GNV News, November 21, 2205

Mali’s capital, Bamako, is facing a severe fuel shortage due to the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM), an armed group, disrupting fuel transport. As a result, on November 2, Mali’s military government ordered a two-week closure of schools and universities, prices of daily necessities have risen, and the impact on residents’ lives has spread. At the same time, it has not amounted to a complete siege, and it is reported that, despite some disruption to daily life, it is not a situation that could be described as collapse at this point.

JNIM is an organization formed in 2017 by the merger of armed groups operating in the Sahel, including Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, and it has links to al-Qaeda. Until 2024, JNIM’s activities in Mali were mainly concentrated in the north, but in 2025 its operations in the southwest, where Bamako is located, became more active, and since it announced in September that it would block fuel shipments to Bamako, it has attacked hundreds of fuel-transport trucks. However, JNIM’s fighters are estimated at around 6,000, and it is considered difficult to seize and govern Bamako, which has a population of nearly 3 million. Therefore, some analyses suggest that the purpose of the transport obstruction is not the fall of Bamako, but to increase public dissatisfaction with the military government.

Since 2012, instability due to the activities of multiple armed groups has continued in Mali, and it has also been reported that both the government and non-state armed groups have been complicit in human rights abuses. Military operations carried out by France, the former colonial power, in the name of “counterterrorism” failed to improve the deteriorating security situation. After several coups that followed, from 2021 the military’s Assimi Goïta took power, but as relations with the military government he leads worsened, French forces withdrew from Mali in 2022. In their place, a Russian private military company took on addressing the armed groups, but it has been noted that the momentum of the armed groups has instead increased. In particular, JNIM has expanded its scope of activity, attacking not only in Burkina Faso and Niger but also in Benin and Togo.

According to a report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released in November 2025, about 6.4 million people in Mali currently need humanitarian assistance, and more than 400,000 are displaced within the country.

Learn more about international relations in West Africa → “Evolving International Relations in West Africa”

Learn more about the conflict in the Central Sahel → “What is happening in Burkina Faso?”

A road leading to the presidential palace in Bamako, the capital of Mali (Photo: Robin Taylor / Flickr [CC BY 2.0])