Throughout May and June, the jihadist Front for the Victory of Islam and Muslims (known as JNIM) carried out an unprecedented number of attacks in Burkina Faso and Mali, including as many as 70 offensives against the Burkinabe army and a further 20 operations against Malian security forces next door.
This continues a months-long trend. The Al-Qaeda-affiliated group has been waging large-scale attacks against army bases in north-eastern Burkina Faso, apparently as part of a strategy to clear the border region with southwestern Niger, where it hopes to gain a launchpad for more frequent and bigger operations, both against Burkinabe and Nigerien security forces and against its jihadist rival, the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP).
On June 8, 2024, a cell of JNIM’s ally the Macina Liberation Front (MLF) assassinated IS commander Abdelaziz Maza and two of his companions in a border district of Oudalan state in northeastern Burkina Faso. They were killed by an improvised explosive device as they headed east in a pick-up truck from the town of Tambao towards the IS-controlled Dolbèl region of Niger’s Tillaberi Province.
Security sources told the Center for African Security Studies that JNIM had infiltrated a training camp where Maza was supervising training operations. After 20 days at the camp, the agent had identified two points where he could be targeted; along the road between Oudalan and the border, and on the road linking Oudalan with Gourma province.
Despite his stature, Maza’s killing is unlikely to be a significant setback for IS activities in the region. While he was influential in the organization’s expansion in northeastern Burkina Faso, the organization has been able to build up a cadre of commanders and fighters meaning it can quickly recover from such losses—especially since dozens of IS members who had fought in Syria, Iraq and Libya arrived in the Sahel countries over the course of 2023.
Maza’s killing appears to have been a tit-for-tat operation in response to ISWAP’s assassination of JNIM’s Emir in the I-n-Tillit region of southeastern Mali, Iliassou Amadou Moussa, who had been leading reconnaissance operations as JNIM attempts to expand into ISWAP-controlled territories.
The killings have fueled an increasingly bitter rivalry between the two organizations, even if they manage to reach a temporary truce. Over the longer term, the military, economic and ethnic dynamics are likely to lead to widespread fighting between the two major organizations in the region.
