The Malian army and its Russian allies have suffered the first serious setback in their joint offensive to reclaim territory controlled by the Tuareg separatists, which began in 2023. Tuareg rebels from the Permanent Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad (CSP-DPA) and jihadists from the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM) have inflicted a severe defeat on the Malian army and the Russian mercenaries of the Wagner company supporting it in the town of Tinzaouaten, in northern Mali near the border with Algeria. Three days of intense fighting have resulted in dozens of Malian and Russian deaths, and the capture of vehicles and war material, according to several sources.
Without giving figures, the Wagner company itself has acknowledged, in a statement published on Monday, having suffered casualties in the fighting, including that of Commander Sergei Shevchenko, alias Pond. “On the first day, Pond’s group wiped out most of the Islamists and sent the rest into disarray,” according to the note released by the mercenary group via Telegram, “however, a sandstorm allowed the radicals to regroup and increase their number to 1,000 men.” The last message from this military column, according to Reuters, was on July 27 and reveals the extent of the defeat: “Three of our men remain. We are still fighting.”
There are discrepancies over the number of dead. The Malian army has only acknowledged two dead and 10 wounded among its own. However, the military column, which was completely destroyed, included dozens of Malian soldiers and Russian contractors. A JNIM statement speaks of 50 Wagner members and 10 Malian soldiers killed. For its part, the CSP-DPA points to “dozens of dead and wounded” without specifying.
Fighting broke out on 25 July when a Russian-Malian convoy of at least a dozen vehicles was heading towards the town of Tinzaouaten, a major commercial crossroads in the Kidal region, close to the Algerian border. Fearing abuse and murder, as has happened in other towns, some civilians began to flee to the neighbouring country. The Algerian army then blocked the border crossing and CSP-DPA fighters decided to confront the military convoy when it was a few kilometres from Tinzaouaten.
In the first hours, the military column managed to resist the Tuareg rebels’ offensive and even advance, but an intense sandstorm made the use of air resources difficult and halted the fighting, allowing reinforcements from members of the CSP-DPA to arrive. The next day, hostilities resumed and the separatists’ numerical superiority and knowledge of the terrain against an isolated convoy tipped the balance in their favour. Faced with defeat, the remnants of the Russian-Malian column began a retreat towards Kidal, but fell into an ambush by the jihadist group JNIM, holding out until 27 July. In the following hours, Russian soldiers and mercenaries scattered after the battle surrendered to the Tuareg rebels to avoid falling into the hands of the radicals, according to various sources.
The battle for Tinzaouaten, broadcast almost in real time through videos circulating on social media, is a major propaganda victory for the separatists in northern Mali, grouped under the CSP-DPA. For the first time, Wagner’s mercenaries appear killed in combat or as prisoners, a very different vision from the triumphant images of the capture of Kidal in November 2023, when the contractors were decisive in the recovery of the city by the Malian army. The conflict between Tuareg rebels and the Malian army was reactivated last summer, coinciding with the withdrawal of the United Nations mission from northern Mali. The Armed Forces and their Russian allies then launched an offensive to occupy the military bases in the north, where the Tuareg rebellion had managed to establish itself after the 2015 Algiers peace accords, succeeding in overcoming the separatists.
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Since then, under the orders of the leader of the coup-plotting military junta in Mali, Colonel Assimi Goïta, the army and its Russian allies have occupied town after town in the north of the country without encountering much resistance. During this advance, soldiers and mercenaries have committed all kinds of abuses against the civilian population, especially Tuareg and Arab ethnic groups, according to the testimonies of the tens of thousands of people who have fled to Mauritania and who now reside there as refugees, as revealed by UNHCR, the UN refugee agency.
However, northern Mali is also one of the most important strongholds of another armed group, the JNIM led by the terrorist Iyad Ag Ghali. This coalition of jihadist groups linked to Al Qaeda is also at war with the Malian army and its Russian allies, and frequently harasses their military units with attacks, attacks and the laying of mines in the path of their military columns. Although they are different armed groups, the radicals and the separatists share a common enemy and can occasionally collaborate or even form strategic alliances, as was seen a few days ago in the battle of Tinzaouaten and as already happened in 2012 during the takeover of northern Mali.
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