Pragmatism and Purism in Jihadist Governance: The Islamic Emirate of Azawad Revisited

The Islamic Emirate established in northern Mali in 2012 was brought down less than a year later by a French military intervention, provoked by the Emirate’s belligerent posture. This article explains why the leaders of the Emirate appeared to govern in a way that jeopardized the state’s survival, despite AQIM’s leadership calling for a cautious approach. Based on novel primary sources, this article provides a detailed view of governance practices in the Emirate, showing that they were in fact considerably more pragmatic than hitherto assumed. Furthermore, it argues that both AQIM and the leaders of the Emirate in the end were more concerned with the long-term prospects of jihadist expansion in the region than with the survival of the Emirate itself. In 2012, jihadist1 groups overran all of northern Mali and established what became known as the Islamic Emirate of Azawad,2 the largest contingent territory ever held by groups affiliated with al-Qaida. Even though the leadership of AQIM (al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghrib) admonished the people in charge to govern pragmatically and avoid provocations, the newborn state quickly gained notoriety for harsh governance and belligerence to the outside world, provoking a French military intervention that crushed the Islamic Emirate of Azawad less than a year after it was declared. The purpose of this article is to explain why the leaders of the Islamic Emirate of Azawad (henceforth “the Emirate” for short) seemingly ignored the AQIM leadership’s calls for pragmatism and chose to govern in a way that jeopardized the state’s survival. I rely on previously unused and underused sources to provide an in-depth analysis of the internal debates on governance within AQIM and its partner group Ansar Dine, as well as an account of actual governance practices in the Emirate. In light of this material, I find that the leaders of the Emirate were considerably more pragmatist in their governance than what has hitherto been recognized in the literature. While there were important differences in policy preferences between them, I argue that a binary opposition between a pragmatist AQIM leadership and an ideologically purist Emirate is too reductive. The more hardline governance pursued by the Emirate was not primarily a matter of ideological concerns trumping the AQIM leadership’s pragmatic ones, but represented © 2022 the Author(s). Published with license by taylor & francis Group, llC. CONTACT Vidar B. Skretting vidar-benjamin.skretting@ffi.no norwegian defence research establishment (ffi), Postboks 25, Kjeller 2027, norway *university of oslo, norway https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2021.2007562 this is an open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 21 June 2021 Accepted 30 October 2021