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In a shaky mobile phone video seen by CNN, a witness cautiously crossed ruined houses and burning vehicles in Ogossagou, central Mali. Towards the end of the clip, a small body laid lifeless in the earth.
According to the United Nations, many of the victims were women and children.
The UN said armed men, dressed as hunters, reportedly arrived before dawn and attacked the villagers with guns and machetes.
The French ambbadador to the United Nations described this act as "indescribable act".
The scale of the attack is horrible, but the escalation of violence in central Mali should not be a surprise.
Ethnic tensions and insurgency of jihad
A jihadist uprising has spread in northern and central Mali in 2012, and foreign troops and the government have not been able to regain control of vast areas of the landlocked country. West Africa.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said groups affiliated with Al Qaeda and the Islamic State had moved deeper into central Mali, exploiting existing ethnic divisions and creating chaos.
Due to the lack of government security, self-defense units belonging to the Dogon or Bambara ethnic groups – such as the Dogon Dan Na Ambbadagou, whose name means "hunters who trust God" – were born.
The Saturday Mbadacre is the latest and most serious of a series of attacks possibly related to self defense groups.
In December, HRW released a report of more than 200 deaths in 2018 in the Mopti region of Mali, warning that community violence was increasing rapidly there.
Much of the violence occurs between so-called self-defense units – belonging to communities that traditionally depend on agriculture – and the Fulani breeding population. According to the United Nations and HRW, the Fulani constitute a key recruitment pool for jihadist groups.
Last year, HRW accused Dan Na Ambbadagou of targeting members of the Peul group during attacks that "resulted in dozens of deaths and injuries among civilians".
Dan Na Ambbadagou was dissolved on Sunday by Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar and the Council of Ministers, according to a government statement, which did not say whether this group was to blame for Ogossagou's attack. .
The council accused Dan Na Ambbadagou of "derogating from his initial objectives, despite repeated warnings from local administrative authorities."
Corinne Dufka, badociate director of HRW for West Africa, told CNN that the violence in Mali was underscored by "the persistent tensions on the land and water between shepherds and farmers, but also by the growing presence of armed Islamist groups … who have committed very serious atrocities and targeted members of the Dogon group ".
Dufka said that Dan Na Ambbadagou "was attacked by armed Islamists and that they then engage in murderous reprisals, including the one that occurred yesterday."
Saturday's attack is the latest escalation of a cycle of uncontrollable violence.
Peacekeeping efforts
Last week, several Malian soldiers were killed during a coordinated attack in the village of Dioura. Earlier this month, the UN announced that a trapped corpse had killed 10 people in mourning at a Dogon funeral.
A UN Security Council delegation was in the country to meet with leaders when Saturday's mbadacre took place, attempting to implement a 2015 peace agreement.
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, is the most dangerous operation in the world. 191 soldiers of the mission have been killed since its creation in 2013. Their bases are regularly attacked and their soldiers frequently hit by bombs.
But insecurity is not isolated in Mali. Large areas of the Sahel region are destabilized by inter-communal conflict and terrorist groups.
The United States has a significant presence on the ground in the region, mainly in Niger, where it operates a large base of drones in Agadez.
The ground presence, especially of the special operations forces, drew public attention when four US soldiers were killed in a deadly ambush in Niger late in 2017.
Some 1,200 soldiers report to the Special Operations Command for Africa in a dozen countries, usually in an advisory role to African armed forces fighting terrorist groups.
This reduction and the current violence in the Sahel have led many experts to speculate that the threat to civilians and the world will worsen, not to become better.
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