French Operation Kills AQIM Leader Responsible for 2011 Kidnapping

On July 5, the French Army’s Special Forces killed the terrorist Ali Ag Wadossene, according to a statement released on July 7. While the official French statement said that two others were captured, a Malian military official said that over ten others were taken. Two members of the Special Forces were injured in the operation, which took place in the Tigharghar Mountains in the Kidal region in northern Mali.

Wadossene was identified as one of the operational leaders of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). He was a member of Mali’s National Guard before deserting, and was 26 years old at the time of his death. He organized the 2011 kidnapping of the Frenchman Serge Lazarevic. Lazarevic was kidnapped while on a business trip with another Frenchman, Philippe Verdon, who was killed by AQIM in 2013 in retaliation for French intervention in Mali. On account of the kidnapping, Wadossene was jailed and later released in 2014 as part of an exchange for Lazarevic’s freedom.

France never confirmed the 2014 prisoner swap that freed Lazarevic in exchange for the release of Wadossene and three other militants, but Malian officials said that it took place. The Malian Human Rights Association spoke out against the deal, saying that despite it being “a victory for French diplomacy, we see [the exchange] as total disrespect for the victims of Mali’s crisis.”

AQIM is the official Al Qaeda branch in North Africa. It originally formed in Algeria as opposition to the country’s secular government, but now seeks to eradicate Western influence from the entirety of the region. The group has a history of kidnapping westerners, both for propaganda and for ransom money. Most pushback against it has come from the UN Security Council peacekeeping mission MINUSMA and from the French Operation Barkhane. In May, French forces killed Amada Ag Hama and Ibrahim Ag Inawalen, two other top AQIM officials in northern Mali.

The purpose of the French operation on July 5 was to destabilize the chain of command within AQIM, thereby hurting terrorist organizations across the Sahel region of Africa. However, AQIM has been described as a loose network of armed groups that comes together when necessary, and research suggests that decentralized groups tend to fare better when their leadership structure is destroyed due to their fluid nature. Therefore, although decapitation can have unpredictable effects on terrorist organizations, AQIM cannot be expected to disappear.