From Burkina Faso, the vice tightens around Iyad Ag Ghali

One of the major figures of the terrorist organization GSIM, Tidiane Djbrilou Dicko, was neutralized after an air strike in northern Burkina Faso. Dicko was one of the lieutenants of the leader of the organization, Iyad Ag Ghali.

After "several months of work by the intelligence services", the Burkina Faso army located and bombarded the representative of the terrorist group GSIM on its territory, Tidiane Dicko, as well as 11 other fighters. The airstrike took place in the province of Soum last Thursday.

Dicko was responsible for the Silgadji attack in early 2020, the first in this northern province of Burkina Faso. The terrorist attack caused the death of 39 civilians. The terrorist leader had also attacked three military convoys in the region last year. Tidiane Djbrilou Dicko is also said to have sponsored and equipped Ali Tidjani and his cell, responsible for the Solhan attack in June 2021, the worst in the history of Burkina Faso – 160 dead.

A news that should put even more pressure on the head of the organization, Iyad Ag Ghali. The jihadist leader, present in Mali, still escapes the Malian army. Since the elimination of his "competitors", in particular the leader of the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS) Adnane Walid al-Sahraoui, Ag Ghali is undoubtedly the first terrorist target in the Sahel, and in Africa more generally.

Iyad Ag Ghali, from negotiations to all-out war

The GSIM group was behind recent attacks in northern Togo and Benin. Before the fall of Bah N'Daw and Moctar Ouane in Mali, Iyad Ag Ghali tried to negotiate an amnesty with the Malian government. Also in Burkina Faso, where representatives of the Katiba Macina (affiliated with the GSIM) were negotiating a truce with the Dabiré government.

However, the successive coups d'etat in Mali, then in Burkina Faso, first provoked a return of clashes between these terrorist groups and the French forces of Barkhane, then a return of terrorist violence targeting the state, in the two Sahelian countries.

Strange when you remember that the propaganda of all these groups was above all their hostility towards the French presence. In a press release from GSIM, after an attack on a Barkhane convoy in Mali, we can read that “France is paying the price for its arrogance and its occupation (of Mali, editor’s note). (…) The GSIM has decided to alert Muslims to the need for jihad against France”. But now that French and Western forces in general are leaving Mali, and have been inactive in Burkina Faso for months, why is this terrorist group still attacking the army and African civilians?

For the researcher Guillaume Soto-Mayor, author of "Jihadists in Africa: outlaws without religion", if it is true that the GSIM, and the groups affiliated with al-Qaeda in general, are born above all from rebel movements , their condemnation of the violence of the Islamic State has earned them the label of apostates by "rival terrorist organizations".

Perhaps it is therefore that Iyad Ag Ghali is now seeking to curry favor with ISGS and EIAO fighters in his area of ​​influence. It remains to be seen what the reaction of the Heads of State of the countries concerned, Assimi Goïta and Paul-Henri Damiba, will be.