Mali’s government is an internationally isolated military junta teetering on the brink of collapse in the face of an armed insurgency. So why is everyone beating a path to its door?
Talking to the generals
In west Africa this week on his first official trip since taking office, it is no surprise that United States assistant secretary of state for African affairs Frank Garcia is visiting Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire. Nigeria is the region’s most populous state, its biggest economy and a serious military actor, while Côte d’Ivoire is an increasingly important security and economic partner for Washington.
More interesting is Garcia’s decision to visit Mali, whose military government turned away from France and other western powers in 2023 and depends for its security on Russia’s Africa Corps. A successor to the Wagner Group of mercenaries, the Africa Corps is directly controlled by the Russian defence ministry and it also supports military regimes in neighbouring Niger and Burkina Faso.
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met all three regimes during a visit to the region last week but confidence in the effectiveness of Moscow’s support has taken a hit in recent months as an alliance of jihadists and separatist rebels advanced southwards towards Mali’s capital, Bamako.
In a co-ordinated attack in late April the insurgents drove the Malian army and the Africa Corps out of important positions in the north of the country and killed the defence minister.
Although the government remains in control of Bamako, a blockade that has seen rebels burning hundreds of trucks entering Mali in recent months has caused severe fuel shortages in the capital. Malian forces and the Africa Corps now focus most of their effort on protecting supplies into the capital and protecting the regime, leaving fewer soldiers available to fight the rebels.
One of the poorest countries in the world, Mali is a vast, landlocked territory more than twice the size of France, almost two-thirds of which is desert. It is bordered by Algeria to the north; Niger to the east; Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea to the south; and Senegal and Mauritania to the west.
The rebel alliance is made up of al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a predominantly Tuareg separatist movement. The Tuareg are a traditionally nomadic, north African ethnic group who have been in the Sahara for thousands of years and whose homeland stretches across the borders drawn by French colonial administrators in the 19th century.
The Tuareg have been seeking self-determination since Mali gained independence from France in 1960 and Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi financed their rebel movement, recruiting and training Tuareg fighters to serve in his security forces. When Nato’s aerial bombing campaign helped to topple Gaddafi in 2011, many of his Tuareg fighters returned to Mali, taking with them truckloads of weapons including thousands of machine guns and portable anti-aircraft missiles and a lot of ammunition.
Joining forces with al-Qaeda affiliates, the newly armed Tuareg rebels launched an offensive in 2012 that could have seen them march on Bamako were it not for a French military intervention the following year. Negotiations between Mali’s government and the Tuareg separatists led in 2015 to the Algiers Accords, which promised decentralisation, more development for the north of the country and the integration of rebel fighters into the national army.
The government failed to deliver on many of its commitments and after general Assimi Goïta took power in a coup in 2021, he expelled French troops from the country, took Mali out of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas) and abrogated the Algiers Accords.
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger established the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) as an alternative to Ecowas, rejecting western military links and turning to Russia instead as a partner that offers security support without conditions related to democracy and human rights.
The failure of the Africa Corps to halt rebel advances in recent months has prompted Mali’s military regime to look beyond Russia for potential partners, signing defence agreements with Turkey and engaging more actively with the Trump administration. Mali has restored diplomatic relations with Algeria, and the African Union, which expelled Mali after the 2021 coup, sent a high-level representative to Bamako for talks this week.
The US and other western powers are encouraging co-operation between Ecowas and the AES in a cautious effort to bring Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso in from the cold. This is driven by fears that further advances by jihadist groups like JNIM could destabilise the entire region, as the head of the United Nations office for West Africa and the Sahel, Leonardo Santos Simão, warned the security council on Tuesday.
“Their attacks are co-ordinated across multiple fronts, including across countries. Their actions intersect with international organised crime and are aimed at consolidating territorial and economic control, and erosion of public confidence in state authority, with serious damage to social cohesion,” he said.
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