Almost a week after rival armed groups carried out a series of coordinated attacks across Mali, the country’s military government has begun restructuring and taking measures to secure the country.On April 25, al-Qaeda-linked group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) claimed responsibility for attacks on military sites across the country, including in the capital, Bamako. JNIM said it had “captured” the city of Kidal in the north in a coordinated operation with the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg-dominated rebel group with which it has previously sparred.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listThe series of attacks marked one of the biggest security crises the country has faced since at least 2012. JNIM controls swaths of rural territory, especially in the northern and central regions of the country, and has active cells located around the capital.Meanwhile, armed Tuareg separatists belonging to the Liberation Front for Azawad (FLA) group, which is fighting for an independent Tuareg nation in the north, are clashing with the military and allied Russian mercenaries who have been deployed since 2021. Together, FLA and JNIM control Kidal now, but they also want to take Gao, the largest city in the north, as well as Menaka and Timbuktu, to complete the self-declared state of Azawad.Despite having differing ideologies and, at times, fighting each other, these two groups h …
