“We heard rumours that they were preparing to attack,” says Garba Touré, guitarist with the Malian band Songhoy Blues. “When the firing started I rushed back home to check that my mother and children were ok. It was as if we’d been hit by an earthquake.”

Touré had decided to risk a visit to his hometown of Diré near Timbuktu after months of touring in Europe and the US, despite his concerns about the deteriorating security situation.

But when he arrived, his family was caught up in the worst violence the region had seen for more than a year.

Rebel groups fighting for greater autonomy in the north have initialled a peace accord brokered by Algeria, but Bilal Ag Acherif, the leader of the alliance, the Coordination of Movements for Azawad (CMA), said amendments would be necessary before he would sign the final deal.

With the recent spike in violence, many fear that the truce, which had been due to be signed in Bamako today, might now be dead in the water.

Renewed conflict

Mali’s main Tuareg-led rebel alliance, the CMA, initialled a peace agreement with the government but demanded changes before signing a deal to end decades of conflict. Photograph: Farouk Batiche/AFP/Getty Images

In the past two weeks alone fighting between the Malian army, pro-government militias and Touareg-led rebels has left 20 soldiers and over 25 rebel fighters dead, according to government sources.

Rebel attacks on the towns of Léré, Goundam, Diré and Tenenkou were followed last week by ambushes on army convoys near the historic city of Timbuktu, in which nine soldiers were killed.

Northern Mali has suffered sporadic attacks against police and army installations by a variety of armed jihadist and Touareg-led separatists groups ever since the French army drove out Islamist militias from the region in February 2013.

In the decades-long fight for autonomy by the Tuareg rebels, the town of Menaka in the east of the country has been on the front line, typically the first to be captured each time the separatists rise up against the central government.

The recent upsurge began at the end of April, when an alliance of pro-government militia groups known as Platform attacked Menaka, wresting control from the rebels.

In response, the Tuareg separatists attacked military and police points as far as Tenenkou in the south, to prove it still controlled vast swaths of the desert territory.

Fahad ag Almahmoud, general secretary of Gatia, the main pro-government militia involved in the attack, claims it was an accident.

“We sent a patrol to the villages and camps in the region to raise awareness about the peace process and persuade to local leaders to come to the signing of the accords in Bamako on 15 May,” he said. “The CMA tried to ambush our convoy about 15km outside Menaka; then things degenerated and turned to our advantage.”

Proxies

Tuareg Malian soldiers under the command of Colonel El-Hadj Ag Gamou patrol the streets of Gao, northern Mali in 2013. Photograph: Jerome Delay/AP

The creation of Gatia in the summer of 2014 raised fears that the government in Bamako had revived its policy of fighting Touareg rebels in the north by arming ethnic militias with a grievance against the Touareg rebel leadership.

Rebel spokesperson Moussa ag Acharatoumane accuses the government of ordering Gatia to attack Menaka in order to derail the peace process.



“Everybody knows that those militias are housed, supported, financed and trained by the Malian army,” says Acharatoumane.

Gatia is primarily composed of Imghad Touareg, traditionally subservient to the Ifoghas and Idnan “nobility” who currently dominate the rival rebel alliance. For many decades after independence, Bamako ruled the north by proxy through Ifoghas chiefs, causing great resentment amongst the Imghad and other marginalised Touareg groups.



“Bamako must stop dealing with a few powerful families and individuals in the north,” says Gatia’s Almahmoud. “It has to learn to rule in a democratic way.”

Deadline

Some locals are sympathetic to the motivations behind the CMA’s struggle, although many condemn its use of violence. “Some arguments put forward by the rebellion are irrefutable,” says the director of a local NGO from Menaka who asked to remain anonymous.

“There’s a lack of development. People have no access to health. Education is even worse. There are no jobs. Most people are forced to make their lives elsewhere. The state haven’t done much good here. But the rebels weren’t much better. It’s three years since they’ve occupied the north, and nothing much has been done. They never had the means to maintain security, even if they wanted to.”

Now, after over three years of civil war ordinary people in northern Mali are desperate for a return to security and normality, but a resolution is not yet in sight.