ARMED NON-STATE ACTORS

Mouvement National de libération de l’Azawad (MNLA)  – Mali 

The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad, MNLA) is a secular independentist movement formed in 2011 as a result of the merger of previous Tuareg rebellions and fighters returning from Libya after the collapse of the Gadhafi regime. Although it is largely composed of ethnic Tuaregs, the MNLA has presented itself as a movement fighting for the right to self-determination of all the peoples of “Azawad”, a territory considered its homeland in northern Mali. The MNLA launched its first armed attacks against Malian government forces in January 2012 and in a few months gained control of large areas, including the cities of Timbuktu and Gao, before being evicted by radical Islamist groups. At the beginning of 2013, after the military intervention of France, the MNLA demanded autonomy during talks with the government and signed the 2015 Peace Agreement under the banner of the Coordination of Movements of Azawad (CMA). The Peace Agreement did not put an end to the conflict however, as the CMA still controls territory in the northern part of the country and has engaged in hostilities with both pro-government ANSAs and Islamist groups after 2015.

Taliban – Afghanistan

The Taliban, also known as the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), was an ‘armed opposition group.’ It was active on and off between 1994-1996, after which they became the de facto government of Afghanistan until their ouster in 2001, and from 2001 through August 2021, after which they again became the de facto government of Afghanistan. The group had two stated objectives: to eject foreign forces from the country and establish what they deemed a truly Islamic government. The Taliban were a deeply conservative Islamist movement, with an ideology rooted in their specific version of Sunni Hanafi and Afghan cultural norms. But as an insurgency after 2001, the movement had to reconcile their traditionalist ideology with both the demands of securing the population and exposure to a much broader field of ideas and influences.

MILF – Philippines

The organisation that would go on to become the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) formed from a split in the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 1977. Its initial objective was the independence of territory inhabited by several Islamized ethno-linguistic groups, collectively known as the Moro people, in Mindanao in the southern Philippines. In contrast to the ethno-nationalist MNLF, the MILF emphasised the centrality of Islam in its struggle.  The MILF began to gain strong support and its military wing, the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF)  was successful in taking control of large swathes of territory, most notably in Maguindanao and Lanao Del Sur.  The MILF engaged in peace talks, and entered into intermittent ceasefires with the Government from the 1990s. In 2014 the two parties signed a peace agreement called the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro which in 2019 created the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) under the MILF-led Bangsamoro Transition Authority, meaningfully bringing to an end the MILF’s conflict. 

Al-Qaeda

Al-Qaeda is a salafi-jihadist organization that originated as a political movement that uses militant insurgency as a means of struggle against, what it sees as, illegitimate authoritarian regimes in the Muslim world and a ‘colonial’ anti-Muslim international system. Al-Qaeda was headed by Osama Bin Laden and later his recently deceased deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. Al-Qaeda’s trajectory can be seen in four distinct phases: first, the formative period bearing the group’s origins during the Afghan War and throughout the 1980s; second, the 1990s, witnessing the United States’ intervention in the Gulf War and in Somalia as well as the increase in its military bases in the Arabian Peninsula, leading to al-Qaeda’s declarations of war against the US and Israel, which culminated in the 9/11 attacks; third, the post-2001 period which saw a set of key transformations: al-Qaeda going underground in the face of an international counterterrorism campaign (the Afghanistan War in 2001 followed by Iraq war in 2003), and its decision to franchise its jihadist agenda, with al-Qaeda affiliates emerging all over the world (from Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula to the Maghrib and Europe). Currently, al-Qaeda as a central organization’s ability to conduct operations waned and activities are mostly conducted by those varyingly and loosely connected affiliates.