“Total liberation of Azawad. » That this slogan to the glory of Azawad, the name given to northern Mali by its inhabitants, was launched from Tin Zaouatine is not insignificant. This cob hamlet bordering a wadi, in the heart of an expanse of sand and stones, has become the hotspot of the Sahelo-Saharan strip, on the border between Mali and Algeria. An abscess ongoing regional reconfigurations. This November 30, 2024, a spokesperson for the rebellion (majority Tuareg), fighting against the Malian authorities, read a press release announcing the merger of armed independence groups from northern Mali into a new movement, the Liberation Front of Azawad (FLA).
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The event marks an escalation of the separatist insurgency in northern Mali – which, after the signing of the Algiers peace agreement in 2015, regained strength with the coming to power of the sovereignist junta by Assimi Goïta, in 2020 –, even though jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) organization are still active there. The day after the creation of the FLA, a Turkish drone strike by Bayraktar Akinci carried out by the Malian army killed eight Tuareg rebel leaders, including five executives of the new movement. And this a few kilometers from the Algerian border guards who, through binoculars, monitor the rise in tensions around Tin Zaouatine. “Drones from the Malian army fly over the area every day”testifies a resident. The Azawad insurgents, however, hold the ground. On July 27, they inflicted a humiliating defeat on the troops of Bamako supported by the mercenaries of the Russian Wagner group, killing 47 Malian soldiers and 84 Russians, according to the rebels’ toll.
It is an understatement to say that Algeria is alarmed by the return of war to its Sahelian borders. This growing instability illustrates both the erosion of its influence, which has long regulated conflicts on its southern markets through its mediation, and the indisputable role that it continues to play there, geography obliges. With its 460 kilometers shared with Mauritania, 1,300 kilometers with Mali, 950 kilometers with Niger and 980 kilometers with Libya, Algeria occupies a central place whose former influence it is struggling to restore. The time when it projected the prestige of its flamboyant Third Worldism, in the 1960s and 1970s, is over.
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