The offensive of April 25, 2026 in Mali: a turning point for the Alliance of Sahel States and regional security

The coordinated attacks on April 25, 2026, against several Malian cities — Bamako, Gao, Kidal, and Ménaka — represent the most ambitious offensive carried out by armed groups in the Sahel in nearly fifteen years. Jointly claimed by the Front for the Liberation of Azawad (FLA), a Tuareg separatist coalition, and Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), affiliated with Al-Qaeda, this multidirectional operation revealed an unprecedented tactical convergence between jihadist movements and ethno-nationalist claims. The immediate toll is heavy: the Malian Minister of Defense, Sadio Camara, a central figure in the ruling junta, was killed in the fighting, delivering a major symbolic and operational blow to the Bamako regime.

The response was swift. The Alliance of Sahel States (AES), a military coalition comprising Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, confirmed on May 1 that it had launched "intense air campaigns" against insurgent positions in northern Mali. This marks the first officially confirmed large-scale joint operation since the formalization of the alliance. The Nigerien government praised "the prompt and vigorous response of the unified force units," marking a demonstration of collective strength aimed at projecting the image of an autonomous security architecture, free from Western frameworks. At the national funeral of Minister Camara, the Burkinabe Minister of Defense, Célestin Simporé, speaking on behalf of the AES, promised to "hunt down the assassins" — a statement that goes beyond rhetoric to confirm the accelerated militarization of the alliance.

This escalation occurs in a context of deep and documented security degradation. According to data from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the period from January to March 2026 recorded 2,640 conflict-related deaths in the central Sahel, with 1,179 security incidents reported in Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger. The region now hosts 2.8 million internally displaced persons. Burkina Faso remains, according to the Global Terrorism Index, the country most affected by terrorism in the world, with Mali in third place. These figures, far from improving, have worsened since the departure of French forces from Operation Barkhane in 2022 and the gradual withdrawal of MINUSMA, which left a security vacuum that the new partners have failed to fill.

The Africa Corps, a Russian state structure that has replaced the Wagner Group in the Sahel theater, is at the heart of the contradictions of this new arrangement. Deployed in reduced numbers — a few thousand men spread across several African theaters — it prioritizes kinetic strikes and technical intelligence at the expense of territorial networking and human intelligence. This approach, while allowing for occasional tactical successes, proves structurally inadequate against insurgents who disperse, reorganize, and exploit local grievances. Reports documenting abuses — summary executions, enforced disappearances, sexual violence — attributed to Russian forces and their Malian partners have further fueled insurgent recruitment, creating a self-sustaining cycle of violence. Access to mineral resources, particularly gold deposits, appears to be an operational priority for Moscow at least as important as securing populations.

The shockwave from the Malian events extends far beyond the borders of the AES. In Burkina Faso, authorities have launched a large-scale security operation in Ouagadougou with an increased deployment of forces in strategic areas. Niger has made the unusual decision to cancel official May 1 celebrations for security reasons, a telling signal of the pressure that armed groups now exert even in the capitals. Côte d'Ivoire, while seeking to reassure about the security of its borders, anticipates an influx of refugees from Mali and Burkina Faso, reviving fears of armed networks infiltrating among displaced populations. The prospect of a corridor of instability linking the Sahel to the Gulf of Guinea coast is no longer a theoretical hypothesis but a concrete operational concern for coastal states.

The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is attempting to respond to this reconfiguration with an ambitious $2.6 billion plan to deploy a regional force of 5,000 soldiers. However, the credibility of this initiative remains to be demonstrated in light of the established rift between the AES and the regional organization. Former cooperation mechanisms — the G5 Sahel, security coordination frameworks inherited from the Barkhane era — are experiencing marked regression, while bilateral relations are strained, particularly between Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire or between Niger and Benin.

Another concerning development lies in the eastern expansion of the crisis. According to an analysis by the Ethiopian Institute of Foreign Affairs published on May 12, 2026, insecurity is now spreading from the western Sahel through Niger, Chad, and Sudan to the Horn of Africa, creating an interconnected conflict corridor linking West Africa to East Africa. Arms flows, the movement of fighters, and illicit trafficking are using historical trans-Saharan routes, transforming a regional crisis into a continental challenge. The Sudanese conflict between rival armed factions accelerates this dynamic by weakening border governance and intensifying trafficking through Darfur and bordering areas.

The war in Ukraine also imposes objective constraints on Russia's capacity to support a prolonged counter-insurgency effort in the Sahel — limitations on resources, equipment, and strategic attention that mechanically reduce the effectiveness of the Africa Corps. This reality, combined with the demonstrated adaptability of insurgent groups, suggests that the security outsourcing model adopted by the AES regimes is reaching its limits. As highlighted in an analysis by the Lansing Institute, "the problem is not merely tactical but structural: the Russian model relies on kinetic operations without sufficient integration into local human intelligence networks, producing tactical successes without strategic control."

The central question now is the political and operational sustainability of the AES. The unified force, recently increased from 5,000 to 15,000 men following a mid-April 2026 decision, represents a considerable mobilization effort for three states whose economies are among the most fragile on the continent. The death of Sadio Camara further deprives the Malian junta of an essential pillar of its military-political apparatus, at a time when the legitimacy of the regime, based on its ability to guarantee security, is being directly challenged by the events of April 25.

On the international stage, the United States, through AFRICOM, reaffirmed in January 2026 its willingness to maintain counter-terrorism cooperation with Sahelian countries, including through intelligence sharing, despite the withdrawal of its troops from Niger. This ambiguous posture — physical disengagement but maintenance of an informational presence — reflects the difficulty of Western powers in defining a coherent strategy in the face of a region that has explicitly rejected their intervention framework while remaining dependent on certain external technical capabilities.

Ultimately, the offensive of April 25, 2026, and its consequences illustrate a fundamental strategic truth: security cannot be outsourced. Neither the replacement of one external partner with another nor the accelerated militarization of regional alliances can substitute for state legitimacy, inclusive governance, and the socio-economic resilience of territories. The Sahel of 2026 is not only the theater of a war against terrorism; it is a mirror of the limits of all stabilization models based on the primacy of force, whether they are Western, Russian, or African. The future of the conflict will depend less on the number of soldiers deployed than on the still uncertain capacity of the states in the region to rebuild a social contract with populations caught between adaptive insurgents and weakened military regimes.