Mali — Transitional Authorities — JNIM

The parties

• Mali — Transitional Authorities adversarial relationship with JNIM

A symmetric arrangement: it reads the same from either side. Authored once, on one record.

Status

Active

In force and operating. Says nothing about how well it is working, or about which way it is heading.

Last material change: 2026-04.

What the arrangement covers

Categories the arrangement is documented to include. Not a measure: a relationship covering more of them is described in more detail, not held more firmly.

Summary

JNIM formed in March 2017 from four groups and has since displaced the state from much of central Mali, expanded south and west, and — from September 2025 — turned to the fuel corridors, declaring a blockade on the routes into Bamako and striking convoys and depots. The April–May 2026 offensives, coordinated with the FLA in the north, extended the blockade to the capital's approaches and pushed the Russian contingent back toward Bamako. JNIM has repeatedly said it would negotiate, on conditions that include the departure of foreign forces; the transitional authorities have refused any talks and treat the movement as a terrorist organisation, while local ceasefires and community-level arrangements are reported in parts of the centre. Neither party controls the whole of the territory it claims, and neither has been able to end the other.

Why it matters

Everything else in the module — the Russian presence, the AES, the fuel blockade's economics, the displacement — is downstream of this relationship. Whether it ends in negotiation, in exhaustion or in the fall of a government is the module's largest open question, and it is one the Diplomacy layer could not show until this record existed.

Related events

• The war moves to central Mali 2015 – 2019

  Military · Humanitarian

• Formation of JNIM 2 Mar 2017

  Military · Political

• JNIM declares a national fuel blockade Sep 2025 – ongoing

  Economic · Military · Humanitarian

• April 2026 offensive — Kidal falls, the defence minister is killed 25 Apr – May 2026

  Military · Territorial change · Leadership change

• July 2026 nationwide attacks and the battle for Anéfis 4 – 10 Jul 2026

  Military

• A contested garrison attack at San, and two irreconcilable accounts of it 9 August 2026

  Military

What remains unknown

• The terms JNIM has attached to negotiation are reported through its own statements and mediators' accounts; no consolidated position is published.
• Local arrangements between JNIM units and communities or state representatives are reported case by case and cannot be counted here.
• Vigil publishes no order of battle, strength or disposition for either party, and the absence is structural.

Readings the evidence also supports

• The blockade can be read as a strategy to force negotiation on the insurgency's terms, or as a shift toward economic strangulation with no negotiated end in view. JNIM's statements support the first; the pattern of attacks in 2026 is consistent with the second.

Listed because the record's own assessment is not the only one its sources permit — not as a hedge on the assessment above.