What is Al-Qaeda's 'Anaconda strategy' unfolding in Mali?
Al-Qaeda's affiliate Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) is dispensing justice, collecting taxes, enforcing its own rules, and squeezing the state in what analysts now call an "anaconda strategy". Only a few towns in the West African country remain firmly under state control. JNIM holds influence or shadows the government in the rest of the country.