Mali: Could the war between Bamako and National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA) former rebels restart ?
Ismaël Wagué, Mali’s minister of national reconciliation, is in Gao to resume dialogue with armed groups in Northern Mali.
This trip comes at a time when former Azawad independence rebels may take up arms once more.
Officers from the Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad treaded sand while hundreds of men, who were standing in the back of dozens of pickup trucks arranged in an arc, pointed their automatic weapons skywards and cheered.
On 26 and 27 February 2022, while Azawad’s flags were flying high, these former separatist fighters, who had signed the Accord pour la Paix et la Réconciliation (APR) in 2015, following the Algiers process and travelled to the Timbuktu region to attend the movement’s regional consultations.