Royal ransoms, a top money-maker for Mali's jihadist kidnappers

AT LEAST $50 million for the freedom of an Emirati sheikh: that is the king’s ransom paid two weeks ago to jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda who are pushing to topple the Malian government and impose Islamic law.

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FULANI refugee women wearing the veil imposed by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a branch of Al-Qaeda in Mali, queue in the village of Mekhal Oualad Zeid, a few kilometres from the border between Mauritania and Mali in Fassale.

(AFP)

Alongside a crippling fuel blockade, the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, known by its Arabic acronym JNIM, has made kidnapping wealthy foreigners for a ransom a pillar of its strategy of “economic jihad”

Its goal: oust the junta, which has struggled to contain Mali’s decade-long insurgency since taking power following back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, by scaring away investors and paralysing the west African country’s economy.

In June, the JNIM threatened to strike any foreign businesses and industries installed in Mali, as well as any enterprise doing business with the Malian government without its “authorisation”.