Published On 4/7/2026
Two months after a massive attack on Malian army positions, armed groups launched another coordinated attack on Saturday morning, which analysts say exposes the weakness of government forces and deepens the conflict in a way that may push the political opposition to change the ruling military council to avoid the fall of the country.
On April 25, the army was subjected to coordinated attacks in locations in the capital, Bamako, and in the center of the country, which experts said caused changes in the lines of engagement between it and the armed groups.
These attacks led to the militants taking control of important areas in the capital and the north of the country, during which Defense Minister Sadio Camara was killed, before the militants resumed their attack on government forces and other Russian paramilitary forces in the center of the country, today, Saturday.
The Malian army announced that it had repelled attempts to attack its positions in the north, center and south of the capital, while explosions occurred in the city of Sevare, which includes a military base and an airport in the center of the country, followed by aircraft flying over the area.
The main Kinyoruba prison, a few tens of kilometers from the capital, where militants are being held, was also attacked. The army said that it was able to repel the attacks and kill a number of the attackers.
The fragility of the army and the growth of militants
However, the Azawad Liberation Front targeted military sites south of the strategic city of Kidal, which reflects the geographical expansion of the conflict and its effects, and makes the government’s task of controlling the situation difficult.
This new attack reveals the growing capabilities of the militants and their determination to confront the army, whose fragility is being revealed day after day, which has prompted its opponents to move from defense to attack, says Mohamedou Ould Mokhtar Mohamed, professor of political science at the University of Nouakchott.
If the army had been able to repel the attack, it would have prevented it from occurring in the first place, according to what Mohamedou said on the “Beyond the News” program, indicating the possibility of confrontations taking place and not a response by the army.
Things do not seem close to a solution because the United Nations is unwilling to bring the parties together, the United States is not interested, and the European Union is neither, while France is not able to do so, in the opinion of West African affairs researcher Chris Ogunmudidi.
Different goals, one enemy
The militants and the Azawad unite in their hostility to the army, even if their ultimate goals differ. They discovered the weakness and began to exploit it to undermine the government’s ability to respond, Ogunmudidi says.
At the same time, the Russian Africa Corps does not seem able to repel these attacks because it is committed to the war in Ukraine, and faces financial and logistical problems that hinder its work to help the government deter these militants and separatists, who the spokesman believes have “found a good starting point.”
Indeed, the Russian Legion seems interested in protecting the military junta, not resisting the militants, and therefore its performance was lower than the performance of the French forces that were expelled by the military junta years ago, according to Jacques Rolland, senior researcher at the World Policy Institute.
The army seems aware of the fact that it will not be able to confront the Azawad, who Rolland said had good relations with France and were providing it with intelligence information about the militants.
However, France is currently out of the game, and it fears the militants taking control of the financial capital and perhaps the entire country because this means that they will expand to other countries in the south, according to Rolland.
Although it is difficult for militants to control the entire country due to the long distances, Roland believes that the solution may come from within, so that the opposition groups change the ruling military council because it is no longer able to resolve matters.
There is no military solution
No one currently can intervene from the outside except Algeria, which fears the arrival of militants to its borders, and which Rolland said had submitted a previous initiative but was accused of siding with the government.
But France is not far from the conflict in the way Roland talks about, because it may benefit in one way or another from weakening the current government that expelled it from the country, and it is trying to preserve its interests in Mali, which it colonized for decades, as Ould Mokhtar Mohamed says.
It is expected that the government will try to negotiate with Azawad again because there is no military solution to this crisis, according to Ould Mokhtar Mohamed, who said that the army will not be able to restrain these groups or repel their advance, stressing that there is no military solution to this conflict.
Ogunmudi agreed with the previous spokesman by saying that the confrontations do not negate the idea of negotiation, no matter how violent they are, and he believes that the Gulf states may play a leading role in this issue because the West does not seem to do so. Roland also supported him in this proposition.
