The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara is a terrorist militant group with a Salafi Jihadism ideology. ISIS-GS was formed on 15 May 2015 as the result of a split within the militant group Al-Mourabitoun. The rift was a reaction to the adherence of one of its leaders, Adnane Abou Walid al-Sahraoui, to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Al-Mourabitoun was created on 22 August 2013 after the merging of MUJAO and El-Mouaguiine Biddam. On 13 May 2015, MUJAO pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in a statement by the group's leader, Walid al-Sarhaoui. It operated independently until 30 October 2016, when it was formally recognised by the Islamic State. In December 2015, about 100 militants pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. The group's ranks increased by dozens of Mali militants and sympathizers from the Gao Region near Ménaka. On November 28, 2019, Spanish authorities issued a warning on the possibility of a terror attack in the region against Spanish citizens visiting or working in the Saharawi refugee camps in Western Sahara. Spanish authorities feared the attacks would coincide with the Spanish Día de la Constitución celebrations. Secret services warned of the risk of a jihadist attack in the Sahara region at refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria. Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic denied this threat.
Organization, forces and location
Commanding officers
The group was founded and is headed by Adnane Abou Walid Al-Sahraoui. Al-Sahraoui may have been replaced towards the end of 2019 by a new emir, Abdoul Hakim Al-Sahraoui. Among his other commanders are Doundoun Chefou, Illiassou Djibo alias Petit Chafori and Mohamed Ag Almouner, known as "Tinka", killed by the French army on August 26, 2018.
Forces
In early 2017, Marc Mémier, a researcher at the French Institute for International Relations, estimated that the Islamic State in the Grand Sahara had a few dozen men - not counting sympathizers - mostly Malians in the region of Gao. At the end of 2015, RFI indicated that the group's workforce would total around one hundred. According to a report from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, the EIGS had 425 combatants in August 2018.
Settlement area and ethnic base
The group is based in the Ménaka region. As with other armed groups in the Sahel, jihadists or not, the EIGS is part of a largely community-based dynamic. A large part of its combatants are thus Peuls. In Mali, the latter are for the most part Nigerien nationals whom the droughts and the demographic surge of Zarma and Hausa peasants, which is exerted from the south to the north, have pushed on the Malian side of the border. Adnane Abou Walid Al-Sahraoui has won the support of many members of this community by promising to protect them against raids and theft of cattle carried out by the Tuaregs, starting with the Dahoussahak. However, the EIGS would include members from the two communities. Thus, at present, the combatants of the EIGS are divided into two katibas, one composed mainly of Daoussahak and the other of Peuls.
