“Very few factions are looking to govern or control territory … These are highly flexible, mobile units moving frequently, changing areas and it’s very difficult to identify who is who and who controls what,” said Rida Lyammouri, a US-based independent researcher on the Sahel. But it took 18 months for al-Sahraoui’s bayat, or oath of allegiance, to be formally accepted – and only after he proved his mettle with a series of attacks.Įven Boko Haram, which gained global notoriety by abducting more than 200 schoolgirls in 2014, has suffered serious losses of manpower, funds and territory in recent months, and is now very scattered. ![]() Often such pledges of support have been welcomed by Isis high command. ![]() In recent years disaffected extremist leaders have looked to Isis for sponsorship – and advantage over their rivals – in conflict zones from west Africa to the Philippines. Some factions maintained their ties to al-Qaida in the Maghreb, the tenacious and powerful local affiliate of the veteran group founded by Osama bin Laden in 1988.Īl-Sahraoui went his own way with a few dozen extremist followers, eventually pledging allegiance to Isis in May 2015. Little is known about how he became interested in Islamist extremism but by 2012 he was spokesman for the militant coalition that took over Timbuktu, the mythic city in northern Mali.įrench troops forced the militants back into the northern deserts of Mali in 2013, and a year later the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis) split their coalition. The 40-year-old is thought to have grown up in refugee camps in the south of Algeria, where he was committed to the nationalist cause of the Western Sahara. Reuters news agency reported that the attackers were from al-Sahraoui’s group, which calls itself the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara.Īl-Sahraoui’s background and allegiance is evidence of the extremely fractured nature of the conflict across the swath of northern Africa known as the Sahel.
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