The Sahel at the Time of Unprecedented Alliances: The Coordinated Offensives of April-May 2026 and the Security Restructuring of West Africa

Since April 25, 2026, Mali has been the scene of an unprecedented offensive since the Tuareg rebellion of 2012. An unexpected — and historically unnatural — coalition between the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg separatist movement, and Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an organization affiliated with Al-Qaeda, has struck in a coordinated manner at eight strategic locations: Bamako, Kati, Bourem, Gao, Kidal, Sévaré, Senou, and Mopti. In three weeks, this alliance has dealt the Malian armed forces and their Russian allies from Africa Corps setbacks that shake the very foundations of the Sahelian security architecture.

The death of General Sadio Camara, Mali's Minister of Defense, killed on April 26 in a suicide attack targeting his residence in Kati, represents a major symbolic and operational shock. The architect of the military-strategic rapprochement between Bamako and Moscow, Camara embodied the backbone of Russo-Malian cooperation. His assassination, coupled with the injury of the head of intelligence services, General Modibo Koné, creates a decision-making vacuum at the top of the Malian security apparatus at a moment when the junta led by Assimi Goïta faces its most serious existential crisis. According to the Malian Armed Forces, more than 200 enemy fighters have been neutralized, while Africa Corps claims to have eliminated over 1,000 assailants — figures that cannot be independently verified but reflect the intensity of the fighting.

The most concerning element of this new configuration is the tactical convergence between the FLA and JNIM. These two groups pursue radically opposing objectives: the FLA aspires to autonomy or independence for Azawad within a secular framework, while JNIM seeks to establish governance based on Sharia and to overthrow the regimes in the region. Yet, as early as 2025, negotiations led under the auspices of the Association of Ulemas of Azawad resulted in a pragmatic compromise: the FLA commits to rejecting secularism and applying Sharia in areas under its control, and JNIM agrees to localize its fight without formally renouncing its allegiance to Al-Qaeda. This alliance recalls, in its logic, the trajectory of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria — a jihadist group that has gradually adopted a nationalist discourse to gain local legitimacy.

The capture of Kidal by the FLA on April 27 represents a particularly stinging setback for Bamako and Moscow. This city, recaptured in 2023 by Malian forces supported by Russian paramilitaries from Wagner (now Africa Corps), had been presented as a symbol of the return of state sovereignty. Its fall and the negotiated withdrawal of Russian forces from several northern localities — Aguelhok, Tessalit, Ber, Tessit — expose the limits of the Russian counterinsurgency model, based on the brutality of airstrikes and the absence of a political strategy for territorial anchoring. An Africa Corps Mil Mi-35 helicopter was shot down with its crew, and images of Russian convoys withdrawing under negotiated agreements with the insurgents have severely undermined the credibility that Moscow sought to project on the African continent.

This dynamic is not limited to Malian territory. On May 7, 2026, an attack claimed by JNIM against a Beninese military post in the Korga region, northern Benin, resulted in the deaths of seven soldiers and allowed the seizure of an arsenal including heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, and a sophisticated DJI Matrice 30T drone. This operation confirms the thesis of a methodical expansion of Sahelian jihadism towards the coastal states of the Gulf of Guinea. Emmanuel Dupuy, director of the European Institute for Security and Strategic Studies, describes the current threat as a "terrorist hydra" stretching from Senegal to Sudan and now penetrating the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea — Benin, Togo, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana. The transboundary W-Arly-Pendjari natural reserve, straddling Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger, has become a logistical rear base for these groups.

In the face of this escalation, institutional responses appear fragmented. The Alliance of Sahel States (AES), created in September 2023 by Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, has dispatched airstrikes and promised to "hunt down the assassins" of General Camara, according to the words of Burkina Faso's Minister of Defense, Célestin Simporé. However, the unified force of 5,000 men that the AES aims to deploy remains largely theoretical, and the three member countries themselves are facing internal security crises that limit their capacity for external intervention. The Global Terrorism Index 2026 indicates that the Sahel now accounts for "one-fifth of all attacks by armed groups in the world and 51% of all deaths" related to terrorism.

At the same time, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) approved in February 2026 the creation of an anti-terrorism brigade of 1,650 soldiers, the core of a future regional force that could mobilize up to 260,000 men with an annual budget of $2.5 billion. Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal have confirmed their commitment to provide contingents. However, this initiative will have to overcome two major obstacles: funding — previous experiences of the G5 Sahel and the Accra Initiative having failed due to a lack of sustainable resources — and the political rift between ECOWAS and the three AES countries, which slammed the door on the West African organization in January 2025.

The geopolitical dimension of the crisis was heightened by the publication, on May 12, 2026, of the new U.S. anti-terrorism strategy. Washington identifies West Africa, the Sahel, and the Lake Chad basin as "the most active and dangerous centers of terrorist activity in the world," and warns that fighters from the Islamic State displaced from Iraq and Syria have massively redeployed to Africa and Central Asia. The document specifies that the United States will maintain a "light military footprint" on the continent while enhancing intelligence sharing and developing partner forces — a posture that contrasts with the gradual disengagement observed since 2021, but does not propose a structural solution to the ongoing security collapse.

Analysis of current dynamics suggests that the Sahelian crisis has entered a phase of metastasis. The center of gravity remains in Mali, where JNIM has imposed a de facto blockade on Bamako since September 2025, causing fuel shortages and an economic asphyxiation of the capital. However, internal pressure is pushing armed groups to expand southward rather than retreat. The UNHCR anticipates a 17% increase in the number of Sahelian refugees and asylum seekers by the end of 2026, bringing the total to nearly 1.3 million people, primarily directed towards the coastal states.

This crisis illustrates the failure of purely military approaches. Neither the French Barkhane operation, nor the UN MINUSMA, nor the Russian mercenaries have succeeded in halting jihadist progress. As Paul Melly, a researcher at Chatham House, points out, the root causes — failing governance, marginalization of rural communities, conflicts between farmers and herders, cross-border trafficking — cannot be resolved by military force alone. Beverly Ochieng, the coordinator of Control Risks in Dakar, emphasizes the need for a "holistic operation including social interventions to stop the influence of these groups and their recruitment capacity." Without a strategy that integrates development, political reconciliation, and effective state presence in the peripheries, the Sahel will continue to fuel what analyst Ahmed Mbarek describes as "a gradual recomposition of an expanded security space extending into West Africa and the Sahel, with all the implications this holds for regional stability in the years to come."