Institute com-
mented, “the population in Bamako showed surprising indifference to the
coup while it was in progress, and was willing to embrace the group of junior
officers that staged the coup once President Touré agreed to step down.”77 To
many Malians, the coup was a necessary antidote to a government that was
irretrievably corrupt and ineffective.78

24
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

6. Sanogo in Power

S ome U.S. military officers wanted to continue assistance to Mali’s secu-

rity forces after the coup, but were overruled by the State Department,
which decided that the continuation of U.S. assistance would constitute the
sanctioning of a military coup, which was undesirable, and it would enmesh
the United States in an internal conflict between Tuaregs and Malians of
Mandé and other ethnic descent. On 23 March, USSOF discontinued all their
activities in Mali. SOCAFRICA maintained a team of four to six troops at
the embassy in Bamako on a standby basis, but they were not permitted to
interact with the Malian military.79 The Flintlock exercise, which had been
scheduled to take place in northern Mali later in the year, was aborted.
On 10 April 2012, the United States officially terminated assistance to
Mali’s government in accordance with Section 7008 of the Department of
State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2012.
This legislation prohibited assistance to any country whose elected head
of government had been removed by a military coup. Some humanitarian
assistance was permitted to continue, as was assistance for elections.80
The suspension of U.S. aid bewildered and infuriated Malian military
officers, who shared the general view of their countrymen that a military
coup was preferable to the continuation of corrupt democracy. “The coup
happens, we’re weaker than ever, and then you pull your aid?” said a Malian
officer who enjoyed widespread respect among the foreign advisers. “We’re
fighting the same enemies. Why should a coup be more important than
defeating AQIM? It’s your enemy just as much as it’s ours.”81
The termination of U.S. aid was accompanied by a debilitating purge
within the Malian military. On the heels of the coup, Sanogo arrested much
of the senior military leadership and gave the senior army posts to colonels
who had not been close to the deposed president.82 These changes paralyzed
the central leadership and led promptly to disorder on the periphery. Within
a few days of the coup, the commanders of three of the four ETIAs in the
north defected with their entire units to the rebellion, leaving the govern-
ment with few loyal forces in the north.83 The remaining loyalist forces aban-
doned the three northern regions of Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu, withdrawing
to Sévaré, Ségou, and Bamako by the end of March.84

25
JSOU Report 15-5

Into the void stepped the MNLA, Ansar Dine, and AQIM, who took
charge of local governance and plundered foreign-financed development
projects.85 U.S. military officers warned that the extremists were strong
enough and the Malian army weak enough that Bamako could fall in a day’s
time, causing Western governments to plan for an emergency evacuation.
For reasons that remain unclear, AQIM and the others chose not to push
into southern Mali at this precarious time.86
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) responded
to these developments swiftly and decisively. On 27 March, the heads of state
of ECOWAS announced that they were activating a force of 3,000 ECOWAS
troops for use against the rebels in northern Mali should they refuse to
accept a peaceful resolution of the conflict.87 ECOWAS also pressured the
military junta to agree to an interim government and democratic elections,
which Sanogo did on 6 April. The military named the speaker of the National
Assembly, Dioncounda Traoré, as interim president, and Cheick Modibo
Diarra as interim prime minister.
Although this agreement eased tensions in Bamako and reduced inter-
national criticism, it did not put an end to infighting among Mali’s elites.
On April 30, the Red Berets of the presidential guard, still smarting from
the deposing of the president, attempted a coup against Sanogo and his sup-
porters in the regular army. Fighting raged that night at the airport, several
military barracks in Bamako, and the national TV and radio stations. Forces
loyal to the junta overran the Red Beret base at Djicoroni, outside Bamako,
the next day, causing the ring leaders to flee and the coup to collapse. The
fighting claimed a total of 14 lives and it wounded another 40. The forces
loyal to Sanogo arrested 140 of the Red Berets, including 40 officers, of whom
21 disappeared and may have been killed. Approximately 400 paratroopers
from the 33rd RCP joined other units, while most of the remaining 800
refused and insisted the paratroopers be kept together in a single unit.88
In northern Mali, the rebels enticed Malian refugees to return to their
homes and join rebel fighting units by offering them high pay.89 The MNLA
soon fell behind Ansar Dine in recruitment of fighters, because it did not
have revenue sources comparable to AQIM’s hostage taking and drug traf-
ficking activities. Ansar Dine soon took over some of the areas that MNLA
had seized at the end of March. AQIM solidified its position as the brains
of the rebellion in northern Mali, with Ansar Dine providing the arms and
legs.90
26
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

Ansar Dine and AQIM also lured youth from foreign countries with
promises of salaries greatly exceeding the average wages in poor countries.
Islamists from many of Mali’s neighbors, including Tunisia, Burkina Faso,
Algeria, Niger, and Togo went to Mali to join the jihad, as did Islamists from
Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and France. By the end of the year, according
to French intelligence, the number of Islamist fighters in Mali stood between
2,500 and 3,000.91
The multinational conglomeration of veteran jihadists ran training camps
for aspiring extremists in northern Mali. According to Malian witnesses,
hundreds of Boko Haram fighters came from Nigeria to Timbuktu in 2012 to
receive weapons training at an AQIM training camp. Some of them returned
to Nigeria to use newly acquired skills and weapons.92 In 2013, Islamists from
Tunisia and Algeria were reported to be returning to their native countries
after receiving terrorist training in Mali.93
Islamist efforts to govern northern Mali became the subject of much
controversy among both their opponents and their own leadership. By some
accounts, their draconian justice earned the respect of the citizenry because
its impartiality and its lack of corruption contrasted favorably with the mis-
deeds of the previous government.94 The Islamic totalitarians of the Taliban
had gained ground in Afghanistan in the 1990s by meting out punishments
with similar impartiality and severity.
Other observers believed that the harsh governance measures of the
extremists alienated the subject population. Abou Moussab Abdelwadoud,
the head of AQIM, leveled this charge. The population had to be educated
in Islam before harsh punishments could be imposed, he asserted in July.
He said:
Our previous experience proved that applying Shariah this way,
without taking the environment into consideration, will lead to
people rejecting the religion, and engender hatred toward the Muja-
hideen, and will consequently lead to the failure of our experiment.95

The rebels needed to indoctrinate more of northern Mali’s people in order

to gain their support for jihadi Salafism and mobilize them in defense of the
area. To those who sought to win without careful cultivation of the popula-
tion, he warned, “You are in danger of destroying our experiment, of killing
off our baby, our beautiful tree.”96

27
JSOU Report 15-5

Abou Moussab Abdelwadoud also warned against provocative actions

that might induce foreign powers to intervene. MNLA and Ansar Dine had
pillaged several Christian churches, a Christian school, and a Christian
radio station, causing nearby Christian populations to flee their homes.97
Ansar Dine had also destroyed seven mausoleums of Muslim saints in Tim-
buktu, which it claimed represented polytheistic tendencies that had to be
rooted out in accordance with the Salafist conception of strict monotheism.
When the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiza-
tion (UNESCO) protested publicly that the world should not “allow vandals
to wipe out historical monuments,” Ansar Dine responded by destroying
the Sidi Yahya mosque, which dated back to 1400. “We don’t acknowledge
UNESCO,” said Ansar Dine spokesman Sanda Ould Bouamama. “What is
UNESCO? We don’t care about the words of any entity because God is one
without partners.”98
Abou Moussab Abdelwadoud found particular fault with effrontery of
this sort. “You must adopt mature and moderate rhetoric that reassures and
calms,” he admonished. “To do so, you must avoid any statements that are
provocative to neighboring countries and avoid repeated threats.” Evidently
aware of the tendency of some Westerners to emphasize the local concerns
of Islamic rebels and discount their international objectives, he advised,
“Better for you to be silent and pretend to be a ‘domestic’ movement that has
its own causes and concerns. There is no call for you to show that we have
an expansionary, jihadi, Qaida or any other sort of project.” He also called
for an end to provocations against other rebel groups, especially MNLA.99
At least some of the rebels appear to have heeded the AQIM leader’s
rebuke. In the ensuing period, reports emerged of rebel organizers adopt-
ing a more lenient approach toward the population. The foreign extremist
leaders in particular focused more on providing government services than
on meting out punishments.100 They permitted international humanitarian
organizations to distribute food and conduct other relief operations.101
During the second half of 2012, AQIM improved relations with MNLA
and recruited more natives of northern Mali into AQIM and Ansar Dine.
Mali’s government and its allies attempted to exploit differences between
the “local” groups MNLA and Ansar Dine and the “global jihadist” groups
AQIM and MUJAO. But AQIM’s recent proselytization among the Tuaregs
and its ongoing outreach to the MNLA and other native Malians ensured
that those efforts came to naught.102
28
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

In recent years, the United States had exploited its technical intelligence
assets to locate violent Islamists, and then employed drones or surgical
ground strikes to eliminate them.103 In the aftermath of the Malian coup,
U.S. aircraft flew over Mali to obtain information, but the lack of friendly
forces on the ground prevented the use of ground platforms and minimized
the availability of human intelligence. The Islamists took aggressive counter-
measures to technical collection, banning cell phones, dismantling cellular
towers, and shutting down Internet cafes. “It’s tough to penetrate,” remarked
General Carter Ham, then-commander of AFRICOM. “It’s tough to get
access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environ-
ment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries
as well.”104
For most of the year, the Obama administration was cool to recommen-
dations from ECOWAS to send their military forces into northern Mali,
convinced that the problem did not merit such a risky solution. Senior U.S.
officials expressed doubt as to whether AQIM posed a threat to the United
States. “AQIM has always been way more talk than action,” asserted one
senior U.S. counterterrorism official.105 This sort of skepticism also kept the
U.S. Government from adding AQIM leaders to high-value targeting lists.106
American perceptions about Mali began to change in late September after
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded AQIM may have used Mali as a staging
ground for an attack in Benghazi on 11 September 2012, which killed four
Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. At a special
UN meeting on the Maghreb and the Sahel on 26 September, Secretary of
State Clinton publicly linked AQIM’s Mali presence to the Benghazi attack.107
On 1 October, Carson said, “there will have to be at some point military
action to push” the rebels out of northern Mali. According to Carson, the
military action would have to be led by Mali’s forces and supported by Mali’s
neighbors.108
In November, ECOWAS resolved to send a force of 3,000 to Mali, com-
posed primarily of soldiers from Nigeria, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Ivory
Coast President Alassane Outtara said that these soldiers could go to Mali as
soon as the UN approved the plan, which he hoped would be in late Novem-
ber or early December. The plan envisioned a period of six months of training
and developing bases in the south, followed by operations into the north.109
France, the European Union (EU), and most of the UN Security Council
backed the ECOWAS plan.110 French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian
29
JSOU Report 15-5

warned that Mali would become a “terrorist sanctuary” if no actions were

taken. “In Mali, it is our own security that is at stake: the security of France,
the security of Europe,” he said. “If we don’t move, a terrorist entity will
take shape which could hit this or another country, including France, and
including Europe.”111
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was more muted in his support,
asserting that a military operation “may be required as a last resort to deal
with the most hardline extremist and criminal elements in the north.” First,
he said:
the focus must be on initiating a broad-based and inclusive political
dialogue aimed at forging national consensus around a road map
for the transition and at addressing the long-standing grievances
of the Tuaregs and other communities in the north.112

He also pointed out the difficulty of combating the heavily armed rebel
groups in Mali, whose strength had risen to an estimated 3,000 core com-
batants. Mali’s military paled in comparison, as it was “highly politicized,
bitterly divided and poorly trained and equipped.”113 Many of Mali’s high-
ranking officers were still in jail.114
The specifics of the ECOWAS intervention plan came under fire from
Western military experts, who deemed the text of the plan confused and
inadequate.115 In early December, U.S. ambassador to the UN Susan Rice
was reported to be “highly skeptical” of the ECOWAS plan. According to
one diplomat, Rice said that the plan was “crap.”116 Rice insisted that the
intervening force must be a “credible” force that “must kick al-Qaeda hard,”
said a second diplomat. She believed that the Malian and other West African
troops did not meet that standard.117 AFRICOM sent military personnel to
help develop the ECOWAS plan, but they would need time and cooperation
to develop the plan to the point that it was acceptable to Western experts.118
In light of the weaknesses of the African forces and the ECOWAS mili-
tary planning, the U.S. military offered to act unilaterally against the leaders
of Ansar Dine and AQIM. Precision strikes by SOF could at least weaken
the Islamist organizations and impede their terrorist plotting. The Obama
administration rejected the offer, on the grounds that it would inspire Islamic
militants to undertake new acts of violence, including terrorist strikes against
Western targets.119

30
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

In early December, lack of confidence in the available military options led

the Obama administration to call for a delay in military intervention until
Mali had elected a new president. “Mali’s first challenge is the restoration
of democratic governance,” Carson told the African Affairs Subcommittee
of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on 5 December. Carson said:
The United States has made elections in Mali a priority because
historically transitional governments that are not pressed to hold
elections and restore constitutional order tend to hold on to power
long beyond their mandate … Elections are critical for ensuring
that the Malian government has the legitimacy needed to negotiate
with indigenous northern groups and effectively coordinate with
regional and international partners to oust AQIM.120

France raised its voice in opposition to the American position. Malians

living under Islamist domination, they pointed out, would be unable to vote.
“Do you think that al-Qaeda will be securing voting booths for a fair elec-
tion?” remarked one UN Security Council diplomat.121 The French sought to
obtain American acquiescence to a military mission by offering a provision
that would allow the Americans to review and approve the actual military
plan prior to implementation.122
The French sweetener proved sufficient to gain American concurrence.
On 20 December, the UN Security Council unanimously authorized an Afri-
can-led security mission to Mali, called the International Support Mission
in Mali (AFISMA), for a period of one year. Its principal objectives would
be recovery of the areas held by the rebels and reunification of the country.
The Security Council called on UN member states to provide financial sup-
port for the mission.123

31
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

7. The January Offensive and

Counteroffensive

T he enemy would render these deliberations moot by forcing the issue

on the ground. On 5 January, military elements of Ansar Dine and
MUJAO advanced southward toward Konna, the only government-held
town north of Mopti, which was the main redoubt protecting southern Mali
from the north. AQIM, along with local imams, marabout (holy men), and
local notables, supported the jihadist groups. Those who had doubted that
the “local” and “global jihadist” groups could be split from one another
through negotiations cited the collaboration between Ansar Dine, MUJAO,
and AQIM as vindication of their doubts.124
Riding all-terrain vehicles, the extremists ran into Malian army forces
north of Konna on 8 January. The extremists got the better of the army, push-
ing the Malian soldiers back. Other extremist forces advanced in western
Mali.125 Rebel forces captured Konna the next day and pressed on toward
Mopti. On 10 January, the French ambassador in Bamako notified Paris that
the enemy was on the verge of taking Mopti, and if Mopti fell then there
would be nothing to stop the insurgents from advancing on Bamako itself.
French President François Hollande in turn declared that the extremists
were “seeking to deal a fatal blow to the very existence of Mali.”126 Of special
concern to Hollande were the more than 6,000 French citizens and 1,000
other Europeans in Mali, most of them in Bamako, for the French could not
evacuate so many people if the enemy attacked the capital. Were AQIM to
take thousands of Europeans captive, it could demand thousands of ransoms
or the release of thousands of Islamist prisoners.127 When Malian interim
President Dioncounda Traoré called President Hollande on 10 January to
request his help, Hollande agreed to take military action. Hollande then
notified President Obama that the French were about to intervene militar-
ily in Mali.128
On that same day, roughly three dozen French special operations troops
landed at the Sévaré military base near Mopti, where they immediately began
assisting Malian forces. The French troops at first served solely as spotters
for air strikes by French aircraft. But on 11 January, as Malian forces came
under fierce enemy attack, the French SOF took part in the ground action as
33
JSOU Report 15-5

well.129 From bases in Burkina Faso, French SOF Gazelle helicopters began
to attack rebel columns in Mali, and French conventional forces began to
arrive in the country hours later.130
The French special operators found the enemy to be much more formi-
dable than anticipated. “What has struck us markedly is how modern their
equipment is and their ability to use it,” commented one French official. “In
Libya they picked up modern, sophisticated kit that is a lot more robust and
effective than could have been imagined.”131
Enemy tactics also proved better than expected. The rebels employed a
host of tactical innovations intended to offset Western technological advan-
tage, many of which were spelled out in an al-Qaeda document found by an
Associated Press correspondent after the fighting. The document’s purported
author was a senior Yemeni member of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
but Osama Bin Laden was believed to have provided some of the tips himself.
Drawing upon lessons learned in other countries, the document enumerated
a host of techniques for thwarting drones. “It is possible to know the inten-
tion and the mission of the drone by using the Russian-made ‘sky grabber’
device to infiltrate the drone’s waves and the frequencies,” one section read.
“The device is available in the market for $2,595 and the one who operates
it should be a computer know-how.” Another section recommended “using
devices that broadcast frequencies or pack of frequencies to disconnect the
contacts and confuse the frequencies used to control the drone.” The docu-
ment called for vigilance against spies, noting that the spy “is the main pillar”
of drone warfare. To deter would-be spies, a captured spy should be “hanged
in public places with a sign hanging from his neck identifying him as an
‘American Spy’ or any other deterrent means similar to that done to (Israeli
spy hanged in Syria) Levy Cohen or (late Afghan president) Najibullah.”132
Islamist fighters deftly exploited the Western aversion to inflicting civil-
ian casualties. They mounted antiaircraft weapons on the roofs of homes to
discourage French aircraft from firing at them, and moved around in civilian
clothing on scooters of the sort employed by the populace. They did their
best to stick close to civilians and their dwellings, offering food and religious
education to prevent the people from shunning them or ratting them out.133
Within the U.S. Government, military officers proposed committing
SOF in support of the French. The State Department rejected the proposal.
The number of U.S. military personnel was limited to 12 at the embassy in
Bamako, and 10 others serving as liaisons with French forces.134
34
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

On 14 January, the Islamists attacked Diabaly in western Mali. Some

Malian soldiers threw away their weapons, removed their uniforms, and tried
to blend into the civilian population. “We thought the army would protect
us,” said Gaoussou Keita, a radio repairman in Diabaly. “But they simply
ran away.”135 Local resident Gaoussou Kone remarked, “We were surprised
to learn that our soldiers ran away. There is no African country that is strong
enough to fight these people on their own. They are too well-armed.”136
French aircraft arrived at Diabaly to rain destruction down on the attack-
ers, in the hope that air power would suffice to stop the rebels before they
took the whole town. But the rebels overran Diabaly and a nearby Malian
Army outpost anyway.137 Acknowledging that ground forces would be
required to blunt the enemy offensive, Hollande promptly decided to increase
French troop strength from 800 to 2,500 and shift from defense to offense.
He directed the French to attack quickly, in order to catch as many of the
enemy as possible before they slipped away.138
To facilitate the expansion of French ground operations, French diplomats
asked the Americans to provide refueling aircraft. France had only a few
aging KC-135 refuelers, which were not up to a task of this magnitude. Years
earlier, France had ordered 14 new Airbus 330 tankers, but the purchase had
been put on hold in 2010, owing to shrinkage of the French defense budget.139
The French expected the American help to be readily forthcoming.
According to French and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
officials who attended the private meetings, then-Secretary of Defense Leon
Panetta and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low
Intensity Conflict Michael Sheehan had said at a NATO summit a few months
earlier that the United States would provide “whatever it takes” to help the
French in Mali. U.S. defense officials would later dispute that recounting,
saying their messages to France might have been “lost in translation,” and
during those private meetings “neither Mr. Panetta nor Mr. Sheehan directly
urged France to use force and didn’t promise specific support.” Panetta’s
aides said that “his comments were meant to convey general U.S. support
for the aims of the French in Mali.”140
On 14 January, though, Panetta made additional comments that seemed
to suggest the United States would back France to the hilt. In reference to
Mali, Panetta said:

35
JSOU Report 15-5

We have made a commitment that al-Qaeda is not going to find any

place to hide … We’re concerned that any time al-Qaeda establishes
a base of operations, while they might not have any immediate plans
for attacks in the United States and in Europe, that ultimately that
still remains their objective.141

Two days later, Panetta remarked, “This is an al-Qaeda operation, and it

is for that reason that we have always been concerned about their presence
in Mali, because they would use it as a base of operations.”142
According to Adam Entous and Julian Barnes of the Wall Street Jour-
nal, Pentagon officials initially promised to meet the French requests for
assistance, but White House officials countermanded the promises. It is not
clear whether this turn of affairs resulted from a lack of coordination within
the executive branch or a change of heart at the White House. The Obama
administration informed the French that it needed more information about
the targets of the French aircraft the American tankers would refuel. The
French were taken aback, given their impressions from the previous discus-
sions that the United States would back them unequivocally and without
hesitation.143
The French also asked the United States to help transport troops into Mali
and provide intelligence that could be used for targeting. The Americans
informed the French government that it would have to pay for the services
of the transport aircraft. This reply also appalled the French, who labeled it
a “demand without precedent.”144 A senior U.S. official told the Washington
Post that the U.S. Government was not immediately granting the request for
intelligence because it first needed to understand “what the French objec-
tives are and really how they intend to go about them and against whom.”145
As the days wore on with no change in the status of the French request,
Obama administration figures discussed the threat of militants in Mali and
whether aiding France’s efforts was an urgent priority. “No one here is ques-
tioning the threat that AQIM poses regionally,” an unnamed administration
official commented. “The question we all need to ask is, what threat do they
pose to the U.S. homeland? The answer so far has been none.”146 Another
concern was that the French offensive might be harming elements of the
rebel coalition that were not as radical as AQIM. Anonymous U.S. officials
said, “the U.S. believes AQIM members are fighting in Mali alongside rebels

36
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

whose affiliations and intentions are less clear-cut. Some of these less-radical
factions may be open to negotiations.”147
The tendency of European nations to depend on the United States for
military assets was cited as a further reason for inaction. One U.S. offi-
cial said that it was practicing “tough love” with the French. According to
this individual, “The message to France and other European allies was that
Washington won’t foot the bill as global policeman at a time when European
powers are cutting defense investments.”148 Administration officials also
expressed a concern that providing any assistance would make the United
States a “co-belligerent” and there would be a “slippery slope” that would
draw the United States into Mali more deeply.149 A senior State Department
official told reporters, “We do best if we are in a strong supporting and
sustaining role, and not in a role in which we are taking the lead. This is
primarily an African problem.”150 Still another explanation advanced by the
U.S. Government was that legal considerations required a delay. U.S. offi-
cials were said to be conducting a review of the legalities of such assistance
because of the ban on providing aid to the Malian government and the lack
of a UN blessing for the French operation.151
Elsewhere on the diplomatic front, Western nations were urging Algeria
to help resolve the Mali crisis. The strongest military power in the region,
Algeria, had demonstrated an impressive ability to eliminate Islamist extrem-
ists, but the Algerian government disregarded the West’s pleas. Combating
rebels in northern Mali did not appear to be in its interests, as operations
in Mali might cause the rebels to move into Algeria, where many of them
had caused trouble in the past. Just a few months earlier, Algerian forces
had driven AQIM forces from the Kabylie Mountains into northern Mali.152
National pride may also have played a role in Algeria’s refusal. Some Alge-
rian officials contended that their government was unwilling to send forces
to Mali because no one had sent forces to help Algeria deal with Islamist
rebels in the 1990s. In addition, Algerians were incensed at the United States
and France over their intervention in Libya in 2011. NATO countries had
used the pretext of humanitarian assistance to engineer Gadhafi’s fall, and
then had done little to restore stability or secure weapons in the aftermath,
leaving Libyan-based extremists free to run rampant across the region with
heavy weapons. Some of those extremists were carrying out complex terror
attacks in Algeria.153

37
JSOU Report 15-5

Among the places where the militants showed up with heavy weapons was
a gas plant in the Algerian desert, where a multinational staff was laboring
on behalf of the Algerian state energy agency Sonatrach, Norway’s Statoil,
and BP. Led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a group of armed Islamists seized the
facility on 16 January, taking several hundred hostages, including a handful
of Americans.154 Belmokhtar, who had split from AQIM a month earlier to
form a new group called the “Masked Brigade,” claimed that he had ordered
the attack as retaliation for the French intervention in Mali.155
The attackers intended to blow up the gas facility, creating a spectacular
fireball that would kill all of the employees and send a message around the
world. But they had made the mistake of blowing up the plant’s generators
during the initial assault, which shut down the processes required to ignite
a massive explosion. On 17 January, with the plant still out of operation, the
militants decided to load some of the hostages into five vehicles and break
out of the Algerian army’s encirclement. The Algerian forces opened fire
on the vehicles, three of which exploded, killing some hostages as well as a
militant leader.156
The Algerian government decided to send in military forces on 19 January
without consulting the United States or other interested foreign nations.157
The Algerian army stormed the facility, shooting most of the militants and
some of the hostages before securing the plant. A total of 38 workers, includ-
ing three Americans, perished during the siege.158
Despite the failure of the militants to blow the plant up, the international
jihadist community deemed the event a success. And although Belmokhtar
had reportedly split with AQIM a month earlier, AQIM received most of
the credit for the attack. As word of the brazen attack spread across the
Internet, AQIM was inundated with donations and offers to serve in their
jihadist ranks.159
Back in Mali, the French sent a mechanized infantry force of 600
from Niono toward Diabaly on 18 January, while Malian military forces
approached separately.160 Before French and Malian forces reached Diabaly,
French air strikes slammed into the town, which convinced the rebels to
flee. When the Malians came close to the town, nevertheless, they halted and
refused to go further, for fear the rebels still had fighters in the town or had
left booby traps behind. “It’s not possible to say if they have left Diabaly 100
percent,” said Lieutenant Colonel Seydou Sogoba, a Malian military com-
mander. “It’s hard to tell who’s an Islamist. They don’t have ‘Islamist’ written
38
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

on their faces.” Residents who had evacuated Diabaly during earlier fighting
were hesitant to return for fear that the Islamists remained or would soon
return.161 French forces finally took full control of Diabaly on 21 January.
During the first few weeks of the French intervention, the French govern-
ment planned to secure Bamako and the rest of the south, then help prepare
an African-led force to move into the north. Near the end of January, how-
ever, Hollande changed his mind, opting to use French troops to retake the
north right away. On 26 January, French paratroopers conducted a night
parachute landing near Timbuktu and headed into the city to catch fleeing
rebels. The enemy chose not to fight, and nearly all enemy fighters were able
to melt into the population or escape the area without getting caught. To
take Gao, the French brought Chadian and Nigerien troops by air, entering
Mali from Niger on the ground.162 At Gao, too, the rebels abandoned the city
and evaded French attempts to ensnare them.163
As the French forces were taking the northern population centers, the
U.S. Government remained unwilling to meet the French request for refuel-
ing aircraft. On 26 January, Karen DeYoung divulged in the Washington Post
that the administration’s legal review had concluded that the United States
could provide the requested assistance, on the grounds that al-Qaeda posed
a threat to the United States. The legal clearance, DeYoung further reported,
had not led to action on the French request, owing to ongoing doubts within
the administration of the strategic advisability of assistance. An unnamed
U.S. official explained the delay in these terms:
What we’ve been working through is not viewing Mali as a one-
off but rather as part of a continuum of counterterrorism efforts
and decisions that we’re making to address the situation in north-
ern Africa [over the medium and long term] … We need to think
through what our engagement means—what the risk of getting
further engaged could be to U.S. personnel abroad, [and] the dura-
tion of time that we’re being asked to get involved.164

On the evening of 26 January, the same day that the Washington Post
article appeared, the Pentagon announced that it would meet the French
request for refueling aircraft.165 Three U.S. KC-135 tankers based in Moron
Air Base in Spain began providing in-flight refueling to French aircraft
flying from N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. On 18 January, the U.S.
Air Force’s 818th Contingency Response Group moved from Joint Base
39
JSOU Report 15-5

McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey to an air base in Istres, France, where

it loaded French vehicles onto U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft and flew them to
Bamako. Several weeks later, the emphasis shifted to flying people and equip-
ment within Mali, primarily with six C-130 airlifters that were assigned to
AFRICOM and U.S. European Command. American airmen would remain
in Mali to the end of the year and beyond because of the ongoing shortage
of French logistical assets.166
French forces moved into the city of Kidal on 30 January. They cut a
deal with the MNLA and an Ansar Dine splinter group called the Islamic
Movement of Azawad (MIA), whereby the MNLA and MIA would allow the
French to enter peacefully on the condition that the Malian army would not
be allowed back into the city. The French were not prepared to govern Kidal,
so the MNLA and MIA retained control of governance. Manning roadblocks
and collecting taxes, they ran Kidal city until July when, under international
pressure, they allowed the Malian military to assume control.167
At the beginning of February 2012, Chad deployed its Special Anti-
Terrorism Group to northern Mali for operations in support of the French
counteroffensive. The unit had received prolonged training from USSOF,
and had also received American equipment and logistical support.168 Other
neighboring countries, including Nigeria and Senegal, said they would send
forces to Mali, but their forces were slow in arriving, and once in Mali they
did not participate in dangerous combat missions as the Chadians did.169
French and Chadian forces entered Aguelhok and Tessalit on 7 and 8
February, bringing them into closer proximity to the Ifoghas and Tigharghar
Mountains, where AQIM and other rebel groups were believed to have bases.
The French and Chadian forces began patrolling the mountains with the
assistance of friendly Tuareg militiamen, but without the Malian army, which
the French wanted to keep away to prevent a rekindling of conflict with the
MNLA.170 Only occasionally did the hunters manage to find and engage the
rebels. In the middle of February, 1,200 French and 900 Chadian troops
caught a large AQIM force in the Ametettai valley, in northeastern Mali.
The French and Chadians killed more than 100 AQIM fighters and took five
prisoners, at a cost of 26 Chadian and two French personnel.171
Large numbers of residents fled the northern cities when the French and
their allies arrived. Some families fled merely to avoid the fighting, or to
avoid retribution for their support of the rebels. Others, especially among
the youth, were recruited by the militants to join them as they retreated to
40
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

hidden base areas. Between 200 and 300 pupils were reported to have gone
with the militants from Gao. “MUJAO took many of the students from the
Quranic schools because they speak Arabic and are easier to convert and
manipulate,” remarked Gao Mayor Sadou Diallo.172
African nations, which in the past had often condemned Western military
action in Africa as a tool of neocolonialism, applauded the French interven-
tion of January 2012. Many of Mali’s neighbors lined up to send troops for
the follow-on mission. “All of the African continent, all its heads of state, is
happy about the speed with which France acted and with France’s political
courage,” said Thomas Boni Yayi, who was both the African Union Chair-
man and the president of Benin. Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, who
offered to provide 1,200 troops, said of the Malian insurgency, “If it is not
contained, definitely it will spill into West Africa ... It is one of the reasons
we have to move fast.”173
Among the world’s violent Islamist groups, the French intervention pro-
voked a torrent of vitriol. Jihadist websites advocated attacks on French citi-
zens and the French homeland, including landmarks like the Eiffel Tower.
“Carry out lone-wolf actions, capture and kill and slaughter, even if it is one
Frenchman,” one posting read.174 U.S. Ambassador to Mali Mary Beth Leon-
ard said she was worried that Malians with French passports would conduct
terrorist attacks in Europe, since their passports would allow them to enter
France and other European countries without extensive scrutiny. Once inside
Europe, they could strike American embassies, schools, or military bases.175

41
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

8. After the Storm

F ollowing the French re-conquest of the north, the U.S. Government

did not resume training Malian forces. American troops did, however,
train some African forces that were heading to Mali as peacekeepers. In May,
Army Regionally Aligned Forces from 1-18 IN deployed a 22-person training
team to Oullam, Niger, for 10 weeks to mentor and train Nigerien defense
forces in preparation for their deployment to Mali.176
The United States also positioned two unarmed drones near the Nigerien
capital of Niamey to gather information in Mali and Niger for the benefit
of French forces. Nigerien President Issoufou Mahamadou said that he had
asked Washington to send the drones to Niger because he was concerned
that Niger on its own might not be strong enough to fend off Islamist fighters
based in Mali, Libya, or Nigeria. According to U.S. officials, the drones were
intended to conduct surveillance over Mali, but not to launch air strikes,
although these individuals did not rule out the use of American air strikes in
the future. One U.S. official commented, “Most of the surveillance missions
are designed to track broad patterns of human activity and are not aimed
at hunting individuals.”177
In February 2013, 500 EU military personnel arrived in Bamako to pro-
vide training to the Malian military. The EU planned to use them to train
four battalions of 600-700 Malian soldiers each. The training regimen would
include extensive emphasis on human rights, in part because of reports that
Malian soldiers had executed Arab and Tuareg civilians suspected of aiding
the enemy.178 The newly arrived head of the EU mission, French General
François Lecointre, reported the Malian army to be “in a state of advanced
disrepair,” its soldiers “badly trained, badly paid and under-equipped.”179
General Lecointre asserted that the EU needed to provide weapons, trans-
portation, and communications equipment, in addition to training. The EU
mission would work through General Dembélé and Minister of Defense and
Veterans’ Affairs Brigadier General Yamoussa Camara, not through Captain
Sanogo, whom the Europeans wished to isolate and disempower. Sanogo had
just put himself in charge of a military committee responsible for reform
of the security forces, and some senior military officers continued to take
direction from him.180

43
JSOU Report 15-5

On 2 April, the EU Training Mission began training the first of four

Malian battalions at Koulikoro, a military base 37 miles from Bamako.181 The
training turned out to be less impressive than advertised. Of the 550 “train-
ers” present in April, only 150 were trainers, the remainder being support
staff and security.182 Malian soldiers received only two months of training,
much too little to impart the skills and attitudes that make for capable and
disciplined soldiers. In June, soldiers from the first battalion to complete
EU training boycotted their graduation ceremony in protest against their
commanders, whom they accused of stealing aid funds that were supposed
to be spent on the battalion.183
France and the United States, meanwhile, took action to accelerate
the transportation of ECOWAS forces to Mali and their integration into
AFISMA. By late March, the ECOWAS representation in Mali consisted
of 4,300 soldiers from Togo, Senegal, Benin, Ghana, Niger, Sierra Leone,
the Ivory Coast, and Burkina Faso. Chad had another 2,000 troops in the
country. The AFISMA forces were supposed to be self-sufficient for the first
90 days of deployment, but some began experiencing shortages of food, fuel,
and water well before that time, which compelled other foreign countries
to provide them with logistical support.184 “If this war has shown one thing
about our armies, it is our inability to project power beyond our borders,”
said a West African chief of staff. “And it is not only a question of resources.
We also lack skills.”185 In April, Assistant Secretary of Defense Sheehan told
a Senate Armed Services subcommittee that the ECOWAS contingent “is a
completely incapable force.”186
During the spring, the Malian government sent 1,200 troops to Gao
and 650 to Timbuktu to reassert sovereign authority. The local populations
accused the incoming Malian soldiers of human rights abuses, though the
claims proved difficult to verify. French, Malian, and AFISMA forces con-
ducted numerous operations in northern Mali, but seldom encountered
armed opposition. The enemy occasionally employed suicide bombers against
military forces and installations, and otherwise appeared content to stay
hidden until the French departed.187
On 1 July 2013, the UN took control of the 6,000 West African troops in
Mali under a new peacekeeping mission called Multidimensional Integrated
Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA). Led by a Rwandan officer, Major
General Jean Bosco Kazura, MINUSMA was slated to reach a total strength
of 12,640 African troops by December. It was to provide security in the north
44
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

for upcoming elections, and then ultimately take full responsibility for Mali’s
security.188 The change in name and mission notwithstanding, the African
forces did not appear to be capable of replacing the French forces as planned.
President Hollande had said in March that the number of French troops in
Mali would be reduced to 2,000 by the middle of the year, but France still
had 3,200 troops in Mali in July, and the same number in August.189
In the summer elections, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita won the presiden-
tial runoff with 78 percent of the vote. The most immediate threat to Keita
appeared to come from Sanogo, who in August had managed to get himself
promoted to the rank of general.190 On 30 September, Sanogo’s allies from
the Committee for Reform of the Armed Forces organized a protest against
the government at the Kati barracks, where the 2012 coup had begun. After
firing the usual shots in the air, the protesters claimed that they had been
denied promotions that had been promised previously. Six soldiers were
killed during the incident, and a colonel disappeared.191
President Keita responded by ordering the dissolution of the commit-
tee. “I will not tolerate indiscipline and anarchy,” Keita said in a nationally
televised speech. “Investigations are under way into the reasons and the
individuals behind this slap in the face of the nation which comes at a time
when soldiers from other nations have left their countries ... to come defend
us.”192 The government arrested several military officers, including Malian
army Colonel Youssou Traoré, who was accused of inciting the protest.193
Later in the fall, President Keita sacked the army chief of staff, the direc-
tor of the national police, and the head of the military academies, all of
whom were close to Sanogo.194 The critical opportunity presented itself in
December, when a forensic team discovered the remains of 21 people in a
mass grave where Sanogo loyalists were believed to have carried out a mas-
sacre. Seizing on the discovery, Keita arrested Sanogo and charged him with
assassination.195
During the second half of 2013, Keita made some headway in moving the
right military officers into the most important positions. In September, the
officer in charge of Malian forces in the North was Colonel Didier Dacko, a
man highly regarded by American and French officers. Dacko had attended
the National Defense University in Washington in 2009, during which time
he had absorbed Western counterinsurgency theories that emphasized win-
ning over the population, and he was now putting those principles into
practice. Dacko recounted:
45
JSOU Report 15-5

What I took away was that in dealing with insurgencies, the most
important thing is to work with the population and win them over
without using too much force … We need the Tuareg on our side,
or at least not as our enemies. We can’t win over the jihadis; we
need to crush them. But we can’t do it if we’re fighting all of the
Tuareg as well.196

In the fall, Hollande kept talking about reducing the French presence,
but his withdrawal plans were continuously undercut by the shortcomings
of MINUSMA. Instead of rising in numbers as planned, the UN peacekeep-
ing force actually declined to 5,200 troops in October.197 The quality of those
troops did not show an appreciable increase. The peacekeepers also contin-
ued to suffer from shortages of equipment and combat enablers.198
The security situation in northern Mali began to deteriorate in October.
Rebel forces increased their terrorist attacks on international peacekeepers,
Malian soldiers, and foreign journalists.199 The violence caused retrenchment
among international aid organizations that had returned to northern Mali
earlier in the year. A humanitarian worker, who did not wish to be named,
said:
Insecurity is still critical in some areas, especially the areas bor-
dering Kidal and Menaka … Even local organisations cannot get
access there. We are receiving information about the infiltration
of jihadists in Gao – we believe that people who are recognised as
active members of the Islamist groups are coming back, and plan-
ning attacks.200

On 2 November, AQIM kidnapped and killed French journalists Ghis-

laine Dupont and Claude Verlon of Radio France International, who had
just finished interviewing a local leader in Kidal. AQIM released a statement
saying, “The organisation considers that this is the least price that President
François Hollande and his people will pay for their new crusade.”201 French
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced that the French army was rede-
ploying 150 soldiers from the south to Kidal. He added, though, that the
decrease in the French troop presence in Mali as a whole would continue
unabated.202 At the end of 2013, nevertheless, France still had 2,800 troops in
Mali, and the UN peacekeeping mission still had only half of its authorized
strength of 12,600.203

46
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

The uptick in violence may have been the result of several changes within
the constellation of rebel groups. In late summer, Mokhtar Belmokhtar
had joined forces with MUJAO, announcing that they had decided to get
together “to confront the Zionist campaign against Islam and Muslims” and
to combat “the secular forces who reject all that is Islamist and who have
forced the eviction of our Muslim brothers in Egypt.” The groups attested,
further, that the ultimate “leaders of jihad” were al-Qaeda head Ayman al-
Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.204
The Tuaregs of the MNLA made common cause with other separatist
groups and spurned the government’s reconciliation efforts. On 4 November,
MNLA announced a merger with the High Council for the Unity of Azawad
and the Arab Movement of Azawad.205 Later in the month, an MNLA leader
informed the French press that MNLA was ending its ceasefire with the
government, vowing, “Wherever we find the Malian army we will launch
the assault against them.”206
The first Malian battalion to undergo training by the EU deployed to
Kidal in the spring of 2014 to combat resurgent rebels. The French negotia-
tion of a truce in Kidal in January 2013 had revitalized hopes that the Malian
Tuaregs could indeed be separated from the international extremists, but
the Tuaregs of Kidal had subsequently welcomed the extremists back and
abetted them in ejecting the Malian army. The Malian government sent
its new battalion to Kidal without notifying its foreign allies, which many
diplomats applauded as a sign of the government’s growing confidence and
independence. But the move prevented those allies from lending support to
the Kidal operation. The battalion suffered a humiliating defeat, and had to
retreat without retrieving its dead.207
During the spring of 2014, Islamist and separatist rebels also defeated the
Malian armed forces in battle at Tessalit, Menaka, Aguelhok, and Anefis.
The setbacks compelled President Keita to agree to a ceasefire that provided
for negotiations over the ultimate status of Tuareg areas.208 The MNLA and
other Tuareg groups continued to fight the government after the ceasefire,
taking possession of additional towns.209
The EU announced, in the meantime, that it would be providing 75
experts to train Mali’s police, Gendarmerie, and National Guard.210 If prop-
erly organized and led, these forces could help provide lasting security in
the north. The European trainers were slow in getting started, and daunted
by their tasks. Albrecht Conze, the German diplomat who headed the police
47
JSOU Report 15-5

training mission, arrived in the summer to find the Malian police forces in
abysmal shape. Leaders had been appointed without regard for merit, and
the rank and file had received little training.211
French SOF continued to carry out precision attacks on extremists in
Mali during 2014.212 Relying on sophisticated intelligence and operational
capabilities to carry out high-value targeting, the French did not undertake
counterinsurgency operations or prepare the Malians to undertake them.
Nor was there much evidence that the French were helping Malians acquire
surgical strike capabilities. The French inflicted significant losses on the
extremist groups, but remained unable to cause serious harm to their lead-
ership structures. Key leaders were well protected or were living outside of
Mali.213 A particularly popular location was southwestern Libya, which had
been beyond central control since the fall of Gadhafi. The population of
southwestern Libya, of which a substantial fraction was Tuareg by ethnicity,
sympathized with the extremists for ideological or commercial reasons. The
small number of Libyan security forces in the area left them alone.214
The lack of French attention to Malian capacity was to some extent influ-
enced by the growing recognition that France would not get out of Mali as
soon as it had planned. In May, the French government announced that it
planned to keep 1,000 French troops in Mali and 3,000 in the Sahel-Sahara
for “as long as necessary.” The French intended to maintain four major mili-
tary bases: in Gao, and in the capitals of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Chad.215
The U.S. military still lacked authorization to operate in either Mali or
Libya, but it did have authorization to support activities in the infiltration
corridor between Mali and Libya, and to provide a small amount of support
to the EU Training Mission and the training of MINUSMA forces from
other nations. By this time, Mali was a relatively low priority for the United
States. The French, whose robust intervention had come as a surprise to most
Americans, were believed to be containing Mali’s extremists, though it was
far from clear how long they planned to stay. Larger numbers of extremists,
moreover, were now located in other countries, such as Syria, Iraq, Libya,
and Yemen. Furthermore, AFRICOM was preoccupied with fighting the
Ebola virus in western Africa and Boko Haram in Nigeria.216
Neither the United States nor anyone else was doing much to address
the ongoing drug trafficking in Mali and other West Africa countries. By
November 2014, the United States had reported only two successful counter-
narcotics operation in West Africa, and European countries had not recorded
48
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

a single success. Malian government officials—including drug enforcement

officials appointed under foreign pressure—continued to collaborate with
drug traffickers as in the past. Such conditions encouraged traffickers to
make lavish use of these routes in lieu of riskier routes.217
By the fall of 2014, most of the Malian government’s security forces
had been driven from northern Mali. Extremists periodically attacked
MINUSMA, which was increasingly confined to its bases, and hence unable
to interfere with the extremists and separatists roaming the north.218 The UN
Secretary General reported:
The withdrawal of the Malian Defence and Security Forces from
most of northern Mali, the absence of effective control by the armed
groups over the areas gained from the Malian Defence and Security
Forces in May and the gradual drawdown and reconfiguration of
French operation Serval/Barkhane have given way to a marked
increase in the activities of extremist groups.219

On 8 October, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop asked the UN

Security Council to send a “rapid-reaction force” to reinforce the UN peace-
keeping mission, warning that Mali “again runs the risk of becoming the
destination of hordes of terrorists who have been forced out of other parts
of the world.”220
Instead of providing the military reinforcements requested by the Malian
government, the UN decided to host negotiations. Malian officials and rep-
resentatives from northern rebel groups gathered in Algiers to discuss an
agreement that would permit the reintegration of the north into Mali. The
negotiations dragged on for months without agreement, while the rebels
continued to kill and wound the UN peacekeepers. As of the middle of 2015,
a peace deal remained elusive.

49
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

9. Conclusion and Implications for SOF

A mong the most striking features of the Malian experience was the dis-
parity of opinion within the U.S. Government on the extremist threat.
In 2010 and 2011, some U.S. officials warned that the extremist threat in Mali
was growing rapidly, based upon a wide variety of information sources, many
of them publicly available. Turmoil in Libya, the links between extremists
in Libya and Mali, and collaboration between Islamists and Tuareg sepa-
ratists provided ominous signs. Others, however, discounted the indicators
of rising enemy strength, depicted the threats as purely local, or contended
that the enemies could be contained by playing them off against one another.
As a consequence, the U.S. Government avoided actions that might have
weakened the extremists, such as deploying more U.S. resources to Mali or
increasing support to Mali’s government and security forces. It took the kill-
ing of the U.S. ambassador in Libya and the execution of several Americans
at an Algerian gas facility to convince skeptics that AQIM posed a
significant threat to U.S. interests. The underestimation of the extremist
threat in Mali is worth remembering in future debates about the
magnitude of extremist threats.
The extremist offensives in 2011 and 2012 revealed that the North African
Islamists had made dramatic advances in their military and political capa-
bilities during and after the Libyan civil war. They fielded capable leaders
and developed complex procedures for mitigating the West’s technological
advantages. They also improved their ability to govern populations, resulting
in greater assistance from the population and a greater ability to mingle with
civilians who could provide cover from air strikes. The similarities between
their operations and those of Sunni extremist groups in the Middle East
provided disconcerting evidence that extremist groups were learning from
experience and sharing their findings across continents.
Until 2011, some experts believed that Mali’s extremist problems, what-
ever their magnitude, could not be solved militarily. The problems could be
solved instead through investment in social and economic development.
Hence, aid to Mali ought to be concentrated on development and not on
security. The U.S. Government and other donors adhered to this position
in the period leading up to the coup of March 2012. But spending in those

51
JSOU Report 15-5

sectors failed to curb the extremists, because of weak Malian implementa-

tion of development and because of insecurity in the north that impeded
implementation.
Another reason for low foreign assistance to Mali’s military was the
belief that strong militaries are threats to civilian government. Mali’s case,
however, showed that weak militaries can also overthrow civilian govern-
ments, and that starving military organizations of resources may increase
their propensity for coups. Sanogo, who had a long record of ineptitude and
indiscipline prior to the coup, would not have been an officer in Mali’s armed
forces had the officer corps been as professional as those in other countries,
and that lack of professionalism reflected a dearth of expenditures on the
military. Although foreign military assistance cannot guarantee positive
results, the United States does have a good record of improving the profes-
sionalism of the forces it trains, and one component of that professionalism
is a respect for the legal prerogatives of civil authorities.
The U.S. Defense and State Departments differed sharply in their rem-
edies to the problem of insufficient Malian capacity. The Defense Department
advocated greater participation by USSOF in counterinsurgency and coun-
terterrorism operations, but was overruled by the State Department, which
was worried that American military action could exacerbate extremism and
undercut efforts to achieve a political solution. The State Department for-
bade SOF from providing robust advisory assistance to the Malian military
in 2012, and to the French military in 2013. Following the coup of March
2012, the State Department focused on political negotiations as the solution
to Mali’s extremist problems. That solution failed to remedy the situation,
and led instead to the extremist offensive of January 2013, which appeared
certain to conquer all of Mali until the French military intervened. Although
greater U.S. military participation in such countries may not always be the
best option, this episode should give the State Department and White House
cause to give more serious consideration to the Defense Department when
such controversies arise again, as they undoubtedly will.
Most of the disputes between State and Defense took place behind closed
doors, where they are supposed to take place. The State Department listened
to Defense’s concerns, but by and large decided on policies different from
those advocated by Defense, which is the prerogative of the State Department
as the nation’s principal agency for the conduct of foreign policy. On several
occasions, particularly during the French intervention, Defense Department
52
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

officials made statements that were subsequently rescinded by other Defense,

State, or White House officials. This development suggests that either Defense
did not adequately coordinate with State, or that the White House decided to
change its policy as events unfolded. Whatever the case, inadequate coordi-
nation among executive agencies sent mixed messages to friends and foes, to
the detriment of U.S. foreign policy. Greater care in communicating a single,
consistent message is required.
U.S. policy also suffered from a lack of clarity over what the United States
would give its French ally and what it expected in return. The Secretary of
Defense led the French to believe that the United States would unequivocally
assist a French military intervention in Mali. Whether the State Department
and White House shared this view at the time is not certain, but subsequent
statements from the French indicate that neither State nor the White House
conveyed a contrary position to the French. Once the French intervened,
they were informed that U.S. policy had changed to one of selective support,
based upon a review of French objectives and plans. The United States often
attaches conditions to its assistance to other nations, and can be expected to
do so in the future, but it must communicate those conditions ahead of time
if it wishes to facilitate effective planning and avoid accusations of bad faith.
Some U.S. officials soon acknowledged the damage caused by the failure
to take the threat seriously enough and by the lack of appropriate assistance
in the security sector. Among them was Amanda Dory, the Deputy Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Africa. “We provided training and equip support
for many years, but in relatively modest quantities,” Dory told a Senate sub-
committee on 5 December 2012. “I don’t think that level of resourcing was
commensurate with the threat.”221
U.S. military officers would also fault the subject matter of the training
that the United States had administered to Mali’s security forces. In January
2013, General Carter Ham told an audience at Howard University that the
United States had erred by focusing the training solely on military tactics
and techniques. “We didn’t spend, probably, the requisite time focusing on
values, ethics, and military ethos,” General Ham said.222 Training individuals
in values, ethics, and military ethos can do much to improve the competence
of security forces and their respect for human rights. It can also increase the
military’s respect for civil authority, although it cannot necessarily ensure
respect for a dreadful government.

53
JSOU Report 15-5

Other U.S. military leaders asserted that Mali demonstrated the weak-
ness of episodic training, in which the exposure of host-nation personnel to
U.S. training was too inconsistent to impart skills and culture. In May 2013,
Admiral William McRaven asserted:
What we have learned in working around the world in Colombia,
Afghanistan and the Philippines is you’ve got to have that persistent
presence. It has been difficult for us in some countries to have a
persistent presence, and Mali is a case in point. We had an episodic
presence in Mali.223

The superior performance of Mali’s CFS, the one unit exposed to continu-
ous U.S. training, demonstrated the value of persistent SOF engagement. The
CFS displayed superior tactical proficiency, and unlike many of the other
units it did not side with Sanogo’s rebels or the insurgents in the aftermath of
the coup. In fact, the huge disparity between the CFS and the other Malian
units contributed to subsequent United States Special Operations Com-
mand (USSOCOM) decisions to shift to persistent training across Africa
and other regions. This shift has been a welcome one, though it has meant
that USSOCOM, with its fixed manpower numbers, is training fewer host-
nation units and hence is increasingly limited to working with elite units.
A focus on elite units is improving African counterterrorism capabilities,
but it is also inhibiting the development of the broader capabilities required
for counterinsurgency. The officers from the elite units may one day become
leaders elsewhere in the armed forces, thus broadening the competence of
the armed forces, as occurred in Colombia.224 But that outcome depends on
leadership decisions by chiefs of state and ministers of defense, and requires
decades to come to fruition.
External critics cited the coup by Mali’s military as evidence that SOF
training of Malian forces had been an abject failure. Gregory Mann, a
Columbia University history professor, wrote in Foreign Policy,
a decade of American investment in Special Forces training, coop-
eration between Sahalien armies and the United States, and coun-
terterrorism programs of all sorts run by both the State Department
and the Pentagon has, at best, failed to prevent a new disaster in the
desert and, at worst, sowed its seeds.

54
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

Mann contended that “military cooperation and training have not helped
the army to hold the line in the north.”225
Vicki Huddleston, the former U.S. Ambassador to Mali, leveled similar
charges. In the New York Times she wrote:
Years of training by United States Special Forces did not stop the
Malian military from fleeing when the Islamist insurgency started
last January. In fact, the military exacerbated the chaos by over-
throwing Mali’s democratically elected government last March.226

Such critiques fail to take into account the shortcomings and limita-
tions of the training. As noted above, most of the U.S. training in Mali was
handicapped by its episodic nature. The training was confined to tactical
units whose personnel rotated frequently, further diluting the exposure of
any one individual to American training. Personnel rotation decisions were
the responsibility of the host-nation ministry of defense, which SOF could
not influence because it did not have the personnel to engage in ministerial
development on a substantial scale.
Indeed, one of the most valuable lessons of Mali is that influencing part-
ner nation ministries can be a critical, even essential component of capacity
building. The government’s failure to resupply the elite 33rd RPC in early
2012 demonstrated that tactical units, however well trained they may be,
cannot stay in the field when higher echelons fail to provide adequate logis-
tical support. Tactical training may influence ministries in the long run, by
virtue of the fact that today’s company commander could one day become
a senior ministry official. But such promotions will not happen in time to
help solve immediate problems.
The case of Mali also demonstrates how bad national leadership can
inhibit progress in the security sector. The corrupt practices of President
Amadou Toumani Touré resulted in dire shortages of equipment and sup-
plies for Mali’s security forces. Touré’s meddling in military recruitment,
training, and promotion caused severe damage to the professionalism of
the armed forces. It also squandered some of the U.S. military’s spending
on training and education, as individuals of low aptitude—to include Cap-
tain Sanogo—were assigned to American programs instead of more capable
individuals.
Addressing such problems of governance is primarily a mission for non-
military elements of the U.S. Government, especially the State Department.
55
JSOU Report 15-5

In the Malian case, the U.S. Government did not adequately appreciate the
problems of bad governance, and did not take action to address them. The
holding of elections and media commentary about the strength of Mali’s
democracy helped obscure the ineffectuality and corruption that plagued
Mali’s government.
Prior to the coup, less than 1 percent of the U.S. aid budget for Mali was
spent on governance, and approximately 2 percent was spent on security.
The other 97 percent funded programs in social or economic development.227
Allocating a greater portion of the aid pie to governance and security cer-
tainly would have made sense, and the earlier in time the better since the
problems had their origins in decisions made well in the past. The State
Department, it should be added, is not well prepared to provide assistance
in governance; improving U.S. capabilities in governance assistance will
require major changes in organization, personnel, and policy.
The U.S. Government’s concern about Malian governance spiked fol-
lowing the military coup, as the administration chose to terminate aid to
the Sanogo regime because of its anti-democratic and military origins. The
decision was attributed to Section 7008 of the Department of State, Foreign
Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, although whether
that law was actually binding would be cast into doubt by the later refusal
of the U.S. Government to withhold aid from Egypt after a military coup in
July 2013. The termination of aid to Mali proved to be counterproductive, as
it undermined Mali’s security forces at a time of enemy military advances.
While many in the West found a military coup troubling, the people of Mali
supported it because of the weakness of the civilian government, a fact that
called into question the viability of Mali’s democratic project. Unless Mali’s
civil leaders can provide better governance than their predecessors, military
coups are likely to recur, regardless of U.S. policy toward coups or U.S. train-
ing of military officers in the importance of civil control of the military.
Given the negative effects of terminating aid in Mali the last time around,
the policy of reflexive aid termination deserves reexamination.
After the coup, the U.S. Government emphasized the need for Mali and
its neighbors to handle Mali’s security problems. But the planning effort
for an ECOWAS intervention demonstrated that the African forces were
not capable of solving these problems on their own. The French have since
tried to turn matters over to MINUSMA and the Malian government, but
have been compelled to remain in Mali because others lack the quantity and
56
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

quality of troops to assume full responsibility for security. Of the African

forces, only the Chadians have proven effective at securing territory and
attacking the extremists.
Effective development of Malian and African forces will be essential
to averting rebel advances when the last French troops leave. Most of the
EU’s training effort has taken place in Bamako, which has been problematic
because the people who could benefit most from capacity building are in
the north and they are loathe to travel to the south for training. The first
EU-trained Malian forces to be fielded suffered ignominious defeat, which
can be traced to ineffectual leadership. Their failure should not have been
surprising, for developing leaders takes decades, not a few months as the EU
attempted. A much longer and more careful effort will likely be necessary if
Mali is to survive. Whether the French and other Western nations are will-
ing to stay in Mali that long remains to be seen.

57
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

Appendix A: Acronyms

AFISMA International Support Mission in Mali

AFRICOM United States Africa Command
AQIM al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb
CFS Malian Special Forces Company
ECOWAS Economic Community of West African States
ETIA Echelon Tactique Inter-Armée
EU European Union
GSPC Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat
JCET Joint Combined Exchange Training
JPAT Joint Planning Assistance Team
JSOTF-TS Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara
MIA Islamic Movement of Azawad
MINUSMA Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali
MNLA National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad
MPLA Popular Movement for the Liberation of Azawad
MUJAO Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NCO noncommissioned officer
NGO nongovernmental organization
ODA Operational Detachment – Alpha
RCP Parachute Commando Regiment
SOCAFRICA Special Operations Command Africa

59
JSOU Report 15-5

SOF Special Operations Forces

TSCTP Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership
UN United Nations
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization
USSOCOM United States Special Operations Command
USSOF United States Special Operations Forces

60
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

Endnotes
1. Michael Shurkin, France’s War in Mali: Lessons for an Expeditionary Army (Santa
Monica: Rand, 2014), 16; and Dona J. Stewart, What is Next for Mali? The Roots
of Conflict and Challenges to Stability (Carlisle: U.S. Army War College Press,
2013), 25-27.
2. Sara Randall, “The Demographic Consequences of Conflict, Exile and Repatria-
tion: A Case Study of Malian Tuareg,” European Journal of Population, vol. 21
(2005), 296.
3. Angel Rabasa et al., From Insurgency to Stability, Volume II: Insights from Selected
Case Studies (Santa Monica, Rand: 2011), 139.
4. Martin van Vliet, “The Challenges of Retaking Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel,
vol. 5, no. 11-12 (November 2012), 2; and Rabasa et al., From Insurgency to Stabil-
ity, 121-123.
5. Robert Pringle, “Miracle in Mali,” Wilson Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2 (spring 2006),
31.
6. Susanna D. Wing, Constructing Democracy in Transitioning Societies of Africa:
Constitutionalism and Deliberation in Mali (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2008).
7. Marietou Macalou, The Politicization of the Malian Civil Service in the Context
of Democratization,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2010.
8. David Gutelius, “Islam in Northern Mali and the War on Terror,” Journal of
Contemporary African Studies, vol. 25, no. 1 (January 2007), 63.
9. Camille Tawil, “The Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb: Expan-
sion in the Sahel and Challenges from Within Jihadist Circles,” The Jamestown
Foundation, April 2010, 8; and Ricardo René Larémont, “Al Qaeda in the Islamic
Maghreb: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in the Sahel,” African Security, vol.
4, no. 4 (October 2011), 243-244.
10. Baz Lecocq and Paul Schrivjer, “The War on Terror in a Haze of Dust: Potholes
and Pitfalls on the Saharan Front,” Journal of Contemporary African Studies, vol.
25, no. 1 (January 2007), 147.
11. Morten Bøås, “Guns, Money and Prayers: AQIM’s Blueprint for Securing Control
of Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel, vol. 7, no. 4 (April 2014), 4.
12. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 251.
13. Stephen Ellis, “West Africa’s International Drug Trade,” African Affairs, vol. 108,
no. 431 (April 2009), 171-172.
14. Tawil, “The al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb,” 13.
15. Juan C. Zarate and David A. Gordon, “The Battle for Reform with Al-Qaeda,”
Washington Quarterly, Summer 2011, 106; and Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the
Islamic Maghreb,” 258-259.

61
JSOU Report 15-5

16. John Rollins, “Al Qaeda and Affiliates: Historical Perspective, Global Presence,
and Implications for U.S. Policy,” Congressional Research Service, 25 January
2011.
17. “Al-Qaeda ‘Issues France Threat’,” BBC News, 14 September 2006.
18. Ibid.
19. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 245-250.
20. Tawil, “The al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb,” 14.
21. Adam Nossiter, “Millions in Ransoms Fuel Militants’ Clout in West Africa,” New
York Times, 12 December 2012.
22. Tawil, “The al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb,” 16.
23. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 245-250.
24. Stephen A. Emerson, “Desert Insurgency: Lessons from the Tuareg Rebellion,”
Small Wars and Insurgencies, vol. 22, no. 4 (October 2011), 680-681.
25. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 259; and Emerson, “Desert Insur-
gency,” 673-674.
26. Martin van Vliet, “The Challenges of Retaking Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel,
vol. 5, no. 11-12 (November 2012), 3; and Wolfram Lacher, “Organized Crime and
Conflict in the Sahel-Sahara Region,” 13 September 2012, Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, accessed at: http://carnegieendowment.org/2012/09/13/
organized-crime-and-conflict-in-sahel-sahara-region/dtjm#.
27. Animism began to erode in the late twentieth century because of the rising
popularity of “Arabism.” Jeremy Keenan, The Lesser Gods of the Sahara: Social
Change and Indigenous Rights (London: Routledge, 2004), 94.
28. Lecocq and Schrivjer, “The War on Terror in a Haze of Dust,” 155.
29. Stephen A. Harmon, Terror and Insurgency in the Sahara-Sahel Region: Corrup-
tion, Contraband, Jihad and the Mali War of 2012-2013 (Farnham, Surrey and
Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2014), 170.
30. Rabasa et al., From Insurgency to Stability, 127-128.
31. Yahia H. Zoubir, “The United States and Maghreb-Sahel Security,” International
Affairs, vol. 85, no. 5 (2009), 989-990; and United States Africa Command, “Trans
Sahara Counter Terrorism Partnership,” www.africom.mil/NEWSROOM/Docu-
ment/7432, accessed August 12, 2013.
32. Phillip Ulmer, “Special Forces Support Pan Sahel Initiative in Africa,” American
Forces Press Service, 8 March 2004.
33. Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Counterterrorism Efforts in Africa Defined by a Decade
of Missteps,” Washington Post, 4 February 2013.
34. Larémont, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” 261-262.
35. Stewart, What is Next for Mali, 47; United States Africa Command, “Trans Sahara
Counter Terrorism Partnership.”

62
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

36. Max R. Blumenfeld, JSOTF-TS Public Affairs, “Training in Trans-Sahara Africa,”

13 December 2010, accessed at: http://www.africom.mil/newsroom/article/7896/
training-in-trans-sahara-africa.
37. United Nations Security Council Report S/2012/894, “Report of the Secretary-
General on the Situation in Mali,” 29 November 2012, 4.
38. Stew Magnuson, “Mali Crisis Officer Lessons for Special Operations Command,”
National Defense, May 2013.
39. Johnnie Carson, “Opening Remarks for Hearing on Counterterrorism in Africa
(Sahel Region),” Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,
Subcommittee on Africa, 17 November 2009, accessed at: http://www.state.gov/p/
af/rls/rm/2009/132062.htm.
40. Earl Gast, “Mali: Current Threats to Development Gains and the Way Forward,”
Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee
on African Affairs, 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://www.state.gov/r/pa/
usaid/201589.htm.
41. Interviews with U.S. Government officials, 2014. Hearing, Committee On For-
eign Affairs, House of Representatives, “The Crisis in Mali: U.S. Interests and
the International Response,” 113th Cong., 1st Sess., 14 February 2013.
42. Neil MacFarquhar, “Mali Tackles Al Qaeda and Drug Traffic,” New York Times,
1 January 2011.
43. For Sachs’s view on corruption, see Jeffrey D. Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic
Possibilities for Our Time (New York: Penguin, 2005), 190-209.
44. Modibo Goita, “West Africa’s Growing Terrorist Threat: Confronting AQIM’s
Sahelian Strategy,” Africa Center for Strategic Studies, February 2011; and “Mali
Report Claims CFA 112 Billion Lost to Mismanagement in 2009,” African Press
Agency, 4 August 2010. Some of the corruption that aroused ire in northern
Mali originated with officials appointed by the central government in Bamako.
Much of it, though, came from individuals native to northern Mali who had been
empowered by the decentralization granted by the central government after the
rebellions of the 1990s. They had not been selected by the central government,
and were corrupt on their own initiative. See also: International Crisis Group,
“Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,” 11 April 2013, 30.
45. “Malian al-Qaeda Hunter Shot Dead,” BBC, 11 June 2009. Mali’s army stepped
up its attacks on AQIM in June, but then halted in July after an AQIM ambush
on a poorly defended camp that killed several dozen soldiers. See also: Simon
J. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No: Lessons for
SOF from Mali,” Master’s Thesis, Naval Postgraduate School, December 2013,
13-15.
46. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 2-18.
47. Ibid., 26-27.
48. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014-2015; and Powelson, “Enduring
Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 18.

63
JSOU Report 15-5

49. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 28-29.

50. Ibid., 31.
51. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Avoiding Escalation,” 18 July 2012, 5; inter-
views with U.S. government officials, 2014.
52. Goita, “West Africa’s Growing Terrorist Threat.”
53. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 30.
54. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2015; and Powelson, “Enduring Engage-
ment Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 29-32.
55. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2015.
56. Interviews with AFRICOM personnel, 2014.
57. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014-2015; and Powelson, “Enduring
Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 33-35.
58. Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 34-36, 43-45.
59. Ibid., 39, 42.
60. Stephen Schnell, Trust As a Currency: The Role of Relationships in the Human
Domain (Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: School of Advanced Military Studies, 2014),
41-42; and Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,”
40-41.
61. Steven Radelet, Emerging Africa (Washington, DC: Center for Global Develop-
ment, 2010), 10; and Gast, “Mali: Current Threats to Development Gains and
the Way Forward.”
62. John T. Bennett, “Pentagon: All U.S. Elite Commandos in Mali ‘Accounted For,’”
U.S. News, 23 March 2012.
63. Caitriona Dowd and Clionadh Raleigh, “The Myth of Global Islamic Terrorism
and Local Conflict in Mali and the Sahel,” African Affairs, vol. 112, No. 448 (July
2013), 5; Alexis Arieff, “Crisis in Mali,” Congressional Research Service, 14 Janu-
ary 2013, 11; and Andrew Lebovich, “The Local Face of Jihadism in Northern
Mali,” CTC Sentinel, vol. 6, no. 6 (June 2013), 8.
64. Andre Le Sage, “The Evolving Threat of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb,” Stra-
tegic Forum, no. 268 (July 2011); and Goita, “West Africa’s Growing Terrorist
Threat.”
65. Interviews with SOCAFRICA and AFRICOM officials, 2014-2015.
66. Scott Stewart, “Mali Besieged by Fighters Fleeing Libya,” Stratfor, 2 February
2012; Edward Cody, “In Mali, An Islamist Extremist Haven Takes Shape,” Wash-
ington Post, 7 June 2012; and International Crisis Group, “Mali: Avoiding Escala-
tion,” 11.
67. In November 2009, the hulk of a burned out Boeing 727 that had flown 10 tons of
cocaine from Venezuela was discovered in the Malian desert. An ensuing sting
operation, involving DEA agents posing as members of the Colombian FARC, led
to the arrest and prosecution of three AQIM members from Mali on drug traf-
ficking and terrorism charges, providing the first undisputed link of al-Qaeda to

64
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

Latin American drug trafficking organizations. Chris Hawley, “South American

Gangs Flying Vast Quantities of Cocaine to Europe,” Guardian, 15 November
2010; James Butty, “Three Malians to Soon Stand Trial in US Courts for Alleged
Narco-Terrorism,” Voice of America, 10 January 2010; and Samuel Logan, “DEA
Uncovers Drug-Terror Nexus,” International Relations and Security Network,
21 January 2010, accessed at: http://www.isn.ethz.ch/Digital-Library/Articles/
Detail//?id=111599.
68. Interviews with U.S. military officials, 2014.
69. Arieff, “Crisis in Mali,” Research Service, 14 January 2013, 11.
70. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Avoiding Escalation,” 9-10.
71. The U.S. government and other international parties sought to interdict some of
the weapons, but they concentrated mainly on surface-to-air missiles. Abigail
Hauslohner, “Weapons, Fighters From Libyan War May Be At Root Of Regional
Unrest,” Washington Post, 19 January 2013.
72. Roger Kaplan, “War Comes to Mali,” Weekly Standard, 20 February 2012; and
Powelson, “Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 50-51.
73. Roger Kaplan, “Tuareg Forces Take Tessalit,” Weekly Standard, 13 March
2012; International Crisis Group, “Mali: Avoiding Escalation,” 13; Powelson,
“Enduring Engagement Yes, Episodic Engagement No,” 52; and interviews with
SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014.
74. Serge Daniel, “Mali Soldiers Attack Presidency in Apparent Coup Bid,” Agence
France Presse, 21 March 2012; and Rukmini Callimachi, “Amadou Haya Sanogo,
Mali Coup Leader, Derails 20 Years Of Democracy,” Associated Press, 7 July
2012.
75. Callimachi, “Amadou Haya Sanogo, Mali Coup Leader, Derails 20 Years Of
Democracy.”
76. Interviews with SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014-2015.
77. Christopher Fomunyoh, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://
www.ndi.org/files/Christopher%20Fomunyoh%20Senate%20Testimony%20
on%20Mali.pdf.
78. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,”
16.
79. John Vandiver, “Small Team of U.S. troops Still in Mali, On ‘Stand-By’,” Stars
and Stripes, 4 April 2012; and Amanda Dory, Testimony Before the Senate Com-
mittee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, 5 December 2012,
accessed at: http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Amanda_Dory_Tes-
timony.pdf.
80. Gast, “Mali: Current Threats to Development Gains and the Way Forward.”
81. Yochi Dreazen, “Foreign Policy: Drug Palaces Show The Challenges Of War In
Mali,” Foreign Policy, 6 April 2013.

65
JSOU Report 15-5

82. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,”
16.
83. Adam Nossiter, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti, “French Strikes in Mali Sup-
plant Caution of U.S.,” New York Times, 14 January 2013.
84. Derek Henry Flood, “Between Islamization and Secession: The Contest for North-
ern Mali,” CTC Sentinel, vol. 5, no. 7 (July 2012), 1.
85. Nina Munk, The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty (New York:
Doubleday, 2013), 225.
86. Interviews with U.S. military officials, 2014.
87. United Nations Security Council Report S/2012/894, 2.
88. Jamestown Foundation, “Red Berets, Green Berets: Can Mali’s Divided Military
Restore Order and Stability?” Terrorism Monitor, vol. 11, no. 4 (22 February 2013).
89. Alan Boswell, “Al Qaida-Linked Groups Cement Control In Northern Mali As
Diplomats Ponder Intervention,” McClatchy Newspapers, 31 October 2012.
90. Cody, “In Mali, An Islamist Extremist Haven Takes Shape”; Flood, “Between
Islamization and Secession,” 6; and “The Political Economy of Conflicts in
Northern Mali,” ECOWAS Peace and Security Report, no. 2 (April 2013), 6.
91. Adam Entous and Drew Hinshaw, “U.S. Sets Sights On Al Qaeda In Mali,” Wall
Street Journal, 27 July 2012; Eric Schmitt, “American Commander Details Al
Qaeda’s Strength In Mali,” New York Times, 4 December 2012; Bruce Crumley,
“Mali’s Crisis: Is the Plan for Western Intervention ‘Crap’?” Time, 18 December
2012; and “Insight: Islamist Inroads in Mali May Undo French War on Al Qaeda,”
Reuters, 13 March 2013.
92. Drew Hinshaw and Adam Entous, “On Terror’s New Front Line, Mistrust Blunts
U.S. Strategy,” Wall Street Journal, 27 February 2013; and Sudarsan Raghavan,
“Nigerian Militants Return From Mali With New Weapons,” Washington Post,
1 June 2013.
93. Yochi Dreazen, “The New Terrorist Training Ground,” The Atlantic, 18 September
2013.
94. Bruce Whitehouse, “The Malian Government’s Challenge to Restore Order in
the North,” CTC Sentinel, vol. 7, no. 2 (February 2014), 14.
95. “AQIM Leader Condemns Destruction of Mali Mausoleums in Secret Papers
Found by RFI Journalist,” Radio France Internationale, 25 February 2013.
96. Ibid.
97. Human Rights Watch, “Mali: War Crimes by Northern Rebels,” 30 April 2012.
98. Jemal Oumar, “Locals, UNESCO Condemn Destruction of Timbuktu Mosque,”
Magharebia, 4 July 2012.
99. “Mali-Al-Qaida’s Sahara Playbook,” Associated Press, accessed at: http://hosted.
ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-manifesto.pdf.
100. Lebovich, “The Local Face of Jihadism in Northern Mali,” CTC Sentinel, 9.

66
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

101. Gast, “Mali: Current Threats to Development Gains and the Way Forward.”
102. Lebovich, “The Local Face of Jihadism in Northern Mali,” 4-10; and International
Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform.”
103. Jose A. Rodriguez, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9 /11 Saved
American Lives (New York: Threshold Editions, 2012), 253-256.
104. Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Sees Hazy Threat From Mali Militants,”
New York Times, 17 January 2013.
105. Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock, “Al Qaeda in Africa is Under Scrutiny,” Wash-
ington Post, 2 October 2012.
106. Siobhan Gorman, Adam Entous and Devlin Barrett, “Push to Expand U.S. ‘Kill
List,’” Wall Street Journal, 9 February 2013.
107. Steven Lee Myers, “Clinton Suggests Link to Qaeda Offshoot in Deadly Libya
Attack,” New York Times, 26 September 2012.
108. “US Would Back ‘Well Planned’ African-Led Force For Mali, Agence France-
Presse, 1 October 2012.
109. West Africa Bloc ECOWAS Agrees to Deploy Troops to Mali,” BBC News, 11
November 2012.
110. Crumley, “Mali’s Crisis.”
111. “West Africa Bloc ECOWAS Agrees to Deploy Troops to Mali,” BBC News, 11
November 2012.
112. United Nations Security Council Report S/2012/894, 3-4, 18-19. French media
sources estimated the number of extremist combatants in Mali at between 4,000
and 15,000. Arieff, “Crisis in Mali,” 2.
113. Ibid.
114. Baba Ahmed, “Malian Army Ill-Equipped to Fight Islamists,” Associated Press,
23 January 2013.
115. Stewart, What is Next for Mali, 60.
116. Colum Lynch, “Rice: French Plan for Mali Intervention is ‘Crap’,” Foreignpolicy.
com, 11 December 2012.
117. Tim Witcher, “US Doubts African Military Intervention Plan for Mali,” Agence
France-Presse, 7 December 2012.
118. Interviews with U.S. military officers, December 2014; and Amanda Dory, Tes-
timony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on
African Affairs, 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://www.foreign.senate.gov/
imo/media/doc/Amanda_Dory_Testimony.pdf.
119. Nossiter, Schmitt and Mazzetti, “French Strikes in Mali Supplant Caution of
U.S.”
120. Johnnie Carson, Testimony Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Subcommittee on African Affairs, 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://www.
foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Hon_Johnnie_Carson.pdf.

67
JSOU Report 15-5

121. Lynch, “Rice: French Plan for Mali Intervention is ‘Crap’.”

122. Colum Lynch, “U.S.- And European-Backed Force Will Try To Rebuild Mali’s
Military,” Washington Post, 21 December 2012.
123. “UN Security Council authorizes African-led Intervention Force in Mali,” United
Nations News Centre, 20 December 2012.
124. Lebovich, “The Local Face of Jihadism in Northern Mali,” 5.
125. “Official: Mali Islamists Closer to Gov’t Areas,” Associated Press, 7 January
2013; and United Nations Security Council Report S/2013/189, “Report of the
Secretary-General on the Situation in Mali,” 26 March 2013, 1.
126. Edward Cody, “France’s Hollande Intervenes in Mali,” Washington Post, 12
January 2013.
127. Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 8.
128. Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria, “French Urgency, U.S. Caution Collide
In Mali Operation,” Reuters, 26 January 2013; and Cody, “France’s Hollande
Intervenes in Mali.”
129. Adam Nossiter and Neil Macfarquhar, “On the Ground in Mali, French and
Local Troops Confront Islamist Forces,” New York Times, 16 January 2013; and
International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,”
6-7.
130. Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 13; and Steven Erlanger and Scott Sayare, “French
Airstrikes In Mali Deter Islamist Rebels,” New York Times, 13 January 2013.
131. “Mali Islamists Much Stronger Than Expected, France Says,” Agence France-
Presse, 13 January 2013. Photographs taken in Konna later in the month revealed
finned projectiles, which were identified as NR-160 antitank rounds that had
been sold to Ghadafi by a Belgian company in the 1970s and 1980s. See also: C.
J. Chivers, “Looted Libyan Arms in Mali May Have Shifted Conflict’s Path,” New
York Times, 7 February 2013.
132. “The Al-Qaida Papers—Drones,” accessed at: http://hosted.ap.org/specials/inter-
actives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-papers-drones.pdf.
133. Sudarsan Raghavan, “Foreigners in a Leading Role,” Washington Post, 29 January
2013.
134. Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Sends A Handful Of Troops To Mali,” Washington Post,
1 May 2013.
135. Lydia Polgreen, “Mali Army, Riding U.S. Hopes, Is Proving No Match for Mili-
tants,” New York Times, 24 January 2013.
136. Ahmed, “Malian Army Ill-Equipped to Fight Islamists.”
137. Nossiter and Macfarquhar, “On the Ground in Mali.”
138. Jim Michaels, “USA Should Do More To Help France In Mali, Says House Chair-
man,” USA Today, 15 January 2013; and Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 9-12.
139. “Why France Can’t Fight,” Wall Street Journal, 28 January 2013.

68
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

140. Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, “Mali Exposes Flaws in West’s Security
Plans,” Wall Street Journal, 24 January 2013.
141. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Leon Panetta Says U.S. Has Pledged To Help France In
Mali,” New York Times, 14 January 2013.
142. Mazzetti and Schmitt, “U.S. Sees Hazy Threat From Mali Militants.” General
Carter Ham told an interviewer that if Mali’s militants were not stopped, they
“will obtain capability to match their intent—that being to extend their reach and
control and to attack American interests.” See also: David S. Cloud, Shashank
Bengali, and Ken Dilanian, “Mali Conflict Exposes White House-Pentagon
Split,” Los Angeles Times, 19 January 2013.
143. Adam Entous, “U.S. Agrees to Support French in Mali with Plane Refueling,”
Wall Street Journal, 27 January 2013.
144. Anne Applebaum, “A New Cop On The Beat?” Washington Post, 25 January 2013.
145. Anne Gearan, Karen DeYoung, and Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Weighs Military Aid
For France In Mali,” Washington Post, 16 January 2013.
146. Cloud, Bengali, and Ken Dilanian, “Mali Conflict Exposes White House-Pen-
tagon Split”; and Entous and Barnes, “Mali Exposes Flaws in West’s Security
Plans.”
147. Adam Entous and Julian E. Barnes, “U.S. Delays Support, Cites Legal Concerns,”
Wall Street Journal, 16 January 2013.
148. Entous and Barnes, “Mali Exposes Flaws in West’s Security Plans.”
149. Siobhan Gorman and Adam Entous, “U.S. Moving To Broaden African Pres-
ence,” Wall Street Journal, 28 January 2013.
150. “With No End-Game in Sight U.S. Moves Cautiously on Mali,” Reuters, 17 Janu-
ary 2013.
151. Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Aid To France For Mali Operations Clears Legal Hurdles,”
Washington Post, 26 January 2013.
152. Robert F. Worth, “Jihadists’ Surge In North Africa Reveals Grim Side Of Arab
Spring,” New York Times, 20 January 2013.
153. Craig Whitlock, “Algerian Stance Spoils U.S. Regional Strategy,” Washington
Post, 19 January 2013.
154. Joby Warrick, “Al-Qaeda Branch’s Image Soars After Hostage Drama in Algeria,”
20 January 2013.
155. Adam Nossiter and Alan Cowell, “Hostages Dead In Bloody Climax To Siege
In Algeria,” New York Times, 20 January 2013. Some speculated that the attack
was intended to raise the new organization’s prestige above that of other Islamist
groups in the region. See also: Paul Schemm and Karim Kebir, “Al-Qaida Flour-
ishes in Sahara, Emerges Stronger,” Associated Press, 20 January 2013.
156. Adam Nossiter and Nicholas Kulish, “Militants’ Goal In Algeria Gas Plant Siege:
A Giant Fireball,” New York Times, 3 February 2013.

69
JSOU Report 15-5

157. Michael R. Gordon and Mark Mazzetti, “Lack Of Warning On Rescue Effort
Highlights Limits Of Algerian Cooperation,” New York Times, 18 January 2013.
158. Michael Birnbaum and Anthony Faiola, “Algerian Leader Ties 2 Canadians To
Hostage Crisis,” Washington Post, 22 January 2013.
159. Warrick, “Al-Qaeda Branch’s Image Soars After Hostage Drama in Algeria.”
160. Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 16.
161. Sudarsan Raghavan, “Fear of Islamist Militants Lingers After They’ve Left,”
Washington Post, 20 January 2013.
162. Shurkin, France’s War in Mali, 16-19; and Drew Hinshaw and Sam Schechner,
“In Strategic Shift, French Troops Step Up Role In Mali,” Wall Street Journal, 28
January 2013.
163. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,”
23; and Joseph Bamat, “US Slams African Force as French Begin Mali Pullout,”
Agence France-Presse, 9 April 2013.
164. Karen DeYoung, “U.S. Aid To France For Mali Operations Clears Legal Hurdles,”
Washington Post, 26 January 2013.
165. Ernesto Londono, “U.S. Broadens Aid To France In Mali,” Washington Post, 27
January 2013.
166. “US Military Sending Air Tankers to Refuel French Jets Over Mali,” Associated
Press, 27 January 2013; and Gabe Starosta, “Mission to Mali,” Air Force Magazine,
November 2013.
167. Baba Ahmed, “Malian Military Enters Contested City of Kidal,” Associated Press,
5 July 2013; and United Nations Security Council Report S/2014/1, “Report of
the Secretary-General on the Situation in Mali,” 2 January 2014, 2.
168. Adam Entous, David Gauthier-Villars, and Drew Hinshaw, “U. S. Boosts War
Role In Africa,” Wall Street Journal, 4 March 2013.
169. Eric Schmitt, “Terror Haven In Mali Feared After French Leave,” New York Times,
18 March 2013.
170. Derek Henry Flood, “A Review of the French-Led Military Campaign in North-
ern Mali, CTC Sentinel, vol. 6, no. 5 (May 2013), 7-8.
171. Opération Serval au Mali : Une Centaine De Jihadistes Tués Dans La Vallée
d’Ametettai,” La Voix du Nord, 7 March 2013.
172. Krista Larson, “Mali’s Islamic Radicals Recruiting Child Soldiers At Schools,”
Associated Press, 23 February 2013.
173. “U.S., Africa Say Mali Action Counters Growing Islamist Threat,” Reuters, 23
January 2013.
174. Warrick, “Al-Qaeda Branch’s Image Soars After Hostage Drama in Algeria.”
175. Dreazen, “The New Terrorist Training Ground.”
176. Kimberly Field, James Learmont, and Jason Charland, “Regional Aligned Forces:
Business Not as Usual,” Parameters, vol. 43, no. 3 (Autumn 2013), 61-62.

70
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

177. Craig Whitlock, “U.S. Troops Setting Up Drone Base in Niger,” Washington
Post, 23 February 2013; Craig Whitlock, “Drone Base In Niger Is Key Asset,”
Washington Post, 22 March 2013; and Craig Whitlock, “Pentagon Deploys Small
Number of Troops to War-Torn Mali,” Washington Post, 30 April 2013.
178. French General Urges EU to Equip ‘Impoverished’ Mali Army, Reuters, 20 Feb-
ruary 2013.
179. Jamestown Foundation, “Red Berets, Green Berets.”
180. International Crisis Group, “Mali: Security, Dialogue and Meaningful Reform,”
15-16.
181. United Nations Security Council Report S/2013/189, 8.
182. “Mali Crisis: EU Troops Begin Training Mission,” BBC, 2 April 2013.
183. Whitehouse, “The Malian Government’s Challenge to Restore Order in the
North,” 13.
184. United Nations Security Council Report S/2013/189, 8; and Bamat, “US Slams
African Force as French Begin Mali Pullout.”
185. Remi Carayol, “Guerre au Mali: La Misma, Faible Force,” Jeune Afrique, 14 April
2013.
186. Bamat, “US Slams African Force as French Begin Mali Pullout.”
187. United Nations Security Council Report S/2013/338, “Report of the Secretary-
General on the Situation in Mali,” 10 June 2013, 5-8.
188. “UN’s Mali Peace Force Begins Operations,” BBC, 1 July 2013.
189. “U.N.’s Mali Task Is State-Building as Much as Peacekeeping,” Reuters, 23 August
2013; “US Drone Crashed In Mali In April: Official,” Agence France-Presse, 12
July 2013; and “U.N.’s Mali Task Is State-Building as Much as Peacekeeping,”
Reuters, 23 August 2013.
190. Human rights groups protested against Sanogo’s continued politicking, noting
that Sanogo had been implicated in the disappearance of twenty individuals after
the unsuccessful countercoup of 2012. “Mali’s Coup Leader Promoted to Army
General,” Associated Press, 14 August 2013.
191. “Mali’s President Replaces Junta-Linked Army Chief,” Reuters, 9 November 2013.
192. Tiemoko Diallo and Adama Diarra, “Mali President Dissolves Army Reform
Committee,” Reuters, 2 October 2013.
193. “Arrests Made After Mali Military Camp Unrest,” Associated Press, 3 October
2013.
194. “Mali’s President Replaces Junta-Linked Army Chief,” Reuters, 9 November 2013.
195. Baba Ahmed and Rukmini Callimachi, “Remains Of 21 People Found Near
Barracks in Mali,” Associated Press, 4 December 2013.
196. Dreazen, “The New Terrorist Training Ground.”
197. Margaret Besheer, “UN: Recent Security Incidents in Mali ‘Wake-up Call’,” Voice
of America, 16 October 2013.

71
JSOU Report 15-5

198. “U.N. Peace Force in Mali ‘Needs Troops and Equipment,’” BBC, 16 October
2013.
199. “U.N. Troops from Chad Killed in Mali’s Tessalit Town,” BBC, 23 October 2013;
and United Nations Security Council Report S/2014/1, 3-5.
200. Afua Hirsch, “Mali’s Fight with Militants is Far From Over in Gao,” The Guard-
ian, 17 October 2013.
201. “‘Al-Qaeda Killed’ French Reporters Dupont and Verlon in Mali,” BBC, 6 Novem-
ber 2013.
202. “France Won’t Delay Mali Troop Reductions Despite Killings,” Voice of America,
5 November 2013.
203. “Mali Dismisses Candidates for Fraud in Elections,” Reuters, 1 January 2014.
204. Ahmed Mohamed, “Mali Jihadist Group Expands, Vows Attacks in Egypt,”
Associated Press, 22 August 2013.
205. “Rebel Groups from North Mali Agree to Unite,” Reuters, 4 November 2013.
206. “Tuareg Separatist Group in Mali ‘Ends Ceasefire,’” BBC, 29 November 2013.
207. Adama Diarra and Tiemoko Diallo, “Tuareg Separatists Beat Back Mali Offensive
in Flashpoint Town,” Reuters, 21 May 2014.
208. “Mali Tuareg Rebels Agree Ceasefire in Kidal Talks,” BBC, 24 May 2014.
209. United Nations Security Council Report S/2014/692, “Report of the Secretary-
General on the Situation in Mali,” 22 September 2014, 3-6.
210. “EU Agrees to Train Mali Police, Extends Army Training Mission,” Reuters, 15
April 2014.
211. Naftali Bendavid, “Mali’s Police Restructuring Will Take Years,” Wall Street
Journal, 22 September 2014.
212. Adam Nossiter, “Leading Militant Killed in Mali, Military Officials Say,” New
York Times, 14 March 2014.
213. Bøås, “Guns, Money and Prayers,” 5.
214. “Most people know who they are but without a central government, you can’t
really do anything,” a Libyan military officer told the Associated Press. “We can
do little on the borders and sometimes we just let them through.” Members of
AQIM said that the fighters currently in Libya planned to return to northern
Mali as soon as the French left. “Desert Gives Al-Qaida Refuge to Regroup After
Being Driven out of Mali by France,” Associated Press, 19 January 2014.
215. John Irish, “French Soldier Dies in Mali as Paris Readings Counter-Insurgency
Plan,” Reuters, 8 May 2014.
216. Interviews with AFRICOM and SOCAFRICA officials, 2014.
217. Alex Perry, “Blood Lines: How Europe’s Cocaine Habit Funds Beheadings,”
Newsweek, 20 November 2014.
218. Interviews with AFRICOM and SOCAFRICA personnel, 2014.
219. United Nations Security Council Report S/2014/692, 9.

72
 Moyar: Countering Violent Extremism in Mali

220. Colum Lynch, “With The World’s Gaze Fixed on The Islamic State, Mali’s Jihad-
ists Return,” Foreign Policy, 14 October 2014.
221. U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on African Affairs,
“Assessing Developments in Mali: Restoring Democracy and Reclaiming the
North,” 5 December 2012, accessed at: http://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/
assessing-developments-in-mali-restoring-democracy-and-reclaiming-the-
north.
222. Tyrone C. Marshall Jr., “AFRICOM Commander Addresses Concerns, Potential
Solutions in Mali,” American Forces Press Service, 24 January 2013.
223. Magnuson, “Mali Crisis Officer Lessons for Special Operations Command.”
224. Mark Moyar, Hector Pagan, and Wil R. Griego, Persistent Engagement in Colom-
bia (Tampa: Joint Special Operations University Press, 2014), 51-52.
225. Gregory Mann, “The Mess in Mali: How the War on Terror Ruined A Success
Story in West Africa,” Foreign Policy, 5 April 2012.
226. Vicki Huddleston, “Why We Must Help Save Mali,” New York Times, 14 January
2013.
227. Mali Fiscal Year 2011 Disbursements, foreignassistance.gov, accessed at: http://
foreignassistance.gov/OU.aspx?OUID=209&FY=2011&AgencyID=0&budT
ab=tab_Bud_Spent&tabID=tab_sct_Peace_Disbs; U.S. Department of State,
“International Military Education and Training Account Summary,” accessed
at: http://www.state.gov/t/pm/ppa/sat/c14562.htm; U.S. Department of State,
Foreign Military Financing Account Summary, accessed at: http://www.state.
gov/t/pm/ppa/sat/c14560.htm; and Millennium Challenge Corporation, “Quar-
terly Status Report, Mali Compact,” March 2012, accessed at: http://www.mcc.
gov/documents/reports/qsr-2012002103102-mali.pdf.

73