It’s been a terrible year for people in northeast Mali.
Since March, Islamist armed groups aligned with the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) have killed hundreds of people and forced tens of thousands to flee their homes.
The attacks appear to be systematic and largely targeting ethnic Dawsahak, a Tuareg group. Survivors described the pattern of attacks to our investigators.
First, heavily armed men on motorcycles and in other vehicles surround a village and shoot indiscriminately. Then, they summarily execute villagers, primarily men. After that, they go on a looting spree and destroy property.
The pattern has been the same in dozens of villages in Mali’s Ménaka and Gao regions. Often, several villages in an area are attacked around the same day, further suggesting a plan or higher-level orders from superiors in the armed groups.
“They burned houses, took our animals and grain, and what they could not take they set on fire,” said a village leader who witnessed attacks on the town of Tamalate on March 8.
A teacher who saw an attack on Intagoiyat village in March told us, “They shot at everything. They just kill… they do not talk except ‘God is great’ and it’s over.”
Community leaders say nearly 1,000 civilians have been killed in the region since March. Tens of thousands of people have lost their livestock, livelihoods, and valuables, and fled, either to elsewhere in Mali or to next-door Niger.
Both the Malian army and the UN peacekeepers (the “Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali,” MINUSMA), have forces in Gao and Ménaka. The problem is, these troops do not patrol far from the towns, and they have little or no capacity to protect civilians in remote areas.
This needs to change.
Both forces should boost their presence in the affected regions, ramp up protection patrols, and help authorities provide justice for victims and their families.