A Nation Under Siege: Mali Faces Crushing Fuel Blockade

For the past month, Bamako, the capital of the West African country of Mali, has been under an oil blockade. Lines snake around gas stations, neighborhoods go without power, and in some areas the price of gas has gone up 700%. The culprit is the terrorist group Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which is little known in the West. It has grown from its origins as a coalition of five different jihadist groups, including a branch of al Qaeda, to one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist organizations—second only to ISIS in the number of civilians killed in its attacks in 2024. 

Rather than attacking Bamako directly, in early September JNIM declared that it would destroy any trucks that carried fuel from neighboring countries into Mali in an attempt to both demonstrate the government’s weakness and isolate the nation’s major cities. At least a hundred trucks have been burned thus far despite fuel convoys being escorted by the Malian Army. In doing so, JNIM has targeted a major vulnerability of the state, as Mali is landlocked and receives close to 95% of its petroleum from the neighboring countries of Coat D’Ivore and Senegal.

The current conflict in Mali dates back to 2012, when members of the Tuareg, a minority ethnic group that lives mostly in the northeast of the country, launched a rebellion in an attempt to achieve an autonomous nation called Azawad. The situation has worsened since a military junta led by General Assimi Goita overthrew the civilian government in 2020. Since coming to power, the Junta has imprisoned journalists, dissolved all political parties, and broken its own promises about a transition schedule that was supposed to restore democracy to Mali by 2024. They have also isolated Mali from international partners, leaving the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) soon after they came to power. France removed its troops from the country in 2022 after nine years of counter terrorism operations citing lack of success, and the government requested that UN peacekeepers leave the following year. 

In their place, the junta brought in Russian mercenaries from the Wagner Group as part of a reorientation from France towards Russia. Between the first deployments of Wagner in Mali in December 2021 and their replacement by the Russian controlled Africa Corps in 2025, Wagner failed to make significant progress in fighting against JNIM. Moreover, Wagner committed human rights abuses, including running secret torture centers that have actually helped JNIM and other jihadist groups recruit. According to the US Department of War-run Africa Center for Strategic Studies, in 2023-2025, Malian government forces and Wagner were responsible for far more noncombatant deaths than the Jihadist groups they were fighting against. This level of violence against civilians, combined with the junta’s lack of political legitimacy and isolation from traditional allies in fighting terrorism, do much to explain JNIM’s growing power in the country. 

In the face of the Malian government’s lack of success in combating JNIM or breaking the fuel blockade, the situation for the country appears grim. On October 25th, the United States authorized “non essential” diplomatic staff to leave the country. Hundreds of thousands of Malians have already fled the country, and hundreds of thousands more are internally displaced. Sources suggest that the government has already opened negotiations with JNIM but without any success. If the government should collapse and Bamako fall to JNIM, some have suggested that JNIM might follow the pattern of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria, another al-Qaeda linked Jihadist group, in moderating to achieve some level of international recognition. This suggestion is overly optimistic: HTS began moderating in its governing ideology long before it overthrew the Assad regime, and JNIM has shown no signs thus far of doing the same. It is more likely that a hypothetical JNIM government would be similar to the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan. There is already one significant sign that JNIM would take after the Taliban: on October 17th, they demanded that all women wear the veil on public transportation traveling through areas they control.