Mopti, Mali: Soldier, schoolgirl, teacher, militant… In the nightmare of central Mali, each has a tale to tell of violence, survival, and loss.
In interviews conducted over 18 months, eight people have told AFP how their lives have been dramatically shaped by this brutal conflict in the heart of the Sahel. Central Mali is one of the world’s most violent places — an arid region stalked by ethnic killings, tit-for-tat violence, and relentless attacks on troops, police, or other perceived symbols of the state.
Violence has gripped the region since 2015 when firebrand preacher Amadou Koufa established an Al-Qaeda-aligned militant group. Recruiting at the time from within his own Fulani group, who is also known as Peul, his movement fed suspicions against the semi-nomadic herder community. An ethnic powder-keg was lit.
“I was convinced that these people they call militants had more respect for humans than the army,” said Bilal, 37, a Bambara.
He joined the militants as he was unable to make ends meet by selling fish. The eight were interviewed in the capital, Bamako, the volatile central town of Mopti or the city of Sevare.
Their names have been changed by AFP for their protection. Central Mali is a place of many ethnicities, and frictions, especially over land, are common.
These ancient antagonisms flared when Koufa’s group emerged. Today, the region has been swept by a wildfire of hatred and mistrust. Nearly 200,000 people have fled their homes, and thousands have been killed.
No one, it seems, has been spared — as Rokia, a woman aged about 50 from the nomadic Bozo ethnic group, knows only too well. Her family of fishermen was stopped by militants on the banks of the Niger River in 2018. Her husband Ba, her brothers Amadou and Sinbarma, and her sons Mahamat and Lassana were taken away.
“I don’t sleep, life no longer makes sense. Things can carry on or stop, it doesn’t matter to me,” she said.
Some ethnic groups have formed so-called self-defense forces, such as the Dan Nan Ambassagou, which sprang up within the traditional Dogon hunter community.
When militants arrived in Georges’ village, he joined a Dogon militia.
“As the eldest, I’d inherited protective amulets and my father’s hunting rifle. The responsibility fell to me, I had to go and fight,” the ex-militiaman, aged in his 40s, said.
The Dan Nan Ambassagou has been accused by NGOs and the UN of carrying out massacres in Fulani villages, an allegation it denies.
The force has officially been dissolved but remains active. Fourteen-year-old Fulani schoolgirl Fatoumata survived an attack on her village because, she said, after the shooting “they must have thought I was dead.”
In central Mali, places seen as symbols of the state are targeted by jihadists.
“We knew the situation wasn’t good. We’d heard of schools that had closed but we continued, for the children’s sake,” teacher Sidiki, 36, said.
Malick, a soldier aged about 30, described the terror of a jihadist ambush that killed or wounded his comrades.
For those on the front line, “often, food, medicine, and munitions are lacking,” he said. Fulani merchant Kassim, 42, told how he was held in detention for 28 days because “they think that we, the Fulani, all agree with jihad.”
A number of villages have signed peace agreements — sometimes under duress — with militants. Then there is the case of radio journalist Bachir, a 42-year-old Fulani, which illustrates how minds have been horribly distorted by the violence.
He was falsely accused of being an army informer by the militant — and then found himself being falsely accused of being a militant by the Dogon.
