Al-Qaeda-linked Jihadists in Mali have kidnapped and executed a female TikTok star in front of her family after accusing her of filming them and collaborating with the army.
Mariam Cisse, who posted videos about the city of Tonka in the northern Timbuktu region to her 90,000 followers, was shot dead by suspected members of the notorious Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) terror group in a public square on November 7.
News of her death has shocked the country, which is ruled by a military junta that is struggling to contain the jihadist insurgency that has gripped the country since 2012.
Mali is one of a series of African countries descending into chaos with Sudan torn apart by civil war and a humanitarian crisis and Nigeria ravaged by jihadist violence in its restive northeast.
My sister was arrested Thursday [November 6] by the jihadists,’ Mariam’s brother said, claiming the Al-Qaeda affliate had accused her of ‘informing the Malian army of their movements’.
Mariam, known for publicly supporting the army by wearing their uniforms in her videos, was reportedly taken out of the city from a local fair by several armed men.
She was livestreaming her day at the fair at the time of her kidnapping.
The following day, they took her on a motorbike to Tonka, where she was shot in Independence Square, a significant landmark in the city, her brother said, adding that he was forced to watch from the crowd.
Mariam largely posted comedic and lighthearted videos that focused on social issues and the perils of living in an unstable country.
A security source said: ‘Mariam Cisse has been assassinated in a public square in Tonka by jihadists who accused her of having filmed them for the Malian army.’
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, called it a ‘barbaric’ act.
A local official also confirmed the execution, denouncing it as an ‘ignoble act’ and adding that the terrorists carried out the attack to discourage Malians from publicly supporting government forces.
The military junta is struggling to contain the long-running jihadist insurgency.
In recent weeks, fighters from JNIM, the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims, have imposed a fuel blockade that has forced the government to close schools and prevented harvesting in several regions.
JNIM is the most influential jihadist group in Mali and the ‘most significant threat in the Sahel’, according to the United Nations.
It wants to implement Sharia law and is acting to delegitimize Sahelian states – at both the military and political level – by positioning itself as a more credible alternative.
It indirectly governs villages via agreements tailored to different localities, claiming in its propaganda to be defending the local populations.
In recent months, JNIM has expanded its influence over a large swathe of territory – how much is not yet clear – funding itself through tax collection and kidnap for ransom.
Last week JNIM obtained ‘at least $50 million’ for the release of two Emirati hostages and their Iranian employee, AFP learned from sources close to the negotiations.
For Sambe, the jihadists’ ‘strategic objective’ with their blockade is to ‘bring down the regime’.
And one European security source told AFP that JNIM ‘wants to overthrow the junta and install a government with which it can negotiate, which it can force to implement its agenda’.
It has forced the government to close schools, prevented harvesting in several regions and limited access to electricity.
Last week, President Assimi Goita called on citizens to do their part, particularly by reducing unnecessary travel, while promising to ‘do everything possible to deliver fuel’.
For Alioune Tine, formerly the UN’s independent expert on the human rights situation in Mali, the leader’s statement was a ‘terrible admission of failure’.
The ruling military junta, which seized power in back-to-back coups in 2020 and 2021, had promised to stem the jihadist expansion that has plagued the country for more than a decade.
It broke ties with former western military allies, including France, partnering instead with Russian paramilitaries to fight the jihadists.
But ‘the Malian state no longer controls anything’ within its territory, Bakary Sambe from the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute think tank said. Instead, he said, it ‘is concentrating its forces around Bamako to secure the regime’.
And the population’s initial support for the junta ‘is beginning to erode in the face of the military regime’s inability to keep its security promise’, he added.
Faced with the deteriorating situation, the United States and United Kingdom announced they were withdrawing non-essential personnel from Mali at the end of October.
Several other embassies, including most recently France on Friday, have asked their citizens to leave the country.
Last week, militants in Sudan were reported to have staged horrific public mass gang rapes and slaughtered 40 people at a funeral as the country’s ‘nightmare of violence’ continues.
Frightened people who have been forced to flee El-Fasher after it fell to the Rapid Support Forces have described horrific abuse, including rape at the hands of the militants.
Speaking from a makeshift shelter, Amira, a mother of four, said: ‘The rapes were gang rapes. Mass rape in public, rape in front of everyone and no one could stop it.’
‘You’d be asleep and they’d come and rape you,’ said Amira, using a pseudonym while speaking during a webinar organised by campaign group Avaaz.
‘I saw with my own eyes people who couldn’t afford to pay and the fighters took their daughters instead. They said, ”Since you can’t pay, we’ll take the girls.” If you had daughters of a young age, they would take them immediately.’
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said more than 300 survivors of sexual violence had sought care from its teams in Tawila after a previous RSF assault on the nearby Zamzam camp, which displaced more than 380,000 people last spring.
According to a report by charity groups, children as young as one have been brutally raped.
Over in Nigeria, Christians have welcomed Donald Trump’s threat to send the US military to the West African nation ‘guns-a-blazing’, though its leaders are wary of American intervention.
Nigeria has been roiled by internal violence in the wake of a jihadist insurgency spearheaded by extremist group Boko Haram in the northeast since 2009.
Trump, 79, had already designated Nigeria a ‘country of particular concern,’ but he took his condemnation of the situation in the country even further after hearing about it on Fox News, threatening to cut aid and even send in US troops.
Some Christian communities have welcomed the US president’s menace, believing that foreign armies are needed to restore peace in their homeland.
‘We see President Trump as our second God,’ Christian community leader Bamshak Daniel told the Wall Street Journal.
‘We have been praying for a supernatural intervention to save the lives of our people. President Trump must make haste and carry out this military intervention.’
Nigerian President Bola Tinubu was shocked by the fiery ‘guns-a-blazing’ rhetoric coming from the leader of one of his country’s most important partners.
He was stunned when he first saw Trump’s Truth Social post – which occurred during his morning routine of drinking a shot of espresso and having his routine doctor’s check-up, the Journal said.
Tinubu – a 73-year-old Muslim married to one of Nigeria’s most prominent Christian Pentecostal preachers – said Trump’s interpretation of his country’s malaise is a ‘gross misrepresentation of the reality’.
Amid the various forms of bloodletting around the country – including ethnic rivalry and banditry – the Islamist militants have been slaughtering Christians as well as Muslims they regard as ‘apostates’ for failing to comply with their brand of Islam.
There has also been a separate onslaught by Fulani Muslim tribesmen against mainly Christian farming communities, a protracted crisis linked to a tangle of issues like religion, ethnicity and a scramble over the dwindling supply of arable land.
While Christians are among those targeted, analysts say the majority of victims of armed groups are Muslims in Nigeria’s Muslim-majority north, where most attacks occur, according to the Associated Press.