By Lou E. Cardot, University of Toronto
Background: Mali’s Security Crisis
For more than 10 years, Mali has been at the centre of one of the world’s most persistent and complex security crises. In early 2012, a Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali, fuelled by weapons and fighters spilling over from Libya after Gaddafi’s fall, overwhelmed Malian army positions. A military coup in Bamako that March further weakened the state. In the chaos, jihadist groups linked to al-Qaeda, including al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar Dine and MUJAO, sidelined the Tuareg separatists and seized control of major northern cities such as Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal.
France intervened in January 2013 with Operation Serval, pushing jihadist fighters out of the main urban centres. Serval soon morphed into Operation Barkhane, a broader counter-terrorism mission spread across the Sahel, and the UN deployed MINUSMA, a large peacekeeping mission meant to stabilise Mali. On paper, this combination of French forces, UN peacekeepers, and the 2015 Algiers Accords should have restored order. But violence didn’t disappear: instead of open occupation of northern cities, insurgents embedded themselves in rural areas and in the centre of the country.
From around 2015 onward, central Mali became a new epicentre. Katiba Macina, a jihadist group rooted partly in Fulani communities, expanded attacks in the Mopti and Ségou regions. Local conflicts over land, herding routes and community rivalries became entangled with jihadist recruitment and self-defence militias, producing cycles of reprisal massacres. In 2017, several al-Qaeda-aligned factions merged into Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a Jihadist organisation responsible for more than half of violent events across the Sahel region. The UN describes JNIM as al-Qaeda’s official branch in Mali, bringing together AQIM’s Sahel wing, Ansar Dine, al-Mourabitoun and others under a single command.
Over the same decade, Mali’s political institutions eroded. After the 2012 coup, two further military takeovers in 2020 and 2021 brought Colonel Assimi Goïta and a junta (a committee of officers who seized power and now rule by decree) to power. Promised transitions back to civilian rule have repeatedly been delayed; in 2025, the government even advanced a bill granting Goïta an extra five-year renewable term, while dissolving political parties and repressing critics. All of this unfolded as jihadist attacks continued to spread into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, forming what analysts now call the Sahel’s “coup belt.”
What’s New: The GSIM Blockade and Economic Suffocation
Despite years of French operations, UN peacekeeping, and regional initiatives, Mali is less secure today than when the crisis began. The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) and other conflict trackers show that international missions like Barkhane and MINUSMA failed to achieve lasting stability, even as the number of violent incidents rose and spread geographically. By 2024, the Sahel region accounted for almost half of all terrorism-related deaths worldwide, and deaths from terrorism in the region had increased nearly tenfold since 2019, with Mali among the hardest-hit countries.
For most of the 2010s, jihadist groups attacked military bases, ambushed convoys, and exerted influence in rural zones. But today, the JNIM has shifted toward a strategy that directly targets the country’s economic lifelines. Reports now show GSIM militants imposing a blockade on fuel imports into Mali, a landlocked country heavily dependent on trucking routes from coastal neighbours. The group is effectively choking the national economy by blocking or taxing shipments at key transit points, leaving entire regions without gasoline for weeks.
The impact has been severe. Mali relies on fuel for almost every major function of daily life: diesel generators power hospitals and schools, long-haul trucks deliver food and medicine across vast rural distances, and thermal power plants supply the majority of the national electricity grid. When fuel stops moving, everything stops with it. Furthermore, the capital of Bamako has been receiving “less than six hours of electricity per day,” with long lines forming outside the few stations that still manage to secure limited supplies. Many provincial towns have no fuel at all.
This marks a profound evolution of the conflict. Instead of simply degrading security conditions, GSIM is now influencing the material conditions of life itself. Political analysts have long warned that jihadist groups in the Sahel are moving toward forms of shadow governance, adjudicating disputes, imposing taxes, and regulating trade. But a nationwide fuel blockade represents something more direct: the ability to disrupt a country’s core infrastructure. Blocking fuel means blocking electricity, transport, food supply chains, and humanitarian operations. It is a demonstration of power far beyond the bombings and ambushes that characterised the earlier years of the war.
Why France Is Reducing Its Diplomatic Staff Now
In late November 2025, France announced that it would reduce its diplomatic and consular personnel in Mali, citing a sharply deteriorating security environment and growing risks to its staff. This move follows similar decisions by the United States and the United Kingdom, both of which had already evacuated non-essential personnel due to escalating instability.
The immediate reason for France’s decision is the rapid intensification of jihadist violence. Groups like GSIM now control or disrupt key transport routes into Mali’s capital, and their blockade on fuel has made mobility, electricity, and supply chains increasingly unreliable. Diplomats depend on secure transit, consistent power, and state protection, all of which have become difficult to guarantee. Le Monde reports that France has maintained a standing advisory urging its roughly 4,000 citizens in Mali to leave “as soon as possible,” reflecting the same calculation: when a government cannot ensure basic safety, foreign missions cannot operate normally. Earlier this month, the United States warned Americans in Mali to leave the country immediately after increasing pressure from al Qaeda-linked.
Regional & Global Implications
A Collapse of Western Engagement
France’s diplomatic reduction is part of a broader withdrawal of Western influence from the Sahel. Over the past three years, France has ended major military operations in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger; the EU training mission has been suspended; and the United States has drawn down security cooperation. These departures have not been replaced with equivalent civilian or diplomatic engagement, leaving a vacuum in a region where state institutions are weakening and jihadist groups are expanding. The USA, UK, and France’s drawdowns reinforce Mali’s growing isolation from partners that once underpinned its counter-terrorism, development, and governance programs. With Western embassies scaling back operations, Mali risks drifting further from an international order that offered security guarantees and economic support, and deeper into a cycle where crises escalate with fewer external constraints or mediators.
Rising Russian Influence
As Western governments disengage, Russia has positioned itself as Mali’s primary external partner through the Wagner Group and its rebranded security networks. The junta has embraced Russian advisors, weapons, and contractors as symbols of sovereignty and resistance to France, using this alliance to consolidate domestic support. Yet on the ground, Russian involvement has not improved security: Wagner deployments have been linked to mass civilian casualties, short-term territorial gains, and rapid reversals once fighters withdraw. This pattern, visible in Mali as well as in the Central African Republic, reflects a model of security assistance that prioritizes regime survival over long-term stabilization. As Mali grows more dependent on Russia, it risks becoming locked into an alliance that trades legitimacy and human rights for coercive force, while offering little capacity-building for state institutions. The result is a geopolitical shift that strengthens authoritarian tendencies without addressing the structural drivers of the conflict.
Humanitarian Fallout
The economic and infrastructural consequences of the GSIM blockade create severe humanitarian risks that extend well beyond just fuel shortages. Fuel drives food transport, powers generators in hospitals, and underpins urban water pumping systems. When GSIM blocks shipments, food prices rise, electricity cuts deepen, and rural markets become inaccessible. The blockade has halted 95% of Mali’s fuel imports via trucking from coastal neighbors (Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire), disrupting food supply chains. This affects ~6.4 million people (27% of population) needing humanitarian aid, with 3.7 million facing acute food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+). Rural deliveries are down 70%, exacerbating malnutrition in 1.9 million children under 5. Bamako receives less than six hours of electricity per day, and some towns have had no fuel for weeks. Diesel powers 80% of off-grid hospital generators; shortages have caused 50% of facilities in Mopti/Ségou to cut emergency services, threatening 2.5 million with severe health risks (e.g., no power for ventilators/surgeries). Similarly, 60% of Bamako’s water supply relies on diesel pumps; blockades have reduced output by 40%, leaving 1.9 million without clean water/hygiene access and spiking cholera risks (up 25% in 2025). These constraints widen inequalities between urban centres with some state presence and rural regions increasingly governed by armed groups. If the blockade persists, it will trigger a humanitarian emergency across central and northern Mali, with a Phase 5 famine for 4.5 million Malians, and displacement up 20%, in central and north areas where state services have already virtually disappeared.
The Sahel as the World’s Fastest-Growing Terrorism Hotspot
The crisis in Mali is part of a regional surge in jihadist activity that has transformed the Sahel into the world’s deadliest terrorism hub. According to the Global Terrorism Index 2025, conflict deaths in the region exceeded 25,000 in 2024 for the first time since tracking began, with terrorism fueling over 15% of that toll, a dramatic escalation from 2019 levels. The collapse of Western partnerships, combined with political upheaval in Burkina Faso and Niger, has created a contiguous belt of military juntas with limited state capacity and growing ties to Russia. Niger, once considered the region’s “anchor state” and key partner for U.S. and French forces, has pivoted away from the West following its 2023 coup, dismantling the regional security architecture that once balanced jihadist expansion. With no state in the central Sahel capable of filling that role, armed groups now operate across borders with unprecedented freedom, adapting faster than fragmented state forces and exploiting governance vacuums.
What’s Next for Mali and International Diplomacy?
For international actors, the situation in Mali questions how states engage with governments that lack both territorial control and administrative capacity. Diplomatic presence traditionally depends on predictable security environments, functioning institutions, and avenues for political dialogue, all of which are eroding in Mali. The withdrawal of Western missions reflects not only rising operational risks but also a collapse of the shared frameworks that previously structured cooperation: counterterrorism partnerships, electoral transitions, and multilateral stabilization efforts. With those frameworks gone, embassies are retreating from a space where their influence has sharply diminished, leaving Malians in economic suffocation with shrinking humanitarian access and an erosion of public trust, ultimately accelerating the country’s fragmentation.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
