Mali zones show broad influence, activity, access pressure, or administrative context. They do not represent precise territorial control — influence and activity are not the same as control.
Mali zones show broad influence, activity, access pressure, or administrative context. They do not represent precise territorial control — influence and activity are not the same as control.
Government-administered core — Cities and regions under state administration; rural margins pressured. As of 2026-07 · Confidence: Moderate.
JNIM activity areas — Reported JNIM operating and attack-reach areas — not held territory. As of 2026-07 · Confidence: Moderate.
Islamic State Sahel activity areas — Reported Islamic State Sahel activity areas — not held territory. As of 2026-07 · Confidence: Moderate.
Azawad activity zones — Reported FLA activity and presence — not held territory. As of 2026-07 · Confidence: Moderate.
Contested corridors — Broad bands along contested supply and trade arteries — not routes. As of 2026-07 · Confidence: Moderate.
The conflict in five minutes
6 points
Each point restates something this module establishes with sources elsewhere. Nothing here is a new claim.
It is not one war, and not two sides
Five camps operate at once: a military government in Bamako, a separatist movement in the north, an al-Qaeda-aligned coalition, an Islamic State province at war with that coalition, and outside powers whose choices shape all of it.
It started in 2012 with a rebellion that lost control of itself
Libya's collapse sent home armed, experienced fighters.
France stopped the collapse and settled nothing
A jihadist column moving on the road south in January 2013 brought French intervention within hours.
The real war is on the roads, not in the cities
The state holds the towns; its enemies hold the space between them.
Mali is an overlapping conflict system, not a two-sided war: jihadist insurgency, Azawad separatism, military rule, foreign security partnerships, regional competition, humanitarian crisis and economic stress, all running at once.
Why it matters
Mali is where the collapse of a state is being tested in slow motion, and the answers are travelling.
Government & allied forcescamp
The transitional military authorities, the FDS, allied communal self-defence forces, and the Russian security presence supporting them.
Azawad movementscamp
The separatist and allied northern movements — today unified in the FLA — whose project is self-determination for Azawad, not religious rule.
JNIM & lineagecamp
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition and its predecessor organisations. Distinct from Islamic State Sahel, with which it is at war.
The military government formed by the 2020 and 2021 coups under General Assimi Goïta — sovereigntist in rhetoric, Russian-partnered in security, and since 2025 under the most serious military and economic pressure of its tenure.
The rebuilt, Russian-partnered military that retook the north in 2023 and lost much of it again in 2026 — expanded, drone-armed, and stretched across three fronts.
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition under Iyad Ag Ghaly — the war’s strongest non-state force, now waging economic siege against the capital and coordinated offensives with the FLA.
The MNLA, alongside jihadist fighters of Ansar Dine, attacks army garrisons across the north — including Aguelhok, where captured soldiers are massacred.
Ansar Dine, AQIM and MUJAO turn on and expel the MNLA from Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal, imposing their rule on the northern cities — destroying shrines in Timbuktu and applying hudud punishments.
After a jihadist column pushes south toward Sévaré and the road to Bamako, France intervenes at Mali's request with airstrikes and a rapid ground force.
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Explore deeperWhy it matters · Headline figures · How it got here · Timeline — most recent first · +1 more
Why it matters
Significance, not narrative
Mali is where the collapse of a state is being tested in slow motion, and the answers are travelling. An insurgency here is now strangling a national economy by burning fuel trucks on three roads; a separatist movement and a jihadist coalition with incompatible aims are fighting side by side; a military government has swapped Western partners for Russian ones with no conditions attached; and five million people need humanitarian assistance in a response funded at a fifth of what it asks for. The same pattern is spreading across Burkina Faso, Niger and toward the West African coast. If you want to understand how modern insurgencies win without taking cities — and what happens to civilians while they do — this is the clearest case available.
The intervention prevented the immediate collapse of the Malian state — a real achievement — but resolved none of the governance, security, decentralisation or legitimacy problems that had produced it.
Central Mali proved the insurgency was not a northern or Tuareg phenomenon but a state-absence phenomenon — and it put the war astride the river, the roads and the food systems the whole country depends on.
The FLA and JNIM launch the war's largest coordinated offensive since 2012: the FLA takes Kidal as government and Russian forces withdraw from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms; a car bombing at Kati kills Defence Minister Sadio Camara; IS-Sahel seizes the Labbezanga border post.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
The military government formed by the 2020 and 2021 coups under General Assimi Goïta — sovereigntist in rhetoric, Russian-partnered in security, and since 2025 under the most serious military and economic pressure of its tenure.
The rebuilt, Russian-partnered military that retook the north in 2023 and lost much of it again in 2026 — expanded, drone-armed, and stretched across three fronts.
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition under Iyad Ag Ghaly — the war’s strongest non-state force, now waging economic siege against the capital and coordinated offensives with the FLA.
Published 2026-08-02 · window 2026-07-27 → 2026-08-02
A Human Rights Watch investigation published on 31 July converted a thinly documented June air strike in the Mopti region into a substantial civilian-harm case against Africa Corps, reporting eight civilians killed at a village chief's residence and a cattle market. The evidence is new; the incident is not — it occurred on 15 June, outside this reporting window.
New evidence links Africa Corps aircraft to a strike that killed civilians in KyrniaConfidence: Moderatehumanitarian
Human Rights Watch published an investigation into two air strikes on Kyrnia, in Mali's Mopti region, on 15 June.
Force Atlas updated — Africa Corps record reviewedmodule change
Conduct record updated with the documented Kyrnia air-strike case and its 31 July investigation date.
The specific reports each development rests on, with their own publication dates. A report's publication date is not the date of the thing it describes — the brief's reporting window states the second, these citations state the first.
The location, the date and the circumstances are supported by several independent forms of evidence — witness testimony, satellite imagery, geolocated footage and the attacking force's own published material. The casualty count and the legal characterisation have not been established through an independent official investigation, and no Malian or Russian inquiry has been announced. Africa Corps' own account of the target is a party's claim and is recorded as such.
The FLA and JNIM launch the war's largest coordinated offensive since 2012: the FLA takes Kidal as government and Russian forces withdraw from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms; a car bombing at Kati kills Defence Minister Sadio Camara; IS-Sahel seizes the Labbezanga border post.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
Whether formal territorial concession in the far north is treated as absolutely excluded is disputed. Official statements maintain territorial integrity as non-negotiable, while reporting describes the April 2026 far-northern withdrawals as negotiated. Whether that represents a tacit accommodation or a temporary military decision is contested and the terms are not public. Vigil records the disagreement rather than resolving it.
The military government formed by the 2020 and 2021 coups under General Assimi Goïta — sovereigntist in rhetoric, Russian-partnered in security, and since 2025 under the most serious military and economic pressure of its tenure.
The rebuilt, Russian-partnered military that retook the north in 2023 and lost much of it again in 2026 — expanded, drone-armed, and stretched across three fronts.
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition under Iyad Ag Ghaly — the war’s strongest non-state force, now waging economic siege against the capital and coordinated offensives with the FLA.
Every campaign in Mali ultimately points at Bamako: JNIM's fuel blockade squeezes it, the April 2026 attacks reached Kati next door, and sabotage has hit its water and power.
Gao is the anchor of what remains of state presence in the north: the staging point for the Anéfis relief column and the hub the Africa Corps operates from.
FLA and JNIM waves in April and July 2026 that took Kidal, reached Bamako's approaches and left the far north largely outside state presence. The significance is structural rather than territorial: two movements with incompatible end-states are fighting as one, and Anéfis changed hands twice inside a week.
April 2026 – presentConfidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
April wave — Kidal and Kati25 April – May 2026
→July wave — Anéfis and the capital's approaches4 – 10 July 2026
A declared blockade of Mali's three fuel-import corridors, running since September 2025 and prosecuted by burning tanker convoys rather than by taking ground. It turned the war into a question of whether the state can keep its economy running. Neither broken nor decisive: convoys still move, escorted and costlier.
Since September 2025Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
No security-status or threat-trend scale is shown: Vigil publishes no method for one, and a score without a method is false precision.Module overview →
Campaigns
2 records · 2 ongoing
FLA and JNIM waves in April and July 2026 that took Kidal, reached Bamako's approaches and left the far north largely outside state presence. The significance is structural rather than territorial: two movements with incompatible end-states are fighting as one, and Anéfis changed hands twice inside a week.
April 2026 – presentConfidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
April wave — Kidal and Kati25 April – May 2026
→July wave — Anéfis and the capital's approaches4 – 10 July 2026
A declared blockade of Mali's three fuel-import corridors, running since September 2025 and prosecuted by burning tanker convoys rather than by taking ground. It turned the war into a question of whether the state can keep its economy running. Neither broken nor decisive: convoys still move, escorted and costlier.
Since September 2025Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
Disputed relationshipDan Na AmbassagouFormationConfidence: Lowas of 2026-06What is disputed: whether the state directs, supports or merely tolerates the militia.
Disputed relationshipMalian Defence and Security Forces (FDS)State militaryConfidence: Lowas of 2026-06What is disputed: whether the state directs, supports or merely tolerates the militia.
What kind of ground this is and what it does to movement in general.
Flat, open desert giving way to Sahelian scrub, where distance rather than terrain is the obstacle. Three consequences follow: attack reach is not control, the side with the lighter logistics wins the geography, and sanctuary in the Adrar has let northern rebellions recur rather than conclude.
Northern MaliConfidence: Moderateas of 2026-074 mapped constrictions
Three overland routes from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea carry Mali's entire fuel supply; with no refining, pipeline or rail alternative at scale, dependence is total. They have been under a declared blockade since September 2025, with several hundred tankers reported destroyed.
Confidence: Highas of 2026-072 disruptions recorded
Bamako–Dakar corridorPrimary corridorThe western route to the Atlantic through Senegal, and the axis on which the heaviest reported tanker losses occurred from late 2025.
→Bamako–Abidjan corridorPrimary corridorThe southern route to Côte d'Ivoire's ports, carrying the balance of fuel and container trade as pressure on the Dakar axis increased.
→KayesTransit nodeThe western regional centre on the Dakar corridor; fuel queues here are one of the reported measures of the blockade's bite.
→KitaTransit nodeRail and road town on the Bamako–Kayes stretch.
→SikassoTransit nodeThe southern regional centre through which the Abidjan corridor runs.
→BamakoRegional hubDestination and distribution point for national fuel supply, and the place where shortage becomes politically visible.
Forces in the far north are sustained on one axis — Gao through Anéfis toward Kidal — with no surface alternative of comparable capacity and no air substitute at scale. Because that axis runs on imported fuel, northern sustainment is a second-order dependency on the corridors JNIM is blockading.
Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-074 disruptions recorded
Gao–Kidal corridorPrimary corridorThe desert road north from Gao through Anéfis to Kidal.
→KidalTransit nodeThe northern terminus of the axis and the far north's political centre; held by the state 2023–2026, taken by the FLA in April 2026.
→TessalitTransit nodeFar-northern border town, reportedly evacuated by government and Russian forces in the April 2026 withdrawals.
→AnéfisChokepointThe road junction connecting Gao to Kidal and the far north.
→GaoRegional hubThe northern logistics base and the anchor of any northern presence.
→SévaréRegional hubThe central hub covering the Mopti region and the approaches from the south.
Armed reconnaissance and strike over a national area from a small number of bases — the capability that substitutes for a conventional air force Mali does not have.
Rural depth before urban assault: build presence where the state is absent and apply force to movement — corridor ambush, blockade, roadside devices — rather than to the positions themselves. Manoeuvre is light and disperses fast. Declining to hold ground is a calculation, not a rule.
Where this breaks down3 further gaps on the record
The generalisation fails in three ways worth stating.
Most recent observed adaptationas of 2026-07Confidence: Moderate3 recorded
A shift from attacking military targets to attacking the movement of commercial goods, from September 2025 — an approach that requires no territorial holding and cannot be answered by recapturing ground.
The FLA and JNIM launch the war's largest coordinated offensive since 2012: the FLA takes Kidal as government and Russian forces withdraw from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms; a car bombing at Kati kills Defence Minister Sadio Camara; IS-Sahel seizes the Labbezanga border post.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
The military government formed by the 2020 and 2021 coups under General Assimi Goïta — sovereigntist in rhetoric, Russian-partnered in security, and since 2025 under the most serious military and economic pressure of its tenure.
The rebuilt, Russian-partnered military that retook the north in 2023 and lost much of it again in 2026 — expanded, drone-armed, and stretched across three fronts.
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition under Iyad Ag Ghaly — the war’s strongest non-state force, now waging economic siege against the capital and coordinated offensives with the FLA.
Mali is an overlapping conflict system, not a two-sided war: jihadist insurgency, Azawad separatism, military rule, foreign security partnerships, regional competition, humanitarian crisis and economic stress, all running at once.
Why it matters
Mali is where the collapse of a state is being tested in slow motion, and the answers are travelling.
Government & allied forcescamp
The transitional military authorities, the FDS, allied communal self-defence forces, and the Russian security presence supporting them.
Azawad movementscamp
The separatist and allied northern movements — today unified in the FLA — whose project is self-determination for Azawad, not religious rule.
JNIM & lineagecamp
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition and its predecessor organisations. Distinct from Islamic State Sahel, with which it is at war.
What an actor says and what Vigil reads into it are different claims with different evidence requirements, and they are kept apart here.
posture as of 2026-07reviewed 2026-07-261 more on the profile
Statesthe actor’s own positionas of 2026-07
Restoration of state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the defeat of "terrorism" — the frame under which the transition justifies both its security partnerships and the absence of an electoral timetable.
Statesthe actor’s own positionas of 2026-07
A sovereigntist foreign policy: security cooperation without governance conditionality, and regional integration through the Alliance of Sahel States rather than ECOWAS.
posture as of 2026-07reviewed 2026-07-262 more on the profile
Statesthe actor’s own positionas of 2026-07
The establishment of Islamic rule in Mali and the wider Sahel, under al-Qaeda's gradualist franchise model.
Statesthe actor’s own positionas of 2026-07
Repeated signalled openness to negotiation with the Malian state — on the organisation's own terms, and consistently including the departure of foreign forces.
Convert the post-MINUSMA military situation into irreversible control of the Kidal region and standing as the north's political authority — the position from which any future settlement would be negotiated.
Constrained by · Domestic politicalConfidence: High
No electoral exit and no announced end to the transition, which makes every security failure a direct legitimacy problem with no scheduled moment of renewal.
Constrained by · EconomicConfidence: High
Fiscal dependence on a single commodity: gold is roughly 80% of exports and the indispensable revenue base, concentrated in the western belt the insurgency has been pressing since 2024.
Camps first, because grouping the actors wrongly is the commonest error about this kind of conflict.
Government & allied forcescamp
The transitional military authorities, the FDS, allied communal self-defence forces, and the Russian security presence supporting them. Colour marks the camp, not endorsement.
Azawad movementscamp
The separatist and allied northern movements — today unified in the FLA — whose project is self-determination for Azawad, not religious rule. A distinct camp from JNIM even where they currently fight alongside it.
JNIM & lineagecamp
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition and its predecessor organisations. Distinct from Islamic State Sahel, with which it is at war.
The fall of the Gaddafi government releases thousands of Sahelian fighters from Libyan service — many of them Malian Tuareg — who return home with vehicles, weapons and combat experience.
Junior officers under Captain Sanogo, mutinying at Kati over the government's handling of the northern war, overthrow President Touré weeks before scheduled elections.
Attacks at Kéniéroba and Kati reached the capital region. Whether that becomes something more than raiding is the clearest single escalation signal in the module.
Movement from corridor attacks to sustained pressure on mining areas would attack the fiscal base itself, which has no substitute.
Gao is the anchor of any northern presence. Pressure on Gao is a different order of event from pressure on Anéfis.
Three coups since 2020 came from within the security establishment; the death of the defence minister in April 2026 removed a central figure.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
Rival and battlefield competitor since 2019–2020 — never a single “jihadist” bloc. Local truces and territorial seams exist, but the rivalry is structural.
The military government formed by the 2020 and 2021 coups under General Assimi Goïta — sovereigntist in rhetoric, Russian-partnered in security, and since 2025 under the most serious military and economic pressure of its tenure.
The rebuilt, Russian-partnered military that retook the north in 2023 and lost much of it again in 2026 — expanded, drone-armed, and stretched across three fronts.
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition under Iyad Ag Ghaly — the war’s strongest non-state force, now waging economic siege against the capital and coordinated offensives with the FLA.
The FLA and JNIM launch the war's largest coordinated offensive since 2012: the FLA takes Kidal as government and Russian forces withdraw from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms; a car bombing at Kati kills Defence Minister Sadio Camara; IS-Sahel seizes the Labbezanga border post.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
FLA and JNIM waves in April and July 2026 that took Kidal, reached Bamako's approaches and left the far north largely outside state presence. The significance is structural rather than territorial: two movements with incompatible end-states are fighting as one, and Anéfis changed hands twice inside a week.
April 2026 – presentConfidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
April wave — Kidal and Kati25 April – May 2026
→July wave — Anéfis and the capital's approaches4 – 10 July 2026
A declared blockade of Mali's three fuel-import corridors, running since September 2025 and prosecuted by burning tanker convoys rather than by taking ground. It turned the war into a question of whether the state can keep its economy running. Neither broken nor decisive: convoys still move, escorted and costlier.
Since September 2025Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
Locations here are regional; no facility, warehouse, convoy route or aid schedule is published anywhere in this module.Humanitarian →
Economic situation
Figures as of 2026-06 · Confidence: Moderate
Mali's economy is the war's main battlefield: a landlocked, gold-dependent state whose revenue runs through mines its enemies are approaching and whose fuel runs through corridors they are burning.
Gold is roughly 80% of exports and the state's indispensable revenue, concentrated in the western belt around Kayes and Kéniéba.
Hundreds of thousands work Mali's artisanal gold sites — a livelihood system, an export channel that partly escapes the state, and a soft target no one protects.
The ECOWAS rupture — final in January 2025 — cost market access, free movement and the bloc's dispute machinery, while leaving the corridor dependence untouched.
Development finance contracted sharply after the coups, the Wagner deployment and the Western rupture; humanitarian funding, at ~21% of the 2025 appeal, is the lowest in a decade.
Exposure and transmission, not investment advice.Economy →
Commodities and sectors
5 entries · sensitivity graded
Goldhigh sensitivity
~80% of exports and the fiscal base of the state — industrial mines in the west, a vast artisanal sector, and the revenue that pays for the war and, by credible reporting, for the Russian partnership.
Refined fuel (imported)high sensitivity
Entirely imported through Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea.
Cottonmoderate sensitivity
The main cash crop and the largest rural employer after subsistence farming, concentrated in the Sikasso belt — exposed to input costs, transport insecurity and world prices at once.
With the Dakar route under attack, the Abidjan corridor carries the balance of Mali’s fuel and container trade.
Bamako–Dakar corridorCorridor · supply & trade arteryreported disruptedConfidence: High
Landlocked Mali imports its fuel, and most of it comes this way.
Gao–Kidal corridorCorridor · supply & trade arteryreported disruptedConfidence: High
Every force that has tried to hold the far north has had to hold this road: Serval in 2013, the army in 2023, the Africa Corps relief column in July 2026.
Burning tanker convoys on Mali's three import corridors raises road-freight costs across an economy in which almost everything moves by road, reaching food supply, harvest movement, capital electricity and gold-sector inputs. The compounding fiscal squeeze that implies is plausible, not documented.
Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-07Plausible exposure at the final step
JNIM declares a blockade of fuel imports, September 2025
The three overland import corridors — Dakar via Kayes, Abidjan via Sikasso, and the Guinean leg — carry the entire national fuel supply.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.Confidence: High
Systematic burning of tanker convoys from late 2025 — several hundred reported destroyed.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.Confidence: High
Fuel scarcity and escort costs raise road-transport costs across an economy in which almost everything moves by road.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.Confidence: Moderate
Sustained transport-cost inflation compresses trade volumes and customs revenue at the same time as it raises the cost of the state's own military logistics — the army's relief columns burn the same imported diesel.
A mechanism Vigil assesses as likely; not documented as having occurred.Confidence: Moderate
Three overland routes from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea carry Mali's entire fuel supply; with no refining, pipeline or rail alternative at scale, dependence is total. They have been under a declared blockade since September 2025, with several hundred tankers reported destroyed.
Confidence: Highas of 2026-072 disruptions recorded
Bamako–Dakar corridorPrimary corridorThe western route to the Atlantic through Senegal, and the axis on which the heaviest reported tanker losses occurred from late 2025.
→Bamako–Abidjan corridorPrimary corridorThe southern route to Côte d'Ivoire's ports, carrying the balance of fuel and container trade as pressure on the Dakar axis increased.
→KayesTransit nodeThe western regional centre on the Dakar corridor; fuel queues here are one of the reported measures of the blockade's bite.
→KitaTransit nodeRail and road town on the Bamako–Kayes stretch.
→SikassoTransit nodeThe southern regional centre through which the Abidjan corridor runs.
→BamakoRegional hubDestination and distribution point for national fuel supply, and the place where shortage becomes politically visible.
Forces in the far north are sustained on one axis — Gao through Anéfis toward Kidal — with no surface alternative of comparable capacity and no air substitute at scale. Because that axis runs on imported fuel, northern sustainment is a second-order dependency on the corridors JNIM is blockading.
Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-074 disruptions recorded
Gao–Kidal corridorPrimary corridorThe desert road north from Gao through Anéfis to Kidal.
→KidalTransit nodeThe northern terminus of the axis and the far north's political centre; held by the state 2023–2026, taken by the FLA in April 2026.
→TessalitTransit nodeFar-northern border town, reportedly evacuated by government and Russian forces in the April 2026 withdrawals.
→AnéfisChokepointThe road junction connecting Gao to Kidal and the far north.
→GaoRegional hubThe northern logistics base and the anchor of any northern presence.
→SévaréRegional hubThe central hub covering the Mopti region and the approaches from the south.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
FLA and JNIM waves in April and July 2026 that took Kidal, reached Bamako's approaches and left the far north largely outside state presence. The significance is structural rather than territorial: two movements with incompatible end-states are fighting as one, and Anéfis changed hands twice inside a week.
April 2026 – presentConfidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
April wave — Kidal and Kati25 April – May 2026
→July wave — Anéfis and the capital's approaches4 – 10 July 2026
A declared blockade of Mali's three fuel-import corridors, running since September 2025 and prosecuted by burning tanker convoys rather than by taking ground. It turned the war into a question of whether the state can keep its economy running. Neither broken nor decisive: convoys still move, escorted and costlier.
Since September 2025Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
The FLA and JNIM launch the war's largest coordinated offensive since 2012: the FLA takes Kidal as government and Russian forces withdraw from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms; a car bombing at Kati kills Defence Minister Sadio Camara; IS-Sahel seizes the Labbezanga border post.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
Locations here are regional; no facility, warehouse, convoy route or aid schedule is published anywhere in this module.Humanitarian →
Conditions by system
6 systems · data as of 2026-08
Displacement, food, access, services and protection as this module documents them.
Displacementas of 2026-04
Displacement is concentrated in the northern and central regions and moves with the fighting: the 2026 offensives displaced people from Kidal, Ménaka and the Mopti countryside, while earlier waves from the Ménaka region fled Islamic State Sahel's campaigns.
Food securityas of 2026
Hunger here is a logistics problem before it is a harvest problem.
Locations here are regional; no facility, warehouse, convoy route or aid schedule is published anywhere in this module.Humanitarian →
Civilian impact — transmission chains
1 chain · every step graded
Mined roads, armed-group taxation and village blockades cut civilians from fields and markets, with acute food insecurity projected at about 1.56 million people for 2026. Access is degraded by the same insecurity that creates the need, so these figures are floors rather than ceilings.
Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-07Plausible exposure at the final step
Corridor blockade and rural road insecurity, compounded by village blockades in the centre
The systems civilians depend on run on the same roads the war is fought over: fuel and food imports through the southern corridors, harvest movement out of the Office du Niger irrigation zone and the inland delta, herds to market across the pastoral zones, and the supply chains that keep health facilities and schools functioning in contested areas.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.Confidence: High
Roads are mined and ambushed; armed groups tax or block movement; village blockades in the Niono and Mopti areas have cut farmers from their fields at planting and harvest.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.Confidence: High
Acute food insecurity projected at about 1.56 million people for 2026, with pockets of famine-like conditions reported in northern areas and severe child malnutrition projected above 227,000.
Documented as having occurred, with sources.Confidence: Moderate
Access is the binding constraint on the response, and it is degraded by the same insecurity that creates the need.
A mechanism Vigil assesses as likely; not documented as having occurred.Confidence: Moderate
Three overland routes from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea carry Mali's entire fuel supply; with no refining, pipeline or rail alternative at scale, dependence is total. They have been under a declared blockade since September 2025, with several hundred tankers reported destroyed.
Confidence: Highas of 2026-072 disruptions recorded
Bamako–Dakar corridorPrimary corridorThe western route to the Atlantic through Senegal, and the axis on which the heaviest reported tanker losses occurred from late 2025.
→Bamako–Abidjan corridorPrimary corridorThe southern route to Côte d'Ivoire's ports, carrying the balance of fuel and container trade as pressure on the Dakar axis increased.
→KayesTransit nodeThe western regional centre on the Dakar corridor; fuel queues here are one of the reported measures of the blockade's bite.
→KitaTransit nodeRail and road town on the Bamako–Kayes stretch.
→SikassoTransit nodeThe southern regional centre through which the Abidjan corridor runs.
→BamakoRegional hubDestination and distribution point for national fuel supply, and the place where shortage becomes politically visible.
Forces in the far north are sustained on one axis — Gao through Anéfis toward Kidal — with no surface alternative of comparable capacity and no air substitute at scale. Because that axis runs on imported fuel, northern sustainment is a second-order dependency on the corridors JNIM is blockading.
Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-074 disruptions recorded
Gao–Kidal corridorPrimary corridorThe desert road north from Gao through Anéfis to Kidal.
→KidalTransit nodeThe northern terminus of the axis and the far north's political centre; held by the state 2023–2026, taken by the FLA in April 2026.
→TessalitTransit nodeFar-northern border town, reportedly evacuated by government and Russian forces in the April 2026 withdrawals.
→AnéfisChokepointThe road junction connecting Gao to Kidal and the far north.
→GaoRegional hubThe northern logistics base and the anchor of any northern presence.
→SévaréRegional hubThe central hub covering the Mopti region and the approaches from the south.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
Armed men associated with a Dogon self-defence militia kill more than 150 Fulani villagers at Ogossagou — the worst single atrocity in a spiral of communal killings and reprisals across the centre.
Katiba Macina embeds the insurgency in the Mopti and Ségou regions, recruiting on local grievance and pastoralist marginalisation; the centre overtakes the north as the war's deadliest theatre.
The FLA and JNIM launch the war's largest coordinated offensive since 2012: the FLA takes Kidal as government and Russian forces withdraw from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms; a car bombing at Kati kills Defence Minister Sadio Camara; IS-Sahel seizes the Labbezanga border post.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
FLA and JNIM waves in April and July 2026 that took Kidal, reached Bamako's approaches and left the far north largely outside state presence. The significance is structural rather than territorial: two movements with incompatible end-states are fighting as one, and Anéfis changed hands twice inside a week.
April 2026 – presentConfidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
April wave — Kidal and Kati25 April – May 2026
→July wave — Anéfis and the capital's approaches4 – 10 July 2026
A declared blockade of Mali's three fuel-import corridors, running since September 2025 and prosecuted by burning tanker convoys rather than by taking ground. It turned the war into a question of whether the state can keep its economy running. Neither broken nor decisive: convoys still move, escorted and costlier.
Since September 2025Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
The FLA and JNIM launch the war's largest coordinated offensive since 2012: the FLA takes Kidal as government and Russian forces withdraw from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms; a car bombing at Kati kills Defence Minister Sadio Camara; IS-Sahel seizes the Labbezanga border post.
JNIM announces a blockade of fuel imports and begins systematically burning tanker convoys from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea — hundreds reported destroyed within months, with Bamako's power and fuel supply visibly degraded.
Grouped by how a claim is grounded — an official statement, government data, satellite imagery and a think-tank assessment are different kinds of evidence. That is a separate question from confidence, which grades how strongly the evidence supports the claim.
Established media5 sources
Al Jazeera English · Associated Press · France 24 / RFI · and 2 more
International organisation5 sources
UN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel) · UN Security Council and Panel of Experts reporting · UNHCR operational data (Mali situation) · and 2 more
Think tank / research institute3 sources
ACLED conflict data & analysis · Africa Center for Strategic Studies · International Crisis Group
Official statement2 sources
Armed-group statements (JNIM, FLA, IS-Sahel and others) · Official government statements
25 records, reviewed between 2026-07-11 and 2026-07-19.
4 more not shown in this summary
Terminology used in this module
6 of 22 glossary entries · most recently reviewed
Every entry states what the term does not mean as well as what it does — the misreading is usually the part that matters.
An actor taken as a whole: political system, leadership, military capacity, alliances, strengths and vulnerabilities, with every figure dated and graded. Actors are described by role and alignment, never as friend or foe.
How strongly the available evidence supports a specific claim, graded low, moderate or high. Shown on brief items, profiles, records, figures, map markers and zones — never as a site-wide average.
On an equipment record, how the system's presence in a conflict is documented — for example visually confirmed, or reported. It answers a different question from confidence.
A module's structured catalogue of the organisations fighting in it — services, commands, formations and the equipment they are documented to field — with the structure and history of each, and nothing operational.
One conflict or regional system covered in depth: its map, history, key events, actors, force structure, economy and human impact, cross-linked and reviewed on a stated cadence.
The first brief a module publishes: the analytical starting picture at launch, covering a longer window than a weekly review because it has to establish where things stand.
Assembled from the records themselves, not written separately, so it cannot drift from what each record actually admits. A record that names its gaps is more useful than one that implies completeness.
Water-point and well distribution is the terrain factor that most shapes movement here and the one Vigil does not publish, deliberately: it is precisely the class of detail that would make this record operationally useful rather than explanatory.
Tanker loss figures come from a mix of official statements, armed-group claims and media reporting; there is no independently audited count, and the reported totals should be read as orders of magnitude.
8 more not shown in this summary
Related records
9 record types in this module
Every cross-reference on this site is resolved when it is built: a link to a deleted record fails the build rather than rotting quietly.
The intervention prevented the immediate collapse of the Malian state — a real achievement — but resolved none of the governance, security, decentralisation or legitimacy problems that had produced it.
Central Mali proved the insurgency was not a northern or Tuareg phenomenon but a state-absence phenomenon — and it put the war astride the river, the roads and the food systems the whole country depends on.
The military government formed by the 2020 and 2021 coups under General Assimi Goïta — sovereigntist in rhetoric, Russian-partnered in security, and since 2025 under the most serious military and economic pressure of its tenure.
The rebuilt, Russian-partnered military that retook the north in 2023 and lost much of it again in 2026 — expanded, drone-armed, and stretched across three fronts.
The al-Qaeda-aligned coalition under Iyad Ag Ghaly — the war’s strongest non-state force, now waging economic siege against the capital and coordinated offensives with the FLA.
FLA and JNIM waves in April and July 2026 that took Kidal, reached Bamako's approaches and left the far north largely outside state presence. The significance is structural rather than territorial: two movements with incompatible end-states are fighting as one, and Anéfis changed hands twice inside a week.
April 2026 – presentConfidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
April wave — Kidal and Kati25 April – May 2026
→July wave — Anéfis and the capital's approaches4 – 10 July 2026
A declared blockade of Mali's three fuel-import corridors, running since September 2025 and prosecuted by burning tanker convoys rather than by taking ground. It turned the war into a question of whether the state can keep its economy running. Neither broken nor decisive: convoys still move, escorted and costlier.
Since September 2025Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-07
What kind of ground this is and what it does to movement in general.
Flat, open desert giving way to Sahelian scrub, where distance rather than terrain is the obstacle. Three consequences follow: attack reach is not control, the side with the lighter logistics wins the geography, and sanctuary in the Adrar has let northern rebellions recur rather than conclude.
Northern MaliConfidence: Moderateas of 2026-074 mapped constrictions
Three overland routes from Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea carry Mali's entire fuel supply; with no refining, pipeline or rail alternative at scale, dependence is total. They have been under a declared blockade since September 2025, with several hundred tankers reported destroyed.
Confidence: Highas of 2026-072 disruptions recorded
Bamako–Dakar corridorPrimary corridorThe western route to the Atlantic through Senegal, and the axis on which the heaviest reported tanker losses occurred from late 2025.
→Bamako–Abidjan corridorPrimary corridorThe southern route to Côte d'Ivoire's ports, carrying the balance of fuel and container trade as pressure on the Dakar axis increased.
→KayesTransit nodeThe western regional centre on the Dakar corridor; fuel queues here are one of the reported measures of the blockade's bite.
→KitaTransit nodeRail and road town on the Bamako–Kayes stretch.
→SikassoTransit nodeThe southern regional centre through which the Abidjan corridor runs.
→BamakoRegional hubDestination and distribution point for national fuel supply, and the place where shortage becomes politically visible.
Forces in the far north are sustained on one axis — Gao through Anéfis toward Kidal — with no surface alternative of comparable capacity and no air substitute at scale. Because that axis runs on imported fuel, northern sustainment is a second-order dependency on the corridors JNIM is blockading.
Confidence: Moderateas of 2026-074 disruptions recorded
Gao–Kidal corridorPrimary corridorThe desert road north from Gao through Anéfis to Kidal.
→KidalTransit nodeThe northern terminus of the axis and the far north's political centre; held by the state 2023–2026, taken by the FLA in April 2026.
→TessalitTransit nodeFar-northern border town, reportedly evacuated by government and Russian forces in the April 2026 withdrawals.
→AnéfisChokepointThe road junction connecting Gao to Kidal and the far north.
→GaoRegional hubThe northern logistics base and the anchor of any northern presence.
→SévaréRegional hubThe central hub covering the Mopti region and the approaches from the south.
Context, not targeting. This module publishes no current unit positions, strengths or movements, no facility detail, and no operational guidance — those classes of content have no fields in Vigil's schemas and cannot be authored. Every card is a summary of a canonical record; follow its link for the full text, its sources and its stated limits. See the methodology and the corrections log.