Three top jihadists dominate Sahel after Al-Qaeda leader death

Three leaders have been left dominating the jihadist insurgency in the Sahel, following the death of a top Al-Qaeda commander in the West African state of Mali this week.

French forces killed Algerian national Abdelmalek Droukdel, the head of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), in a raid in northern Mali on Wednesday.

The move will strike a blow to the organisation, but other powerful Al-Qaeda-linked leaders already operate in Sahel.

Droukdel’s death also comes at a time of increasing jihadist infighting, between Al-Qaeda affiliates and Islamic-Statealigned militants.

Three jihadist leaders now loom large over the central Sahel: Iyad Ag Ghaly and Amadou Koufa — who are both linked to Al-Qaeda — and Adnan Abou Walid Sahraoui, who leads the region’s Islamic State group franchise.

Iyad Ag Ghaly, who heads the powerful GSIM jihadist alliance, is a veteran of Mali’s internecine conflicts.

An ethnic Tuareg from northern Mali, he first leapt onto the stage during a Tuareg rebellion during the 1990s.

After it subsided he went into business, before returning to militancy again in 2012, with a group called Ansar Dine.

That year, Tuareg separatists launched a rebellion in northern Mali, which was quickly commandeered by jihadists.

The event triggered a bloody conflict, which has spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. On Friday, about 30 people were killed in an ethnic Fulani village. —