Mali: a World Collapses, the International Community Looks Away

For several weeks, concern has been growing in Mali. The Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), affiliated with Al-Qaeda, has multiplied its offensives and now controls several strategic routes around Bamako. The roads linking the capital to the rest of the country have become dangerous, sometimes impassable. Fuel convoys are regularly attacked, creating an almost-blockade situation and a sharp rise in the prices of basic necessities. Tired of unpaid salaries and insecurity, teachers and civil servants are leaving their posts; some schools no longer open. The country appears to be suffocating. Is Mali on the verge of collapse? Could a caliphate be established in its place?

Is JNIM capable of taking Bamako?

In the current sequence, JNIM, until now active mainly in northern Mali, seems to have adopted a new strategy: the control of flows of goods and people to and from Bamako. It is unlikely that it will launch a direct offensive on the capital, quite simply because it does not have the logistical means nor the necessary cohesion.

It is often forgotten that, behind the “JNIM” label, lie distinct groups, with motivations that depend on specific and differentiated contexts. It is not a unified entity. What is worrying, however, is the silence of the authorities. Neither Assimi Goïta nor his allies in the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) are speaking out, and no large-scale operation has yet been launched to free the supply routes coming from Senegal or Côte d’Ivoire.

In the long term, therefore, the issue is not the potential capture of Bamako, but that of attrition. How long can an isolated regime, cut off from its economic circuits, hold on? And who will benefit from this slow suffocation? It is clear that a period of profound uncertainty is looming.

Has the situation deteriorated since the departure of the French?

We must be wary of any nostalgia regarding the French military presence in Mali. Operations Serval (2013) and Barkhane (2014–2022) did not succeed in curbing terrorist attacks. It was this chronic insecurity that, among other things, led to their departure in the summer of 2022.

What must be understood are the processes, never linear but unfolding over time. Since 2012, Mali has been facing a multifaceted brutalisation at several levels of its social and political fabric. I intentionally use the term “brutalisation” in the sense given by George Mosse: an acclimatisation to violence, no longer seen as an accident but as a normalised means of social regulation.

Some may reproach the junta for locking itself into an anti-French discursive register at the expense of security. Here again, caution is needed. It is clear that Assimi Goïta and his ministers adopted strong anti-French rhetoric to better defend a sovereignty freed from the remnants of an unfinished decolonisation. While the systematic nature of this discourse may be criticised, grey areas remain, on which light will eventually need to be shed.

It will be necessary, sooner or later, to write the history of French military operations differently, no longer only at the operational level, but through the interactions that were likely missed between French and Malian soldiers. Without understanding these distortions, it is difficult to grasp the virulence of the rejection France continues to face.

Despite criticism of Barkhane, the Malian government paradoxically chose to pursue the path of armed force, this time in cooperation with Russia. The Wagner paramilitary group, gradually replaced by Africa Corps, is now the new actor in this endless militarisation — the effectiveness of which remains to be demonstrated in the current configuration.

Will Mali become a caliphate controlled by jihadists?

The question is legitimate, but it is based on several misunderstandings. If by this we mean that Mali might one day become an Islamic Republic, this is a false debate: several states with which France maintains regular relations, such as Mauritania, already claim this status without French actors expressing outrage. Nevertheless, such an evolution in Mali remains, at this stage, highly improbable.

The term “jihadist” has become a convenient but often inaccurate shorthand. Not all members of armed groups engage in jihad. Marc-Antoine Pérouse de Montclos has shown that it is primarily a radicalisation of poverty and exclusion, while Matthieu Pellerin has noted that although ideology exists, it is not always a primary motivation. It may become one, but remains only one possible factor among others.

The affiliation of Malian groups with Al-Qaeda thus conceals the diversity of their trajectories and objectives. It cannot be denied that certain rural areas and several localities are now under the control of JNIM and governed by Sharia law, with, for example, a ban on listening to music — reminiscent of scenes from Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Timbuktu (2014).

The concept of a caliphate implies, by definition, a global and unified project. Yet, on the ground, two entities coexist — Al-Qaeda and Islamic State — whose strategies diverge. As noted above, JNIM does not constitute a homogeneous group but a coalition of circumstance, shaped by local dynamics and shifting loyalties.

Right now, the greatest risk for Mali is not the creation of a caliphate but the atomisation of power and, by extension, the territory: a political fragmentation with cross-border ramifications likely to redraw, in the long term, the map of the sub-region.

A country that holds on, despite everything

JNIM’s strangling of Bamako raises fears of Mali’s collapse. The concern is not unfounded. Yet for now, the country holds — with difficulty, and in silence.

It holds through inertia, and through resilience as well, because no alternative has yet emerged. It holds above all because Malian societies, from north to south, east to west, continue to invent, day after day, forms of survival and regulation where the State has disappeared.

What may be collapsing is not so much Mali itself but our ability to see it in any way other than as a permanent chaos.