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The Trump administration is weighing military strikes in Mali against an al-Qaeda-linked militant group.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, Mali is facing one of the worst security situations on the planet, and it sits at the center of the region that has become the world’s epicenter for terrorism. The landlocked nation of roughly 25 million has been carved up by Islamist terrorists, a junta that seized power in coups in 2020 and 2021, and the Russian mercenaries that the junta brought in to clean up the mess. The most powerful of those groups is JNIM, or Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, an al-Qaeda affiliate that has grown into the best-armed insurgency in the Sahel. It’s seeking to impose religious rule over the country, and its efforts to get there are brutal. The group killed Mali’s defense minister, Sadio Camara, in a suicide attack on April 25, sent fighters into the streets of the capital Bamako this spring in an assault that left hundreds dead, and choked much of the country with a fuel blockade last year. In recent weeks it has ambushed army convoys nationwide, shot down at least two military helicopters, and killed everyone in a village it viewed as loyal to the state. It has also pushed its attacks beyond Mali’s borders, including a deadly strike on the airport in Niger’s capital last month.
What’s going on now: The Washington Post first reported that Trump is considering strikes that would make Mali the eighth country he has bombed since returning to office. Senior officials are split on whether to go through with it. Sebastian Gorka, the National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism, has pushed hardest for strikes, while others want to hold off.
The White House would not say whether strikes are coming, pointing instead at Russia. “We urge regional partners and NATO allies to support the Alliance of Sahel States in their war against JNIM and ISIS,” an administration official said, describing Sahel terrorism as a “multinational problem” and pinning the security collapse on Moscow. “We hope that other African nations take note of Russia’s terrible performance in combating terrorism.”
The complication is who else is on the ground. Mali’s junta turned its back on the West and brought in Russian contractors, Wagner first, now Africa Corps. Direct US involvement raises the prospect of American and Russian forces operating in the same airspace, requiring the kind of deconfliction Washington and Moscow ran during Syria’s civil war. It also means partnering with a government whose own forces kill more civilians than the militants do.
The Pentagon declined to comment on the report, and Sebastian Gorka did not respond to requests for comment.
