Historical Phases

What happened

Northern Mali had been in intermittent revolt since independence — Tuareg rebellions in 1962, 1990, 2006 — over a periphery the state never fully administered, developed or policed. Every settlement promised decentralisation and development; none delivered enough to end the cycle. What changed in 2011 was capability, not grievance: the collapse of Libya sent home thousands of Sahelian fighters with weapons, vehicles and combat experience. In January 2012 the MNLA — with Ansar Dine's jihadists riding alongside — attacked the northern garrisons and broke them, massacring captured soldiers at Aguelhok. In March, junior officers at Kati overthrew the government for failing the war; within ten days the three northern regional capitals fell, and on 6 April the MNLA declared the independent state of Azawad. By July its jihadist co-belligerents had thrown it out of every city it claimed.

The period covers

• Tuareg rebellions of 1962, 1990 and 2006 — grievance and unimplemented settlements
• A northern periphery the state never fully administered or developed
• Gaddafi's fall returns armed, experienced Malian Tuareg fighters
• MNLA rebellion from January 2012; Aguelhok massacre
• March 2012 coup at Kati collapses the state's response
• Declaration of Azawad, 6 April 2012 — recognised by no one
• Ansar Dine, AQIM and MUJAO expel the MNLA and take the northern cities

Key analytical point

The separatist uprising and the jihadist takeover were connected but not identical projects. They rebelled together and fought each other within months: the MNLA wanted a secular Azawad, the jihadists wanted religious rule over any territory at all. Conflating the two remains the most common analytical error about Mali — and the 2026 FLA–JNIM alignment makes keeping them distinct more important, not less.

Key events in this phase

What happened

In January 2013 a jihadist column took Konna and moved on Sévaré — the gateway to the road south. Mali's army could not stop it, and France intervened within hours. Operation Serval broke the occupation in weeks: Gao and Timbuktu were retaken by early February, and the jihadists dispersed into the deserts and mountains rather than fight for cities. The international architecture then assembled around the victory: MINUSMA from April 2013, growing into one of the UN's largest and its deadliest mission of the era; the EU training mission rebuilding the army; and from August 2014 the region-wide Operation Barkhane hunting jihadist leadership across five countries.

The period covers

• Jihadist advance south through Konna toward Sévaré, January 2013
• Operation Serval — French intervention from 11 January 2013
• Recapture of Gao and Timbuktu within three weeks
• MINUSMA established, April 2013
• Operation Barkhane from August 2014 — Sahel-wide counterterrorism
• EUTM Mali and European training and support missions

Key analytical point

The intervention prevented the immediate collapse of the Malian state — a real achievement — but resolved none of the governance, security, decentralisation or legitimacy problems that had produced it. It also revealed the war's actual shape: the enemy did not need cities, and traded terrain for time it then used to outlast every force sent against it.

Key events in this phase

What happened

The Algiers Agreement of 2015 — brokered by Algeria, signed by the government, the pro-government Platform and the separatist CMA — promised decentralisation, integration of ex-combatants and development for the north. Implementation stalled almost immediately and never recovered: the CMA governed Kidal de facto for a decade while nominally implementing a peace it did not have. Meanwhile the war moved somewhere the agreement did not cover. Amadou Koufa's Katiba Macina embedded jihad in central Mali's pastoralist grievances from 2015; in March 2017 Ansar Dine, AQIM's Saharan emirate, al-Mourabitoun and Katiba Macina merged into JNIM under Iyad Ag Ghaly. The centre overtook the north as the deadliest theatre, farmer–herder tension curdled into communal massacre — Ogossagou in March 2019, more than 150 Fulani civilians killed — and self-defence militias proliferated. From 2019–20, JNIM and the Islamic State's Sahel branch turned on each other.

The period covers

• 2015 Algiers Agreement — signed, then never implemented
• Formation of JNIM, March 2017 — one command over the jihadist field
• Katiba Macina and the spread into central Mali
• Communal violence: Ogossagou and the farmer–herder spiral
• Local self-defence militias (Dan Na Ambassagou, dozo hunters) proliferate
• Open war between al-Qaeda-linked and Islamic State-linked networks from 2019–20

Key analytical point

Central Mali proved the insurgency was not a northern or Tuareg phenomenon but a state-absence phenomenon — and it put the war astride the river, the roads and the food systems the whole country depends on. The peace process was negotiating the previous war while the next one was being built.

Key events in this phase

What happened

In August 2020, after mass protests over insecurity and disputed elections, officers from Kati deposed President Keïta; in May 2021 Colonel Assimi Goïta removed the civilian transition leadership he had installed and took the presidency himself. The coup within the coup ended any prospect of rapid civilian return and triggered the ruptures that followed: ECOWAS closed borders and froze assets in January 2022 — pain without leverage, and a sovereigntist narrative handed to the junta — while relations with France collapsed. Russian personnel described by Western governments as Wagner contractors, and by Bamako as bilateral trainers, deployed from December 2021. In March 2022 a joint Malian–Wagner operation at Moura killed hundreds of civilians, per UN investigation. France announced the end of Barkhane in Mali in February 2022 and left on 15 August.

The period covers

• August 2020 coup — protests and security failure consume the civilian order
• May 2021 coup and Goïta's consolidation; the transition timetable slips indefinitely
• Deterioration with France and ECOWAS; sanctions January–July 2022
• Arrival of Wagner-linked forces from December 2021
• The Moura operation, March 2022 — mass civilian killings documented by the UN
• French withdrawal completed 15 August 2022
• A sovereignty-first military-government narrative built on the rupture

Key analytical point

The pivot swapped one security partner for another on radically different terms: no governance conditionality, no public accounting, and a harsher counterinsurgency. It bought the junta autonomy and manpower, and cost it the air cover, intelligence and medevac that had underwritten the previous decade — capabilities the new partnership never fully replaced.

Key events in this phase

What happened

In June 2023 Mali demanded MINUSMA's departure; the Security Council complied, and the mission ran a compressed, contested withdrawal by 31 December. The race to occupy its northern camps restarted the war between the state and the CMA within weeks. Drone-supported Malian and Wagner forces took Kidal in November 2023 — the junta's signature victory, the town's first return to state control since 2012 — and in January 2024 Bamako formally terminated the Algiers Agreement, ending the negotiated northern settlement. The separatists answered at Tinzaouatène in July 2024, routing a Malian–Wagner column in Wagner's heaviest publicly documented African defeat, with JNIM claiming a role — an early signal of convergence. In November 2024 the CMA's movements dissolved into a single Azawad Liberation Front. The Alliance of Sahel States hardened from pact to confederation, and the three members' ECOWAS exit became final in January 2025. That June, Wagner announced departure and the defence-ministry Africa Corps took over the same war with much the same men.

The period covers

• Mali demands MINUSMA's departure; withdrawal completed December 2023
• Renewed northern war as the state and the CMA race for the abandoned camps
• Government recapture of Kidal, November 2023 — drone-enabled
• Termination of the Algiers Agreement, January 2024
• Tinzaouatène, July 2024 — the separatists' landmark victory
• Reorganisation of the Azawad movements into the FLA, November 2024
• AES deepens; ECOWAS exit final January 2025
• Wagner-to-Africa Corps transition, June 2025

Key analytical point

Removing the UN buffer did not freeze the northern question — it detonated it. Within twenty-six months the state went from retaking Kidal to facing a unified separatist front allied with JNIM, having destroyed the only negotiating framework that existed in between.

Key events in this phase

What happened

From September 2025 JNIM declared a blockade of fuel imports and began systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed, Bamako's fuel and power visibly degraded, an insurgency strangling a state's economy without taking a city. Its western campaign had already reached Kayes and the gold belt. Then on 25 April 2026 the FLA and JNIM launched the largest coordinated offensive since 2012: the FLA took Kidal as government and Russian forces withdrew from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms; a car bombing at Kati killed Defence Minister Sadio Camara; Islamic State Sahel seized the Labbezanga border crossing; and JNIM reportedly set up checkpoints on Bamako's approaches. A second wave on 4 July hit Anéfis, Aguelhok, Gao, Sévaré and Kéniéroba; fighters besieged the Anéfis base, ambushed a Malian–Africa Corps relief convoy near Tabrichat and downed an Mi-24 before a second column broke through and the army announced the town retaken on 10 July, at a stated cost of about 30 soldiers. Days earlier, Russia and the AES states had pledged deeper military cooperation at Niamey; days later, Mali and Algeria restored ambassadors and reopened their airspace.

The period covers

• JNIM's fuel blockade from September 2025 — economic siege of the capital
• Expansion into western and southern Mali; pressure on Kayes and the gold belt
• April 2026 offensive — Kidal falls, the defence minister is killed
• Renewed Azawad separatist capability under a unified FLA
• Reported JNIM–FLA tactical coordination at national scale
• Islamic State Sahel activity around the tri-border region and Labbezanga
• July 2026 attacks reaching Bamako's approaches at Kéniéroba and Kati
• Russia–AES security cooperation deepened at Niamey, July 2026

Key analytical point

The 2026 offensives demonstrated geographic reach from the Algerian border to the capital's approaches — pressure on positions, not proof of durable control. An attack near a place is not possession of it, and Anéfis changed hands twice in a week. What did change is the map of the possible: the junta's signature achievement was reversed, and two movements with incompatible end-states are fighting as one. JNIM and the FLA have different objectives; their coordination is operational, not ideological — and its durability is the war's central open question.

Key events in this phase