Archive December 31, 2025

“Bienvenue a Bamako” The fixer, the minder and the men linked to the Malian government were waiting for us at the airport in Bamako. Polite, greet, and watchful.

It was late December, and we had just taken an Air Burkina flight from Dakar, Senegal across the Sahel, where a storm of political upheaval and armed violence has unsettled the region in recent years.

Mali occupies a significant position. After two military coups in 2020 and 2021, the country severed ties with its former colonial ruler, France, expelled French forces, pushed out the United Nations peacekeeping mission, and redrew its alliances

In September of this year, it established the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) along with Burkinabe and Niger, which is now ruled by military-backed military-backed dictatorships supported by Russian mercenaries. Together, the regional grouping withdrew from the wider Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc, accusing it of serving foreign interests rather than African ones.

The Confederal Summit of Heads of State of the AES, the second-ever summit held since the alliance was founded, drew together leaders from the three countries in Bamako this month. And we were there to cover it.

The summit marked a moment of greatness. Leaders of the three countries inaugurated a new Sahel Investment and Development Bank meant to finance infrastructure projects without reliance on Western lenders, a new television channel built around a shared narrative and presented as giving voice to the people of the Sahel, and a joint military force intended to operate across borders against armed groups. More important than signing new agreements, it was a moment to celebrate successes.

But the reason behind the urgency of those announcements lay beyond the summit hall.

Armed groups now have room to maneuver and expand in this complex web of fracture and identity. Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate, has expanded from rural Mali, launching attacks across the region and reaching the coast of Benin, exploiting weak state presence and long-unresolved grievances.

I pondered how much of the world was still under al-Qaeda’s control as our plane flew toward Bamako as we watched an endless stretch of it.

From the airport, our minders drove us fast through the city. Malian pop blared from speakers as we swerved around, street vendors sold their goods, and motorcycles swerved around us. At first, this did not feel like a capital under siege. The military administration claimed that since September, armed groups have been choking off of Bamako’s transportation and supplies.

We drove past petrol stations where long queues stretched into the night. Even as fuel became less plentiful, life continued. People sat patiently, waiting their turn. While rumors arose that the authorities had engaged in quiet negotiations with the fighters they claimed to be fighting in order to maintain the city’s momentum, anger appeared to have subsided.

“To become one nation, to hold each other’s hand”

Our minders drove us on to the Sahel Alliance Square, a newly created public space built to celebrate the union of the three countries and its people.

As gunmen affiliated with JNIM have established checkpoints obstructing trade routes to the capital in recent months, Malian forces moved past, perhaps toward a front line that feels even closer. In September 2024, they also carried out coordinated attacks inside Bamako, hitting a military police school housing elite units, nearby neighbourhoods, and the military airport on the city’s outskirts. Bamako continues, as if the conflict were taking place in a remote area.

At Sahel Alliance Square, a few hundred young people gathered and cheered as the Malian forces went by, drawn by loud music, trivia questions on stage and the MC’s promise of small prizes.

Name the AES nations in the simple question: Name the leaders?

The children received a microphone. The alliance leaders ‘ names were drilled in: Abdourahamane Tchiani of Niger. Burkinabe Ibrahim Traore Assimi Goita of Mali. repeated until they stopped.

Correct answers won a prize: a T-shirt stamped with the faces of the alliance leaders.

Moussa Niare, a 12-year-old resident of Bamako, was tucked into a shirt that featured the three military leaders’ faces.

“They’ve gathered together to become one country, to hold each other’s hand, and to fight a common enemy”, he told us with buoyant confidence, as the government’s attempt to sell the new alliance to the public appeared to be cultivating loyalty among the young.

Russia in, France out

While Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger went through separate political transitions, the paths that brought them into a shared alliance followed a similar pattern.

Each nation saw its democratically elected leaders removed by the military between 2020 and 2023, with necessary corrections being made in each case.

In Mali, Colonel Goita seized power after months of protest and amid claims that President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita had failed to curb corruption or halt the advance of armed groups.

As the country’s insecurity deteriorated, the army ousted President Roch Marc Christian Kabore in early 2022. Later that year, Captain Traore emerged from a counter-coup, promising a more effective response to the rebellion.

In Niger, soldiers led by General Tchiani detained President Mohamed Bazoum in July 2023, accusing his government of failing to safeguard national security and of leaning too heavily on foreign partners.

What started out as two distinct power seizures has since evolved into a formal alliance-based political project. The gathering in Bamako was to give shape to their union.

A joint military battalion launched in response to the AES summit’s announcement to combat armed groups across the Sahel was one of its key findings.

This follows months of escalating violence, as regional armies assisted by Russian mercenaries push back against armed groups who have been launching attacks for over a decade.

France’s former colonial government had a strong military and diplomatic presence under previous civil governments. French troops, whose presence in the region dates back to independence, are now being pushed out, as military rulers recast sovereignty as both a political and security imperative. Although France had more than 5, 000 soldiers stationed there at its peak when the last troops left Mali in 2022. When they withdrew, the country became a symbol of strategic failure for France’s Emmanuel Macron.

Before that, French diplomacy had come across as toneless and patronizing, failing to acknowledge the aspirations of its former colonies. The common regional currency, the CFA franc, still anchored to the French treasury, has become a powerful symbol of that resentment.

French state television and radio have been banned in Mali right now. In what was once the heart of Francophone West Africa, French media has become shorthand for interference. Not only did credibility suffer, but also influence. France was no longer seen as guaranteeing stability, but as producing instability.

Anti-French sentiment is exploding all over the Sahel and beyond, frequently expressed in French itself; the colonisers’ language is now the language of resistance.

Like a marriage of two ideals

At the end of the summit, Mali’s Goita was preparing to hand over the AES’s rotating leadership to Traore of Burkina Faso.

Young, charismatic, and Traore, the new pan-African rock star, has benefited from a dispersed network of Africanist influencers and pro-Russian messaging to win young audiences over. Across social media platforms, short videos circulate relentlessly: speeches clipped for virality, images of defiance, and slogans reduced to shareable fragments.

In Burkinabe, journalists and members of the civil society who have criticized the military’s regulations have been taken on the front lines as a result of Traore’s conscription policy. Human rights groups outspoken about alleged extrajudicial killings say they have been silenced or sidelined. However, the majority of it is accepted as collateral, according to supporters, of finally regaining sovereignty.

Before the ceremony, we met Mali’s finance minister. He initially had confidence, was practiced, and was confident. But when pressed about financing for the ambitious infrastructure projects the three governments have laid out for the Sahel, his composure faltered and his words stuttered. This government official was not used to being interrogated. The microphone was removed. He later said, “The IMF won’t release loans until Mali has ironed out its relations with France,” while he was far from the camera.

The spokesperson, irritated by my questions, took me aside. He said he occasionally considered putting journalists in jail “just for fun” as he slowly and patronizingly adjusted the collar on my suit.

He did not question the organisation I worked for. He questioned my loyalty and French passport. I told him my allegiance was to the truth. He nodded off, as if that expression confirmed his suspicions.

In the worldview of Mali’s military government – men shaped by years on the front line, living with a permanent sense of threat – journalists and critics are part of the problem. The challenge was to create safety. The alliance, the spokesperson explained, was the solution to what they could not find within regional body, ECOWAS.

The three nations had once played a part in the creation of the half-century-old West African institution. Now, the AES leaders say its ageing, democratically elected presidents have grown detached, more invested in maintaining one another in office than in confronting the region’s crises. They are promoting the AES as an alternative in response.

As the Sahel alliance grows, it’s also building new infrastructure.

Preparations were underway for its new television station in Bamako. The ON AIR sign glowed. Modern cameras were mounted on polished weapons on tripods.

The channel’s director, Salif Sanogo, told me it would be “a tool to fight disinformation”, a way to counter Western, and more specifically French, narratives and “give voice to the people of the Sahel, by the people of the Sahel”.

The cameras had been purchased abroad. The installation was overseen by a French production company. The irony was unremarkable.

To defend the alliance, he offered a metaphor. He remarked, “It’s like a marriage of reason.” “It’s easier to make decisions when you’re married to three. It’s a mess when you’re married to 15 people. He was referring to the 15 member states of ECOWAS.

“We will survive this, too.”

Two years into the AES alliance, they have moved faster than the legacy regional bloc they left behind. Presented as a matter of survival rather than ambition, a joint military force now unifies their borders. A mutual defence pact recasts coups and external pressure as shared threats, not national failures. They claim that a common Sahel investment and development bank, which is designed to finance mining, energy, and mineral extraction without relying on Western investors, provides sovereignty without conditions. A common currency is under discussion.

Even as a home base for independent media contracts, a shared news channel’s goal is to project a single narrative. And after withdrawing from the International Criminal Court, they have proposed a Sahel penal court, one that would try serious crimes and human rights violations on their own terms. Depending on who you ask, justice is brought under control or justice is brought back.

What is taking shape is not just an alliance, but an alternative architecture, built quickly, deliberately, and in full view of its critics.

AES is establishing structure in contrast to ECOWAS, which slowly established rules through elections, mediation, and consensus. Where ECOWAS insists on patience, AES insists on speed.

This is long overdue, according to supporters, and dignity has been restored following decades of dependency. To critics, it is power concentrated in uniforms, accountability postponed, repression dressed up as emancipation.

Traore redrew the enemy: not al-Qaeda, from the moment he assumed control of the alliance. Not ISIL. France, not even. But their African neighbours, cast as the enemy within. He espoused his warning about what he termed a “black winter,” a speech that occupied the audience and spanned far beyond, drawing millions of online viewers.

“Why are we, Black people, trying to cultivate hatred among ourselves”, he asked, “and through hypocrisy calling ourselves brothers? Either we permanently end imperialism or we continue to be slaves until we vanish.

Away from the summit’s “black winter”, under a sunlit sky in Bamako, life moved on with a quieter rhythm. Music carried a familiarity that transcended the tension of speeches and slogans as it drew crowds and streets. It was Amadou and Mariam, Mali’s most internationally known musical duo, whose songs once carried the country’s everyday joys far beyond its borders. This year, Amadou passed away suddenly. But the melody lingers.

The largest alliance of all is hidden in its lyrics. Not one forged by treaties or uniforms, but by people, across Mali and the Sahel, in all their diversity.

Mariam sings “Sabali.”

“Forbearance.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have gotten what he wants from President Donald Trump as he nears the close of his most recent trip to the United States.

After their meeting on Monday, Trump praised Netanyahu, calling him a “hero” and saying that Israel, and by extension its prime minister, had “lived up to the plan 100 percent” in response to the US president’s signature Gaza ceasefire.

Despite reports last week that US officials were beginning to feel frustrated over Netanyahu’s apparent “slow walking” of the 20-point ceasefire plan, which the US administration had imposed in October, and that the Israeli prime minister may be hoping to keep the door open for Hamas to resume hostilities at a date of his choosing.

After the exchange of all captives in Gaza, both alive and dead, aid deliveries into the area, and the freezing of all front lines, Gaza would move toward phase two, which includes discussions about creating a technocratic “board of peace” to govern the area and the deployment of an international security force to safeguard it.

Netanyahu has so far refused to provide all the aid Gaza desperately needs, and he also claims that phase two cannot begin until Hamas recovers the body of the last captive. After Trump’s meeting on Monday, he fully supported his request that Hamas disarms before Israel withdraws its forces.

Hamas has repeatedly criticized Israel’s forced disarmament, and officials have claimed that Palestinian factions should discuss the issue of arms internally.

Why would that be the case if Netanyahu tried to avoid entering the second phase of the agreement without making any effort?

Here are four reasons why Netanyahu might enjoy things as they are:

Right in front of him is a lot of pressure.

By any measure, Netanyahu’s ruling coalition is the most liberal coalition in country history. The support of Israel’s hardliners has helped the prime minister’s coalition survive periods of intense domestic protest and international criticism.

Numerous members of the right now oppose the ceasefire, including finance minister Bezalel Smotrich and national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who are also demanding that Gaza be occupied.

Israeli Katz, Netanyahu’s defense minister, has also shown little interest in upholding the agreement that his nation signed in October. Katz asserted that Israel’s forces would remain in Gaza, eventually allowing for further settlements, during a ceremony to mark the expansion of the most recent of Israel’s illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Katz later apologized, allegedly after the US pressured him.

He opposes a deployment of international forces in Gaza.

Israel’s operational freedom would be constrained by allowing an international force to be deployed to Gaza, which would also limit its military’s ability to enter the country again, carry out targeted strikes, or pursue Hamas resurrected areas.

More than 400 people have been killed in the enclave since Israeli forces agreed to end fighting on October 10 despite the ceasefire.

Politically, allowing an international stabilization force, especially one from neighboring states, would turn what Israel has frequently seen into a domestic war into a global conflict, with many of the decisions being made by actors outside its control in terms of strategy, diplomacy, and politics.

It could also be seen as a concession made by the US and the international community, which undermines Netanyahu’s repeated pledges to uphold Israeli sovereignty and strategic independence.

Israeli political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said from Berlin, “If Netanyahu allows a foreign military force to enter Gaza, he immediately denies himself a significant portion of his right to operate.” He should want things to stay exactly where they are, but not to alienate Trump, he said.

He wants to block any progress toward a two-state solution.

The ceasefire&nbsp agreement includes terms that Israel and the Palestinians agree to engage in a dialogue toward what it refers to as a “political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence,” though it doesn’t explicitly mention a two-state solution.

However, Netanyahu has campaigned on the issue since at least 2015 and has been opposed to a two-state solution.

He criticized Israel’s refusal to grant the establishment of a Palestinian homeland at the UN in September, calling the decision to recognize a Palestinian state “insane.”

The two-state solution is still a practical possibility thanks to Israeli ministers’ efforts. The establishment of a viable state would be impossible under Israel’s plan to establish a number of new settlements in the West Bank, which would have previously been thought to be the region’s capital.

This is more than just a geographical ill-fated consequence. Smotrich predicted that the project would “bury the idea of a Palestinian state” when it announced the plans for the new settlements in August.

He would gain from a new start to war.

Netanyahu is the subject of numerous domestic threats, including those involving his own corruption trial and the potentially explosive issue of imposing compulsory military service on Israel’s ultra-religious students. He also faces public scrutiny for his own failures on October 7, 2023, which will fall under a crucial election year for the prime minister.

His coalition may splinter as a result of each of these difficulties, which could weaken his grip on power. However, any new conflict could derail or at least make them politically ambiguous, with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, or even Iran.