2011 – early 2012 Key event
Political Military Weapons deliveries Northern Mali / Azawad
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.
Why it mattersThe trigger that turned decades of northern grievance into capability. The returnees provided the core of the MNLA's fighting strength within months.
17 Jan 2012 Key event Essential Northern Mali
Military Territorial change Northern Mali / Azawad
The MNLA, alongside jihadist fighters of Ansar Dine, attacks army garrisons across the north — including Aguelhok, where captured soldiers are massacred. The army, outgunned and under-supplied, collapses northward.
Why it mattersThe fourth Tuareg rebellion since independence, but the first with Libyan-grade weaponry and a jihadist partner riding alongside — a partnership of convenience whose breakup would define the next phase.
21 – 22 Mar 2012 Key event Kati / Bamako
Political Leadership change State authority and military rule
Junior officers under Captain Sanogo, mutinying at Kati over the government's handling of the northern war, overthrow President Touré weeks before scheduled elections.
Why it mattersThe coup meant to save the north accelerated its loss: within ten days the three northern regional capitals fell. It also set the template — military seizure of power justified by security failure — repeated in 2020 and 2021.
6 Apr 2012 Key event Northern Mali
Political Territorial change Northern Mali / Azawad
With Gao, Timbuktu and Kidal in rebel hands, the MNLA unilaterally declares the independent state of Azawad. No state recognises it.
Why it mattersThe high-water mark of the separatist project — and the moment it began losing control of its own rebellion to the jihadist groups that had fought alongside it.
Jun – Jul 2012 Key event Essential Gao · Timbuktu · Kidal
Military Territorial change Northern Mali / Azawad
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.
Why it mattersThe separatist rebellion and the jihadist project were connected but never identical: within three months of "Azawad", the jihadists owned the north and the separatists were in exile. Conflating the two remains the most common analytical error about Mali.
11 Jan 2013 Key event Essential Konna / Sévaré axis
Military Northern Mali / Azawad
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.
Why it mattersThe intervention prevented the probable fall of the Malian state — but it froze, rather than solved, the questions of governance, legitimacy and the north's status that had produced the collapse.
Jan – Feb 2013 Key event Gao · Timbuktu
Military Territorial change Northern Mali / Azawad
French and Malian forces retake Gao and Timbuktu within three weeks; jihadist forces disperse into the deserts and mountains rather than fight for the cities.
Why it mattersA fast conventional victory that revealed the war's real shape: the enemy did not need cities. The insurgency traded terrain for time and outlasted the intervention that expelled it.
Apr 2013 Key event
Diplomatic Military State authority and military rule
The UN Security Council creates the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, which grows into one of the UN's largest operations — and its deadliest peacekeeping mission of the era.
Why it mattersMINUSMA became the scaffolding of the post-2013 order: protection in the northern cities, logistics the state lacked, and a documentation record — while never having a peace to keep.
May – Jun 2015 Key event
Diplomatic Northern Mali / Azawad
The government, the pro-government Platform and the separatist CMA sign the Algerian-brokered Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation — decentralisation, integration of ex-combatants, and development for the north.
Why it mattersThe only comprehensive settlement of the northern question ever signed. Its implementation stalled almost immediately, and its slow death — terminated in 2024 — tracks the whole arc from peace process to renewed war.
2015 – 2019 Key event Essential Mopti / Ségou regions
Military Humanitarian Central Mali and the delta
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.
Why it mattersCentral Mali proved the insurgency was not a northern or Tuareg phenomenon but a state-absence phenomenon — and put it astride the river, the roads and the food systems the whole country depends on.
2 Mar 2017 Key event Essential
Military Political
Ansar Dine, AQIM's Saharan emirate, al-Mourabitoun and Katiba Macina merge into Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin under Iyad Ag Ghaly, pledging allegiance to al-Qaeda.
Why it mattersThe merger unified command, propaganda and finance across the jihadist field — creating the organisation that now pressures every region of Mali and much of the wider Sahel.
23 Mar 2019 Key event Bankass cercle, Mopti region
Humanitarian Central Mali and the delta
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.
Why it mattersThe moment the central war's communal dimension became undeniable: militia formation, ethnic targeting and jihadist recruitment feeding each other, with civilians paying for every cycle.
18 Aug 2020 Key event Kati / Bamako
Political Leadership change State authority and military rule
After months of mass protests against insecurity and disputed elections, officers from Kati depose President Keïta. Colonel Assimi Goïta emerges at the head of the junta.
Why it mattersSecurity failure once again consumed the civilian order. The coup began the transition-that-isn't: five years on, the officers of August 2020 still govern.
24 May 2021 Key event Essential
Political Leadership change State authority and military rule
Goïta removes the civilian transition president and prime minister he had installed nine months earlier and assumes the presidency himself.
Why it mattersThe "coup within the coup" ended any pretence of rapid civilian return, triggered ECOWAS sanctions and the rupture with France — and opened the door to Moscow.
Dec 2021 – early 2022 Key event
Military Diplomatic State authority and military rule
Russian personnel described by Western governments as Wagner Group contractors — and by Bamako as bilateral trainers — deploy to Mali as relations with France collapse.
Why it mattersThe pivot that redrew the Sahel's security architecture: Russian partnership without governance conditions, purchased with mining-adjacent revenue and paid for in a harsher counterinsurgency.
16 – 17 Feb 2022 Key event Essential Djibo, Soum province
Military Humanitarian Territorial change State authority and military rule
Jihadist forces, primarily Ansarul Islam and JNIM, encircled the Soum provincial capital of Djibo in northern Burkina Faso, destroying infrastructure, mining the roads and ambushing supply convoys. Surrounding populations were forcibly relocated into the town, taking it from about 60,000 inhabitants to between 200,000 and 300,000, and about 370,000 by December 2022. From around May 2022 resupply depended chiefly on humanitarian airlift.
Why it mattersDjibo is the blockade instrument applied completely, and it is why this module covers Burkina Faso and Mali together. What Bamako has experienced since 2025 as corridor interdiction, Djibo has experienced since 2022 as total encirclement: population concentrated inside, roads mined, convoys ambushed, supply by air. The siege has run for more than four years and the town has not fallen — which is also the point. This is a method for making a place ungovernable without capturing it.
Feb – Aug 2022 Key event
Military Diplomatic State authority and military rule
President Macron announces the end of Barkhane operations in Mali in February; the last French soldier leaves Malian territory on 15 August 2022, nine years after Serval.
Why it mattersThe end of the intervention era. The capabilities France took with it — air power, medevac, intelligence — were precisely the ones the army and its new Russian partners could not fully replace.
Jan and Sep 2022 Key event Ouagadougou
Political Leadership change State authority and military rule
Lieutenant-Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba deposed the elected president Roch Marc Christian Kaboré in January 2022, citing his handling of the insurgency. Eight months later, in September, Captain Ibrahim Traoré deposed Damiba on the same grounds, promising to restore security and sovereignty.
Why it mattersThe second coup gave Burkina Faso the government it still has and the doctrine it still fights under — mass civilian mobilisation through the Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland, declared as "total war". It also completed the Sahel's political realignment: within a year, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger were all governed by officers who had seized power on the argument that the previous order was losing the war. The argument has not been vindicated: insecurity and displacement have both worsened since.
Jul 2023 Key event Essential Niamey
Political Leadership change State authority and military rule
The presidential guard deposed President Mohamed Bazoum and established the Conseil national pour la sauvegarde de la patrie (CNSP) under General Abdourahamane Tiani.
Why it mattersThe third of the region's coups, and the one that completed the bloc. Within eighteen months Niger had expelled both of its Western security partners, joined the confederation its neighbours had formed, and replaced its constitution. It is also the coup that produced the sharpest external reaction: the ECOWAS threat of intervention that followed it is what turned a mutual-defence pact between Mali and Burkina Faso into a bloc of three.
14 Nov 2023 Key event Kidal
Military Territorial change Northern Mali / Azawad
Malian forces with Wagner support enter Kidal after the CSP withdraws under drone bombardment — the state's first control of the town since 2012.
Why it mattersThe junta's defining victory and proof of its drone-enabled model; it held for twenty-nine months. Its loss in April 2026 measures exactly how far the pendulum has swung back.
Jun – Dec 2023 Key event Essential
Diplomatic Military State authority and military rule
At Bamako's demand, the Security Council ends MINUSMA's mandate in June 2023; the mission completes a compressed, contested withdrawal by 31 December, handing over or demolishing its northern camps.
Why it mattersRemoving the UN buffer detonated the frozen northern question: the race to occupy MINUSMA's camps restarted the war between the state and the CMA within weeks.
25 Jan 2024 Key event
Diplomatic Political Northern Mali / Azawad
Bamako formally ends the 2015 peace agreement, citing signatory violations and Algerian interference — months after retaking Kidal by force.
Why it mattersThe legal death of the negotiated northern settlement. From this point the state's northern policy is military victory, and the separatists' answer would be reorganisation and revenge.
25 – 27 Jul 2024 Key event Tinzaouatène
Military Northern Mali / Azawad
CSP fighters, with JNIM claiming a role, rout a Malian–Wagner column near the Algerian border, killing dozens including senior Wagner figures — the group's heaviest publicly documented loss in Africa.
Why it mattersProof the northern movements retained real combat power after Kidal — and an early, contested signal of tactical convergence between separatists and JNIM against their common enemy. It is also the origin of this module's Ukrainian file: two days later Kyiv's Defence Intelligence spokesman said the fighters had received the information they needed, and Mali and Niger severed relations with Ukraine over the remark. Nothing about external support to the ambush itself is established — the alliance's own spokesman told Reuters on 15 August 2024 that it had received no outside help here and no Ukrainian assistance of any kind — and the battle record is unchanged by the claim.
29 Jul – 19 Aug 2024 Key event Bamako · Niamey · New York
Diplomatic Political State authority and military rule
On 29 July 2024 Andriy Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine's Defence Intelligence, told the Ukrainian public broadcaster that the fighters who destroyed a Malian–Wagner column at Tinzaouatène had received all the information they needed for the operation. Mali said it had learned of the remarks with deep shock, described them as an admission of Ukrainian involvement in a terrorist attack on its forces, cited comments by Ukraine's ambassador to Senegal alongside them, and severed diplomatic relations with immediate effect on 4 August; Niger followed on 6 August. Ukraine's foreign ministry denied any involvement and called Mali's decision short-sighted and hasty. On 19 August the foreign ministers of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger wrote jointly to the President of the Security Council condemning what they called Ukraine's support for international terrorism in the Sahel. A mid-October report by Le Monde that Ukraine had been supplying drones to the northern coalition was rejected by Ukraine's foreign ministry as false.
Why it mattersThe most consequential thing about the Ukrainian file in this module is that its only firmly established elements are diplomatic. A spokesman's sentence removed Ukraine's standing in two states, produced a complaint from three at the Security Council, and has not been reversed in the two years since — all without any independently verified account of what, if anything, Ukraine actually did. The remark is also narrower than the reaction: it claims information was provided, not people, training or equipment. Read together with the Tuareg alliance's own denial to Reuters on 15 August that it had received any Ukrainian assistance, the episode is the module's clearest case of a consequence outrunning its evidence.
May – Sep 2024 Key event Niamey · Agadez
Military Diplomatic State authority and military rule
After the authorities ordered American forces out in March 2024, withdrawal began on 19 May. US forces left Air Base 101 in Niamey on 7 July and Air Base 201 at Agadez on 5 August, completing the process by the mutually agreed date of 15 September. Air Base 201 had cost about US$110 million and was described by the US Air Force as the largest Air Force-led construction project in its history, built for drone operations and Nigerien force training. Russian trainers had arrived at Air Base 101 in May, while American personnel were still there.
Why it mattersThe end of the Western counter-terrorism architecture in the Sahel, and the clearest single measure of what the region's realignment cost the states that made it. Niger gave up a surveillance and strike capability that has not been publicly replaced, in a theatre where its own losses have since become an internal political problem. The overlap at Air Base 101 — Russian trainers arriving while American troops were still on the base — is the substitution stated in its plainest form.
30 Nov – 1 Dec 2024 Key event Tinzaouatène
Political Military Northern Mali / Azawad
The CMA's component movements dissolve into a single Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) under Bilal Ag Acherif. Within a day, Malian drone strikes near Tinzaouatène kill several figures linked to the new movement.
Why it mattersThe fragmented separatist field became one organisation with one flag — easier to command, easier to ally with, and, as 2026 showed, capable of taking back the north's symbolic capital.
26 Mar 2025 Key event Niamey
Political Leadership change State authority and military rule
Following National Consultations held in Niamey from 15 to 19 February 2025 with 716 delegates, General Abdourahamane Tiani signed and promulgated a Charter of Refoundation replacing the constitution, was sworn in as president for a five-year transition, and dissolved all political parties. The Charter names the CNSP as guarantor of the transition, a Government of the Refoundation as executive, and a Consultative Council of the Refoundation as its political advisory body.
Why it mattersNiger was the first of the three to close its political system, and it did so most completely: Mali revised a charter and Burkina Faso extended an assembly mandate, but Niger replaced its constitution outright and framed the result as a founding act rather than an interim arrangement. Read alongside Mali in May 2025 and Burkina Faso in January 2026, the sequence is the strongest evidence available that the AES is a convergence rather than three parallel accidents.
11 – 12 May 2025 Key event Djibo · Diapaga
Military The Liptako-Gourma borderlands
JNIM assaulted Djibo, the provincial capital of Soum encircled since 2022, overran and razed its army base and withdrew; troops were flown back in afterwards. The group claimed some 200 soldiers killed, a figure no other party confirmed, and human rights researchers later documented executions of civilians in the town. The operation struck several other positions the same day, and within a day JNIM fighters entered Diapaga in the east, attacking the camp and freeing prisoners from the town's jail before leaving.
Why it mattersThe heaviest documented attack in Burkina Faso in this module's record, and the clearest demonstration of the pattern the positions series counts: an armed group able to overrun a besieged provincial garrison and choose not to hold it. Djibo's encirclement did not end; the town remains supplied by air.
1 – 6 Jun 2025 Key event Boulikessi (Douentza cercle)
Military Territorial change Central Mali and the delta
JNIM attacked the Malian camp at Boulikessi, in the Douentza cercle near the Burkinabè border, on 1 June 2025; security sources gave AFP a toll of at least thirty soldiers, other reporting far more. The army returned, the camp was attacked again on 5 June, and on 6 June the army withdrew from it. In the same week JNIM fighters reached inside the Timbuktu camp with a car bomb before being repelled, and Islamic State Sahel overran the camp at Tessit south of Gao.
Why it mattersThe first case in the sequence this module's Watch question on regeneration reads: a position overrun and then not put back. The week also shows the two jihadist organisations pressing the state's fixed footprint at once, in different parts of the country.
6 Jun 2025 Key event
Military Political State authority and military rule
Wagner announces its "mission accomplished" departure from Mali; the Russian presence continues under the defence-ministry-run Africa Corps, absorbing much of the same personnel.
Why it mattersA rebrand more than a withdrawal — but a meaningful one: Moscow's Sahel presence became formal state policy rather than deniable contracting, tying Russian prestige directly to the junta's survival.
13 Jun 2025 Key event Anoumalane, Kidal region
Military Northern Mali / Azawad
Fighters of the Azawad Liberation Front attacked a Malian army and Africa Corps logistics convoy travelling from Anéfis to Aguelhok, near Anoumalane some forty kilometres from Aguelhok. The army confirmed the attack; the FLA claimed more than twenty vehicles destroyed and dozens killed, figures no other party verified.
Why it mattersThe heaviest reported blow to a Malian–Russian force on the northern sustainment road since Tinzaouatène in 2024, and an early sign of what the road north of Anéfis would cost to hold — ten months before the state gave up the far north.
19 Jun 2025 Key event Banibangou
Military The Liptako-Gourma borderlands
Islamic State Sahel fighters overran the army base at Banibangou in northern Tillabéri, held the town for hours, looted and burned it and withdrew toward Mali. Niger's defence ministry acknowledged 34 soldiers killed; later counts were higher. The group returned a year later and overran the base again on 17 June 2026, the same day it took the camp at Inates.
Why it mattersThe clearest demonstration in western Niger of the pattern this module records across the region: an armed group that can overrun a garrison and leave. It is also where the Islamic State Sahel activity area drawn over eastern Mali continues into Niger.
1 Jul 2025 Key event Kayes · Nioro du Sahel · Niono
Military Corridors and access pressure
JNIM struck army and security positions at Kayes, Nioro du Sahel, Diboli on the Senegalese border, Gogui on the Mauritanian border, Sandaré, Niono and Molodo in a coordinated operation. The army said every attack was repelled and more than eighty attackers killed; JNIM claimed control of barracks. Neither account was independently verified. JNIM then declared a blockade of Kayes and Nioro.
Why it mattersThe first JNIM attack on a regional capital, and the opening of the western campaign: the border posts struck sit on the Dakar corridor that carries much of Mali's fuel, and the blockade that followed was the rehearsal for the national fuel blockade of September.
May – Jul 2025 Key event
Political Leadership change State authority and military rule
A decree of 7 May 2025 suspended the activities of all political parties in Mali; a second, on 13 May, dissolved close to 300 of them and banned their meetings and activities under threat of prosecution. On 10 July the transition president enacted a revised transition charter granting himself a five-year mandate, renewable, without an election, with the transition to continue until the country is declared pacified. A national consultation process had recommended suspending election planning on the same condition.
Why it mattersThis is the module's largest political development of 2025 and the point at which the transition stopped being a timetable that kept slipping and became an arrangement with no end condition anyone outside the government can verify. Every subsequent legitimacy question in this module — what the government is fighting to preserve, what a negotiated outcome could even look like, why security failure translates so directly into political risk — runs through it. The dates matter because the module previously placed this process a year too early.
14 Aug 2025 Moscow
Diplomatic Military State authority and military rule
Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov hosted the defence ministers of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in Moscow for what he described as the first consultations between the Russian defence ministry and the confederation's member states. A memorandum of understanding on defence cooperation was signed. Its text is not public; Belousov spoke of "comprehensive assistance" for the three states' stability and sovereignty.
Why it mattersThe first instrument that names the Russian Ministry of Defence as the counterparty of all three governments at once — two months after Wagner's departure from Mali moved the deployment itself under the same ministry. It is recorded as a signed memorandum whose obligations are unknown, not as a treaty, and the Analytical Note on the Wagner–Africa Corps transition treats it as one of three layers of state-to-state paper that replaced a company's contract.
Sep 2025 – ongoing Key event Essential Kayes / Sikasso corridors
Economic Military Humanitarian Corridors and access pressure
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.
Why it mattersThe blockade turned corridor geography into a weapon aimed at the capital: an insurgency strangling a state's economy without taking a single city. It reframed the war as a contest over lifelines, not territory.
20 Dec 2025 Key event Bamako
Military Diplomatic State authority and military rule
The Alliance of Sahel States formally inaugurated its unified force at a ceremony at an air base in Bamako, roughly 5,000 strong and commanded by Burkinabè General Daouda Traoré. The force had been announced in January 2025 and is funded, with the confederation's other institutions, by a 0.5% import levy agreed in March 2025.
Why it mattersThe three AES states face insurgencies that cross their shared borders daily while fighting them nationally, and this force is the stated answer to that asymmetry. Recording the inauguration is not the same as recording a capability: no joint operation attributable to it has been independently documented since, and whether anything it does becomes observable on the ground is one of the module's standing questions. Vigil records the institution as created and withholds the judgement on whether it works.
Early Jan 2026 Key event Ouagadougou
Political Military
Security Minister Mahamadou Sana announced on 6 January 2026 that the authorities had foiled a plot, planned for the preceding weekend, that he said involved the targeted assassination of military and civilian officials including the transition president, the destruction of the country's drone-launch base and funding from Côte d'Ivoire; the former transitional president Paul-Henri Damiba was named as its organiser and the discovery was attributed to a leaked video of the plotters. The defence minister said investigations were continuing and several arrests had been made, without numbers. It is the fourth plot the authorities have announced since September 2022 — after September 2023, January 2024 and April 2025 — and, as with each of them, no independent account of what was planned exists.
Why it mattersThe Sahel's three transitions are military governments whose principal internal threat is their own armies, and each announced plot is evidence of two things at once: that the threat is real enough to act on, and that announcing it is itself an instrument of consolidation. Neither can be separated from outside, which is why the module records the announcement, its named accused and its arrests as the observable and grades the plot itself no higher than the government's word. Read beside the Niger mutiny of August 2026 — the one episode in the three states that took the form of an armed attempt rather than an announced conspiracy — it fixes the range the regime-consolidation question is read across.
28 – 29 Jan 2026 Key event Niamey
Military State authority and military rule
Islamic State's Sahel Province, reported alongside its West Africa Province, launched a large-scale attack on Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey. Twenty attackers were killed, including a French national, and at least eleven were captured; four Nigerien soldiers were wounded. Russia's Foreign Ministry stated that the attack "was repelled through the joint efforts of the Russian Ministry of Defence's African Corps and the Nigerien armed forces". General Tiani subsequently visited the Russian base in person to thank the force. Sources differ by a day on the date.
Why it mattersThis is the best-evidenced Africa Corps engagement anywhere in this module: an official Russian statement, a public acknowledgement from the head of the host state, and a specific casualty account. It establishes that Russia will say publicly that its forces fought alongside a Sahelian army against a jihadist attack — which is the baseline against which the far less well-sourced reports of Russian involvement in the August mutiny should be read. The reported participation of Islamic State West Africa Province is recorded as a fact about this attack; this module does not cover the Lake Chad system.
29 Jan 2026 Key event Ambidédi, Kayes region
Military Economic Humanitarian Corridors and access pressure
JNIM ambushed a convoy of at least forty fuel tankers near Ambidédi, between the Senegalese border at Diboli and Kayes. At least twelve tankers were destroyed; human rights researchers documented the execution of between twelve and eighteen drivers. Whether the convoy was escorted is disputed between accounts. Truck drivers' unions struck in February.
Why it mattersThe last dated attack on a tanker convoy in this module's record, and the one that made drivers themselves the target — the blockade's pressure moving from the cargo to the people who carry it. From February 2026 fuel reached Bamako in mass escorted convoys without a reported loss.
29 Jan 2026 Key event Ouagadougou
Political State authority and military rule
The transitional government formally dissolved every political party in Burkina Faso, including parties that had supported the September 2022 coup. The transition had already been extended by five years in May 2024, placing any election beyond July 2029.
Why it mattersThis closed the last of the three political systems, and the order matters: Niger in March 2025, Mali in May 2025, Burkina Faso in January 2026. All three now run multi-year transitions with no electoral date and no legal opposition. Whatever else the confederation is, it is the institutional form of that shared position — and it means there is no scheduled moment at which any of these governments has to answer for the security record that justified taking power.
25 Apr – May 2026 Key event Essential Kidal · Kati · nationwide
Military Territorial change Leadership change Northern Mali / Azawad
The FLA and JNIM launch the war's largest coordinated offensive since 2012, reported as the first time the two openly coordinated operations: the FLA takes Kidal as government and Russian forces withdraw from the far north, reportedly under negotiated terms, and a car bombing at Kati kills Defence Minister Sadio Camara. The withdrawals extend well beyond Kidal — Africa Corps is reported to have left Aguelhok on 27 April, though a Malian garrison stayed and repelled an attack there in July; government and Russian forces left Tessalit, where the FLA was filmed in the town by 1 May; Malian troops left Tessit in the Gao region, and Ber in the Tombouctou region was given up under negotiation. IS-Sahel joins on 28 April, occupies the vacated Labbezanga border post and briefly enters Ménaka town before withdrawing under reported Russian pressure. JNIM reimposes a full blockade of Bamako on 28 April, claims wide gains around Mopti, and reportedly follows with checkpoints on the capital's approaches.
Why it mattersThe offensive reversed the junta's signature achievement, demonstrated FLA–JNIM operational coordination at national scale, and reached the government's inner circle. It did not settle control everywhere it touched — but it redrew the map of the possible. The withdrawals are the part that lasted: positions across three northern regions were given up inside three days, several of them reportedly by negotiation rather than in battle, and none was retaken until the army and Africa Corps re-entered Kidal on 6 October 2026, again without a battle for the town. Two of the three gains that were seized rather than vacated — Labbezanga and Ménaka — were taken from ground already abandoned or given up again within days, which is the distinction between reach and control this module keeps insisting on.
30 Jun 2026 Key event Gayéri · Sebba · Torodi · Diagourou
Military The Liptako-Gourma borderlands
JNIM attacked army detachments at Gayéri, Solhan and Sebba in eastern and northern Burkina Faso and positions at Torodi and Diagourou in Niger's Tillabéri region. Burkina Faso's army reported all three attacks repelled and more than four hundred attackers killed, a figure only it published. At Diagourou a National Guard post and an adjacent state-backed militia base were overrun, with dozens killed according to a local tally.
Why it mattersThe attack that shows the Liptako-Gourma as one battlefield rather than two national ones: a single operation across a border the two states defend separately and the armed group does not recognise.
4 – 10 Jul 2026 Key event Anéfis · nationwide
Military
A second coordinated wave hits Anéfis, Aguelhok, Gao, Sévaré and Kéniéroba, later Konna and Somadougou. FLA and JNIM fighters besiege the Anéfis base, ambush a Malian–Africa Corps relief convoy near Tabrichat and down an Mi-24; a second column from Gao breaks through and the army announces the town retaken on 10 July, at a stated cost of about 30 soldiers.
Why it mattersThe attacks showed geographic reach from the Algerian border to Bamako's approaches — pressure on positions, not proof of durable control. Anéfis became the test of whether the government and the Africa Corps can still project force up the Kidal road, and of whether the FLA–JNIM alignment can hold ground against a determined relief effort.
8 Jul 2026 Niamey
Diplomatic Military State authority and military rule
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met the foreign ministers of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in Niamey, a follow-up to their April 2025 meeting in Moscow. A joint statement said Moscow would "continue its support for strengthening the operational capacities of AES member states' armed forces", and the ministers discussed defence, counter-terrorism, training and infrastructure cooperation. Reporting describes the statement as welcoming Russian support to the confederation's unified force; no text setting out what that support is has been published.
Why it mattersThe consultations are the dated event behind the Russia–AES framework this module records as the moment three bilateral relationships acquired a single counterparty. A joint statement is a position, not a capability, and it is recorded as such; what it changes is the institutional shape of the relationship, which is the Analytical Note's argument about the transition from Wagner as a whole.
30 Jul 2026
Weapons deliveries Military State authority and military rule
Mali received a further batch of Turkish Bayraktar Akinci heavy strike drones on 30 July 2026, handed over by the deputy defence minister to the armed forces chief of staff and the head of the air force. Serial numbers reported in open sources indicate eight of the type delivered in total since November 2024, supplementing the TB2s in service since 2023. Open-source counts put Malian drone activity at more than 1,200 sorties since 2022, concentrated in the Ménaka, Gao and Kidal regions.
Why it mattersDrone capability is the one line in the Malian state's military position that has moved consistently upward since 2023, and it is also the instrument at the centre of the module's civilian-harm file — the Kyrnia strikes, the contested strikes near Tinzaouatène, and the 2025 shoot-down that ruptured relations with Algeria. Capability and conduct are the same story here, and the fleet growing while the territorial position contracts is the more exact statement of where this war stands than either fact alone.
9 August 2026 Key event San, Ségou region
Military Central Mali and the delta
JNIM fighters attacked the Malian army's main camp at San, in the Ségou region of central Mali, on 9 August 2026. Reporting puts Malian military losses at ten to twelve soldiers killed with equipment seized. Africa Corps, the Russian contingent operating alongside Malian forces, attributed the attack to a JNIM and Azawad Liberation Front coalition and said more than 40 attackers were killed; the commander of the 23rd FAMa Regiment, Lt Col El Oumrani, said the attack had been repelled and clearance operations were continuing. A JNIM-affiliated channel claimed its fighters had taken full control of the barracks and published video said to show them at the compound; Africa Corps said the attackers had filmed around the perimeter and withdrawn after the assault failed. Neither account has been independently verified. The attack fell on the last day of the previous reporting window and the reporting arrived after that brief had closed.
Why it mattersSan is a regional town on the road between Bamako and Mopti, and the attack is the module's recurring problem in its clearest form: the two sides are not disagreeing about what happened but about what it means to hold a place for a few hours. Vigil's standing rule is that attack reach is not territorial control, and it cuts both ways here — a JNIM video inside a compound does not establish control of San, and an army statement that an assault was repelled does not establish that the road is secure. What the episode does establish is that a garrison at a regional centre on a main axis could be assaulted at scale, and that the state's account of the result now comes partly from a foreign contractor.
13 August 2026 Bamako
Political Diplomatic State authority and military rule
Malian head of state Gen. Assimi Goïta pardoned French national Yann Vezilier by decree on 13 August 2026 and ordered his immediate removal from the country. Vezilier, an official at the French embassy in Bamako, was arrested in August 2025 alongside several Malian officers, including Generals Abass Dembélé and Néma Sagara, and sentenced in June 2026 to twenty years for endangering the external security of the state. The Malian government stated that the clemency is not an acquittal and does not overturn a conviction reached in proceedings it describes as fair. France had confirmed that Vezilier worked at its embassy, rejected the accusations as baseless, and argued that he held diplomatic accreditation protecting him from arrest under the Vienna Convention.
Why it mattersThe case has been the sharpest point of the Bamako–Paris rupture for a year, and the way it ends is the informative part. A pardon keeps the conviction, keeps the state's account of a French destabilisation plot, and removes the prisoner — so the authorities give up the least they can while closing a file that had no further use. It is a de-escalation of an irritant rather than a change in the relationship, and nothing in it addresses the Malian officers convicted in the same case, whose position is unchanged.
20 August 2026 Key event Bombori, Mopti region
Humanitarian Military Central Mali and the delta
Human Rights Watch reported on 20 August 2026 that Russian government controlled Africa Corps forces summarily killed nine civilians, including four children, and beat dozens of others at Bombori village in the Mopti region in early July 2026. According to the organisation's findings, more than 100 Africa Corps fighters accompanied by several Malian soldiers entered the village at about 05:00 on 10 July, broke into homes in the ethnic Fulani neighbourhood, rounded up at least 80 men and boys, beat and interrogated them about alleged links to Islamist armed groups, shot six civilians who tried to flee, and detained and executed three others, one of whom was beheaded; at least eight homes were looted and burned. Human Rights Watch said it wrote to the Russian and Malian defence ministers on 4 and 5 August setting out its findings and questions and received no response. The findings are the organisation's own investigation and have not been independently confirmed; neither government has publicly responded.
Why it mattersThis is the second documented case in three weeks, after the 31 July findings on the June air strikes at Kyrnia in the same region, and the pattern that is now established is not about any single incident. It is that credible documentation is being produced at intervals, that it is being put to both governments in writing, and that no investigation, denial or response follows. That silence is itself the accountability finding: there is no channel through which conduct by a foreign force operating alongside the Malian army is examined by anyone who can act on it. Vigil records the allegations as the organisation's findings and takes no position on individual criminal responsibility.
25 – 26 Aug 2026 Algiers
Diplomatic State authority and military rule
Malian Prime Minister General Abdoulaye Maïga made a two-day working visit to Algeria on 25–26 August 2026, meeting Prime Minister Sifi Ghrieb, in the highest-level contact since the two states restored ambassadors and reopened their airspace in July. No agreement was announced. Algeria is reported to have facilitated the release of several Malian soldiers held by Tuareg rebels and jihadists; analysts cited in the reporting describe Bamako as hoping Algiers will use its influence over northern factions toward a settlement more favourable than the terminated Algiers Accord.
Why it mattersThe July reset restored ties without restoring a process, and this is the first test of whether anything follows from it. What Bamako wants from Algeria is on the record only through analysts, not through either government, and Algeria has committed to nothing publicly. The case Mali filed at the International Court of Justice over the 2025 drone incident has not been withdrawn. Recorded as an update rather than a key event because contact is not yet mediation.
29 – 30 Aug 2026 Key event Niamey
Military Political State authority and military rule
Mutinous soldiers attacked the Diori Hamani International Airport, the presidential palace, the state broadcaster and Base 101 — the air force base that hosts both the Russian Africa Corps and the AES joint command. State media described hundreds of disaffected soldiers; reporting indicates the mutineers included troops from Niamey and from Ouallam, Téra and Dosso, localities where the army has sustained heavy casualties. Government forces retook Base 101, General Salifou Modi said on state television that the situation was under control, and dozens of soldiers were shown paraded afterwards. On 29 August Russia's ambassador, Viktor Voropayev, told TASS that the command of Base 101 had appealed to Russian personnel for assistance, and that Niger's chief of the general staff, the army chief of staff and the base commander later visited the Africa Corps compound to thank it; to Western agencies he said the mutineers were neutralised "particularly thanks to the intervention" of the force. Reporting attributes ground and aerial support, drones included, to Africa Corps personnel, and describes Russian personnel held by the mutineers early in the episode. Casualty and arrest figures have not been established; the government held a funeral for three presidential-guard members on 31 August. Algeria's defence ministry said on 30 August that Su-30 fighter aircraft, with an air-to-air refuelling aircraft, had landed at Niamey at the request of the Nigerien authorities to support the army against an attempt to destabilise the state, and President Tebboune confirmed the deployment in an interview broadcast on 3 October; reported numbers differ, and no action by the aircraft has been reported. On 11 September a decree replaced the chief of staff of the armed forces, General Moussa Salaou Barmou, with Brigadier General Mamane Sani Kiaou, the army chief of staff, without a stated reason; the handover took place on 16 September.
Why it mattersTwo things about this were established on the day and one has been settled since. Established: soldiers from the units taking the heaviest losses in the western theatre turned on the capital, which makes battlefield attrition an internal political fact rather than only a military one; and the base they attacked is where Russia's force and the confederation's joint command both sit. Settled, by Moscow's own account within a day: Russian personnel did act, and did so — the ambassador says — because the base command asked them to. That is the second official Russian acknowledgement of an engagement in this module after the January airport attack, and it dissolves the distinction the first version of this record drew between defending its own base and choosing a side. A force attacked at its base, asked by that base's command to help, and thanked by the army's chief of staff afterwards, has done both at once. What the statement does not establish is whether Africa Corps would act in an internal contest away from its own base, or in Mali or Burkina Faso; that is now the question the Analytical Note on the Wagner–Africa Corps transition carries forward.
10 Sep 2026 Key event Dioura
Military Central Mali and the delta
JNIM attacks the Malian army camp at Dioura, in the Ténenkou cercle of the Mopti region, and claims total control of the barracks. Security, military and local sources give AFP a rising toll over eight days — first more than fifty soldiers and five Africa Corps personnel, then sixty to eighty, then more than a hundred including two officers, with between sixty and ninety taken prisoner; JNIM claims 150 killed and 93 captured. RFI's local sources give about a hundred killed and dozens captured; on 21 September Reuters cites a security source for 130 killed and more than a hundred taken hostage and a diplomatic source for about 120 killed. The Malian authorities announce air-ground operations against the attackers, acknowledge unspecified losses of their own in an operation lasting more than a week, and publish no toll. Local sources say the attackers returned the following day, that no reinforcements were sent and that the camp was emptied of its weaponry; on 21 September RFI reports that no Malian soldier and no Africa Corps member remains at the site.
Why it mattersThe heaviest single loss recorded in this module, and the clearest case of a distinct mechanism: a position that ends not because it was held by someone else but because it was not put back. Dioura's camp had already been raided in 2019, overrun in 2023 and taken and looted in May 2025, and each time the attackers left. What separates 2026 is the aftermath rather than the assault.
12 Sep 2026 Northern Mali
Military Northern Mali / Azawad
CNN published an investigation reporting that about fifteen Ukrainian specialists are deployed in northern Mali working with the Azawad Liberation Front, providing training, support and operational help rather than taking part in front-line fighting, with one operator describing coordinating local drone flights remotely — receiving the video feed over the internet and directing the aircraft by radio. The account rests on interviews with two Ukrainian drone operators said to be deployed there, a Ukrainian Defence Intelligence source, and a named Defence Intelligence spokesman; the source is quoted describing Kyiv as turning its drone experience into a foreign policy tool. The same reporting carries three weaker claims, each on a single anonymous source: that several Ukrainian specialists are also in Sudan, that personnel from Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso had earlier travelled to Mali for Ukrainian drone training, and that Ukrainians assisted the Front's takeover of Kidal. Russia's Defence Ministry has separately said Ukrainian and European mercenary instructors trained the movements before that assault. No state has confirmed any element of the account.
Why it mattersThis record exists because the allegation acquired a shape, not because it acquired confirmation, and the distinction is the whole of it. Ukrainian involvement in Mali has been alleged since 2024; what is new is a number, a named partner, a role that stops short of combat and a command relationship run from outside the theatre. If accurate, the interest of the arrangement is not its size — fifteen people decide nothing about who holds ground in the north — but the fact that a handful of instructors can impose cost on Russian personnel at a price Kyiv can pay indefinitely. Four things stay apart and none collapses into the others: verified presence, which does not exist; attributed reporting, which is what this is, and which is strong of its kind; inferred scope, which is where the Sudan, third-country and Kidal claims sit; and speculation, which would include any account of what Kyiv intends. The Kidal claim deserves particular care: it is asserted by a Ukrainian participant and by the Russian Defence Ministry, two parties opposed in everything else who each have a reason to want it believed, and agreement between interested parties is not corroboration.
16 Sep 2026
Humanitarian Weapons deliveries Northern Mali / Azawad
Bellingcat publishes an investigation into Malian and Africa Corps drone strikes in northern Mali, tying individual incidents to coordinates and to the imagery each finding rests on — among them Amasrakad in March 2024, Tinzaouatène in July and August 2024 and Zouera in July 2025. The investigators describe a recurring dynamic they call guilt by location, in which people are treated as targets on the basis of where they are or what they are moving — fuel or mining among the activities named — rather than on established combatant status. The systems identified are Turkish Bayraktar TB2 and Akıncı aircraft operated by the Malian air force and Shahed-type munitions operated by Africa Corps.
Why it mattersIt records the cost of the state's chosen substitute. As ground positions contracted through 2026, strike became the instrument by which the government asserted reach into places it no longer occupied — and this is the first compiled, geolocated account of what that substitution has meant for civilians. The "guilt by location" finding also joins two files the module had kept apart: the transport of fuel is both the thing the insurgency interdicts and, on this account, a criterion by which people have been struck.
6 Oct 2026 Key event Kidal
Military Territorial change Northern Mali / Azawad
Malian forces and Russia's Africa Corps entered Kidal on 6 October 2026 without a fight, five months after the FLA and JNIM took it. The general staff had announced large-scale air-ground operations in the Kidal region with its Russian partners, after strikes that intensified from 4 October on the town and on Tinzaouatène. Two Malian officers told AFP the column entered shortly before 1 pm and met no resistance. The FLA announced the same day a "strategic and controlled withdrawal", which it called temporary, and blamed the air campaign. That evening the transition government described the consolidation of its position in Kidal and the gradual return of administration, and the army said its offensive in the region would continue. RFI reported a column of about 120 vehicles from Anéfis carrying Malian soldiers, Africa Corps personnel and fighters of the MSA and Gatia, Tuareg groups integrated into the army. An FLA cadre told RFI the withdrawal was decided with JNIM, which did not fight for the town.
Why it mattersIt reverses the April 2026 seizure, the module's central northern fact, in the same way the town was lost: without a battle for it. The army holds the town, while the FLA and JNIM withdrew into the desert around it with their fighters and vehicles intact, by their own account. What the re-entry does not establish is that the state can hold the town, supply it by road or restore administration in a place most residents had already left, or that Tessalit and the other far-northern posts given up in April will follow.
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