Mali was rocked on Saturday by coordinated attacks across the country by terrorist-designated Tuareg rebels from the “Azawad Liberation Front” (FLA per its French acronym) umbrella group in the rural north and “Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin” (JNIM) Islamic terrorists in the urban areas. The BBC reported that both groups confirmed their coordination with one another. This isn’t the first time that the Tuaregs, which want either their own state or at least autonomy, teamed up with Islamic terrorists.
The “National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad” (MNLA) teamed up with Al Qaeda affiliate Ansar Dine in 2012 shortly after NATO’s Libyan War resulted in the dispersal of the late Muammar Gaddafi’s enormous stockpiles throughout the broader region. What began as yet another of Mali’s intermittent Tuareg rebellions quickly evolved into a full-fledged proto-ISIS offensive that only failed to seize control over the entire country due to France’s decisive Operations Serval and Barkhane from 2013-2022.
The 2015 Algiers Accords mediated by Mali’s neighbor Algeria, which has cordial ties with regional Tuareg groups since it too has been a target of such separatists, granted the Tuaregs partial autonomy. Mali pulled out of it in January 2024, however, on the grounds of alleged Tuareg and Algerian violations. Later that summer, the Tuaregs ambushed rebranded Wagner forces near the Algerian border in an audacious drone attack that Ukraine took credit for organizing, thus further complicating the conflict.
By then, the Tuareg cause – which has some sympathizers who perceive it through interconnected anti-colonial and national liberation prisms – was already discredited after the MNLA allowed itself to be used as pawns against Russia by Ukraine, France, and the US with Algerian logistical assistance. For that reason, even after rebranded Wagner’s withdrawal last summer (the Africa Corps remains), neither Russia nor Mali considered opening a dual political track for resolving this latest Tuareg rebellion.
In their eyes, the FLA (which succeeded the MNLA in late 2024) is a foreign proxy force whose ties with their adversaries (Russian-Algerian ties officially remain strong but are increasingly strained by backing opposite sides of this war) detract from whatever legitimate grievances it might have. The political track can therefore only be opened upon armed Tuareg rebels cutting ties with the abovementioned countries and their Islamic terrorist allies. Saturday’s attacks suggest that won’t happen anytime soon.
The Tuareg cause – for as legitimate as some might consider it to be – is now being exploited by the West as a cover for disguising their support for an attempted ISIS-like takeover of Mali despite the West itself opposing precisely this scenario nearly a decade and a half ago. What changed since then is the Syrian precedent of normalizing a now-“former” ISIS ally, Ahmed al-Sharaa, after he took over a whole country and the new interest in replicating this in Mali in order to deal a strategic defeat to Russia in West Africa.
Mali is the core of the Sahelian Alliance that includes Burkina Faso and Niger, all of which take inspiration from Russia’s fight against the West and are militarily allied with it. Mali’s downfall could therefore lead to the dissolution of this bloc, with the other two either falling in its wake or subordinating themselves to the West as a quid pro quo for pressure relief. While the West would celebrate Russia’s regional defeat, the real reason for their celebrations would be restoring control over the region’s mineral wealth.
