(This public photo and its racist text was published by Afrika Korps)
Does wearing Saharan clothing or a turban automatically make a person a terrorist?
In the name of the “war on terrorism,” the Russian militia Africa Corps routinely bombs Tuareg and other civilian communities.
What is unfolding is a process of identity securitization, in which people are targeted because of their appearance, Saharan clothing, or turbans.This photograph shows a shared transport vehicle carrying Tuareg civilians to a weekly market, completely destroyed in an airstrike.
Nothing in the scene indicates the presence of militants (These were innocent civilians, including a nurse serving at the community health center, our local sources confirm).
The objective of these operations appears to be less about fighting terrorism and more about altering the demographic composition of the region.
AZAWAD SUPPORT GROUP:
The expansion of colonialism beyond Europe was not limited to the political conquest of territories; it also entailed the reconfiguration of demographic, territorial, and epistemic orders through processes of dispossession, forced displacement, and, in numerous historical contexts, the elimination or marginalization of populations considered incompatible with the colonial project.
The appropriation of land was frequently preceded or accompanied by practices of ethnic cleansing, population displacement, and the destruction of indigenous political and social structures.
These dynamics did not disappear with formal decolonization. Rather, they were often rearticulated within the postcolonial nation-state, whose institutions, territorial boundaries, and governing logics largely reproduced the colonial state inherited from European rule, particularly French colonialism in the Sahel.
From a necropolitical perspective, these populations occupy what Mbembe describes as “death-worlds” – spaces in which political subjects are subjected to permanent states of insecurity, military occupation, forced exile, or conditions that progressively undermine the possibility of social and political life.
The recurrent cycles of military operations, forced displacement, and the denial of political recognition function as technologies through which sovereignty is exercised over populations considered expendable.
POLITICAL AND CULTURAL MARGINALIZATION
Moreover, the symbolic construction of the Malian nation has often privileged a cultural imaginary centered on the Bambara heartland, while peripheral identities have remained politically marginalized.
This tendency has been reflected not only in state narratives but also in linguistic practices and political discourse, where Bambara has frequently occupied a privileged position in official communication, reinforcing asymmetrical relations of cultural and political recognition.
Rather than acknowledging Mali as a historically plural political space, successive postcolonial governments have often pursued a project of national unity grounded in cultural homogenization, thereby reproducing colonial logics of inclusion and exclusion within the postcolonial state itself.
FORCED DISPLACEMENT AND DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSFORMATION IN AZAWAD
That people in the desert wearing turbans and Saharan clothing (which has always been their tradition) are getting targeted and killed under pretext of “fighting terrorism” is well-known and yes, obviously it’s clearly about altering the demographic composition of the Azawad region.
They want to empty Azawad of its original inhabitants (Tuaregs, Azawadian Moors and Fulanis, and some other light skinned people and nomads) and replace them with their own people from the south and then extract the natural resources.
These attacks are part of a broader policy of forced displacement and demographic transformation in Azawad, echoing assimilationist practices of the 1960s and 1970s, when soldiers deployed by Mali’s first post-independence government were encouraged to forcibly marry Tuareg women in order to promote their assimilation and erase the region’s cultural diversity.
In their racist rhetoric they see them as ” nomadic invasores” even though they were born there since generations, and have been living on the territory since millenia, long before colonial France force attached Azawad to Mali when that state was made in the 1960.
It’s an ethnic and demographic and cultural genocide performed by the successive Malian regimes and military juntas. And from 2022 with “help” from the Afrika Korps (ex Wagner) mercenaries flown there from Russia. And who, as it clearly seems, have taken over the massacre operations because they want the gold. And Mali pay them well, they are much better paid than the Malian army Fama, as has been stated in various reports since a longtime.
And, at the same time the Malian population suffer from lack of food, water, electricity and fuel and other things. It seems like the money, including foreign humanitarian aid, goes to pay the Russian mercenaries and this genocide of the people in Azawad instead of benefitting the Malian people, is it so?
A lot of things raises questions by the observers, including the bestialic and sadistic massacre of four civilian Tuaregs in Zarho where a cut off head and body parts were placed in the sand in the shape of a nazi swastika.
Which happened on june 23rd, 2026.
But as has been written numerous times, history shows that dictators and their murderous regimes always end up tragically in the end, it has always been that way.
IMOUHAGH INTERNATIONAL: STATEMENT OF CONDEMNATION
Here is the official condemnation press- release from Imouhagh International Organisation for the Sake of Justice and Transparency, with the names of the 11 civilian victims who were on their way to the market when the bomb hit them and ended their lives.
Statement of Condemnation.
Imuhagh International condemns in the strongest possible terms the drone strike carried out by the Malian army and Russian mercenaries of Africa Corps, which targeted a vehicle transporting market traders in the village of Intadayné, Tindermène district, Ménaka region, on June 26, 2026.
The victims are:
- Awragh Ag Intaghrist, 64 years old, chief of the village of Tamaya;
- Almouner Ag Intaghrist, 45 years old, owner of the vehicle;
- Ibrahim Ag Inazhoum, 60 years old, notable of Intadayné;
- Inawelane Ag Inalach, 35 years old, nurse at the Intadayné Community Health Center;
- Chanta Ag Ilbak, 16 years old, student at the Intadayné school;
- Itor Ag Iskwa, 15 years old;
- Ahaya, 14 years old;
- Tatebt, blacksmith, 56 years old;
- Tawadat Wallet Mohamed, 40 years old.
Imuhagh International expresses its deepest condolences to the families of the victims and calls for an independent, impartial, and transparent investigation to establish the facts, determine responsibility, and ensure that those responsible for any violation of international law are held accountable.
Angers, June 27, 2026
Imouhagh International Organisation for the Sake of Justice and Transparency, is a non-governmental organization dedicated to advocating for human rights, conflict resolution, and the rights of indigenous people. It primarily focuses on representing the Tuareg people in North Africa and the Sahel region.
Link: Imouhagh International Organisation for the Sake of Justice and Transparency
Azawad Support Group
28-06-26