Mali: Sovereignty and Survival

Multiple non-state actors and outside interventions continue to threaten President Goïta’s struggle for consolidation.

Mali is the epicentre of the transnational security crisis plaguing the Sahel. Since the state’s near-collapse in 2012, Mali’s overlapping intercommunal, jihadist and separatist conflicts have spilled over into Burkina Faso, Niger and West Africa’s littoral states (IISS, 2025). After seizing power in 2021 President Assimi Goïta embraced nationalism and aligned with Russia and other military juntas in the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) to consolidate his rule. But these new partners have proved incapable of restoring the beleaguered state’s territorial integrity as its multidimensional crisis escalates.

The 2012 Rebellion

Mali’s ongoing conflict erupted when the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), consisting of Tuareg activists and combatants from Libya, launched its rebellion in January 2012. Violence in northern Mali is largely driven by successive Malian governments’ marginalisation of and crackdowns against Tuareg and Arab communities (ReliefWeb, 2012). A coup d’etat against then-President Toure in March failed to prevent the MNLA seizing Timbuktu and much of the North. By June the rebellion splintered as Islamist groups like the Al-Qaeda-aligned Ansar Dine, led by longtime political opportunist Iyad Ag Ghaly, broke away from the secular MNLA (France24, 2012).

France launched Operation Serval in January 2013 to halt jihadist advances on the capital Bamako and established the multinational Operation Barkhane in 2014 to assist the struggling Malian Armed Forces (FAM). But France and President Ibrahim Keita’s (in office 2013-2020) employment of the MNLA and local militias as proxies against the jihadists aggravated northern Mali’s intercommunal conflicts (Bernat et al, 2024, P. 118). Widespread dissatisfaction with Keita’s misrule and the French intervention’s failure to quell the insurgency created fertile ground for successive coups d’etat and Goïta’s nationalism (Chafer et al, 2024).

Conflict Outlook

Resource scarcity driven by conflicting national laws and local customs, climate change and population growth has fueled the growth of extremist groups. (Ba, 2026). The fracturing of the jihadists into Ag Ghali’s Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) coalition and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS, later renamed Islamic State Sahel Province – ISSP) originates partly from land disputes in the Mopti Region. JNIM member Katiba Macina’s decision to grant local fighters exclusive dry season grazing rights over the fertile Inner Niger Delta alienated many recruits, who defected to the more hardline ISGS because it accused JNIM of prioritizing ‘non-believers’ over the interests of the Ummah (Bøås, 2025, p.51).

Mali’s security environment is highly fluid. JNIM operates across central and southern Mali and since September 2025 has blockaded fuel supplies entering the south; ISSP operates in eastern Mali and clashes regularly with JNIM in Liptako-Gourma (the Burkina Faso-Mali-Niger tri-border zone); and in violence by the Tuareg Azawad Liberation Front followed the government’s 2024 decision to withdraw from the Algiers Accords, a 2015 agreement to end the war in Mali (IISS, 2025, P. 179). In the meantime, Goïta controls a ‘garrison state’ consisting of Bamako, regional capitals, key transport links and economic areas, despite the underperformance of the Russian forces that replaced the French presence and United Nations peacekeeping mission (Bøås, 2025, P.235).

Economic Outlook

Deteriorating security in Mali’s southwestern Kayes, Koulikoro and Sikasso regions is impacting the mining sector. Should JNIM consolidate its presence in these areas it could exploit the resources to fund its insurgency (UNOCHA, 2025). Mali is one of Africa’s largest gold producers but insecurity has stalled the commercial development of other resources, most notably the unexplored hydrocarbon reserves of the Taoudeni Basin along the Algerian border (Snorek, 2017). Rising gold and lithium prices may provide a windfall that supports the government’s fiscal consolidation. Such benefits will be limited if the government remains overly dependent on commodity exports or if its aggressive resource nationalism deters large-scale investment (Owusu, 2025; IMF, 2026).

By besieging Bamako and preventing the transit of fuel along Mali’s highways, JNIM has disrupted public services and harmed the living standards of Goïta’s urban support base (Bartos and Chin, 2025). Since January the blockade has eased as JNIM fighters were diverted to fight ISSP in Burkina Faso and the government permitted local negotiations over JNIM’s collection of taxes and imposition of Sharia law (DeAngelo, 2025). The agricultural and tertiary sectors have proved resilient and the easing of the blockade will improve Mali’s terms of trade, but heightened security spending will constrain public investment (Coface).

International Outlook

Mali’s security crisis deepened after the deployment of the Wagner Group in December 2021. Joint Wagner-FAM operations have restored government control over areas of central Mali. However, violence against civilians by Wagner, its cooperation with Dozo self-defence militias, and targeting of ethnic Fulanis (perceived as more amenable to JNIM) have aggravated intercommunal violence and undermined the state’s legitimacy in rural areas (Giustozzi, 2024). Whilst Goïta appears to appreciate Wagner and the Africa Corps’ regime security and information campaigns, the President is cautiously reducing Mali’s dependence on Russia given its inability to prevent escalating jihadist violence (Brown, 2026).

Mali’s isolation has been eased by dialogue with the US and warming ties with some West African states despite the AES’ withdrawal from ECOWAS in 2025 (Africa Intelligence, 2026). As tensions with neighbouring Algeria have risen over Mali’s withdrawal from the Algiers Accord and instability along the remote Algeria-Mali border, Morocco has offered counterterror support and invited Mali into its Atlantic Africa trade initiative (Abderrahmane, 2025; Jaabouk, 2026). Military support from the United Arab Emirates is competing with significant Turkish commitments: most notably the Bayraktar TB2 drones used by the FAM to liberate desert commune Kidal, private military contractors and Türkiye’s expanding educational and trade presence (Yochai, 2025).

Forecast

The state’s ability to govern will be corroded by JNIM’s entrenchment in the mineral-rich southwest and imposition of Sharia law and economic control over rural communities (Charles and Kerr, 2025). Delays to Mali’s return to constitutional order and tensions between Goïta and his Russophile Defence Minister Sadio Camara will hinder Mali’s regional normalisation and reengagement with Western partners (Coface). JNIM won’t fight its way into Bamako Kabul-style; instead Goïta’s reliance on repressive counterterror measures, coupled with the power vacuum outside his urban strongholds, may alienate civilians and entrench Mali’s position as a safe haven for West Africa’s jihadist insurgents.

A long-term plan to manage the gold and lithium windfall and advance the extractives industry along the value chain would deliver sustainable funding for counterinsurgency operations and development projects in economically excluded regions. Goïta’s diversification of diplomatic partners, in line with his nationalist ideology, should be extended to ECOWAS and western states to ease Mali’s isolation in West Africa and its reliance on the Africa Corps.

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