Since a combination of jihadist and separatist rebels inflicted severe blows to Mali’s armed forces and their Russian partners recently, prominent experts have called for Washington to intervene, arguing that the military setback could make Mali’s leaders more receptive to U.S. security assistance. Certainly there are opportunities for a mutually beneficial U.S.-Mali rapprochement, but there also are limits on just how much U.S. engagement could reasonably achieve. Washington cannot afford to neglect the lessons of 15 years of Sahelian counterinsurgency efforts as it contemplates what form of partnership to pursue with Mali’s military authorities.
On April 25, al-Qaeda affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Tuareg-led separatist Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) attacked multiple cities in the most ambitious offensive in more than a decade of armed group violence in Mali. They also killed Defense Minister Sadio Camara, the main architect of Mali’s security pact with Russia, in a suicide attack outside the capital, Bamako, striking the heart of the military regime.
The jihadist-separatist coalition occupied the northern town of Kidal, the stronghold of the separatist movement, and negotiated the withdrawal of Malian and Russian forces. The loss of Kidal was particularly humiliating for the regime, which had touted the recapture of the town from rebels in late 2023 as one of its signature victories. JNIM and the FLA have since marched on other northern towns, forcing Malian and Russian troops to abandon positions. JNIM subsequently announced a blockade on Bamako, intending to punish the city’s residents for their support of the regime.
Mali’s president, General Assimi Goïta, unseated the civilian government nearly six years ago, capitalizing on widespread public frustration with corruption and rising insecurity. He brought in the Russian paramilitary group Wagner in late 2021, prompting a messy divorce with Mali’s traditional Western partners, including former colonial power France. He also expelled the 13,000-strong United Nations stabilization mission in 2023. Under Goïta, the government has muzzled critics, routinely postponed elections, and doubled down on a militaristic strategy against jihadist groups. Rights groups including Human Rights Watch have documented repeated violence against civilians, most notably when Malian and Russian forces executed more than 300 civilians in the town of Moura in central Mali.
The Kremlin’s Influence
Mali has been at the center of the Kremlin’s influence campaign in the Sahel since Russian paramilitaries arrived in late 2021, first as Wagner Group and later as Africa Corps. Moscow’s recent losses come less than two years after FLA separatists routed Russian and Malian forces in the town of Tinzaouaten, near the Algerian border. In the wake of last month’s onslaught, analysts have called for Washington to invest in the region, noting that JNIM is one of al-Qaeda’s most powerful global affiliates. The Trump administration last year began seeking to re-engage Mali and its neighbors, Burkina Faso and Niger, both of which also have strained relations with the West after military coups prompted the near-total expulsion of Western security forces from their countries.
In February 2026, about two months before the latest offensive, Washington lifted sanctions it had imposed on three high-ranking Malian military officials, including Camara, for facilitating the Wagner Group’s deployment and expansion in Mali. This came after a senior U.S. State Department official visited Bamako that month to reset relations with the military regime. Trump administration officials have sought to distance themselves from Biden-era policy in part by touting their respect for Malian sovereignty. In March, the United States and Mali reportedly neared a deal to resume aerial surveillance over Mali. Washington’s push to re-engage is driven largely by concerns over jihadists, as militant groups have held Kevin Rideout, a U.S. citizen, who had spent more than a decade working as a missionary in Niger, hostage since October. Moreover, since Niger pushed U.S. troops out of a costly drone base, Washington has largely lost the ability to monitor armed groups in the Sahel.
That said, both countries’ commitment to rapprochement is ambiguous. Goïta has exploited pervasive anticolonial sentiment to shore up his domestic base, winning praise for his efforts to make Mali more self-sufficient. He may struggle to sell his constituents on the idea of a deeper partnership with the United States after years of criticizing Western partnerships. Meanwhile, U.S. law still prohibits the government from providing certain forms of security assistance to governments that take power via coups. In addition, while some analysts speculate that Washington is interested in Mali’s minerals, including lithium being mined by Chinese companies, U.S. investors are likely deterred by the country’s long-term instability and controversial changes to the mining code.
While these constraints narrow the scope for re-engagement, there is room for mutually beneficial cooperation. The United States could offer low-cost, nonlethal assistance, building upon recent diplomacy and military-to-military engagement. For example, Washington could provide equipment maintenance assistance or train Mali’s army on how to defuse improvised explosive devices. A gradual approach would address some of Mali’s security gaps, while creating space for further cooperation in the future. This could eventually include commercial equipment sales or a waiver restoring security assistance on a program-by-program basis. This would provide a greater array of legal options for the U.S. and Mali to address common interests, without forcing Washington into unrestrained cooperation with a regime that forcefully seized power and has drawn criticism for its heavy-handed approach.
Scoped and targeted engagement would help the United States curb a competitor’s influence and monitor regional jihadists at a relatively low cost, while boosting Mali’s capacity to respond to threats on its territory, which is larger than Afghanistan and Iraq combined. On the mineral front, a more secure Mali could attract U.S. investment, with at least one company interested in Mali’s gold.
Limits to Re-Engagement
Even so, there are limits to re-engagement. Despite damage to Russia’s credibility following the recent offensive, Washington is unlikely to emerge as Mali’s preferred partner, because U.S. assistance will almost certainly prove insufficient to fill all of Mali’s security needs. That means that Russia’s influence will likely persist. Russia has been an attractive partner because of its willingness to deploy alongside Malian forces, while providing sophisticated military equipment without restrictions, an offer that the U.S. is probably not able to match due to ethical and legal constraints.
Reinitiating security cooperation with no strings attached could also embolden an autocratic regime wedded to a military-centric approach that years of foreign intervention has shown is incapable of delivering durable peace, leaving civilians in conflict-affected zones without recourse. Mali’s partnership with Russia coincides with an alarming rise in violence, including against civilians, and engagement that is narrowly restricted to the military is unlikely to change Mali’s course. While some propose U.S. private military companies as a solution to the crisis, the outcome would hardly be different. U.S. Africa Command was designed to support a “whole-of-government” approach, moving beyond military approaches; the United States would be best-served by returning to these principles. Last month, the head of U.S. Africa Command, Air Force General Dagvin Anderson, testified to Congress that “encouraging investment and development” would promote stability and reinforce security on the African continent.
Our organization, the International Crisis Group, has spent more than a decade advocating for Mali to pair military intervention with political dialogue featuring a range of Malian actors, potentially including jihadists. Dialogue is a necessary step toward addressing the grievances that have driven citizens to take up arms and enabled jihadists to expand their influence. Insecurity in Mali and the broader region stems in part from demands for political representation, disputes over land and resources, frustration with the state, and intercommunal tensions. Without efforts to rebuild trust between the state and populations that can view it as predatory, absent, or incapable of providing security, tactical military gains are unlikely to produce long-term stability.
But instead of talking, Bamako has cracked down on civil society, the political opposition, and the military, with a new wave of arrests in the wake of the April 25 attacks, and has doubled down on a militarized approach that has not brought lasting victories. Years of military-centric approaches have left citizen grievances unanswered, and, in the rural countryside, the military’s targeting of civilians has inflamed these grievances, inadvertently fueling jihadist expansion and entrenchment.
The question is not whether the United States has an opportunity to engage Mali but rather how it can contribute to peace and security after more than a decade of conflict and fraught foreign interventions. Given that the Malian authorities will not respond well to perceived interference in domestic affairs, the Trump administration’s reticence to lecture partners about democracy and human rights could increase its attractiveness. But at the same time, re-engagement on those terms is likely to diminish the U.S. ability to push for strategic change in the country. The most effective approach to the crisis in Mali would encourage Bamako to combine its military actions with political dialogue.
Mali, and the broader Sahel, are low on the U.S. list of global priorities. But, as jihadists expand and tepid rapprochement continues, Washington’s calculus may be changing. The U.S. Senate recently confirmed former naval officer Frank Garcia as the second Trump administration’s first assistant secretary of state for African affairs, giving Africa policy a more senior advocate moving forward. It would be incredibly difficult for the United States to reverse Mali’s crisis, one of Africa’s most challenging and entrenched. It should approach this opportunity with calibrated expectations. No external partner is likely to decisively resolve more than a decade of conflict. The more realistic objective is to prevent further insecurity while helping create conditions for a lasting political settlement that would benefit the people of the region as well as the interests of the United States.
