PREVIEW
Assimi Goïta’s regime is teetering as insurgent attacks intensify and its Russian allies withdraw
MALI: The coordinated attacks by a jihadist-Tuareg alliance have shaken the junta
Three days after Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) fighters killed defence minister Sadio Camara and destroyed his home in Kati, General Assimi Goïta finally resurfaced. After the attacks began, Goïta fled to an old air base in Bamako. The Kati attack formed part of a combined and coordinated operation with rebels of the Front de libération de l’Azawad (FLA), which targeted five localities across Mali almost simultaneously (AC Vol 67 No 9, Jihadist onslaught exposes fatal flaws in Moscow’s Sahel tactics).
Goïta’s public assertion on 28 April on national state television that ‘everything is under control’ is contradicted by reports from across the country. Kidal is firmly under FLA control. At the weekend, Russian mercenaries of the Africa Corps and Malian soldiers fled to the nearby camp that once belonged to the United Nations mission in Mali, which the junta expelled in 2024 (AC Vol 64 No 18, As Bamako pushes out the UN, Islamists seize new opportunities). Shortly afterwards, the Russians struck a deal with the FLA and were escorted out, leaving the Malians to their fate. This is likely to have far-reaching consequences for relations inside the junta and with Russia.
Elsewhere, the situation remains fluid. No one appears to control the vast sprawl of Gao, with competing claims from the Malian army and the FLA. The latter says it is holding ‘a part’ of the city and is certainly holding ground nearby, once again making it virtually impossible for ordinary citizens to enter or leave. Mali’s army and the Africa Corps have reportedly also ceded Tessit, some 150 kilometres south of Gao near the Niger border. In central Mali, JNIM looted another arsenal belonging to the Malian armed forces at Mopti, while nearby Sévaré, a vital crossroads town, seems to remain under army control.
As late as the night of 27 April, people in Bamako were hearing explosions from the airport area, where Africa Corps has its main base. Residents told Africa Confidential that people are frightened and reluctant to venture out; they fear that jihadists have melted into the population and that sleeper cells may be present in the Malian capital.
JNIM spokesman Bina Diarra on 27 April declared a full blockade of Bamako. As Africa Confidential went to press, it was unclear whether this edict was being obeyed. The army headquarters at Kati is the only place that can be said to be firmly under army control, which stands to reason: it is the battered junta’s principal fief.
Bitter blow
Camara’s death is a severe loss; he was the key link between the junta and Moscow, thanks to his command of Russian and his close links to the Russian military. Modibo Koné, head of national security and responsible for intelligence, is missing, reported to be critically injured and in hospital. Goïta reappeared unhurt and now relies on his former spokesman and national reconciliation minister Ismaël Wagué, and on Malick Diaw, who openly vied with him for the top job after the August 2020 coup.
There have always been divisions within the junta, for instance, over what to do with the perennially dysfunctional Énergie du Mali but they managed to project the image of a united front as long as they were seen to be in full control of the country and the political landscape (AC Vol 64 No 15, Not much power to the people). Bamako residents report receiving only four hours of electricity per day. The first serious crack in that image appeared with the fuel blockade of Bamako in late 2025, which further aggravated the electricity crisis.
Now, the main arguments within the junta revolve around how Malian intelligence – Koné’s remit – failed to detect months of meticulous preparation that clearly preceded these attacks, including repeated satellite communications, and around the question of how to continue with the Russians, if at all. Following the Russians’ hasty departure from Kidal, Goïta summoned the Russian ambassador, Igor Gromyko, for talks. Little imagination is needed to gauge the atmosphere – ‘betrayal’ is the word used by an anonymous government official on hearing of the Africa Corps’ negotiated withdrawal from Kidal.
Statements that Russia would be ‘by Mali’s side’ have not eased the sense of betrayal, which mirrors Mali’s reaction when France decided to reduce and reconfigure its Opération Barkhane (AC Vol 62 No 20, Toxic relationship in the Sahel). In view of the United States’s cautious rapprochement with the junta, a reconfiguration may well be in the works.
In the field, from Kidal to Gao and in Mopti and outside Bamako, Mali’s soldiers – better equipped but still badly paid – are waiting for instructions from a top brass that ran out of excuses long ago but still wishes to stay the course. The chief of staff of the armed forces has virtually no power; all authority reverts to Goïta and his junta, we are told. But this is a junta that has arrogated all power, serves only its own interests and operates without accountability.
JNIM sent a clear message to Burkina Faso and Niger, Mali’s two partners in the Alliance des États du Sahel (AES): ‘Stay out of this.’ They duly did, despite a joint defence pact and a 15,000-strong standing intervention force announced in 2024 but still yet to materialise. A realistic assessment is that Burkina Faso’s army lacks the means to help Mali and that Niger has virtually no interest in doing so. Niger can relatively easily survive on its own, thanks to its booming cross-border trade with Nigeria, its oil and its uranium.
His strident anti-imperialist pan-African rhetoric notwithstanding, General Abdourahamane Tiani is part of the same mixed military-political revolving door elite that has been in power since Seyni Kountché’s 1974 coup. The appetite to send troops into fractured Mali with a weak and divided army simply does not exist.
Stalemate
The assessment by a Sahel observer that the junta – or what remains of it – will not negotiate with either rebels or jihadists means that all foreseeable scenarios contain more violence. A stalemate has taken hold: the junta can no longer claim to be ‘in control’, and the FLA is not interested in taking over the country – it wants its Azawad. Given the terrible behaviour of its predecessor the Mouvement national de la libération de l’Azawad (MNLA), when it occupied Gao, there will be no welcoming party for the FLA if it takes full control of either Gao or Timbuktu, the two places the group says it wishes to capture.
As for JNIM, it does not have the ability to hold large swathes of land, let alone any city, nor does it appear to want to. Its leader Iyad ag Ghali repeatedly states that his movement wants Sharia law and an end to Mali’s status as a lay state, a position the junta has consistently maintained. Sharia law, while certainly not universally welcomed, could be introduced into this staunchly conservative society through negotiations that may involve the influential imam Mahmoud Dicko, who shares Ag Ghali’s agenda. The two men know each other well. Negotiations could be facilitated by a few members of the political class who did not completely discredit themselves in the final days of the late President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta’s rule, and further aided by the influential but discreet Mohamed Ould Hamahoullah (Bouyé Haïdara), the chérif de Nioro du Sahel.
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ANGERING ALGERIA AND ALARMING THE REGION
Mali’s immediate neighbours to the west, all members of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), which Mali left along with Burkina Faso and Niger, have been standing on the sidelines watching events unfold. Their stance was summed up in the Ecowas declaration: condemnation of the attacks, expressions of solidarity with Mali and a call for regional unity – a none-too-subtle appeal for the three states it considers wayward children to return to the fold. Beyond that, the bloc’s greatest concern is an uncontrollable flow of refugees should Mali collapse completely, a prospect no one from Dakar to Abuja via Abidjan wants to face.
Algeria, however, is a very different matter. In just over two years, Assimi Goïta and his comrades have angered the Algerian government twice. The first was their decision to tear up the Algiers Peace Accord and capture Kidal, destroying a document in which the Algerian authorities had invested heavily and creating yet another refugee problem for Algeria (AC Vol 64 No 24, Much ado about Kidal).
Predictably, the Tuareg rebels, whom the Malian armed forces and their Russian Africa Corps partners had dislodged, have steadily regrouped.
Second – and arguably even more serious – was the Bamako government’s announcement, via foreign minister Abdoulaye Diop on 10 April, that it was backing a Moroccan plan for Western Sahara, ending Mali’s recognition of the Polisario Front’s leadership there. This forms part of Rabat’s diplomatic push to bind Mali more closely to its maritime infrastructure, with the Western Sahara port of Dakhla, now under construction, as the central pivot.
The plan would integrate the economies of Morocco and the three Sahelian juntas and weaken their reliance on the ports of Dakar and Abidjan, which lie in ‘hostile’ Ecowas territory. For Algeria, which supports Polisario and houses tens of thousands of Western Sahara refugees, this shift by the Malian junta amounts to a virtual declaration of war. Even if Algeria was not physically involved in the latest Front de libération de l’Azawad (FLA) attacks, it certainly did nothing to stop them.
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