Tuareg rebels this week claimed to have captured a camp belonging to Mali’s armed forces in the north of the country, where clashes have been escalating since August. As the Malian army sends a convoy to fight back the rebels, experts are warning of an all-out war.

The Upper Council for Azawad Unity (CUA) said in a statement on social networks on Wednesday that the army camp at Taoussa, in the Gao region, was “under the control” of the rebels.

There was no immediate statement from the army.

The CUA is part of the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), an alliance of predominantly Tuareg groups seeking autonomy or independence from the Malian state.

After Bourem, Léré, Dioura and Bamba, this is the fifth Malian military camp that Tuareg rebels have attacked since their conflict with the ruling junta resumed three weeks ago.

Battle for the north
The attack occurred while, a little less than 100 kilometres away, a convoy of the Malian army was sent to fight back the rebels.

Troops left Gao on Monday morning to travel further north towards the town of Kidal, considered to be the separatist Tuaregs’ capital.

The column arrived late Tuesday in Tabricha, just above Tarkint.

Experts consider it a high-risk operation, which could foreshadow a large-scale confrontation and prove a turning point after a decade of conflict.

Return to war
The junta’s convoy is reportedly to go first to the localities of Tessalit and Aguelhok north of Kidal to take over camps being vacated by departing troops of the UN stabilisation force, MINUSMA.

The UN mission has been pushed out by the junta and has been handing over its camps to Malian authorities.

The handover began with the camp at Ber in mid-August, but has become a prime factor in a recent resumption of hostilities by the separatists, who claim the UN sites should be returned to them.

Since September, the CSP, a section of the CMA, has declared war against the ruling junta, accusing them of not respecting a peace accord from 2015.

Experts warn that Mali is returning to the days before that landmark pact.

“In fact, it is war. It has been since the Tuareg rebels attacked two army bases in September,” says Thierry Vircoulon, an associate research fellow at the French Institute of International Relations, IFRI.

“The Malian army wanted to fill the void created by the departure of MINUSMA and the Azawad rebels oppose the return of the army to their area,” he told RFI.

Seidik Abba, a Nigerien journalist specialising in the Sahel, agrees.

“We’re back to the situation of 2014,” he said. “We are in a situation of war between the Malian state and the Tuareg groups, as it was before the 2015 peace agreement.”

Fighting two enemies
The resurgence of fighting from Tuareg rebels coincides with a general increase of activity from jihadist groups in the whole of the Sahel, from Burkina Faso to Niger.

The army is also fighting the Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist alliance Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM).

“The Malian army finds itself with an additional enemy. The situation is also critical in Timbuktu because of the new strategy of the jihadists,” Vircoulon said.

Stretched across two fronts, the Malian forces suffer from a lack of resources, Jonathan Guiffard, an expert associated with the independent Institute Montaigne think tank in Paris, told French news agency AFP.

“Either they endure, or they carry out dynamic operations which result in raids here and there. It’s the most they can do,” he said.

As for the separatists, no credible data is available on the CMA’s ranks.

“They have often lied to boost their numbers (as part of a disarmament programme) and have hidden their stocks of weapons,” according to Marc-Andre Boisvert, a researcher at the Centre FrancoPaix in Canada, which studies conflict resolution and peacekeeping.

Before the renewed hostilities, a realistic figure for the rebels would have been 3,000 to 4,000, he said.

The GSIM and related groups have always had their own agenda and command chains “with objectives which have nothing to do with those of the components of the CMA”, according to Guiffard.

But there is a certain “fluidity” between the jihadists and Tuareg separatists, he said.