“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.
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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.
Source: Aljazeera
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