I will leave a rather personal and subjective comment

I will leave a rather personal and subjective comment. I have great sympathy for Moussa Ag Asharatuman, even though his paths have diverged from the Azawadi movement, which I support, and despite the fact that some of his speeches have aroused skepticism in the last couple of years, I consider him a very smart, sensible, charismatic politician. He is accused by some Azawad supporters of supporting Mali for selfish reasons, and I continue to believe that he chooses the best path from his point of view out of the many bad ones in the current situation in order to preserve his ethnic group and defend his political vision. And I'm very worried about the outcome of his fight against ISIS. Not everything is as rosy there as Departamente writes. A lot of people are "returning to normal life" under the wing of ISIS (which, in my opinion, should not have been allowed, because it means that now, fighting ISIS, you will inevitably fight with the population). This fight against ISIS is being waged using methods that have already been used many times and under familiar narratives — the same methods and narratives that have not led to success anywhere else. Yes, ISIS can be suppressed — for the reason that they deliberately set everyone against themselves (only these people don't always know how to unite and act effectively at once), but they can't be eradicated. In Africa, IG is expanding year by year, this applies not only to the Sahel, but also to Congo, Mozambique, and Nigeria. The propaganda presence of ISIS has also become very noticeable — I now constantly see their supporters on Twitter, they also wrote that they have spread on Facebook. Mega-corporations that run social networks are increasingly on their wavelength, and that's why censorship is taking on some strange forms, banning one thing for no reason, but skipping the propaganda of radical Islamism (I have an extremely difficult attitude towards censorship on social networks, so this is not a call for Musk to ban everything immediately, but rather an example, confirming my concerns about the growing influence of ISIS).

Hopefully, Moussa Ag Asharatuman and his movement will not fall into a trap similar to that of the Kurds of Rojava: too much reliance on external forces under the auspices of "we are fighting universal evil, so we will be supported and not abandoned," too little attention to the local population, which is not always it is so hostile to ISIS, as simplified propaganda narratives portray it — yes, ISIS is just terrible and really killed a thousand people in Menaka and Gao in 2022 and continues to execute here and there, but at the same time they are also well-educated and, having cleared the territory, are now working to restore ties with the population; in this In terms of information about the arbitrariness committed by pro-Malian militias, in particular, complaining about GATIA on social networks, I do not know the scale of the problem, but if it is large— part of the population may prefer the harsh order of the IG than the chaos and arbitrariness of pro-Malian structures. There are much fewer complaints about Moussa Ag Asharatuman's MSA on social media.

And, not to end on a sad note, in the comments from time to time, supporters of Moussa Ag Asharatuman propose to make him president of Mali. I suspect that the settled population of the south will never choose and accept a Tuareg president from the north. Otherwise, it is possible that this would be the best choice for Mali.

Source: Telegram "strana_tuaregov"