Co-ordinated JNIM–Tuareg Offensive Kills Mali’s Defence Chief, Forces Russian Pull-out From Kidal

The sudden loss of a hard-line defence minister and the negotiated exit of Russian troops evoke January 2013, when France’s ‘Opération Serval’ raced south to prevent Islamist columns from seizing Bamako after Tuareg rebels briefly proclaimed an Azawad state in 2012. Then as now, a fragile Sahelian state became the arena where local grievances, trans-Saharan smuggling routes and great-power rivalries overlapped. Today the pendulum has swung: France and the UN have exited, while Russia’s Africa Corps fills the vacuum—yet, like the Soviets in 1977 Ethiopia or the U.S. in 2009 Afghanistan, external firepower has not resolved clan politics or jihadist mobility. This weekend’s coordinated strikes signal that the junta’s promise of security after the 2020–21 coups is unraveling, and that Tuareg separatists and jihadists can still cooperate tactically despite divergent goals—a pattern repeatedly seen since the 2012 alliance that first fractured Mali. On a 100-year arc, the episode illustrates the long retreat of colonial‐era borders drawn in 1898–1960 and the return of multipolar competition for Sahelian gold, uranium and transit corridors. Whether Bamako regains Kidal or not, the precedent of forcing a foreign patron to withdraw will embolden non-state actors across the region and may mark another step toward the de-facto balkanisation of the post-colonial Sahel.