SUMMARY
JNIM (Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, GSIM) was an Islamist alliance that was established in Mali in 2017. Eight years prior, in 2009, a government-based conflict had erupted in Mali, as AQIM – an Islamist group that since the late 1990s had been involved in a conflict in Algeria – expanded its activities into the country. The conflict in Mali escalated in 2012 and 2013, and the number of involved armed groups increased; it was in this context that JNIM emerged.
JNIM was created in March 2017, through the merger of the main jihadist groups active in Mali at the time, namely Ansar Dine, the Sahara-branch of AQIM (at this time also including al-Murabitun, and FLM. It should be noted that the Algerian branch of AQIM remained a separate actor in the UCDP data even after the creation of JNIM. By 2019, Burkinabe jihadist group Ansaroul Islam had also been incorporated into the alliance. The emergence of JNIM was to a large extent driven by the evolution and spread of AQIM, and by the emergence of a Malian Tuareg rebellion spearheaded by Ansar Dine. In essence, this meant that JNIM was a result of the merger of several different conflict dynamics, which were both regional and local. JNIM’s constituent factions were loyal to the global extremist Islamist organization al-Qaida, and as part of its formative statement, JNIM pledged allegiance to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri; in turn, al-Qaida’s central leadership fully endorsed the creation of JNIM. The creation of JNIM was part of al-Qaida’s “localization” strategy, which implied an increasing reliance on local armed outfits to extend the organization’s geographical reach. It was also suggested that the formation of the JNIM alliance might have been part of an al-Qaida effort to limit the influence of its rival, the Islamic State (IS), another extremist Islamist organization active in the region at the time. At the time of JNIM’s creation in 2017, IS was losing ground in several countries, including Syria, Iraq, and Libya. As such, it was likely that al-Qaida facilitated the creation of JNIM in order to capitalize on IS’ relative weakness.
JNIM had a Salafist jihadist ideological orientation, whereby it promoted an ultraconservative interpretation of Sunni Islam, and approved the use of armed violence to implement rule based on Islamic law. At the time of its formation, it declared that it aimed to incite the West African Muslim community to “remove oppression” and expel non-Muslim “occupiers”, specifically France, which maintained a military presence in Mali at the time, as well as the UN mission in the country, MINUSMA. Moreover, a month later, it also made clear that the ultimate aim of the group was for the entire region to be ruled under sharia law. Further confirming its border- transcending goals, the group on a number of occasions called on specifically the Fulani community across West Africa and in Cameroon, to wage “jihad”. In line with this overarching aim, the group initiated armed conflicts in a number of countries in the regions during the years after it emerged in Mali, first targeting Burkina Faso, then Niger, and then, in 2022, Benin and Togo.
Iyag ag Ghaly (the leader of Ansar Dine) was named the emir, or top leader of JNIM in the group’s formative statement. Other important leader included commanders from JNIM’s other constituent factions, such as Muhammed Kufa (FLM), Yahia Abu al-Hamam (AQIM’s Sahara-branch, Katiba al-Furqan, confirmed killed in 2019), Abou Abderrahman (AQIM’s Sharia judge), and Hasan al-Ansari (deputy-commander of al-Murabitun, confirmed killed in March 2018). It was also suggested that notorious jihadist Mokhtar Belmokthar, the commander of al-Murabitun, was part of JNIM. However, Belmokthar’s whereabouts were unknown at the time of JNIM’s formation, with rumors of his death circulating; in 2021, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri announced in a book that Belmokhtar had become a "martyr”, albeit failing to say when. Organizationally, JNIM was a coalition of independent groups, which in turn consisted of a number of relatively autonomous katibas, or battalions. All constituent parts were represented within the movement’s shura (consultative council), which was also where all strategic coordination took place.
Each individual group within JNIM retained a specific area of operations, even though the movement’s leader Iyag ag Ghali had the authority to coordinate all of them and achieve the expansion into new territories. The different group’s areas of operation to some extent reflected its ethnic composition, and each area has its own local dynamic. Its Ansar Dine faction – active in northern Mali, was largely comprised of Tuaregs. As for the Sahara-branch of AQIM, it was mainly made up of Berbers, and both Algerian and Tangara Arabs, and at the time of the foundation of JNIM, it was mostly active in Mali’s Timbuktu region. However, post 2017, the group suffered a number of early setbacks, such as the killing of several leader, and its operational status remains unclear, with some observers arguing that its fighters may have been integrated into any of JNIM’s other constituent groups. Ansaroul Islam, for its part, had its roots in northern Burkina Faso’s Soum province, and retained its main bases in that area, while also spreading to the eastern part of the country, thus overlapping at times with with FLM (see below). Its main support base was among the Fulani.
The group within JNIM that evolved to become by far the most active one was FLM, or Katiba Macina as it was more commonly known. As it gained in influence, it also became increasingly complex, with more or less autonomous sub-groups emerging across the ever-expanding territory covered by the movement. Katiba Macina originated among the Fulani population in central Mali and it was the group’s connection to the Fulani community that seemed to have facilitated its geographical expansion over time. From central Mali, the group pressed south into northern Burkina Faso, and then on to both eastern, western and southern Burkina Faso, and eventually into northern Benin and Togo. Furthermore, it also had a presence in western-most Niger. More specifically, the FLM group active in eastern and southeastern Burkina Faso (Kompienga and Tapoa provinces), and responsible for the Benin incursions was under the command of drissa Dicko (Mouslimou), the JNIM Emir of the East. A little to the north, in Komondjari province in eastern Burkina Faso, as well as in western-most Niger’s Torodi region, a group of FLM fighters under the Emir of Torodi, Abu Anifa, was active. It is possible, that this group was part of the so-called Katiba Serma, am FLM offshoot under Abu Jalil al Fulani that had its main base in the Serma area in south-central Mali, near the Burkina border.
Reliable estimates for the size of the group were difficult to find, but one trustworthy source estimated that JNIM had around 2000 fighters in 2022.
