By Omar | 2025-01-31

KABUL -- Al-Qaeda-affiliate Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) has emerged as one of West Africa's most lethal groups, employing hyper-violent tactics that terrorize civilian populations and contravene Islamic teachings.

Operating primarily in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, JNIM emerged in March 2017 as a coalition between Ansar al-Din, the Macina Liberation Front, al-Mourabitoun, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

The group quickly gained a reputation for violence, with a spike in violent events and civilian fatalities accompanying its emergence in the Sahel.

JNIM was responsible for 81% of all extremist groups' activity in the Sahel, the Africa Center for Strategic Studies said in a January 2024 report.

"In 2024, JNIM and IS Sahel launched a spate of high-impact or mass-casualty attacks that targeted state forces, militias and civilians with increasing lethality," Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) reported December 12.

"In particular, the increase in air and drone strikes, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks, rocket and mortar shellings underline a clear change in combat tactics," it said.

Indiscriminate violence

In August, JNIM fighters massacred up to 600 civilians in Barsalogho, Burkina Faso, CNN reported, with a French government security assessment nearly doubling a death toll cited in earlier reports.

The group targeted "women, children, elderly, men, making no distinction," Burkina Faso's Communications Minister Rimtalba Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo said on national television following the incident, AFP reported.

Ouedraogo denounced the "cowardly and barbaric attack," saying it was carried out by "hordes of criminals."

In September, JNIM claimed responsibility for an attack in Mali on Bamako's police training center and airport, killing more than 70 people.

The killing spree continued into January, with an attack in northern Benin, near the border with Burkina Faso, killing 28 troops.

Brutal treatment of civilians

JNIM's indiscriminate killing of civilians and brutal treatment of local populations violate fundamental Islamic teachings that protect innocent civilians and non-combatants during warfare.

Al-Qaeda and its affiliates in the Sahel and in countries such as Afghanistan also recruit from local populations, taking advantage of impoverished youth, Herat-based political analyst Abdul Basir Nazami told Al-Fassel affiliate Salaam Times.

"Key figures of al-Qaeda in Africa have largely remained hidden from the world's view," Herat-based international relations analyst and university professor Bahram Yelani told Salaam Times.

"In recent years, they have committed war crimes," Yelani said.

Violence targeting civilians has led to widespread displacement, the collapse of basic services and the shutdown of educational facilities, particularly in eastern Burkina Faso, according to the European Commission.

"Further violence could exponentially increase the rate of displacement and migration from the (Sahel) region," the Center for Preventive Action warned in October.