June 3, 2026: In late April JNIM\Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, or Group for the support of Islam and Muslims, was active. The Islamic terrorists and Tuareg FLA/Front de libération de l’Azawad separatists simultaneously attacked the city of Kidal in the north and, 1,500 kilometers away, Kati, a military town outside the capital Bamako. At the same time, a JNIM suicide bomber killed the Defense Minister and wounded the Chief of Intelligence. This came after a JNIM fuel blockade was established in late 2025, and continues. Some fuel got through but the blockade also intercepted and stole commercial vehicles carrying products for the retail stores. The airport fifteen kilometers south of Bamako is generally safe, but was attacked by JNIM in late 2024 and two months ago. These attacks did little damage and security forces quickly killed or drove away the Islamic terrorists. The airport is the only reliable supply line for the city.

In January 2024 the Mali military government abandoned the 2015 UN-sponsored peace agreement. Since then it has been chaos, and until the violence subsides, there will be no more peace conferences. Late last year Bamako was suffering. There were frequent disruptions in the availability of electrical power. Households and businesses were accustomed to some outages, but it was getting worse. Blackouts were more common because Islamic terrorists block highways and trucks bring fuel to Bamako. What’s left of the Mail army was escorting fuel trucks to the capital. This year the fuel blockade was constant and Mali was falling apart and headed towards becoming a failed state. That means Mail ceases to exist as a unified nation. On October 28 the American embassy in Bamako called on all American citizens to immediately leave Mali. France has also ordered its citizens to leave. The African Union was calling for immediate efforts to aid Mail before it disappeared as a nation. The main problem was Islamic terrorists who were seeking to take control of the country and turn it into an Islamic State. By the end of 2025, Mali was not likely to survive as an independent state.

Mali is still crippled by corruption and the resulting misrule. The most vocal critics were a handful of popular Islamic clerics. These men do not back Islamic terrorism but they do constantly call for change and reform in the government. In a way, this helps Islamic terror groups because one of the claims these Islamic radicals make was that they were fighting for a more just government. This was done on purpose to encourage angry young men to choose Islamic terrorism as a means to reform the government. Al Qaeda has long taken advantage of this. That led to more violent and ambitious Islamic terror groups in Africa. In 2013 ISIL /Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant showed up in Syria and Iraq and that hyper-violent Islamic terrorist movement soon became an international attraction for Islamic radicals who thought their current Islamic terror group was not sufficiently extreme. ISIL trained new members from all over the world and many of these hyper-fanatics returned home to organize a local province of ISIL.

By 2018 that resulted in two such provinces in central Africa. The smaller one was ISGS/Islamic State in Greater Sahara, which showed up in 2018. ISGS was currently active in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The other, slightly older and larger, ISIL province was ISWAP/Islamic State West Africa Province. ISWAP was actually a faction of the Nigerian Boko Haram Islamic terrorists who had been around since 2004. ISWAP personnel were mostly in northeastern Nigeria as well as smaller numbers in Chad, Niger and northern Cameroon. ISGS and ISWAP do not appear to work together except when it comes to Internet media activities, where ISWAP will mention ISGS accomplishments. ISWAP announcements rarely mentioned ISGS and attributed attacks in ISGS territory as the work of ISWAP. It was unclear what this meant because there had been no announcement of any merger. The operating areas of ISGS and ISWAP were about 2,000 kilometers from each other. Another factor was the frequent cooperation between al Qaeda and ISIL groups in the area.

ISIL did not have effective central authority at the moment with the senior leadership still dispersed and on the run from recent defeats in eastern Syria and western Iraq. It was often difficult, at first, to determine which faction of Boko Haram made an attack. Ultimately one of the factions took credit. ISWAP was usually quicker to do so and has a much more efficient media operation than most Africa based Islamic terror groups. ISWAP was also finding that there was a downside to using ISIL techniques. More Western nations were willing to help, or at least coordinate existing counterterrorism in the region from Somalia to Mali and the Atlantic coast. There were smaller ISIL factions in northern Somalia, southern Libya and eastern Algeria. These groups were once larger but have suffered heavy losses from local and/or international counter-terrorism efforts. In late 2019 ISGS and ISWAP were the two most active ISIL factions in Africa.

JNIM was an al Qaeda coalition formed in early 2017 to consolidate many separate Islamic terror groups in Mali. In part, this was a reaction to the growing threat from ISIL, which was hostile to everyone who was not ISIL and will attack or recruit from the JNIM members like AQIM/Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Dine, FLM and several other smaller groups. Another reason for the merger was to make it easier to pool resources, especially information and practical advice, and coordinate with other Islamic terror groups in the region. This reduces friction and destructive feuding. Making a coalition like this work was always difficult, especially considering the importance of ethnic differences, notably tribal. The FLM was of the Fulani tribe while the other groups were largely Tuareg or Arab and some had a lot of foreigners. Note that JNIM did not absorb all of AQIM groups in the area.

Recently ISIL groups have been the most active in carrying out major attacks. JNIM is still around and mainly taking care of business. Back in 2012, the UN authorized a military operation in northern Mali to remove al Qaeda and other Islamic radical groups, but only if the African troops assigned to the task were made ready. The United States and EU/European Union planned to support the ECOWAS intervention force with cash, weapons, transportation, and technical services like mine clearing. The U.S. and EU would not commit their own combat troops to the operation. ECOWAS/Economic Community of West African States had offered an intervention force but the UN pointed out that these troops were not ready for a campaign in the northern Mali desert. The U.S. and EU offered trainers to get the African troops ready for the campaign, which consisted of capturing half a dozen cities and large towns where the Islamic radicals were the strongest. The United States demanded a stable government in southern Mali first but later changed its mind. The U.S. still wanted the Mali military purged of the mutinous officers who took over the government months earlier. These officers gave up power but remained in control of the military. There were supposed to be new elections, but these had not been held yet. The U.S. backed off on this demand because it wasn't likely to be met any time soon.

The problem with the Mali Army has to do with politics. Most of the troops and officers got their jobs as political favors. It was all about patronage, not preparedness for combat. The few units that were combat ready were disbanded after the earlier coup. This was common in many parts of the world, especially Africa. The Mali troops were more about paychecks than military professionalism. Any plan for invading the north relegated the Mali troops to guard duty in the south. The U.S. would still like the Mali military to turn pro but that is a local political issue which cannot be quickly or easily resolved.

Meanwhile, Islamic radical rule in the north was becoming increasingly intrusive and brutal. People were being executed and there were a growing number of raids into markets, shops, and even homes looking for forbidden items like tobacco, alcohol, video or music recordings, religious amulets, and other items forbidden by Islamic conservatives. A girl was given sixty lashes in a public whipping as punishment for speaking to men she was not related to.

The Islamic radicals were increasing their manpower by offering over a thousand dollars a month to local teenagers who would join. However, the teenagers were told that once they took the money they were in until they died or the threat of ECOWAS intervention went away. In a part of the world where family income was usually less than a thousand dollars a year, getting more than that each month was enormously attractive. The Islamic radicals assigned hard core members of their organization to supervise the young recruits and beat or kill any who resisted or tried to desert. This approach worked elsewhere in Africa and the world. The Islamic radicals can afford all this because al Qaeda has millions in cash on hand from drug smuggling operations and ransoms or from kidnapped Europeans.