Algeria recently downed an armed Malian drone that it claims had flown several kilometers across the border but which its neighbor insists had remained with its sovereign airspace. They then closed their airspace to one another’s planes and the rest of the Sahelian Alliance, which includes Burkina Faso and Niger, followed Mali’s lead by withdrawing their ambassadors from Algeria. These worsening tensions stem from each side’s polar opposite views of the armed Tuareg rebellion in Mali as explained below:
* 29 July 2024: “The Tuareg Conflict Is Much More Complex Than Casual Observers Might Imagine”
* 30 August 2024: “Close Russian Partner Algeria Wants Wagner To Withdraw From Mali”
* 23 February 2025: “Russia’s Support Of Mali Is Driving Algeria To Diversify Its Military Partnerships”
To summarize, Mali and its allies (which include Russia) consider the rebels to be foreign-backed terrorists, while Algeria believes that their rebellion is a legitimate response to Bamako scrapping the 2015 Algiers Agreement in January 2024, which Bamako claims that the Tuaregs repeatedly violated. Mali, the rest of the Sahelian Alliance, and Russia have also claimed that the Tuaregs are cavorting with Islamic terrorists, the West (namely France), and even Ukraine, which Algeria paid no credence to.
Russia has greatly expanded its influence in the Sahel in recent years by politically and lately militarily allying with this newly created trilateral alliance, whose leaders all came to power in anti-French coups that Moscow regards as collectively accelerating regional multipolar processes. These developments turned West Africa into a new front in the New Cold War, mostly between France and Russia but with some American and Ukrainian backing for Paris, which is suspected of instigating the Tuaregs’ rebellion.
The aforementioned foreign support for that side of this conflict was arguably facilitated by Algeria. From Algiers’ perspective, the Tuareg have legitimate grievances, but Bamako’s Moscow-backed military campaign risks radicalizing them and therefore exacerbating preexisting latent threats for Algeria. Just like Sahelian Alliance members Mali and Niger, Algeria is also home to a geographically expansive Tuareg community, and it fears that the latest conflict could spill into its borders if it doesn’t soon end.
Even though Algeria is therefore threatened by the spectre of its own Tuareg separatist campaign, it hopes to contain this threat by politically co-opting the terrorist-designated rebels and passively facilitating others’ military support for them, thus making it an unofficial participant in the hostilities. Algeria’s role just became a formal one after it shot down that armed Malian drone, however, and could expand at a rapid pace if worsening tensions lead to it considering the creation of a “safe zone” in Mali.
These adverse military-strategic dynamics were entirely foreseeable as proven by the three earlier cited analyses and therefore put Russia in a predictable dilemma given its historically close ties with Algeria. It was placed in this position due to the calculation that it could cultivate the Sahelian Alliance as a complementary regional strategic partner through military support against the Tuaregs and their reported terrorist allies without harming relations with Algeria. This was well-intentioned but backfired.
As can be seen, the Tuareg issue is a zero-sum one for Algeria and Mali since no compromise is possible between them due to their diametrically opposed views on this sensitive issue, which each considers to be integral to their respective national security interests. It was therefore impossible for Russia to balance between them no matter how noble its attempt to do so was. Russia doesn’t want to endanger Algeria’s security via its military support for the Sahelian Alliance, but it won’t dump its new allies either.
This state of affairs will thus likely presage a worsening of Russian-Algerian relations, though probably nowhere near as severe as the one between Algeria and the Sahelian Alliance, and both sides might do their best to responsibly manage public perceptions by dealing with this largely behind closed doors. If it becomes a publicly known problem, then precedent suggests that this would be due to Algeria as was the case late last year that was analyzed in one of the three earlier cited analyses, not Russia.
Another among them mentioned how Algeria is diversifying from its outsized dependence on Soviet and Russian arms by exploring more military partnerships with India and the US. On the one hand, Algeria could try to leverage the revenue that Russia receives from the export of spares and new equipment to get Moscow to reconsider its support for Mali, but Russia could also leverage this by delaying these exports on whatever pretext to get Algeria to reconsider its support of the armed Malian Tuaregs.
Any attempt by either could be counterproductive by destroying the mutual trust that remains between them if their counterpart doesn’t react as expected, thus toxifying their ties and consequently provoking one or the other into “overacting” by doubling down on their respective position. That could in turn spike the likelihood of a conventional war between (possibly French-backed) Algeria and the Russian-backed Sahelian Alliance if the resultant tensions spiral further out of control.
Regional military powerhouse Algeria would probably achieve its minimal goal of carving out a “safe zone” for the Tuaregs in Mali just like Turkiye carved out a few for its own local partners in Syria over the years, but the situation could dramatically escalate if Russian equipment is used against its forces. In that scenario, not only might decades’ worth of close Russian-Algerian relations disappear in an instant, but Algeria might exploit this as the pretext for driving even deeper into Mali with the goal of regime change.
That could endanger Russia’s ambitious plans in the region if it succeeds since the Sahelian Alliance would have difficulty surviving without the bloc’s Malian core. Such an outcome would advance Western, and particularly French, interests much more effectively than maintaining their current proxy war. It can therefore be concluded that France might be discreetly working to bring this about, which it could have promoted in the context of their recent rapprochement that repaired their earlier strained ties.
France might have promised Algeria intelligence, logistical, and possibly even armed aid in the event that Algeria commences a conventional military operation in Mali in defense of what it sincerely regards as its national security interests. Furthermore, the context of gradually worsening Russian-Algerian ties could have played a role in Algiers’ decision to patch up its problems with Paris, with whom ties have historically been complicated in the over six decades since securing its independence from that country.
Looking forward, Algeria’s tensions with the Sahelian Alliance will likely worsen, and this could lead to a worsening of Russian-Algerian ties too. While a conventional war isn’t inevitable, nor is the shattering of the Russian-Algerian Strategic Partnership if one does indeed break out, the odds are dangerously increasing and one wrong move by either party could spark a regional conflagration. Russia hopes to avoid this, but that would require dumping the Sahelian Alliance, which it isn’t considering at all.
