On September 17, 2024, Bamako, Mali’s capital suffered the biggest terrorist attack within the past decade, as the JNIM (Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin), a jihadist organization closely affiliated with Al-Qaeda, targeted a military zone close to Bamako-Sénou airport and a gendarmerie school in the Faladié district. Although the exact death toll remains unknown, it is estimated that at least 70 people, primarily military personnel, were killed during the attack and around 200 were injured, underscoring the destructiveness of the strike. Hence, amid the significant rise in violent attacks and the subsequent lack of control over separatist and terrorist organizations within the country, Mali’s military junta faces growing pressure as prospects for peace and stability continue to diminish – an extremely worrisome development.

Though shortly after the strike Mali’s Army Chief of Staff Oumar Diarra declared that the attack was under control and members of the JNIM had been “neutralized”, various actors remained deeply concerned, asserting the need for Mali’s military junta to alter its counter-terrorism tactics.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres emphasized that Mali must “ensure that those responsible for (the) despicable attack are held to account”, while Jean Herve Jezequel, Sahel Project Director of the International Crisis Group added that the attack was “way more ambitious than the previous attacks” stressing “the absolute need for serious adjustments in the Malian counter-insurgency strategy”.
Thus, despite Colonel Assumi Goïta, Mali’s interim president, claiming that the junta has “considerably weakened armed terrorist groups”, it remains questionable how successful Mali’s military junta has actually been in combating the violence perpetrated by these actors.  

Worrisomely, Mali has been heavily struggling with separatist groups such as the ‘Coordination of Azawad Movements’ (CMA), largely composed of Tuareg armed groups, and jihadist organizations including the JNIM and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) for over a decade.
In 2012, tensions escalated sharply when the Tuareg rebellion in northern Mali extended to a civil war, resulting in thousands of deaths and forced displacements. Fortunately, after the 2015 Algerian-brokered peace agreement between the Malian government and the CMA, violence significantly decreased. However, with the expiration of the peace agreement earlier this year, the civilian population has been increasingly vulnerable to a resurgence in violent attacks, which is deeply concerning. 

Initially, after the last coup d’état in 2021 during which Colonel Assumi Goïta rose to power, Mali’s junta promised to “pursue these armed groups day and night until (the) country is completely free from this threat”. To achieve that, Goïta radically altered the country’s counter-terrorism tactics by publicly denouncing Western military support. The interim president expelled French troops in 2022 as well as the UN MINUSMA mission in 2023, and instead employed the Russian mercenary group Wagner, now referred to as the African Corps, in late 2021. Then, in September 2023 together with Burkina Faso’s and Niger’s military juntas, Mali formed the ‘Alliance of Sahel States’, a collective defense pact that additionally emphasizes a regional alliance in counter-terrorism efforts. However, the most recent terrorist attack along with an attack in early September, which resulted in the death of 49 civilians and 15 military soldiers in northern Mali, highlights the insufficiency of the Alliance’s and specifically Mali’s military junta’s efforts to effectively combat violence as the lack of control over terrorist and separatist groups has reached alarming levels. Hence, the military junta’s credibility continues to erode, which is further amplified by its alleged perpetration of human rights violations alongside the African Corps during several military operations, one of which left hundreds of civilians dead in Moura in March 2022. 

Thus, Mali’s military junta must immediately change its counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency tactics to enhance the possibility of lasting peace and stability, as the increase in violence continues to have a detrimental impact on its population. Concretely, Mali’s transitional government urgently needs to push for establishing a new peace agreement with insurgent groups throughout the country whilst also adhering to international human rights laws themselves. Only by adopting a constructive and peace-focused approach that prioritizes the protection of its civilian population, Mali’s military junta can prevent an escalation of violence, which otherwise has an alarmingly high chance of emerging.