OPINION: JNIM expands its grip on Mali despite military setbacks

Introduction: Five towns, one night, one clear message

The coordinated offensive of July 4

On July 4, 2026, fighters from JNIM — the Sahelian branch of al-Qaeda — and their Tuareg allies from the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) claimed coordinated attacks in five Malian towns, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The targets: military positions and a prison holding political dissidents. According to Al Jazeera, Mali's army confirmed attacks on five positions: Aguelhok, Anefis, and Gao in the north, Sévaré in the center, and Kénièroba in the south.

This wave of attacks is not an isolated strike. According to Wikipedia and several regional outlets, this offensive follows a lull of nearly two months since the previous coordinated attacks of April 25, 2026, which had already struck several towns and killed Mali's defense minister, Sadio Camara. The repetition of this playbook — simultaneous attacks on multiple fronts, targeting military and symbolic positions — reveals an operational capacity that far exceeds the image of a scattered, weakened insurgency that the Malian junta likes to project.

A prison targeted: the symbolism is not trivial

The targeting of a prison holding political dissidents deserves particular attention. This tactical choice goes beyond simple military logic: it sends a clear political message about JNIM's and its allies' ability to strike symbols of the repressive apparatus built by the Malian junta, led by Colonel Assimi Goïta. In a country where political space has shrunk considerably since the coups of 2020 and 2021, this attack is a reminder that the junta controls neither the territory nor, apparently, the security of its own prison infrastructure.

The Malian junta responded with a message of total control, insisting the situation was "fully under control" according to Al Jazeera, while acknowledging losses: 20 fighters killed in Sévaré and six in Gao on the government side, against one pro-government soldier killed and four wounded in Gao. This gap between the display of mastery and the documented scale of simultaneous fighting on five fronts illustrates a dissonance that has become familiar in the junta's communications.

There is something quite revealing about a junta that seized power promising to "secure" the country against terrorism finding itself, three years later, simultaneously defending five towns against the very groups it claimed to have defeated. The promised security remains, at best, a horizon that keeps receding as you move toward it.

JNIM, an organization that has learned to endure

An unusual but effective jihadist-separatist alliance

The alliance between JNIM, an al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadist group, and the FLA, a Tuareg separatist movement from Azawad, is a tactical combination that would have seemed unlikely a few years ago, given how fundamentally the two movements' ideological agendas differ. JNIM seeks to establish a regional Islamist order, while the FLA champions self-determination for Tuareg populations in northern Mali. Their tactical convergence against the Malian junta and its Russian allies from the Africa Corps reflects a logic of military opportunity that transcends, at least for now, their programmatic differences.

This alliance has repeatedly shown its capacity for disruption since the start of 2026, notably during April's offensive that killed Mali's defense minister. According to data compiled by Wikipedia on Mali's 2026 offensives, the combined toll of this campaign already includes more than 200 deaths on the government side by its own estimates, and far higher figures according to the Russian Africa Corps, which cites more than 2,500 dead and even 305 killed in specific Russian airstrikes.

A territorial expansion that contradicts the official narrative

The central paradox of this situation, which gives this piece its title, is this: despite documented military setbacks — fighter losses, occasional tactical failures, sporadic government counteroffensives — JNIM and its allies continue to expand their territorial and operational reach across large portions of Malian territory. This expansion is not measured only in square kilometers controlled, but in the ability to strike several towns far apart from one another simultaneously, evidence of a logistics network and coordination that go well beyond simple scattered guerrilla warfare.

Mali is today one of the most active jihadist theaters in the world, according to several analyses from think tanks specializing in tracking international terrorism. This reality clashes violently with the stabilization promises the military junta made upon seizing power, justified precisely by the alleged inability of the previous civilian government to contain the jihadist threat.

I'm often asked why I pay so much attention to the Sahel when Ukraine dominates my usual coverage. The answer is simple: JNIM, Russia, and the instability they cultivate together in the Sahel are two sides of the same geopolitical coin. Understanding one helps understand the other.

Russia's Africa Corps, an ally that stops nothing

Bamako's failed bet on Moscow

Since the withdrawal of French and UN forces from Mali, the junta in Bamako made the strategic choice to turn to Russia and its Africa Corps — the institutional heir to the Wagner paramilitary group after the death of its founder — to provide security and fight jihadist and separatist groups. This bet, presented by the junta as a sovereigntist alternative to a Western presence deemed ineffective, has produced results that, at best, are mixed given the repeated attacks and JNIM's continued expansion.

The losses suffered by the Africa Corps itself, documented notably during the fighting of April and July 2026, including the loss of helicopters and personnel, suggest that the Russian presence has not fundamentally shifted the balance of power on the ground in the Malian government's favor. Russian mercenary forces, despite their reputation for tactical brutality, evidently lack the counterinsurgency capabilities needed to contain an insurgency as mobile and locally entrenched as JNIM's and the FLA's.

Malian accusations against Ukraine and France, a telling admission

Faced with these persistent setbacks, the Malian junta and its Russian allies have repeatedly chosen to accuse outside powers — notably Ukraine and France — of supporting rebel groups, without ever producing verifiable evidence to back these accusations. This rhetorical pattern, documented by several international outlets including RT International itself, echoes a classic strategy of blame-shifting: rather than acknowledge the failure of its own security strategy, the junta prefers to point at convenient outside scapegoats.

No credible evidence has ever been presented to support any direct Kyiv involvement in jihadist or separatist operations in Mali. These accusations fit more into a propaganda logic aimed at justifying the continued presence of Russian mercenaries and diverting attention from a deteriorating security reality on the ground, regardless of who is rhetorically blamed for it.

Accusing Ukraine of orchestrating attacks deep in the Sahel, thousands of kilometers from the Ukrainian front, is a convenient conspiracy theory rather than serious analysis. But this disinformation serves a precise purpose: keeping the Russian presence in place no matter the cost, even as it fails to protect the very populations it's supposed to secure.

A junta increasingly isolated on the regional stage

The Alliance of Sahel States, a fragile bloc facing the threat

Mali joined with Niger and Burkina Faso to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a regional bloc that has distanced itself from ECOWAS and traditional Western partnerships in favor of a firm turn toward Russia. This geopolitical reorientation, presented as an assertion of sovereignty against alleged Western neocolonialism, has so far produced no tangible improvement in the security situation of the three countries involved, all of which face active, persistent jihadist insurgencies.

The solidarity displayed among the three AES juntas barely conceals the scale of the security challenges each faces individually. Mali, in particular, illustrates the limits of this strategy: despite backing from the Russian Africa Corps and Bamako's sovereigntist rhetoric, JNIM and its allies continue to expand their influence over significant portions of national territory, including areas close to the capital.

The human cost of a strategy that isn't working

Behind the military statistics and official statements lies a devastating human reality for Malian civilians, caught between jihadist abuses, sometimes brutal counterinsurgency operations by the army and the Africa Corps, and chronic instability that blocks any lasting economic and social development across large portions of national territory. Human-rights organizations have repeatedly documented abuses against civilians attributed to both jihadist forces and government forces along with their Russian allies.

This seemingly endless war is exhausting a population already facing major economic and climate crises in a Sahel region particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which worsens resource tensions and indirectly fuels jihadist recruitment among young people with no viable economic prospects.

The Malian junta's sovereigntist rhetoric might have been persuasive if security results had followed. They haven't. And while Bamako wraps itself in anti-Western rhetoric, it is Malian civilians who keep paying the price for a strategy that, three years after the coup, has solved nothing.

The international dimension of a conflict too often neglected

A Sahelian front that deserves more Western attention

The Malian situation fits within a broader regional dynamic in which Russia actively seeks to expand its influence in West Africa, taking advantage of the withdrawal of traditional Western powers to fill a security and diplomatic vacuum. This Russian strategy, documented by several geopolitical analyses, is part of a wider push to project influence that also includes other theaters, from the Sahel to Ukraine, where Moscow seeks to demonstrate its ability to shape major security issues against a West it considers weakened or distracted.

This expansion of Russian influence in the Sahel should worry Western capitals more, not only for obvious humanitarian reasons, but also because it fits within a broader strategy of challenging the Western-led international order, of which Ukraine is the most visible front but certainly not the only one. The Sahel and Ukraine are, in their own ways, two theaters of the same geopolitical contest between a West that must remain central and powers seeking to fragment that order.

What the relative failure of the Russian model in Mali reveals

The Africa Corps' inability to meaningfully stem the advance of JNIM and the FLA, despite several years of military presence in Mali, is a valuable indicator of Russia's actual reliability as a security partner for countries that choose to rely on it rather than on more structured and transparent Western partnerships. This finding should serve as a warning to other African governments tempted by the same bet.

Russia is selling a promise of security it plainly cannot keep in Mali, a failure that deserves to be documented and more widely publicized to counter the sovereigntist narrative that Moscow and its regional proxies continue to promote with a certain rhetorical success, regardless of concrete results on the ground.

There's a simple geopolitical lesson in Russia's failure in Mali: raw military power is not enough to contain a locally rooted insurgency. Russia is learning this in the Sahel just as it should have learned it faster in Ukraine, where its supposed military superiority ran into the determination of a people defending their territory.

The strategic lessons of an adapting insurgency

JNIM's organizational resilience despite losses

JNIM's ability to launch a new coordinated offensive after a lull of nearly two months, despite documented losses in earlier fighting, shows an organizational resilience that far exceeds the image of a weakened, declining jihadist group that Malian government propaganda sometimes tries to convey. This capacity for rapid regeneration after tactical setbacks is one of the most concerning features of contemporary jihadist insurgencies in the Sahel.

The fact that these attacks unfolded across five geographically scattered fronts — from the north to the south of the country — also reveals a logistical and coordination capacity suggesting deep territorial roots, well beyond areas traditionally considered jihadist strongholds. This geographic dispersion considerably complicates any counterinsurgency strategy aiming to concentrate resources on a limited number of priority zones.

What this expansion means for Mali's future

If the current trend continues, Mali risks seeing the territory under effective government control keep shrinking, with potentially destabilizing consequences for the entire Sahel region, including neighboring countries facing similar jihadist dynamics. This worrying trajectory should further alert the international community to the risks of a broader security collapse in an already fragile region.

JNIM is not winning because it is militarily invincible — it is winning, in part, because the alternative strategies adopted by the Malian junta, including its alliance with Russia, fail to produce lasting security results on the ground, leaving a vacuum the jihadist organization continues to methodically exploit.

What worries me most in this story is not JNIM's strength, but the structural weakness of the responses arrayed against it. An isolated junta, an overwhelmed Russian ally, a distracted international community: that's the perfect recipe for extremism to keep thriving for years to come.

What the West should take away from this jihadist expansion

The vacuum left by the Western withdrawal was not filled positively

The withdrawal of French and UN forces from Mali, driven by a mix of political fatigue, diplomatic tensions with the junta, and budget constraints, left a security vacuum that neither the Malian junta alone nor its alliance with Russia has managed to fill effectively. This reality deserves unflinching analysis from Western decision-makers considering similar disengagement strategies in other African security theaters.

This lesson goes beyond Mali alone: it illustrates the risks of a hasty withdrawal without a solid transition strategy, a lesson that should also inform Western debates on long-term engagement with complex security issues, whether in the Sahel or other theaters where a Western presence remains contested but whose absence could produce even more devastating consequences.

Renewed vigilance over the expansion of hostile influence

The continued expansion of Russian influence in the Sahel, despite mixed security results, illustrates Moscow's determination to consolidate alternative spheres of influence against the West, a strategy that deserves renewed vigilance from Western foreign ministries, consistent with the broader fight against Russian expansionism also playing out in Ukraine and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

The Sahel is not a secondary theater in today's global geopolitical competition — it is one front among others where the West's ability to maintain a positive influence is being tested against powers actively seeking to redraw the international order to their advantage, often at the expense of local populations who pay the heaviest human price.

You cannot claim to defend a rules-based international order in Ukraine while ignoring similar dynamics playing out in the Sahel. Geopolitical consistency demands equal attention, even when Western cameras prefer to look elsewhere.

April's precedent, a warning Bamako ignored

The defense minister's death, a shock insufficiently heeded

The coordinated offensive of April 25, 2026, which killed Mali's defense minister, Sadio Camara, should have served as enough of an alarm to trigger a deep overhaul of the junta's security strategy. According to Anadolu Ajansı, that wave of attacks had already demonstrated JNIM's and the FLA's ability to strike several targets simultaneously, including the Kidal region and a helicopter shot down near Gao. Two and a half months later, the July 4 offensive reproduces almost exactly the same operational pattern, proof that tactical lessons have not been learned, or that the means to respond to them remain structurally inadequate.

This near-identical repetition, months apart, of the same operational playbook is one of the most damning elements in assessing the actual effectiveness of Mali's current security strategy, whether led by regular forces or in coordination with the Russian Africa Corps. A government that cannot prevent the repetition of an almost identical attack within less than three months sends a clear signal about its own structural limits.

The nagging question of lessons not learned

It would be unfair to claim that no tactical adjustments were attempted by government forces and their Russian allies between April and July 2026. But the similar scale of the two offensives suggests that whatever adjustments were made were not enough to fundamentally shift the balance of power on the ground. JNIM and the FLA continue to enjoy enough freedom of movement to plan and execute coordinated operations across several distant fronts, which in itself amounts to a major security failure for a state claiming to control its national territory.

The pattern repeats because nothing structural has changed — not the underlying security strategy, not the nature of the Russian partnership, not the socioeconomic conditions that continue to fuel jihadist recruitment in the rural areas of the north and center of the country. Without deep structural change, there is no objective reason to believe the next coordinated offensive, likely in the coming months, will be handled any differently than those of April and July.

Three months. That's how long it took JNIM and the FLA to nearly replicate an offensive that had already cost a defense minister his life. If that isn't proof of a structural security failure, I don't know what more it would take to convince Bamako to change course.

Conclusion: An opinion piece so this quiet front isn't forgotten

What this July 4 offensive really reveals

The coordinated offensive by JNIM and the FLA on five Malian towns on July 4, 2026, is not an isolated incident but confirmation of an underlying trend: despite documented military setbacks and the presence of Russian mercenaries meant to reinforce the country's security, the jihadist and separatist insurgency continues to expand its operational grip on Malian territory. This reality flatly contradicts the narrative of stabilization the Bamako junta has tried to project since taking power.

The symbolic targeting of a prison holding political dissidents, combined with simultaneous attacks on geographically scattered military positions, points to an organizational capacity that should alarm regional and international observers far more than the simple casualty counts each side puts forward to defend its own narrative of the situation on the ground.

A call not to look away

This piece is not meant to minimize the complexity of the Malian situation, nor to offer a simple solution to a crisis that has taken different forms for more than a decade. It simply seeks to remind readers that this Sahelian front, often overshadowed by other, more heavily covered geopolitical news, continues to produce significant developments deserving sustained attention, not least because they fit within a broader geopolitical contest between the West and powers seeking to undermine its influence.

Mali keeps burning, slowly but surely, under the largely absent gaze of a world occupied elsewhere. This piece will not change that in the short term. But ignorance is never a strategy, not for decision-makers, nor for those who claim to inform them.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

I cannot claim to have all the answers on the Sahel. It's a complex region, with multiple dynamics, that I don't master with the same depth as the Ukrainian file. But humility about the details must never become an excuse for silence on what matters most: people are dying, towns are falling, and the world too often looks elsewhere.

Columnist's transparency note

Editorial stance

This piece takes an editorial line critical of the expansion of Russian influence in West Africa, consistent with a broader opposition to Moscow's influence strategies also playing out in Ukraine and elsewhere. This stance implies no sympathy toward JNIM's jihadist groups, whose methods and ideology are explicitly condemned, nor unconditional support for the Malian junta's rhetoric, whose own security shortcomings are also highlighted.

Methodology and sources

The facts reported in this piece come from the Council on Foreign Relations (Global Conflict Tracker), Al Jazeera, Wikipedia (the page on Mali's 2026 offensives, itself sourced from news agencies), and RT International for the Russian accusations against Ukraine, reported here descriptively and critically. No fact, figure, or quote has been invented. The diverging casualty counts between government, Russian, and rebel sources are explicitly flagged as non-consensual in the text.

Nature of this analysis

This text is an opinion piece combining verified facts with candid personal analysis. The italicized passages, clearly marked, represent the viewpoint of columnist Maxime Marquette (MadMax), whose expertise on the Sahelian file is, as stated in the text, less deep than on other geopolitical files covered more regularly. This limit is acknowledged rather than hidden.

Sources

Primary sources

Council on Foreign Relations — Global Conflict Tracker, violent extremism in the Sahel

What to know about the renewed coordinated attacks across Mali — Al Jazeera, July 5, 2026

Secondary sources

2026 Mali offensives — Wikipedia

Explainer — Attacks in Mali: what happened and what's next — Anadolu Ajansı, April 25, 2026

Mali: rebels seize key town of Anefis as they tighten grip in the north — allAfrica, July 7, 2026

Russia welcomes joint counterterrorism force deployment in the Sahel — RT International