Mali crisis: strategic stakes and shifting alliances in the Sahel

Since 2012, Mali has been grappling with a deep multidimensional crisis that has reshaped the geopolitical landscape of the Sahel. The gradual erosion of central state authority has given rise to territorial fragmentation, where armed groups and foreign powers compete for influence. Long a cornerstone of Western counterterrorism strategies—first through the French Serval operation in 2013 and later Barkhane in 2014—Mali made a historic shift in 2022 by demanding the withdrawal of French troops. This move marked a pivot toward Russia, embedding a sovereignist narrative at the heart of the country’s political discourse.

The juncture was formalized in 2023 with the creation of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), uniting Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger in a bid to redefine regional dynamics outside Western influence. Yet this bold drive for full sovereignty now confronts harsh military and diplomatic realities. Coordinated offensives by the JNIM (Group for Support of Islam and Muslims) and the FLA (Azawad Liberation Front), combined with internal instability at the highest levels and the shifting role of Russian paramilitary forces, are straining the foundations of this new alliance.

What does the current security collapse—and the negotiated withdrawal of Africa Corps from Kidal—reveal about the fragility of the AES’s sovereignist project amid the complex tug-of-war between Algeria and Russia?

Military command collapse: from April 25 offensive to the fall of Kidal

The crisis escalated with a series of ominous signals: the targeted killing of a Malian soldier in Konna on April 20, followed by an attack by the Islamic State in the Sahel on Tessit two days later. The porous defense lines exposed the fragility of the Malian state’s authority. The arrest of high-profile generals such as Abass Demblélé and Kéba Sangaré highlighted a climate of fear, where security services were deployed less to protect the nation than to preserve the ruling junta. With the withdrawal of French forces, a security vacuum emerged that domestic solutions—even with Russian support—struggled to fill.

The deployment of Wagner-affiliated forces has led to a marked increase in violence against civilians, framed under a brutal counterinsurgency campaign epitomized by the Mourrah operation. As territorial control slipped further, the junta’s sovereignist rhetoric clashed with the harsh reality of operational failure.

On April 25, a coordinated assault struck multiple key locations simultaneously: Mopti, Konna, Sévaré, Bourem, Gao, Bamako’s Senou airport, and the Kati garrison. In Kati, a vehicle laden with explosives destroyed the residence of the Defense Minister, killing Sadio Camara and severely wounding Generals Modibo Koné and Oumar Diarra. The hasty exfiltration of President Assimi Goïta laid bare the collapse of Mali’s politico-military command, revealing the vulnerability of the regime’s core.

That same evening, the JNIM claimed responsibility for the attacks in an official statement and, together with the FLA, announced the capture of Kidal. By April 26, Africa Corps forces had negotiated a withdrawal corridor and abandoned the city, leaving behind critical equipment and munitions. The rapid retreat stripped Russia of a strategic foothold in the Sahel.

By April 27, the presidency remained silent while the army issued a vague statement about “redeployment,” a stark misrepresentation of ground realities. Reports from local and regional sources described disorderly troop movements, desertions, and severed communications between command centers.

Between April 28 and May 1, the situation deteriorated further. A wave of coordinated attacks paralyzed vital supply routes linking Gao, Ménaka, and Ansongo, effectively isolating key eastern garrisons. Under this encirclement maneuver, Mali’s security apparatus began to fracture. Several loyalist units retreated toward Ségou and Koulikoro, driven by relentless pressure from armed groups and deepening internal command disarray.

Parallel skirmishes erupted between army factions, fueling rumors of an impending coup. The prolonged absence of Assimi Goïta from the public eye intensified speculation about a potential power vacuum. On May 2, amid mounting tensions, diplomatic initiatives led by Algeria and Mauritania sought to broker a political solution—yet their success hinged on an increasingly complex battlefield reality: the tactical alignment between the FLA and JNIM.

FLA–JNIM alliance: historical trajectories, asymmetric warfare, and control of strategic corridors

The alliance between the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) and the Group for Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) now stands as one of the most pivotal turning points in Mali’s crisis. Two historically distinct trajectories have converged toward a shared objective: to oust the Malian junta and reshape power dynamics across northern and central regions. Yet this convergence is driven above all by a bid to reclaim control over the economic arteries that fuel the Sahel’s illicit economies.

The FLA’s roots lie in the Tuareg uprisings of the 1990s, 2006, and 2012, movements rooted in long-neglected identity and territorial demands. The Tamanrasset Agreements of 1991 and the Algiers Accords of 2006 and 2015 attempted to address these grievances, but incomplete implementation entrenched a lasting sense of marginalization. After 2015, internal divisions, tribal rivalries, and purges by the junta weakened Tuareg structures, paving the way for a recomposition whose most recent expression is the FLA.

The JNIM emerged from the transformation of the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) and later Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), consolidating its Malian presence from the early 2000s. Its current structure stems from a 2017 merger of Ansar Dine, Al-Mourabitoune, and the Macina Katiba, all unified under Iyad Ag Ghali. Since 2025, the group has pursued an ambiguous “localization” strategy: positioning itself as a local political interlocutor while sustaining extreme violence, marked by widespread human rights abuses and decentralized power structures aligned with local entities.

This approach allows the JNIM to expand influence across rural areas of central and northern Mali, exploiting community tensions, corruption, and government inefficiency.

The FLA–JNIM alliance leverages advanced asymmetric warfare tactics. The JNIM’s operational strength lies in hybrid, sophisticated methods: vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs) to breach defenses, rapid motorbike assaults to exploit gaps, nighttime infiltrations, and widespread use of IEDs to paralyze army movements. Targeted assassinations and systematic harassment of isolated garrisons erode troop morale and fracture local command chains. Mastery of drone technology and anti-aircraft tactics further cements their battlefield advantage during skirmishes, even if they cannot hold fortified positions.

The FLA brings critical territorial expertise: intimate knowledge of desert tracks, rapid mobility, lightning strikes, tribal network exploitation, and the ability to hold symbolic zones like Kidal. The group also possesses an effective intelligence service. The April 26 withdrawal of Africa Corps—after negotiating a safe exit—confirmed Bamako’s loss of control over northern Mali.

Beyond military dimensions, the conflict is also a struggle for control over resources and trade routes—both legal and illicit. By securing the Kidal–Gao–Mopti triangle, the JNIM and FLA seek to sanctuarize transit corridors essential to the war economy. Control over these routes enables financing through the capture of rents from smuggling networks (gold, fuel) and illegal trafficking (drugs, migration), turning territorial dominance into a vital financial lever. Similar dynamics play out along the Bamako–Kayes–Bakel axis, where tolls are extracted daily from the 3,000 trucks supplying Mali via Dakar’s port.

The blockade of Saharan corridors has saturated the army’s response capabilities, transforming a mobile war into systemic collapse. The rapid fall of Kidal, Gao, and Sévaré underscores the complementary effectiveness of the FLA–JNIM alliance in the face of a now headless Malian command. The loss of regime pillars and rumors of a coup in Bamako confirm that the crisis is no longer merely security-related—it threatens the very existence of the Malian state.

This political and military vacuum plays into the hands of the Islamic State in the Sahel (EIS), which is exploiting state collapse to extend its influence.

Islamic State in the Sahel (EIS): the prime beneficiary of Sahelian chaos

The Islamic State in the Sahel (EIS) stands today as the most volatile and unpredictable actor. Since 2023, it has consolidated its presence in the Ménaka–Ansongo corridor, capitalizing on the collapse of state structures and rivalries among armed groups to expand control over the Mali–Niger borderlands. Unlike the JNIM, which seeks to “localize” its struggle, the EIS pursues a strategy of expansion rooted in terror. It eliminates perceived hostile communities and captures commercial routes. The breakdown of Malian command now opens a strategic space that the EIS could exploit—either by challenging the JNIM for jihadist leadership or seizing new sanctuaries in a fragmented territory.

As the AES remains unable to pool its forces, the EIS emerges as the primary potential beneficiary of Mali’s crisis. This dynamic is accentuated by the hasty withdrawal of Africa Corps from key zones, leaving a security void that neither the Malian army nor regional allies can currently fill.

Africa Corps in Mali: the end of the Russian exception

Since 2022, Russia has used Mali as a security laboratory and strategic projection point across the Sahel. Operating as a custom security broker, Moscow provides weapons, trainers, mercenaries, and protection in exchange for mining concessions, logistical access, and political advantages. Russia’s strategy is purely extractive: securing gold and lithium deposits takes precedence over any developmental goals for Mali.

Five years after Wagner’s initial deployment, Russian paramilitary presence has been institutionalized under the Africa Corps banner. This contingent, comprising 1,000 to 1,200 personnel (instructors, drone specialists, protection units), operates under direct oversight of the Russian Defense Ministry through a tactical headquarters in Bamako. Despite this structured network linking the capital to critical zones like Mopti, Gao, and Kidal, the security outcome has been paradoxical. Far from restoring stability, escalating violence and loss of rural control highlight the limits of armed group containment. This underscores the operational shortcomings of a “proxy security” model that remains disconnected from Mali’s territorial realities.

The reverses suffered in Kidal and Gao at the end of April 2026 reveal the structural failure of the junta–Africa Corps partnership. The negotiated withdrawal of Russian forces signals a major tactical rupture, transforming the once-vaunted “strategic partner” into a retreating actor. Even more telling, the JNIM’s direct outreach to the Kremlin—proposing a non-aggression pact that deliberately excludes the Malian government—seals Bamako’s diplomatic isolation and confirms that the center of decision-making no longer resides with the junta.

Russia’s position is further weakened by Turkey’s rising influence as an alternative security actor. In recent months, Ankara has supplied Bamako with drones, precision munitions, light armored vehicles, and surveillance systems. These assets—more flexible, faster to deliver, and often cheaper—appeal to segments of the Malian military. They also stoke internal rivalries within the junta: some officers lean toward Turkey, while others remain aligned with Russia. This competition further undermines command cohesion, already shaken by the death of Defense Minister Sadio Camara, the injuries to General Modibo Koné, and Assimi Goïta’s prolonged absence from the public sphere. Additionally, the deployment of Turkish private forces to protect the junta leader suggests a disavowal of Russian contingents, whose influence now appears in question.

Finally, Russia’s posture in the Sahel has undergone a radical shift: from an offensive sovereignist stance to a defensive retreat. Africa Corps’ inability to secure vital supply routes or maintain control over Kidal exposes structural limitations in Moscow’s security offering amid a multisectoral threat. Concurrently, Turkey’s rising profile weakens Russia’s leverage in Mali.

This vacuum left by Mali’s fractured command structure forces a return to regional diplomacy. Algeria, acting as a silent pivot, emerges as the key player in reshaping Sahelian balance.

Algeria: the silent pivot in Sahelian realignment

Since the 1990s, Algeria has played a central role in managing Mali’s crisis. It sponsored the Tamanrasset Agreements in 1991 and the Algiers Accords in 2006 and 2015. For Algiers, northern Mali is a vital buffer zone for national security. Its doctrine rests on two strategic pillars: preventing the presence of foreign forces along its borders and maintaining a delicate balance among local armed groups in the Sahara.

Algeria seeks a Mali that is neither entirely collapsed nor fully autonomous—one that remains dependent on its mediation for stability. To achieve this, Algiers leverages historical ties with Tuareg communities while monitoring jihadist groups descended from the GSPC and AQIM. Many leaders of Sahelian terrorist organizations trace their roots to Algeria’s 1990s insurgency. By keeping a watchful eye—or “eye in the sand”—over these groups in Mali, Algeria ensures that the Malian sanctuary does not become a rear base for attacks on its northern frontier.

Algeria’s Sahel strategy historically relied on the “Tuareg lever,” using Azawad movements as a permanent counterweight against Bamako. Yet this diplomatic architecture has collapsed under a double rupture. First, the Malian junta shattered Algeria’s foundational doctrine by inviting massive Russian intervention through Africa Corps. Second, rapprochement efforts between Algiers and Nouakchott have accelerated, backed by Mauritanian political support and regional financing.

Moreover, Morocco’s growing influence with the Malian junta now compels Algeria to tighten its regional vigilance. Mali has become the epicenter of a diplomatic confrontation between Rabat and Algiers. By facilitating the AES’s access to the Atlantic Ocean and deepening economic partnerships, Morocco is extending its influence across the Sahel. For Algeria, Morocco’s presence on its southern border is interpreted as a “strategic encirclement maneuver.”

In the current crisis, Algeria emerges as the silent but decisive actor. It refused the presence of Russian mercenaries in Kidal and secured Moscow’s compliance with a withdrawal aligned with its security doctrine. This positions Algiers as the indispensable mediator—though contested by Bamako—for any future political or military realignment.

Yet Algeria must contend with the rise of the AES. Despite political unity against foreign influence, the alliance struggles to translate rhetoric into tangible military capabilities.

The AES: a political project facing operational impotence

Established in September 2023, the Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—comprising Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—was founded on a sovereignist ambition: to break free from regional organizations, resist international pressure, and achieve security autonomy.

The alliance boasts ambitious goals, from creating a joint counterterrorism force to establishing a common market and a logistics corridor to the Atlantic. To support this vision, the three juntas have forged partnerships with new strategic allies including Russia, Turkey, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. Yet these plans remain largely aspirational.

Like the proposed joint force announced by the three regimes, the AES exists largely in declarative form due to the absence of an integrated command, a unified doctrine, or deployable operational capabilities. Beyond the apparent use of drones—whose operational deployment seems shared between national forces and Turkish contractors—a veil of opacity shrouds practical implementation. The AES’s total inaction during the fall of Kidal and subsequent coordinated attacks laid bare the chasm between political ambition and military reality. The alliance’s silence during Kidal’s capture underscored the disconnect between rhetoric and ground truth.

The three AES member states are mired in deep crises. Security-wise, border control is eroding under the pressure of armed group proliferation. Economically, sanctions and investment droughts are suffocating growth. Institutionally, repeated purges are fracturing national cohesion.

Moreover, the rupture with ECOWAS isolates the AES, leaving it without regional partners capable of compensating for its military weaknesses.

Thus, the AES functions more as a tool for political legitimization for incumbent regimes than as a military alliance capable of delivering lasting stability to the region.

This gap between AES ambitions and ground realities ushers in a period of profound uncertainty. Beyond existing alliances, it is essential to analyze Sahelian dynamics to sketch predictive scenarios for regional realignment.

Sahel dynamics: predictive analysis of regional realignment scenarios

A predictive geopolitical lens helps decode weak signals and anticipate strategic ruptures that could redefine the regional balance. This methodological approach reveals four potential trajectories, contingent on evolving power dynamics and actor interactions.

The central scenario foresees a stagnation of tensions, marked by continued attacks and economic degradation, confining the AES to a political framework without concrete military translation. Conversely, a scenario of relative stabilization could emerge if Algerian mediation succeeds in brokering a peace initiative that reduces JNIM and FLA offensives.

Yet the risk of rapid deterioration looms large: a major terrorist attack on a strategic target could precipitate a security and social collapse. Finally, a rupture scenario cannot be ruled out—an unforeseen event such as an internal coup or social explosion could abruptly overthrow the ruling junta.

The Sahel at the mercy of power vacuums: toward total regional realignment

Assimi Goïta’s grip on power now hangs by a thread, contingent on his ability to restore a credible command structure within a shattered state apparatus. The deaths of Sadio Camara and the sidelining of Modibo Koné have broken the junta’s security backbone. Goïta’s prolonged absence fuels speculation and internal rivalries, opening the door to a potential overthrow. The army, weakened by purges and demoralization, is no longer an instrument of sovereignty—it has become a fragmented body dependent on increasingly volatile external allies.

Since 2025, the JNIM’s blockade around Bamako has stretched the capital’s resources to the breaking point, as evidenced by the April 25 attacks. These events lay bare the vulnerability of the political center and accelerate social crisis, exposing the collapse of the state. Mali is not only losing ground militarily—it is losing control of its sovereignist narrative. The withdrawal of Africa Corps, the rise of the FLA–JNIM alliance, Turkey’s growing role, and Algeria’s assertive diplomacy reveal a nation once again open to external influence. Foreign powers are redrawing regional balances as European powers turn their attention to other global fronts.

Amid this realignment, the Malian people remain the greatest victims: enduring insecurity, diplomatic isolation, economic contraction, and a shrinking political horizon. Their sovereignty is being confiscated—first by the military, then by armed groups, and now by foreign powers—each pursuing its own agenda. The democratic project, already fragile since 2012, recedes further, and popular sovereignty grows ever more uncertain.

Beyond Mali’s borders, Burkina Faso appears as the next vulnerable link. Its porous borders, advancing armed groups, weakening institutions, and growing dependence on external partners signal that the Malian crisis is no longer an isolated episode—it heralds a sequence of destabilization whose effects will ripple far beyond central Sahel.

In facing this peril, it becomes urgent to assess the risks of Sahelian evolution in terms of its impact on Europe: migration flows, illicit trafficking, and the rise of armed groups capable of destabilizing states across the Gulf of Guinea.

The Malian crisis thus opens a profound sequence of realignment in which state collapse, the ascent of armed actors, and competition among external powers are redrawing an unstable Sahel—one whose repercussions will extend far beyond the region itself.