Tit-For-Tat Killings in Mali Escalate a Cycle of Ethnic Violence

Tit-For-Tat Killings in Mali Escalate a Cycle of Ethnic Violence
Malian troops join with former rebels during a joint patrol, Gao, Mali, Feb. 23, 2017 (AP photo by Baba Ahmed).

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent.

With the massacre of at least 35 civilians this week in a small village in central Mali, including 24 children, the country’s ongoing cycle of ethnic violence appears to be escalating.

A militant Islamist uprising that began in 2012 exacerbated existing tensions between the region’s pastoralist Dogon communities and the semi-nomadic Fulani herders, in the form of tit-for-tat killings between the two ethnic groups. The scale and intensity of those attacks are increasingly on the rise.

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