Making sense of Mali's armed groups

Al-Qaeda gets the most attention, but local groups and ethnic fighters are part of a complicated mix of instability.

Over the last decade a few local Ifoghas, Tuaregs and Arabs joined AQIM in Mali, and their members also inter-married with the community. However now that AQIM are openly circulating in the main cities of northern Mali, and thanks to its association with local groups like Ansar al Din, the group has become more mainstream. Now youths from southern Mali, Senegal, Niger and other countries have come to join them under the rubric of the Islamic Police which AQIM has a direct hand in running.
AQIM's top leader is the Algerian Abdel Malek Droukdel aka Abu Musab abdel Wadoud, although it also has an Emir for the Sahara named Yahia Abou Hammam, and a number of brigades headed by famous Saharan characters such as the one-eyed Algerian trafficker Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Hamid Abou Zaid, another Algerian. The exact leadership structures in the Sahara are not clear.
Making sense of Mali's armed groups - Features - Al Jazeera English