Figures carry their own uncertainty. Population, economic and military-spending data in wartime are estimates, often contested; every figure on an actor record shows its own as-of date and confidence grade.
AES states & allied forces
Republic of Mali
Governing military authority
The military government formed by the 2020 and 2021 coups under General Assimi Goïta — sovereigntist in rhetoric, Russian-partnered in security, and since 2025 under the most serious military and economic pressure of its tenure.
AES states & allied forces
State military
The rebuilt, Russian-partnered military that retook the north in 2023 and lost much of it again in 2026 — expanded, drone-armed, and stretched across three fronts.
AES states & allied forces
Governing military authority
The military government of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, in power since the second coup of 2022 — the most repressive of the three AES transitions, presiding over the region’s largest displacement crisis and its largest armed mobilisation of civilians.
AES states & allied forces
Republic of the Niger
Governing military authority
The military authorities formed by the July 2023 coup, under General Abdourahamane Tiani — the AES state that expelled both French and American forces, nationalised its uranium, and in August 2026 faced an armed mutiny inside its own capital.
External security partners
Russian Federation
External security partner
Moscow’s Sahel expedition — Wagner from 2021, the defence-ministry Africa Corps since 2025 — the junta’s indispensable partner, and a presence whose costs and losses are now publicly visible.
JNIM & lineage
Al-Qaeda-aligned insurgency
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition under Iyad Ag Ghaly — the war’s strongest non-state force, now waging economic siege against the capital and coordinated offensives with the FLA.
Azawad movements
Separatist movement
The unified successor of the northern separatist movements — formed in late 2024, holder of Kidal since April 2026, and the other half of the coordination that has transformed the war.
Islamic State Sahel
IS-aligned insurgency
The Islamic State’s Sahel province — a separate, rival project to JNIM, strongest in the tri-border zone, expanding opportunistically while its enemies fight each other.
Regional & international
People's Democratic Republic of Algeria
Neighbour & historical mediator
The northern neighbour that brokered every peace deal in Mali’s modern history, ruptured with Bamako for fifteen months over a downed drone, and restored ambassadors and airspace in July 2026.
AES states & allied forces
Regional confederation
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger’s mutual-defence pact turned confederation — the institutional form of the region’s break with ECOWAS and the West, and the vehicle for its Russian partnership.
Regional & international
French Republic
Former intervention power
The former colonial power that saved the Malian state in 2013, hunted its enemies for nine years, and left in 2022 having solved none of the political problems underneath — replaced by Russia within months.
Regional & international
Former peace operation
The UN’s decade-long stabilisation mission — its deadliest of the era — expelled at Bamako’s demand in 2023, whose departure detonated the frozen northern question it had been containing.
Regional & international
Regional bloc (exited)
The West African bloc that sanctioned Mali after its coups and lost it — Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger completed their withdrawal in January 2025, the biggest rupture in ECOWAS’s fifty-year history.
External security partners
Republic of Türkiye
Defence supplier
The supplier of the armed drones that reshaped the northern war — a commercial, condition-free defence relationship that outlasted the Western one without requiring the Russian one’s political price.
