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2021-06-13 Africa North
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With military victory elusive, W.African nations quietly back talks with Islamists
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[AlAhram] For a decade, West African armies and their international allies have fought against bad boy groups active in the Sahel region
... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas...
, some linked to the al Qaeda and Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
networks
Continued from Page 2
Two years after local emir Djibril Diallo fled his home in northern Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other...
following death threats from Islamist bad boys, he received an unexpected request: to return and take part in peace talks with the same people who wanted him dead.
Adama Ouedraogo, deputy mayor of Diallo's hometown of Thiou, called him in January to help negotiate an end to years of attacks by jihadists against local militias and civilians that forced thousands of people to flee the area.
"I told them that if everyone was sincere, I could return," said Diallo, a traditional chief to Fulani
 ... a peculiarly brutal tribe of Moslem herdsmen infesting Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and probably other places that are light on law and order and heavy on tribal identity...
herders.
They have had limited success. Attacks on civilians still occur most weeks and large areas remain outside government control. Hundreds of soldiers have been killed since faceless myrmidons first seized control of swathes of Mali in 2012.
Now, in the worst-hit parts of Burkina Faso and neighbouring Mali, local leaders are pursuing unofficial talks with bad boys. The governments do not publicly acknowledge the discussions, but five sources involved in them told Rooters the authorities have been quietly supportive.
Military ally and former colonial power La Belle France, which has 5,100 troops in the region supporting local forces, says the faceless myrmidons will exploit truces to regroup, rearm and recruit. President Emmanuel Macron reiterated his opposition to talks on Thursday, telling news hounds that French troops would not conduct joint operations with countries that "decide to negotiate with groups that ... shoot at our children".
Yet there are tentative signs that the outreach may be helping stem bloodshed in localities where it is happening.
Data collected by the U.S-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) for the Nord, Sahel and Boucle de Mouhoun
...the three administrative regions butting up against the country’s northern border with Mali, oddly enough in alphabetical order from west to east. Boucle de Mouhoun produces an excess of foodstuffs and illiterates, Nord prefers to concentrate on producing illiterates, and Sahel is even worse at both, which no doubt explains their jihadi problem... regions show significant reductions in conflict-related fatalities, although other factors, including recent military offensives, could have played a role.
In the Nord, the number of deaths from battles and violence against civilians dropped from 65 in the first quarter of 2020 to 26 in the first quarter of 2021. In the Sahel, they fell from 487 to 191 and in the Boucle de Mouhoun, from 66 to zero.
Mahamadou Sawadogo, a researcher on security issues and former Burkinabe gendarme, said such truces had led to an easing of violence, but cautioned that their scope was limited to specific localities.
A June 4-5 attack on Solhan village near the border with Niger, in which at least 132 people died, underlined how dangerous the region remains. The village was not known to have negotiated an agreement with jihadists.
In Thiou, located on an expanse of arid scrubland about 20 km from the Malian border, Diallo and others struck a truce in February with faceless myrmidons who say they are connected to al Qaeda's regional JNIM affiliate.
| ...Group to Support Islam and Moslems (GSIM), or in Arabic Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Moslemin, the regional Al Qaeda in North Africa affiliate. Organizationally they reported to Abdelmalik Droukdel’s group, which once upon a time was the Algerian jihadi group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Whether they still do, given he was killed by the French last year, is an interesting question. ... |
Commerce is flowing freely again and thousands of displaced people have returned, Diallo said.
Idrissa Diallo, a restaurant owner in town who is not related to Djibril Diallo but shares a last name common among Fulanis, fled to Ivory Coast in 2019 after the jihadists began clashing with local vigilante groups. He came home following the talks.
"Calm has been restored," he said, shifting small pieces of meat and onions over smouldering charcoals. "I started to work a little, and there are lots of clients who come."
SECRET MEETINGS
The first meetings took place in December in the secrecy of a forest outside Thiou, in Burkina Faso's Nord region, according to deputy mayor Ouedraogo.
They were organised by Ouedraogo, who said he had kept in touch with some people who joined the bad boys. He was accompanied by the head of a group of volunteer fighters who are backed by the army and oppose the jihadists.
"At the start of the negotiations, it wasn't at all easy," Ouedraogo recalled. "The jihadists came with lots of weapons."
They met seven times before both sides agreed to more formal talks. Ouedraogo informed the mayor, village chiefs and Diallo, an authoritative figure among Fulani herdsmen whom the jihadists considered a worthy interlocutor despite having threatened him.
Diallo joined the process and, after another meeting, jihadists reported back to their superiors, he said.
Thiou's mayor updated the regional governor, a federal government appointee, according to Diallo and two others who participated in the talks but asked not be named.
The mayor declined to comment when asked about the contacts, and the governor did not respond to requests for comment. A government spokesperson said the negotiations were a local initiative and declined to respond to specific questions.
Then, in February, about 400 jihadist fighters, including some from Mali where al Qaeda's powerful JNIM branch is based, came to seal the peace, said Ouedraogo.
The jihadists' main condition was that the volunteer fighters, whom the jihadists accused of stealing cycle of violences and cattle and killing civilians suspected of sympathising with the Islamists, cease their patrols.
The negotiators agreed and allowed the jihadists and their family members to trade at the market and receive medical care in town, according to Ouedraogo and Diallo.
The jihadists vowed to cease attacks and to lift blockades.
FRENCH OPPOSITION
Authorities have been constrained by French opposition to negotiating with bad boys, said a source involved in talks in Burkina Faso and Mali, adding that time was of the essence while contact with faceless myrmidons appeared to be bearing fruit.
At a news conference on Thursday where he announced La Belle France would end its military operation in the Sahel and incorporate its forces into a broader international campaign, Macron threatened to stop working with countries that negotiate with jihadists.
"I don't know how to explain to the parents of a French soldier who fell on the battlefield that I am sending back his brothers in arms to fight alongside an army that has decided to negotiate with his assailants," Macron said.
Decrying "ambiguity" on the matter, Macron said one condition for La Belle France to resume joint military operations with Mali's army - suspended after a coup last month - would be a Malian commitment not to negotiate with the bad boys.
Mali's leaders have publicly endorsed the idea of talks, but they have kept concrete moves to pursue negotiations quiet.
In the Niono Circle in central Mali, representatives of the High Islamic Council (HCI), the country's main Moslem body, led negotiations earlier this year with al Qaeda-linked faceless myrmidons that resulted in a peace deal in March, said Bocary Diallo, one of the HCI negotiators.
Diallo said the organization was given the go-ahead at a meeting attended by religious leaders and four government ministers, but that the government never officially signed off on it.
Mali’s presidency and the ministry of national reconciliation did not respond to requests for comment. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-06-13 00:00||
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