Since April, when two Tuareg rebel groups drove government forces out of northern Mali, the situation in the sparsely populated region has steadily worsened. The lightning advance of the National Movement for the Liberation of the Azawad (MNLA), which seeks independence for the Tuareg homeland, and Ansar Dine, which has an Islamist agenda, triggered a coup of disgruntled junior officers against President Amadou Toumai Touré, with the resulting political instability in Bamako leaving the army incapacitated and the rebels the effective rulers of roughly half the country’s territory.
Though the two groups worked together to launch the rebellion, Ansar Dine has gradually taken the upper hand. The MNLA suffers from a lack of fighters and weapons, while Ansar Dine benefits from the support of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which has formally put all its fighters and resources at the command of Ansar Dine leader Iyad Ag Ghali. The Islamist group has now taken control of most of the rebel-occupied towns and begun to enforce orthodox Sharia law, destroying establishments serving alcohol and Islamic shrines not conforming to orthodox practices.
In May, possibly out of frustration over not achieving international recognition for Tuareg independence despite its demonstrated willingness to cooperate with Western powers against Islamists and drug-runners, the MNLA announced that it was in talks with Ansar Dine on merging the two movements. In its own statements, Ansar Dine went as far as to declare earlier this month that the merger had been finalized and that the two groups had agreed on the establishment of the “Islamic Republic of the Azawad,” with an orthodox version of Sharia as its fundamental law.