What We Know and Don’t Know About the Terrorist Attack in Mali

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/world/africa/terrorist-attacks-in-mali-what-we-know.html

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Gunmen seized a hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali, on Friday, taking about 100 people hostage and killing more than two dozen. The attack is the latest eruption of violence in Mali, a former French colony in West Africa that has been racked by an Islamist insurgency for the past three years.

In 2012, a military coup overthrew the democratically elected president, destabilizing what had been one of the most secure, albeit poor, nations in the region.

An Islamist insurgency, led by an affiliate of Al Qaeda and armed with the remnants of the late Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s arsenal, seized control of the northern half of the country. They captured the city of Timbuktu, destroyed historical sites and imposed Shariah law.

A year later, government forces along with the Western troops under a United Nations mandate and led by France, beat back the insurgency. With promises of a continued international peacekeeping presence and billions of dollars in international aid, Mali held a democratic election to replace the military government, but the new government has little control in the north.

France, which has a long history in the region, conducted major counterterrorism operations in West Africa in 2013 and 2014, including an operation that killed a top leader of Al Mourabitoun last year. French leaders have said that fighting terrorists in Mali is essential to their country’s security.

At least 36 people have been killed in six attacks this year in Mali — not including the hotel siege on Friday — by Islamist insurgents.

A shaky peace deal between the Islamists and the government signed in June has not stopped the attacks, and, in August, five United Nations workers were killed in an assault on a hotel in central Mali. Five months before that, militants killed five at a restaurant in Bamako.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack in Mali. Al Jazeera reported that it had received a recording asserting that a local militant group, Al Mourabitoun, had carried out the siege in conjunction with Al Qaeda’s regional affiliate, though the claim could not be independently confirmed.

The two groups were among the Islamist fighters who joined forces with the Tuareg, a nomadic ethnic minority in West Africa, to carry out the rebellion in the north of Mali. Since then, both groups have carried out attacks against civilians and are allied in their efforts to rid the country of Western influences, overthrow the government and impose Shariah law.

There is no evident link between Friday’s attack in Mali and the terrorist attacks in Paris last week. Those attacks have been attributed to the Islamic State, a rival terrorist organization to Al Qaeda. Both groups compete for new recruits and the Mali attack may have been a way for Al Qaeda to seize international headlines from the Islamic State and prove its capabilities.

Though France declared the bulk of its military operations over in 2014, it kept several hundred troops in the north to fight terrorists. President François Hollande on Friday ordered special-forces troops back to Mali.