The attacks that have convulsed Mali since April 25 represent the most significant battlefield reversal for the military junta since it seized power in 2020. The near-simultaneous strikes — targeting the international airport in Bamako and at least nine other locations across the country — were carried out by fighters from the al-Qaida-backed Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, known as JNIM, and the Azawad Liberation Front, or FLA, a separatist group, operating in coordination with each other. The fighters moved on motorcycles and trucks in an assault that stretched Malian forces and their Russian mercenary allies across multiple fronts.
Malian military leader Assimi Goita vowed on Tuesday that operations would continue until “the armed groups involved have been completely neutralized and security has been sustainably restored throughout the country,” according to remarks reported by the Associated Press.
But the junta’s ability to make good on that vow was called further into doubt late Friday, when a statement from the public prosecutor at the Military Court of Bamako, read on state television, said investigations had uncovered “solid evidence regarding the complicity of certain military personnel” in the attacks. The prosecutor said serving and recently dismissed officers had participated in “the planning, coordination, and execution” of the assault, and also alleged the involvement of politicians, including Oumar Mariko, a prominent Malian political figure now in exile. The Associated Press reported the prosecutor’s statement.
The allegation of internal betrayal compounds a crisis already spiraling on multiple fronts. On Friday, the FLA announced that its fighters had captured the Tessalit military camp, a strategically positioned base near both an airport and the border with Algeria, after the Malian army and members of Russia’s Africa Corps withdrew. An FLA commander, Achafghi Ag Bouhanda, announced the capture in an online video the Associated Press verified. The AP could not independently confirm conditions at the camp, and Malian authorities did not respond to requests for comment.
The loss of Tessalit followed the fall of Kidal earlier in the week — a city that was once a stronghold of the separatists and whose capture by the rebels marks a dramatic reversal. Malian Defense Minister Sadio Camara was killed during the fighting for Kidal, the Associated Press reported, a death that removes one of the junta’s most prominent security figures at the moment of its greatest military vulnerability.
The assault has also tightened the encirclement of Bamako. JNIM announced earlier in the week that it would enforce a total blockade of the capital’s four major roads, building on a partial fuel blockade imposed late last year. Travelers reported roadblocks and disruptions to traffic on Friday. “These days, traveling by road is a dangerous undertaking,” Aminata Traoré, a traveler who moves between Bamako and the Sikasso region in the south, told the Associated Press.
Mali has been governed by a military junta since the 2020 coup that ousted the elected civilian government. Since then, the ruling officers have expelled French and other Western counterterrorism forces that had been operating in the country for nearly a decade and replaced them with Russian mercenary fighters from the former Wagner Group, now operating under the Africa Corps banner. The security situation has deteriorated steadily in the intervening years, with jihadi groups extending their reach across the Sahel region south of the Sahara, which is now considered a global hotspot for violent extremism. The current offensive, with its combination of jihadi-separatist coordination, internal military complicity, and the loss of key northern strongholds, represents the junta’s gravest crisis to date.