Her name was Mariam Cissé, she was in her early twenties and a local celebrity in Tonka, a town in the Timbuktu region of northern Mali. His profile on the social network TikTok, in which he expressed his opinions on current issues and uploaded videos of daily life, had around 90,000 followers. Last Friday she was kidnapped and executed by alleged jihadists in the central square of her city and in front of dozens of people, accused of supporting the Malian army. No armed group claimed responsibility for the killing, which was carried out in a region dominated by members of the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM, for its acronym in Arabic), who move easily in rural areas.
According to Fatoumata Harber, a blogger originally from the same region as Timbuktu, Cissé was chosen for being a free woman. “Terrorists don’t want to see women expressing themselves freely,” she says.
On Thursday, November 6, Mariam Cissé was recording videos with her cell phone at the market in a town near Tonka. It is there that, according to numerous witnesses, she was identified by armed men, kidnapped and taken to an unknown location. The next day, the same people who had kidnapped her took her to her city and, in front of dozens of neighbors, shot her in Piazza Indipendenza. According to what was revealed to the France Presse agency by some residents of this town – who did not want to reveal their identity – Cisse was accused of having recorded videos for the Malian army and of being, therefore, “an enemy”. The young woman had received death threats, even through the same social networks.
Cissé was a merchant and earned his living by selling the agricultural products his family grew. Like millions of social media users around the world, in her TikTok videos you can see everyday scenes of her city or herself talking about different topics. For example, he proudly called his city “the city of potatoes” to underline its agricultural character. In one of these videos she appears dressed in the uniform of the Malian armed forces and expresses her support for the army in the fight against terrorist groups. A report broadcast on public television claims that this young woman “only wanted to promote her community through TikTok and encourage the Malian army in its mission to protect people and their property.”
“Many abroad wonder why the police didn’t intervene, and this suggests that they don’t know the context in which this girl and the entire population of the rural areas of the north lived,” explains Harber. “In these small towns there is neither army nor police, there are only in the big cities like Timbuktu or Goundam. In the smaller towns there are only patrols of soldiers who pass by from time to time and who cannot completely protect the population.”
For the well-known Malian blogger, this is a crime that aims to send a message to women. «They attack us first, as happened in 2012. For example, they do not allow women to move between cities in Mali without wearing the hijab. Now they come to send a message against women by beating down a woman in cold blood. tiktoker to tell women that they have not forgotten us and that they will come back for us. It is a warning about the whole ordeal they will put us through if they take control of Mali one day,” adds Harber.
Since last September, Mali has faced an intensification of jihadist attacks in the center and west of the country and a blockade imposed by terrorists on the entry of fuel from neighbors Senegal and Ivory Coast. The jihadists managed to hinder the entry of tankers loaded with fuel, which they stopped and set on fire at the checkpoints they set up on the entry roads to the capital Bamako. As a result of these actions, there is a large shortage of fuel in the country and many citizens access it through an emerging black market.
Given this situation, and due to the instability that could result from it, several countries such as Spain, the United States, Germany, Italy and France have advised their citizens to consider leaving the country.
“We live with fear in our bodies,” Harber concludes. “It is said that they will also attack Bamako, we can no longer leave the city by road.” Fears increased by the recent payment of at least 50 million euros to the JNIM, according to sources close to the government, for the rescue of three foreign citizens – two Emiratis and an Iranian – kidnapped about 40 kilometers from Bamako.
The military junta that governs Mali after the 2020 coup d’état allied itself with Wagner’s Russian mercenaries (now Africa Corps) in an attempt to stop the jihadist advance, whose insurrection broke out in 2012, but these terrorist groups are far from having been defeated and operate in an increasingly large territory.
