AQIM’s Next Generation Mauritanian Theologian, Archivist and Mediator: Abu Numan Qutayba al-Shinqiti

AQIM’s Next Generation Mauritanian Theologian, Archivist and Mediator: Abu Numan Qutayba al-Shinqiti

Since al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)’s formation in 2007, its most important members have not only been militants, but also theologians. The latter, such as Abu Ubaydah Yusuf Annabi, have justified AQIM’s tactics, including suicide bombings, and AQIM’s targeting, including on Algerian and West African security forces and Western civilians (France24, May 30, 2019). Although other leading AQIM theologians, like Abu al-Hassan Rasheed al-Bulaydi, who was eulogized by Aymen al-Zawahiri in 2015, have been Algerian, a significant number of younger AQIM theologians are Mauritanian (As-Sahab, January 16, 2017). One increasingly influential and young Mauritanian AQIM theologian is Abu Numan Qutayba al-Shinqiti. [1]

The Theologian

Little seems to have been reported about al-Shinqiti’s upbringing or education. However, like other Mauritanian AQIM commanders and theologians—including, for example, former Mali-based Hamadou Kheiry and Khalid al-Shinqiti—he likely joined after the Mauritanian government’s crackdown on Islamists in 2003, or after AQIM’s predecessor, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), rebranded as AQIM in 2007 (Al-Akhbar, March 11, 2012). This coincided with GSPC-turned-AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel’s pledge of loyalty to Osama bin Laden.

Whenever al-Shinqiti joined AQIM, it was not until 2015 that he first appeared publicly on a jihadist magazine’s cover, which featured one of his poems (Al-Huda Issue #1, December 2015). He also appeared separately a year earlier in an AQIM video, which detailed AQIM’s release of the French-Serbian hostage Serge Lazarevic (rfi.fr, December 9, 2014; Al-Andalus, December 21, 2015). In the video, al-Shinqiti maintained the aura of an Islamic scholar, despite his relatively youthful age, especially compared to the likes of Annabi and al-Bulaydi. Captioned as a sharia judge and sitting beside several veiled AQIM members, he exalted God for granting AQIM success and thanked God for the release of AQIM members in exchange for Lazarevic. In addition, he cited the seventh-century Muslim caliph, Omar ibn Khattab, to assert that “rescuing one Muslim captive is dearer to me than expelling the polytheists from the Arabian Peninsula” (Al-Andalus, December 21, 2015).

Al-Shinqiti lastly introduced the fighters beside him in the video, whose names indicated they were likely from Mali (al-Bambari and al-Fulani), Western Sahara (al-Sahrawi) and Tunisia (al-Tunisi). Three other militants’ names in the video lacked ethnic or geographic connotation, however. Because Lazarevic was kidnapped in Mali in 2011 and released to Niger’s government in Niamey, and several fighters surrounding al-Shinqiti were from the Sahel, al-Shinqiti evidently had experience in the region and was operating there.

The Archivist

Al-Shinqiti’s presence in the Sahel was also evidenced by his role in archiving AQIM correspondence with Boko Haram. In 2010, for example, Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau wrote to AQIM’s Sahel-based Tariq ibn Ziyad brigade commander, Abu Zeid, thanking him for AQIM’s generosity in providing approximately $215,000 (200,000 euros) and training to Boko Haram members (Al-Andalus, April 2017).

Abu Zeid and AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdel also exchanged back-and-forth letters in August and December 2009, with Abu Zeid’s correspondence explaining the visit to the Sahel by Boko Haram members, including Khalid al-Barnawi, where they requested support from AQIM before waging jihad in Nigeria. Droukdel’s correspondence promised media, financial, weapons, and training support to Boko Haram. Further, before Khalid al-Barnawi formed the breakaway faction Jama`at Ansar al-Muslimin fi Bilad al-Sudan (Ansaru), which separated from Boko Haram in January 2012, he wrote to another Sahel-based Mauritanian AQIM commander, Abdullah al-Shinqiti, explaining the reasons why coexistence with Abubakar Shekau was impossible. This resulted in Abu al-Hassan Rasheed al-Bulaydi and another Algerian AQIM sharia judge approving Ansaru’s separation from Boko Haram in late 2011 (Al-Andalus, April 2017).

All of this correspondence passed through Abu Numan Qutayba al-Shinqiti at one point. In 2017, AQIM’s al-Andalus media agency published excerpts of those correspondence with al-Shinqiti’s interspersed narration, which provided context and extra details about those correspondence. Al-Shinqiti claimed he had been in southwestern Mali’s Wagadou Forest from 2009 to 2011, which was consistent with his involvement in the Lazarevic hostage exchange and archiving these letters about Boko Haram’s training in the Sahel. Al-Shinqiti also wrote in his narration that he had learned that 20 “Nigerian brothers” participated in AQIM’s raid on Mauritanian troops in Hassi Sidi, Mali in September 2010, which was near Wagadou Forest, and that the spoils from that raid were rendered to Nigeria. He further mentioned a rarely known piece of information about Nigerians having joined AQIM’s predecessor, the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), as early as 1994 (Al-Andalus, April 2017; Al-Andalus, September 22, 2010).

The Mediator

 The strategic reasoning for AQIM publishing the aforementioned, originally secret correspondence was that, in 2017, AQIM’s rivalry with Islamic State was intensifying. The correspondence demonstrated that AQIM had disapproved of Boko Haram’s—and specifically Abubakar Shekau’s—excessive use of takfir (excommunication) against fellow Muslims. More broadly, this also supported AQIM’s narratives against Islamic State’s similar employment of excessive takfir.

Al-Shinqiti has continued supporting AQIM’s counter-Islamic State messaging. Since at least January 2020, for example, AQIM’s Sahel-based sub-affiliate, Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), began clashing with Islamic State’s affiliate in the Sahel, known as Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS) (Nordsudjournal.com, April 6). Moreover, there were reports of JNIM members defecting to ISGS (Timbuktu-institute.org, January 20). In the midst of these challenges, al-Shinqiti published two treatises in early 2020 (Al-Zallaqa, February 20).

The first one was called “Responding to Suspicions You Do Not Apply Sharia,” which attempted to justify JNIM’s more cautious approach to implementing sharia in comparison to Islamic State. This resembled Abdelmalek Droukdel’s advice in 2012 to jihadists who controlled territory in northern Mali. He advised the jihadists to gradually introduce sharia to local populations to win their support. However, this has left AQIM vulnerable to Islamic State accusations of abandoning sharia (Internal Letter, October 3, 2012). The second treatise, “Year of the Group,” reflected al-Shinqiti’s openness to potential reconciliation with Islamic State, or at least an attempt to not fight the group and instead work toward mutual goals of, for example, combatting the Malian army and its French backers. This indicated that, like al-Shinqiti’s contribution to publishing the AQIM correspondence with Boko Haram to challenge Islamic State’s ideology, he was again doing the same, albeit with a subtle olive branch to the rival organization.

Conclusion

Abu Numan Qutayba al-Shinqiti represents a new generation of Mauritanian theologians that may replace Algerian theologians in AQIM, who are aging and increasingly distanced from the main battlefields in the Sahel. While al-Shinqiti does not appear to have taken on combat roles, his theological contributions to AQIM and, more recently, JNIM are supplemented by archiving key documents, taking part in hostage exchanges and counter-messaging Islamic State. He thus appears set to become one of AQIM’s and JNIM’s key public figures in the future, especially if JNIM’s rivalry with ISGS continues to show signs of escalation.

Notes