JNIM and FLA besiege Anéfis — kamikaze drones cut the road from Gao in Mali

Anéfis, August 17. About a hundred kilometers southwest of Kidal, the military camp still holds, but it only survives under fire. Since Saturday, August 15, fighters from the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) have been shelling the position with artillery and kamikaze drones. Reinforcements from Gao were ambushed and turned back. Northern Mali is no longer a war of bases — it is a war of roads.

I know this track. Gao–Tabankort–Anéfis is open Sahara, visibility as far as the eye can see, and convoys that cannot leave the tracks without getting stuck. In 2017, under Barkhane, we held it with permanent patrols. Today, it belongs to no one.

Three days of siege

The offensive was launched on Saturday by the alliance that took Kidal on April 25. The FLA claims to have taken the city of Anéfis, but most of the fighting is concentrated around the camp where Malian soldiers and Russian paramilitaries from the Africa Corps are entrenched. According to security sources cited by African Now, the assailants are using artillery; the Russians respond with drone strikes.

The toll remains uncertain — it must be said. Numbers circulate through local channels, without independent confirmation. What is confirmed is the tactical pattern: kamikaze drones, sustained shelling, and a camp that no longer receives anything by road.

The Gao column pushed back

On Sunday, August 16, the army dispatched a column of reinforcements from Gao. It was ambushed before reaching Anéfis: between five and eight vehicles were destroyed, according to the monitoring network Wamaps, and a forced retreat ensued. On Monday, it was the FLA's turn to send dozens of armed vehicles.

The Malian army claims to have struck "strategic targets" in Anéfis from the air. But aviation does not resupply a camp. It does not replace a column that does not arrive.

The war of corridors

The center of gravity has shifted. As ACLED points out, the question is no longer just who holds the base at Anéfis, but whether the FAMa and the Africa Corps can still move men, equipment, ammunition, and wounded across this terrain. That is exactly the turning point: the battle has become a battle for access.

Armed groups do not need to destroy every convoy. They only need to make each one costly, slow, and uncertain. Each ambush delays resupply, blocks medical evacuation, undermines the morale of the garrison, and forces Bamako to deploy its aircraft and elite units.

The ambush on July 18 — at least 50 Malian soldiers killed between Tabankort and Tangara, one of the heaviest losses of the year — showed that the interdiction works. The August siege confirms it.

Drones, the new equalizer

The second lesson is technological. Kamikaze drones — these small modified commercial devices that JNIM has been using since 2023 — are now used to deny a road, not just to strike a post. Against a convoy on open track, they are almost impossible to counter with the current means of the FAMa.

The cost of attrition is rising on both sides. The Africa Corps has already lost a Su-24 and a Mi-24 in this area since April. These are material losses, but also political: each Russian aircraft shot down weakens the narrative of power that Moscow sells to Bamako.

ICRC, a mirror of war

There is one detail that the statements do not explain. On August 16, at the height of the siege, the ICRC helicoptered six wounded from Kidal to the hospital in Gao — Malian soldiers that the FLA had just handed over, with the agreement of all parties. On the same day, the same actors were killing each other around Anéfis.

This is not naive humanitarianism. It is war institutionalizing itself: tacit rules are established, channels open, including between enemies.

Prisoner releases are multiplying — 82 soldiers returned on August 13 under Algerian mediation, six wounded this week. Violence and negotiation go hand in hand. This is the conflict model emerging in northern Mali.

Aguelhok in the crosshairs

The strategic question is now clear. If Anéfis falls or remains isolated, Aguelhok becomes the last stronghold of the FAMa in the Kidal region — a post that will only survive through air resupply. ACLED's analysis is unambiguous: the JNIM-FLA alliance is testing its ability to undo Bamako's most significant reconquest since late 2023.

On the ground, I would monitor two things. First, the next column: it will depart from Gao, perhaps bypassing through Tabankort under enhanced air cover, and the armed groups already know this. Then the political cost: each convoy pushed back brings Aguelhok's fall closer — and each lost Russian aircraft brings Moscow closer to a negotiation it did not want to have.

The road from Gao has become the decisive front in northern Mali. Whoever controls it will dictate the end of this war.