[7] The organization is not to be confused with the Sufi movement Ançar Dine, founded in Southern Mali in the 1990s by Chérif Ousmane Madani Haïdara, which is fundamentally opposed to militant Islamism.

[6] In April 2012, Salma Belaala, a professor at Warwick University who does research on jihadism in North Africa said that this association was false, claiming that Ansar Dine was opposed to Al Qaeda.

[13] Omar Ould Hamaha, who served as Ansar Dine's spokesman after April 2012, became the military leader of the AQIM-affiliated Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA) in August 2012.

Witnesses had said that Ansar Dine fighters wore long beards and flew black flags with the shahada (Islamic creed) emblazoned in white.

[25][26][27] According to different reports, unlike the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), Ansar Dine did not seek independence but rather to keep Mali intact and convert it into a rigid theocracy.

The Agence France-Presse reported that Ansar Dine claimed to occupy the towns of Tinzaouaten, Tessalit, and Aguelhok, all close to the Algerian border, and that they had captured at least 110 civilian and military prisoners.

[28] That day, Ag Ghaly gave a radio interview in Timbuktu announcing that Sharia would be enforced in the city, including the veiling of women, the stoning of adulterers, and the punitive mutilation of thieves.

[33] Ansar Dine was reportedly responsible for the burning of the tomb of the Sufi saint Sidi Mahmoud Ben Amar, a World Heritage Site, on 4 May in Timbuktu.

[42] In late January 2013, during the French Operation Serval against the Islamist fighters in Northern Mali, a faction split off from Ansar Dine, led by Alghabass Ag Intalla(h).