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Conflict coverage · Central Sahel

The Sahel: A Regional Conflict System

One conflict system across three states, with no single front.

Regional systemStatus: PublishedConflict reviewed 2026-08-30Assessed as of 2026-08

Contains:InsurgencyHumanitarianForeign interventionCorridorState fragility

Where this conflict stands

The central Sahel is one conflict system worked by three states, not three national wars: jihadist insurgency that crosses every border, Azawad separatism, military rule in all three capitals, foreign security partnerships without conditions, a confederation built to replace the regional order it walked out of, humanitarian emergency and economic siege — all running at once. There is no clean front line. States hold the cities while the roads between them are contested, and in 2026 both northern Mali and the approaches to its capital came under pressure at the same time. Coverage here is deepest on Mali; Burkina Faso and Niger carry baselines rather than equivalent depth, and the country lens says by how much.

Jan 2012
Rebellion begins
As of 2012-01highEstablished historical record
5.1M
People in need (OCHA est.)
As of 2026highUN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)
~415,000
Internally displaced (est.)
As of 2025-12moderateUN OCHA humanitarian reporting (Mali / Sahel)
~80%
Gold share of exports
As of 2024moderateEITI Mali extractive-sector disclosures

Changed in brief2026-08-30 · Status wording updated

Coverage by country

  • Mali85 recordsThe module's origin and its deepest coverage: insurgency in three directions, a reversed northern settlement, and an economy under blockade.
  • Burkina Faso9 recordsThe region's largest displacement crisis and its largest armed mobilisation of civilians. A baseline: the transition, the armed forces, the VDP, the four-year encirclement of Djibo and the corridor system. Not yet Malian depth.
  • Niger12 recordsThe eastern member of the confederation — the Tillabéri borderlands, the uranium dispute, the closed Beninese corridor, and the base where Russia's force and the AES joint command sit together. A baseline, not yet depth.
  • Regional — applies to all three7 recordsThe confederation and its relations with ECOWAS, the two cross-border jihadist organisations, and the tri-border borderlands. These name no single country because they concern all of them — read them under every lens, not none.

Counts cover this module’s mapped places, events, zones, campaigns, terrain, corridors, impact chains and actor profiles. A country count is what is specifically about that country; it is not the whole of what bears on it.

And by arena

State authority and military ruleNorthern Mali / AzawadCentral Mali and the deltaCorridors and access pressure

Two dimensions, deliberately not the same one. An arena is the mechanism a record belongs to; a country is whose territory it concerns. Naming the arenas after the three states would have rebuilt three national modules inside one, and lost the cross-border explanation this module exists for.

Backgroundwhy this matters, and the conflict in 6 points

Why it matters

The central Sahel is where the collapse of a state is being tested in slow motion, three times over, and the answers are travelling. An insurgency here is strangling a national economy by burning fuel trucks on roads that also carry a quarter of Senegal's exports; a separatist movement and a jihadist coalition with incompatible aims are fighting side by side; three military governments have swapped Western partners for Russian ones with no conditions attached and built a confederation to make the break permanent; and five million people in Mali alone need humanitarian assistance in a response funded at a fifth of what it asks for. The borders are the one thing the armed groups do not respect and the states cannot ignore. 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 conflict in five minutes

6 points, composed from this conflict’s own sourced records — nothing here is a new claim.

It is not one war, and not two sides

Six camps operate at once: three military governments and their armies, the external partners fighting alongside them on their own terms, a separatist movement in northern Mali, an al-Qaeda-aligned coalition, an Islamic State province at war with that coalition, and the regional and international actors whose choices shape all of it. "Government versus terrorists" gets the conflict wrong at the first step.

It started in 2012 with a rebellion that lost control of itself

Libya's collapse sent home armed, experienced fighters. Tuareg separatists and jihadists rebelled together in January 2012, the army overthrew the government in March for failing the war, and by July the jihadists had expelled their separatist allies from every city. Connected, never identical — the most important distinction about Mali.

France stopped the collapse and settled nothing

A jihadist column moving on the road south in January 2013 brought French intervention within hours. It broke the occupation in weeks. The enemy traded terrain for time and outlasted every force sent against it — France left in 2022, the UN was expelled in 2023.

The real war is on the roads, not in the cities

The state holds the towns; its enemies hold the space between them. JNIM declared a blockade of the fuel corridors from Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire in September 2025 and has burned hundreds of tankers on them, degrading power and prices in the capital without taking a single city. It has not run unbroken: pressure eased in early 2026 and a full blockade was reimposed on 28 April.

2026 reversed the government's signature achievement

In April a joint FLA–JNIM offensive took Kidal, killed the defence minister at Kati, and pushed attacks to the capital's approaches. A July wave besieged Anéfis; the army retook it after six days. Reach was demonstrated — durable control was not.

The humanitarian crisis is the medium, not the side-effect

Around 5.1 million people need assistance and about 415,000 are displaced. Hunger here is a logistics problem before it is a harvest problem — and the same insecurity that causes it blocks the response, which was funded at roughly 21% in 2025.

Explore the system

13 analytical layers, each a full record with its own sources, dates and confidence.

Understand

How did this get here, and who is in it?

  • History6The phases that produced the present situation, each graded and sourced — the long arc a dated timeline cannot show.
  • Key Events37The dated turning points, filterable by the 5 arenas this conflict runs across.
  • Profiles14What each actor is trying to do, what constrains it, and where its stated position differs from Vigil’s assessment.

Military & security

Who can do what, where, and how is it sustained?

  • Force Atlas43How the forces on each side are organised — formations, lineage and subordination, never locations or strength.
  • Campaigns4The sustained efforts each side is actually running, with what each is for and how far it has got.
  • Terrain context4Why the ground itself constrains the fighting — rivers, approaches and corridors that decide what is possible.
  • Strategic logistics4Import corridors, ports, crossings and hubs — the supply systems both sides depend on, and the nodes that would break them.
  • Equipment25Family-level records of the systems in use here — what each is for, never quantities or readiness.

Effects & resilience

What is this doing to economies and to people?

  • EconomyCommodities, sanctions architecture and trade chokepoints — how the war transmits into prices and budgets.
  • HumanitarianDisplacement, protection and civilian infrastructure conditions, at regional level and never operational.
  • Impact chains2Step-by-step mechanisms from a trigger to an effect, each step graded so you can see where evidence ends.

Follow

What is changing, and how do I work with it?

  • Weekly Briefs7Every dated review of this conflict, including the weeks that found nothing and say so.
  • Workspace7The same records arranged for one job at a time — verifying a claim, or assessing military, policy, economic or humanitarian conditions.

Latest

The newest published work on this conflict. Conflict reviewed 2026-08-30.

Weekly Brief2026-08-30

Mali developments — 30 August 2026

1 development · 8 watch items reviewed2026-08-24 → 2026-08-30

One item, and it is institutional rather than violent. The Alliance of Sahel States held the first session of its confederal parliament in Niamey from 24 to 29 August, with Mali represented by General Malick Diaw, president of its appointed transitional legislature. The body has no legislative and no budgetary power and its members are designated by three military governments rather than elected. Mali's own files did not move: the fuel blockade and the escorted-convoy arrangement continued, no verified change in state reach was identified, and no response was recorded to either of the two documented Africa Corps civilian-harm cases.

Read the brief Every dated review

Theatre map

Interactive · approximate · as of 2026-08

Influence and activity zones

Zone coverage: Mali only · Burkina Faso and Niger pending evidence — an undrawn country is an absence of published geometry, not of activity.

Loading map…
Interactive map — tiles © OpenStreetMap contributors, © CARTO. Markers show broad, publicly documented locations; sensitive sites are generalized to area level. Zone fills, where shown, are broad and approximate context with their own dates and confidence — never precise boundaries. The map does not show current deployments, activity or operational readiness, and is not suitable for operational use. Status is dated and contextual — see themethodology.
Influence and activity zones: broad · approximate · as of 2026-07 · Confidence: graded per zone
Zone legend — Influence and activity zones

Sahel 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.

Watch

12 questions Vigil is tracking on Sahel — each one a file it is following, not a forecast it is making.

  1. Can the government supply what it holds?

    Mali's war is decided on roads, not in cities. Watch whether Anéfis, Aguelhok and Gao stay supplied overland, and whether relief columns can move without being ambushed — that, not any map of towns, measures state reach. The April 2026 withdrawals from Aguelhok, Tessalit, Tessit and Ber are the baseline: positions given up were not lost in battle so much as left unsupportable.

  2. Does the JNIM–FLA alignment hold?

    The two have different objectives — religious rule versus self-determination — and a shared enemy. April 2026 was reported as the first time they openly coordinated operations. Watch for friction over governing captured areas, particularly religious-law enforcement in FLA zones. The alliance is the single biggest variable in the war.

  3. Does corridor pressure tighten or ease?

    Read across all three states, because the corridors are the region's organising geography — OECD research puts nearly 70% of violent incidents within kilometres of major roads. In Mali: tankers destroyed against tankers arriving under escort, the balance rather than the declaration, since the blockade has already eased once and been reimposed. In Burkina Faso: whether volume shifts between the Lomé, Abidjan, Cotonou and Tema axes, and whether the August 2026 Ghana accord produces documented escorts. In Niger: whether the Benin border reopens and whether the Kebbi transit route carries real volume. Fuel and food availability in the capitals is where all of it lands.

  4. Does the encirclement model spread?

    Djibo has been surrounded since February 2022, its population forcibly concentrated and its supply moved into the air, and it has not fallen — an instrument for making a place ungovernable without capturing it. Watch whether other towns are enclosed the same way, whether road resupply ever resumes to any of them, and whether an assault is ever followed by occupation rather than withdrawal. This is the observable that distinguishes reach from control at town scale.

8 further entriesthe rest of the standing watch list

  • Does the confederation do anything its members could not?

    The AES has built a treaty, a levy, a customs duty, a bank, a passport, a parliament and — since December 2025 — a unified force with a named commander and a stated strength of about 5,000. No operation attributable to that force has been independently documented. Watch for one: a joint operation across an internal border would be the first evidence that the regional answer matches the regional problem. Watch equally for the ECOWAS track, where free trade and free movement have been maintained "until further notice" while membership has not.

  • Where is the insurgency geography moving?

    Both jihadist organisations are cross-border by construction — IS-Sahel through reported military zones spanning the three states, JNIM through katibas including Ansarul Islam, of Burkinabè origin, and Katiba Macina, which operates in western Burkina Faso as well as Mali. Watch expansion southward toward Niamey and the coastal states, the Lakurawa interface on the Niger–Nigeria border, and whether any incursion is followed by administration. Vigil publishes no strength estimates for these organisations: none is established at this site's standard.

  • Is the Russian presence growing, static or contracting — per state?

    Three deployments, not one posture: roughly 2,000 personnel and a combat record in Mali, an instructor contingent in Burkina Faso whose expansion is reported to have collapsed and partly reversed, and a presence in Niger co-located with the AES joint command at Base 101. Watch each separately — personnel movements, base establishment, recalls, and official statements, of which there has been exactly one.

  • Does documented conduct ever get a response?

    Two Africa Corps civilian-harm cases were documented three weeks apart in 2026 — Kyrnia on 31 July and Bombori on 20 August — each put in writing to the Russian and Malian defence ministries, and neither answered. The same question applies to Burkina Faso, where the VDP carries a documented record of extrajudicial killings, disappearances and sexual violence disproportionately affecting Fulani communities, and to Niger, where conflict-data analysis ranks the national military second among perpetrators of civilian killings in Tillabéri. Watch whether any investigation, denial or official response follows any case anywhere in the region. The absence of a channel is the finding; a first response would be a change in the system, not merely in a file.

  • Is the crisis still being counted?

    Burkina Faso hosts roughly three quarters of the region's displaced people and has published no consolidated displacement count since March 2023 — the figure quoted against 2026 datelines is three years old. Mali's and Burkina Faso's people-in-need totals both fell on methodology changes that the responsible agency states do not indicate improvement. Watch whether official registration resumes, whether access-based targeting is abandoned, and whether the funding gap narrows. A crisis that stops being measured does not stop.

  • Does the Mali–Algeria reset produce mediation?

    Ambassadors and airspace returned in July 2026, and the prime minister was in Algiers in late August. Restoring ties is not restoring a peace process, and the drone case Mali filed at the International Court of Justice has not been withdrawn: watch whether Algiers re-enters northern mediation, whether the ICJ case is discontinued, and whether border dynamics around Tinzaouatène change.

  • Does Islamic State Sahel exploit the fight?

    IS-Sahel gains most when its enemies are busy with each other. It joined the April 2026 offensive three days late, took Labbezanga once the garrison had gone, entered Ménaka town and then withdrew — reach without holding. Watch the tri-border zone and the Gao–Niamey axis, and watch whether an incursion is ever followed by administration.

  • How far south does the pressure go?

    Attacks at Kéniéroba and Kati reached the capital region; the western campaign reached Kayes. Watch whether attack reach on Bamako's approaches becomes something more durable than raiding.

Key actors

The 7 actors a first-time reader cannot follow Sahel without, marked as such on the records themselves. All 14 carry a full profile with objectives, constraints, leverage and stated red lines.

  • Mali — Transitional Authorities

    GovernmentGoverning military authority

    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.

  • Malian Armed Forces (FAMa)

    GovernmentState military

    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.

  • Burkina Faso — Transitional Authorities

    GovernmentGoverning military authority

    The military government of Captain Ibrahim Traoré, in power since the second coup of 2022 — the most repressive of the three AES transitions, presiding over the region’s largest displacement crisis and its largest armed mobilisation of civilians.

  • Niger — CNSP Transitional Authorities

    GovernmentGoverning military authority

    The military authorities formed by the July 2023 coup, under General Abdourahamane Tiani — the AES state that expelled both French and American forces, nationalised its uranium, and in August 2026 faced an armed mutiny inside its own capital.

  • JNIM

    JNIM & lineageAl-Qaeda-aligned insurgency

    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.

  • Azawad Liberation Front (FLA)

    Azawad movementsSeparatist movement

    The unified successor of the northern separatist movements — formed in late 2024, holder of Kidal since April 2026, and the other half of the coordination that has transformed the war.

  • Islamic State Sahel Province

    Islamic State SahelIS-aligned insurgency

    The Islamic State’s Sahel province — a separate, rival project to JNIM, strongest in the tri-border zone, expanding opportunistically while its enemies fight each other.

All 14 Sahel profiles

What are you trying to do?

Seven ways into the same Sahel records. Views change what is shown first — never what Vigil claims to be true.

7 of 7 views have every part of their content in place for Sahel. That describes what a view is assembled from — not how certain any claim in it is. Each record carries its own confidence grade, as-of date and stated gaps.

Evidence and review status

Conflict reviewed
2026-08-30— the date of this conflict’s most recent verified Weekly Brief. It records a review of the conflict as a whole, not a revalidation of every underlying record; each record carries its own date.
Assessed as of
2026-08 — the date this conflict’s standing geographic and situational claims are drawn to.
Review cadence
Weekly review / event-driven updates — quiet weeks are published as quiet reviews rather than as silence.

Scope of this coverage. This is regional-system coverage, not a conventional frontline map — no single front exists to draw. It explains the central Sahel through insurgency, state authority, separatist legacies, foreign security partnerships, corridors and humanitarian pressure, across five linked arenas and three country lenses. Coverage is deepest on Mali by a wide margin: Burkina Faso and Niger carry baselines — the states, their forces, their corridors and the mechanisms that define them — rather than equivalent depth, and the country lens reports the ratio rather than padding it.

Source registryMethodologyCorrections logGlossary

Found an error in Sahel coverage? Corrections are logged in public with the date and what changed — see the corrections log.