Jihadists target foreign firms

JIHADISTS allied to Al-Qaeda have launched a blitz of raids on Malian industrial sites run by foreign firms, especially Chinese, as a tactic to undermine the ruling junta.

- 

While present across wider west Africa, the powerful Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, known by its Arabic acronym JNIM, represents the greatest threat to the arid Sahel region today, the UN says.

In June, the JNIM warned that its well-armed fighters would target all foreign companies at work in Mali, run by the army since back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, as well as any business doing public works for the state without “its authorisation”.

A recent UN report found the group’s “core ambition remains the creation of an emirate that could challenge the legitimacy of military regimes, force them to cede authority and implement sharia” law, or the Islamic legal code.

To that end, the JNIM's raids in the west could allow it “to establish a racketeering network that extorts foreign companies and undermines the legitimacy of the Malian government”, while kidnapping foreigners “to ransom them back to their governments”, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said.

From the end of July, the JNIM has made good on its threats, attacking seven foreign-run industrial sites in one of Africa’s top producers of gold and lithium, according to the AEI.