The northern and central regions of Mali are no longer merely enduring the threat of sporadic armed assaults. For several years, these areas have been caught in a relentless cycle of permanent warfare and the constant exhaustion of their populations. Recent offensives by the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the Front de libération de l’Azawad (FLA) against military outposts, convoys, and vital road infrastructure reveal a significant strategic evolution among these armed factions.
These groups are no longer focused solely on seizing towns or executing spectacular operations. Their objective has shifted to progressively rendering vast swathes of territory beyond the control of the military junta, effectively cornering it within its last strongholds in Bamako.
This strategic transformation is critical because it fundamentally alters the core of the conflict. The central question is no longer who controls a specific city or military base. Instead, it has become: who can still ensure the movement of people, goods, fuel, administrative personnel, or public services?
A war against mobility
For several months, attacks targeting major roadways and military convoys have escalated. In certain regions, administrative travel has become increasingly perilous without armed escorts. This trend not only weakens the Malian army but also erodes the State’s practical capacity to maintain a presence outside major urban centers.
The JNIM appears to have grasped a crucial insight: in a state already debilitated by years of institutional, economic, and security crises, sustained attrition can yield more significant political outcomes than direct, frontal confrontations.
This strategy is notably less resource-intensive than traditional territorial conquest. It allows for the dispersal of opposing forces, inflates security expenditures, and fosters a pervasive sense of insecurity. Crucially, it cultivates collective fatigue: military exhaustion, economic strain, and social weariness.
In many rural areas, the primary concern is no longer merely the presence of armed groups. The more pressing issue has become the gradual disappearance of any stable administrative horizon.
The limitations of a purely military approach
The Malian military leadership has made security restoration a cornerstone of its political legitimacy since the successive coups. The withdrawal of French forces, followed by the increased military cooperation with Russian entities, was framed as a resurgence of national sovereignty.
However, sovereignty is not solely measured by the ability to conduct military operations. It is equally defined by the capacity to maintain territorial, economic, and administrative continuity.
Herein lies the Malian paradox: intensified military action does not necessarily translate into lasting stabilization. In some regions, it coexists with an increasing fragmentation of rural spaces.
The prevailing security doctrine largely relies on offensive operations, airstrikes, and military deployments. Yet, it struggles to rebuild a durable administrative presence, including schools, healthcare, local justice systems, infrastructure, and economic circulation.
The resulting void then generates its own dynamics. As public services vanish, local populations increasingly depend on parallel systems for protection, arbitration, or sheer survival.
The Sahel: a zone of armed reconfiguration
The Malian situation now extends beyond Mali’s borders alone. The entire Sahelian belt is experiencing a rapid reconfiguration of armed actors, local alliances, and clandestine economic networks.
The porous borders shared by Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger facilitate the mobility of armed groups. State responses, conversely, remain largely national, even as insurgent dynamics operate on a regional scale. Furthermore, the political-military alliance formed by these three nations has proven incapable of providing mutual assistance. The recent JNIM and FLA offensive underscored the fragility of this alliance and the isolation of the Malian military junta, whose only significant support comes from Africa Corps mercenaries.
This asymmetry benefits groups capable of swift adaptation. JNIM, in particular, leverages its territorial flexibility, its ability to establish local roots in specific zones, and its integration into informal economic networks.
This does not imply that JNIM permanently controls all the territories it traverses. However, it frequently succeeds in imposing a substantial security cost on the states involved.
The Sahelian conflict is thus evolving into a political war of endurance. Armed groups are less concerned with fully administering a country than with perpetually hindering the normal functioning of states.
Insights from the Malian crisis
The Malian case also exposes the limitations of a strictly antiterrorist interpretation of the Sahel crisis. Reducing the complex situation to a simple military confrontation obscures the profound social, economic, and territorial dimensions of the conflict.
In numerous rural areas, frustrations stemming from state neglect, land disputes, communal rivalries, or structural poverty create sustained vulnerabilities. Jihadist armed groups exploit these existing fractures. While they do not always create them, they are adept at leveraging them.
The central challenge, therefore, becomes political: how can state legitimacy be rebuilt in territories where the State often appears intermittently and primarily in a military guise?
This is likely where Mali’s future will be determined. Not through a single decisive battle, but through the capacity — or incapacity — to re-establish a stable public presence that extends beyond mere security operations.
Because a war of attrition does not only destroy military positions. It wears down roads, the economy, administrative structures, social bonds, and ultimately, the very notion of a governed territory.
