The battle of Kidal began on Saturday, November 11, without witnesses, without images and in the absence of communication other than propaganda from both camps. On Sunday, on social networks, the Malian army, with its land but especially air resources, the number of its soldiers deployed and the support of mercenaries from the Russian paramilitary company Wagner, claimed to have made “very significant progress” , claiming to have “completely dispersed the positions of the armed terrorist groups”, whose “survivors took refuge in the surrounding hills”. The day before, she claimed to have “broken the defensive line set up” by her enemies, now “in disarray”.
Faced with the Malian Armed Forces (FAMA) and their auxiliaries, the Permanent Strategic Framework for Peace, Security and Development (CSP-PSD), which brings together the majority of the predominantly Tuareg armed groups, has on its side the control of this desert terrain and the mobility of its fighters. On Sunday, in a press release, he indicated that he had lured his opponents “into a trap”, on a plateau between Tin Akaola and Agalhik, 25 km west of Kidal, whose “all flanks are blocked”.
Two days earlier, when the outbreak of fighting around Kidal seemed imminent, the rebels had cut the telephone network. Since then, apart from satellite links, Kidal and its surroundings have been unreachable, making any verification of the facts impossible. No human or material assessment of the clashes was possible Monday morning.
The only certainty in the current vagueness: Kidal, bastion of Tuareg insurgencies since the independence of Mali in 1960, has not fallen and continues to live in fear of aerial bombardments. Since the night of November 3 to 4, the first Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2 drone strikes received by Bamako have targeted the city. On Wednesday, the CSP-PSD had already denounced the deaths of fourteen civilians, including eight children, and 30 injured in these operations carried out from the air. They haven't stopped since.
Speed race
In the open battle for the recapture of Kidal – whose fall into the hands of the rebellion in 2012 constitutes an affront to its national honor for Bamako – drones offer the Malian army a considerable strategic advantage, while it has come closer to its objective, without until now being able to achieve it by a land operation. The soldiers and their Russian auxiliaries had been positioned in particular in Anéfis, 110 km to the southwest, for several weeks, and in Tessalit, 200 km to the north, since October 21, after the blue helmets left the city under pressure transitional authorities.
Since the military in power asked the United Nations mission, Minusma, to withdraw from Malian territory by the end of the year, the blue helmets have in fact begun to liberate their bases in the north of the country. country, in fact sparking a race between the junta and the rebels, each trying to seize the vacant place to assert their control of the disputed areas. While the UN abandoned its camp in Kidal on October 31, immediately reinvested by the CSP-PSD, Minusma indicated that as of November 10, some 6,500 of its uniformed employees (out of the 12,944 that counting the mission) and 196 civilians (out of 737) had already left Mali.
While the Algiers peace agreement signed in 2015 between the parties today seems buried and the paths to peaceful resolution of the conflict are moving further away each day, one of the questions concerns the role that could play out in the coming days the main jihadist movement in the area. At the head of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), Iyad Ag Ghali, former Tuareg rebel leader who became the leading figure of Al-Qaeda in the region, has always maintained a link with the executives of the CSP-PSD. According to consistent sources, their last secret meeting in the vicinity of Kidal dates back to October. The two parties would then have agreed on “a non-aggression pact”, according to a rebel leader.
A union of forces with armed Islamists would be a dangerous gamble for the rebellion. If it would offer additional men and resources in its current fight, it would also give credence to the communication of the junta, which designates its enemies under the sole term "terrorists", and would present the risk of seeing the rebels a once again overwhelmed by jihadists. In 2012, the latter were able to take advantage of the blows dealt to the Malian army by independence groups to impose their force and their law throughout northern Mali.
