Jihadist forces have imposed a blockade on Timbuktu, northern Mali, for several days now, causing the prices of goods there to rise, local sources said on Monday.
Jihadists “have blocked all the roads,” an elected official told French news agency AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fears for his safety. “Between Timbuktu and the south, nothing passes” not even via the Niger River, which flows south of the city, he added.
This information was corroborated by a municipal official, who also preferred to withhold his identity. “Everything is expensive in Timbuktu because products no longer enter the city," he said. "The jihadists have blocked the roads. It’s really difficult.”
The embargo follows messages circulated in early August on social networks and attributed to a local commander of the Groupe de soutien à l’islam et aux musulmans (GSIM), a jihadist alliance affiliated to Al-Qaeda.
“We are declaring war in the Timbuktu region. Trucks coming from Algeria, Mauritania and anywhere else” must go no further, the messages said. Trucks that break this order will be “targeted and set on fire," they warned.
These threats coincide with an ongoing security repositioning in the region of Timbuktu, “the city of 333 saints” listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The UN mission in Mali, Minusma, made to leave the country by its ruling junta, has just pulled out of two camps near Timbuktu, Ber and Goundam, which it has transferred to the Malian authorities. This takeover by the Malian state has given rise to fighting with the jihadists and sharp tensions with former Tuareg rebels.
Timbuktu, with its population of a few tens of thousands on the edge of the Sahara, is one of the major towns in the north that fell into the hands of Tuareg rebels and then Salafists insurgents after the outbreak of the Tuareg insurrection in 2012. French and Malian forces recaptured the town in 2013.
The ex-rebels signed a peace agreement with the Malian state in 2015, but that is now in tatters. Radical Islamists, meanwhile, continue to fight the Malian state and foreign presence in the area, while jihadism has spread from the north to central Mali, as well as neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.
The UN mission retains a camp in Timbuktu for the time being, but all peacekeepers must leave Mali by 31 December.
