Charlie Hebdo attack: Hunt for jihad commander ‘Mr Marlboro’

For more than a year, jets like these have been taking off every day, with the spearhead of France fighting a war of attrition against jihadists in North Africa’s Sahel, called Operation Barkhane. Little noticed in India, the war has enraged Islamists, leading to calls for retaliation that culminated in the savage terror attacks in Paris last week.

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Less than a week before the Charlie Hebdo killings, French air power was called in to support Mauritanian troops who faced a seven-hour attack in the town of Nampala and lost seven men. The day before, on January 4, six Nigerian peacekeepers were injured in an IED attack near Gao in Mali. And the day before that, a Tuareg tribal leader hostile to the jihadists was assassinated; New Year’s Eve had seen rocket attacks on a United Nations base at Tessalit, in northern Mali.

“This war won’t end with a mission-accomplished speech or a victory parade,” a French diplomat says. “We’ll just keep plugging away for as long as it takes, making sure an Afghanistan doesn’t emerge in the ungoverned spaces in Europe’s backyard.”

The one-eyed commander

In 1993, Belmokhtar returned home from Afghanistan, to fight with Islamists battling Algeria’s secular but authoritarian government. Following the defeat of the jihadists, Belmokhtar retreated into the desert, where he went on to found al-Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb, or AQIM.

Mokhtar Belmokhtar a.k.a. Mr Marlboro

Belmokhtar raised millions for his new group by capturing control of cigarette-smuggling routes across the Sahel, and kidnapping western tourists for ransom. He developed formidable local contacts, marrying four women from different tribes.

Following his sacking by al-Qaeda’s central leadership for lack of discipline, his war seemed headed towards oblivion, but the wheel of fortune spun back his way in 2012, when Tuareg mercenaries who had served Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi’s forces returned home to northern Mali. They joined an insurrection against the Mali government — and turned to Belmokhtar’s west Africa affiliate, the Movement for Unity and Jihad, for help. MUJAO and Belmokhtar merged to found a new group, al-Murabitoun.

In 2013, Belmokhtar went to war, holding over 800 hostage at a refinery in Algeria, and organising suicide-truck attacks on a military base and a French-run uranium mine in Niger. His army and its allies followed that up by taking over Timbuktu in northern Mali, where they destroyed centuries-old mausoleums and ransacked the library, and then sweeping south from Gao — poised to take Mali’s capital, Bamako.

Paris stepped in responding to pleas, and flew Rafale-4s backed by mid-air tankers for over nine hours non-stop to hit their targets. The raids, backed by special forces, stopped the Islamist offensive in its tracks — but the war has gone on.

Asymmetric war

The reconnaissance pods fitted under the Rafale-4s — which are under consideration for purchase by India, at an estimated $100 million each — can spot the smallest detail from the battlefield. Penetrating through camouflage, they can pick out individuals with weapons, fortifications, pickup trucks used by jihadists, even vehicles that had their engines running most recently. The data can be transmitted in real time to force commanders in N’Djamena, and even to commanders in France.

Equipped with high-grade image intelligence, and a network of bases that allow air strikes within minutes, France’s expeditionary forces in the Sahel are lean: just under 3,000 combat troops, capable of rapid helicopter deployment whenever needed.

Weeks ago, a French raid using these means led to the elimination of globally designated terror commander Ahmed el-Tilemsi, co-founder of MUJAO. There have been dozens of recoveries of weapons caches, including shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles pilfered from Libya.

Operation Barkhane, named after the crescent-shaped sand dunes that flow with the desert winds, pits next-generation military technology against enemies armed with Soviet-era guns, battered pickup trucks and the willingness to blow themselves up.

The war, though, is far from won, and may never be won. Mali remains lethal: jihadists have mounted over 30 significant attacks, including a dozen suicide bombings, in 2014. MINUSMA, the multinational peacekeeping force in Mali, has lost 43 soldiers in combat making it the UN’s most dangerous mission. In his last report to the Security Council, UN undersecretary for peacekeeping Hervé Ladsous admitted “the situation right now is worrying”.

New threats, moreover, have sprung up: Boko Haram in Nigeria has killed thousands, while Libya has exploded into civil war. French intelligence fears the fighting will escalate.

Few across the world are inclined to wade into these dangerous sands: MINUSMA is authorised 11,200 military personnel, but 40 countries together have managed to put in just 8,311. Insiders speak of severe problems of communications and command, with one unit unable to communicate with the other.

“Nation building isn’t like making instant coffee,” a top French official told The Indian Express. “The hope is we’ll be here long enough for our regional partners, in Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad, to develop the military and institutional capacities they need to be robust states. We have hundreds of French citizens fighting with the Islamic State, and there are thousands more from elsewhere in Europe. We don’t need another Islamic State just across our borders.”

The writer was in N’Djamena as a guest of the French government.