In March 2012, the President of Mali
Amadou Toumani Touré was ousted in a
coup d'état over his handling of an insurgency in Northern Mali. As a consequence of the instability that followed, Mali's three largest northern cities—Kidal, Gao and Timbuktu—were overrun by a mixture of
Islamists and
Tuareg Nationalists. By July, the Tuareg were pushed out by their former allies, and the area became dominated by
Jihadist groups:
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM),
Ansar Dine, and the
Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). In January 2013, the Islamists
captured the town of
Konna in Central Mali, after fierce fighting with Malian forces. They were driven out by French forces days later, the start of a French-led military intervention known as
Operation Serval. However, some fighters were able to retreat to hideouts in the mountains or deserts and regroup. Ethnic
Fulani veterans of the conflict make up the core of the group. The Fulani are around 9 percent of Mali's population, but are locally dominant in the
Mopti Region, which was the center of the 19th Century Fulani-led Islamic state of
Macina. ==History==