Mali–Azawad: From the 2017 protests to all-out war, the roots of a crisis that continues to engulf the country.
How did Mali go from a debate on constitutional revision to a war that now pits the state against armed groups and jihadist factions, against a backdrop of foreign intervention and deep political divisions? For many observers, the sequence of events that began in 2017 with the challenge to the Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation stemming from the Algiers process constitutes a major turning point.
Since then, military coups, the realignment of political forces, the break with Western partners, the rapprochement with Russia, and the proliferation of accusations of human rights violations have profoundly transformed the Malian landscape.
By Mohamed AG Ahmedou, journalist and civil society actor from Timbuktu and Taoudenit.
A DISPUTE THAT AROSE AROUND THE ALGIERS AGREEMENT
To understand the current situation in Mali and Azawad, we must go back to the year 2017.
That year, a large citizens’ platform, Antè A Bana – Hands Off My Constitution, emerged to oppose the constitutional revision project championed by then-President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (IBK). Opponents believed that this reform would implement certain provisions of the Agreement for Peace and Reconciliation stemming from the Algiers process, signed in Bamako in May and June 2015 between the Malian state, the Coordination of Azawad Movements (CMA), and the pro-Malian self-defense movements grouped within the Algiers Platform of June 14, 2014.
At the heart of the debates is the regionalization stipulated in the agreement. Supporters of the reform see it as a step towards greater decentralization of the country. Opponents, on the other hand, denounce a risk of undermining national unity, with some equating this regionalization with autonomy granted to the northern regions.
Other political figures, including former Prime Minister Moussa Mara, believe this interpretation is flawed. He argued that the provisions of the Algiers Agreement strengthened the central state more than they addressed the historical demands of the armed movements in Azawad.
FROM CITIZEN MOBILIZATION TO POLITICAL RECOMPOSITION
According to several analyses and testimonies made public in Mali, the dynamic created by Antè A Bana has gradually led to a broader political recomposition. Part of this movement will contribute to the birth of the M5-RFP (June 5 Movement – Rally of Patriotic Forces) in 2020, while another will continue its commitment within Yerewolo Standing on the Ramparts, led by Adama Diarra, known by the nickname “Ben the Brain”.
The M5-RFP then brought together very diverse personalities, including Imam Mahmoud Dicko, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, Cheick Oumar Sissoko, Mountaga Tall, Modibo Sidibé as well as other political and civil society leaders.
According to public statements attributed to Amara Sidibé, a crowd mobilizer in the summer of 2021 at the peacekeeping school, during a conference organized by Malian opposition leader Cheik Oumar Doumbia of the platform called Youth for Change Mali in Bamako, contacts had existed between certain actors of this movement and the military before the 2020 coup d’état since 2018 and 2019.
And that President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita was aware of the meetings that took place between members of the Ante A Bana platform and the military that President IBK denounced in 2019.
THE COUPS OF 2020 AND 2021.
Weakened by a deep security, economic and political crisis, as well as by a large-scale popular protest, President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta was overthrown on August 18, 2020 by a group of officers led in particular by Colonel Assimi Goïta. Under pressure from ECOWAS and the African Union, a transition is put in place with Bah N’Daw as transitional president and Moctar Ouane as Prime Minister.
A few months later, in May 2021, a second coup took place. The military arrested Bah N’Daw and Moctar Ouane after the formation of a new government in which several influential officers, including Sadio Camara and Modibo Koné, were not retained. Assimi Goïta then became president of the transition.
CHOGUEL MAÏGA AND THE BATTLE FOR COMMUNICATION
In the new power structure, Choguel Kokalla Maïga, president of the strategic committee of the M5-RFP, is appointed Prime Minister. At the same time, communication is becoming a central issue. Many Malian journalists are increasingly denouncing growing restrictions targeting traditional media, while the authorities are giving more and more prominence to social media influencers and activists to defend their actions.
This evolution has been accompanied by media closures, broadcast suspensions, the arrest of journalists, and a growing polarization of public debate. It has also led to the recruitment of foreign cyber-activists such as Franklin Niumsi, Dany Almeda, Nathalie Yamb, and others to support the illegal and illegitimate power of Assimi Goïta and his Russian partners in Wagner and Africa Corps, who have sown chaos in Mali and the Sahel.
This has influenced the African online community with anti-French narratives and has fueled the coups in Burkina Faso and Niger.
THE RUSSIAN TURNING POINT:
After the gradual break with several Western partners, the Malian authorities are moving closer to Moscow. Beginning in late 2021, Wagner Group instructors and fighters were deployed to Mali as part of a security cooperation agreement between Bamako and Russia. Malian authorities referred to them as “Russian instructors”, while several Western governments and international organizations, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, identified their presence as that of the Wagner Group, which later became known as the Africa Corps.
Since this deployment, numerous international human rights organizations have documented allegations of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and abuses against civilian populations during military operations conducted jointly with Malian forces. Malian authorities deny these accusations and maintain they are fighting exclusively against armed terrorist groups.
AZAWAD PLUNGES BACK INTO WAR.
The resumption of hostilities between the Malian authorities and the former movements that signed the Algiers Agreement marks a new turning point. The Kidal region came back under the control of the Malian army in November 2023 after more than a decade of state absence. Since then, fighting has intensified in the regions of Kidal, Timbuktu, Gao, Ménaka and Taoudéni.
Local human rights organizations, the affected civilian population, and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) regularly accuse the Malian army of using armed drones against civilian areas, notably during strikes that hit Kidal on November 7, 2023; Amassarakad on March 17, 2024; Inadjatafane on October 20, 2024; the weekly market in Zouéra on July 8, 2025; Ememelane on October 25, 2025; Tangara on November 13, 2025; Eghachar N’tirikene on November 14, 2025; and other localities targeted by drones and cluster munitions from the Malian army and its Russian partners in the Afrika Korps. They report numerous civilian casualties.
For their part, the Malian authorities maintain in official statements that these strikes are targeting exclusively military objectives and armed groups. This is completely false.
A WAR OF NARRATIVES
Beyond military clashes, Mali is now experiencing a real information war. Each side develops its own narrative of events. The authorities denounce a disinformation campaign led by their opponents. The Azawad movements accuse the state of concealing abuses committed against civilian populations.
Between these opposing narratives, international organizations, national and international human rights NGOs and independent journalists often struggle to access combat zones, but with the proliferation of Starlink satellite WiFi, many local and international human rights organizations have been able to document the facts through authentic images.
THE MILITARY BALANCE OF POWER WILL BE DISRUPTED AGAIN IN 2026.
The conflict took a new turn in the spring of 2026. On April 25 and 28, the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) announced it had retaken control of the towns of Kidal and Tessalite, respectively, following exceptionally intense clashes against the Malian Armed Forces and their Russian allies from Afrika Korps (formerly Wagner). The latter eventually surrendered and withdrew from both towns.
While the Malian authorities offer a different interpretation of these events, several observers believe this sequence of events marks a new shift in the balance of power in the north of the country, which its inhabitants call Azawad.
For the leaders of the Azawad Liberation Front, these battles represent their most significant military victory since the resumption of hostilities with Bamako. They compare them to the fighting in Tinzawatène in July 2024, during which heavy losses were reported among the Wagner Group. However, estimates of the number of casualties vary depending on the available sources.
These clashes illustrate the quagmire of a conflict which, far from abating after the denunciation of the Algiers Agreement and the increasing militarization of Bamako’s strategy, continues to reshape the military landscape of Azawad. They also demonstrate the armed groups’ capacity to launch large-scale offensives despite the strengthening of the state’s military capabilities, notably through the acquisition of armed drones and the support of Russian partners.
THE RISE OF ANT-FRENCH SENTIMENT AND MALI`S DIPLOMATIC BREAK WITH ITS WESTERN PARTNERS.
From 2018 onwards, relations between Bamako and Paris gradually deteriorated amid rising sovereignty movements and challenges to the French military and diplomatic presence in Mali. This evolution was accompanied by a political and media campaign denouncing French influence, a campaign spearheaded by several actors in civil society and the M5-RFP movement, including Abdoulkader Maïga, then close to Choguel Kokalla Maïga and considered one of the movement’s key spokespeople. The criticism extended to representatives of the United Nations, often perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being of French nationality.
The expulsion of Christophe Sivillon, head of the MINUSMA regional office in Kidal, in 2019, that of RFI journalist Anthony Fouchard in 2018, that of MINUSMA spokesperson Olivier Salgado in July 2022, and then that of Guillaume Ngefa, director of MINUSMA’s Human Rights Division, in February 2023, illustrate this series of ruptures with several international partners.
The case of the 49 Ivorian soldiers arrested in July 2022 also falls within this climate of diplomatic confrontation. While Côte d’Ivoire maintained that they were deployed to provide logistical support to MINUSMA, the Malian authorities saw it as an infringement on their sovereignty, in a discourse in which France was regularly portrayed as a behind-the-scenes actor.
This communication strategy, which largely contributed to fueling anti-French sentiment among a segment of the public, also exacerbated Mali’s diplomatic isolation. Ironically, several figures who had actively supported this political line were subsequently marginalized by the regime itself. Abdoulkader Maïga was imprisoned in 2024 after defending Choguel Kokalla Maïga against the regime’s new direction, while Ben le Cerveau, a leading figure in Yèrèwolo Debout sur les Remparts, has been detained since September 5, 2023.
This development illustrates the transitional government’s ability to sideline its former supporters as soon as they become critical.
THE SILENCE SURROUNDING THE ATROCITIES IN AZAWAD: A PERSISTENT RIFT BETWEEN MALIAN OPPOSITIONS.
One of the deepest fault lines among opponents of the military regime today lies in how they address the violence committed against civilian populations. While many voices in southern Mali denounce attacks on civil liberties, the seizure of power, and the economic crisis, they often remain more discreet when it comes to documenting or reporting the abuses attributed to the Malian armed forces and their allies in the regions of Timbuktu, Gao, Kidal, Ménaka, Taoudéni, and in the center of the country.
For many actors in Azawad, this silence is perceived as a form of national solidarity that prioritizes preserving the image of the Malian state over acknowledging the suffering of the victims.
However, an insufficient number of Malian opposition figures, such as Boubacar Soumahoro (known as Bouba Fané), Boh Dembelé, Oumar Mariko, and Sambou Sissoko, have chosen to address these violations in a documented manner, regardless of the perpetrators, in the name of the universality of human rights. It is precisely on this issue that the divide is widening between some opposition members in the South and those in Azawad.
Genuine political reconciliation will be difficult to achieve without a shared recognition of the documented facts, the suffering of all communities, and equitable treatment of violations, irrespective of the identity of the victims or perpetrators.
In the history of conflicts in Mali, many denounce the lack of transitional justice for civilian victims of the Malian army, from the events of 1963 to those of the 1990s, which brought grief to the Tuareg and Arab communities.
It is worth recalling that in January and February 2013, the Malian army committed many massacres against the Fulani in villages located in the central delta of the Niger River in the Mopti region where at least more than 30 leaders of this community including imams and traditional chiefs were killed and thrown into wells by the Malian army according to reports documented by the International Federation for Human Rights.
And since the advent of Wagner and Africa Corps, many have also observed that the missions of the Malian army and its Russian partners do not target their adversaries, such as JNIM, the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara or the Azawad Liberation Front, but rather the civilian populations of Tuaregs, Arabs and Fulanis. As for example the massacres on the populations of the village of Moura in March 2022 during a weekly market day. Or the attack against civilian populations in Hombori in May 2022 or in Diafarabe in April 2025 or in Zarho in January 2025 and on April 11, 2025, in short, the list is long.
As long as this demand for fairness is not fully shared, dialogue between the various components of the Malian opposition will remain deeply fragile.
Many southern Malians are only interested in politics and power; those who focus solely on the Tuareg, Arab, and Fulani civilian populations—in terms of the massacres they suffer at the hands of the Malian armed forces and their Russian partners, as well as drone strikes—are ignored by many Malians, including many opponents of the regime, simply because it damages Mali’s image and territorial integrity.
This is a factual reality that is being deliberately ignored. And this is the breaking point with those who are victims of this barbarity, who believe that, as a result, southern Malians do not consider the communities of the north or Azawad as ordinary Malian citizens, but rather as second-class citizens.
However, this leads one to believe that Mali is applying colonialism, which it has always rejected, to the detriment of France, on the populations of northern Mali called Azawad, even if the state tries to brandish 6 to 7 Tuaregs or Arabs who are won over to its cause to say that the Tuaregs and Arabs are in the republic, but this is a strategic machination to whitewash the crimes against the populations.
CIVILIAN POPULATIONS THE FIRST VICTIMS.
Beyond the political and military debates, the human consequences remain considerable. Massive population displacements to Mauritania, Algeria, Libya, Niger and even to Europe, destruction of infrastructure, closure of schools and health centers, collapse of economic activities, food insecurity and restrictions on public freedoms now make up the daily life of many regions of Mali and Azawad.
In this context, the Malian crisis goes far beyond the framework of a simple armed conflict. It reflects the progressive collapse of trust between a segment of the population, state institutions, and the various political and military actors.
Nearly a decade after the signing of the Algiers Agreement, the country remains confronted with a fundamental question: how to rebuild a political framework capable of reconciling the nation’s various components while meeting the demands of security, justice, and respect for fundamental rights?
Mali, under Assimi Goita, finds itself in its worst situation ever, with a lost balance between the civilian populations of the Azawad region and those of the south, and between the populations of the central and southern regions. Will Mali be fragmented into three, four, or more countries? What are the positions of neighboring countries and others?
By Mohamed AG Ahmedou. Reposted by Azawad Support Group
08-07-26