“Bienvenue a Bamako!” The fixer, the minder and the boys linked to the Malian authorities had been ready for us on the airport in Bamako. Well mannered, smiling – and watchful.
It was late December, and we had simply taken an Air Burkina flight from Dakar, Senegal throughout the Sahel, the place a storm of political upheaval and armed violence has unsettled the area lately.
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Mali sits on the centre of a reckoning. After two army coups in 2020 and 2021, the nation severed ties with its former colonial ruler, France, expelled French forces, pushed out the United Nations peacekeeping mission, and redrew its alliances
Alongside Burkina Faso and Niger, now additionally dominated by army governments backed by Russian mercenaries, it fashioned the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) in September 2023. Collectively, the regional grouping withdrew from the broader Financial Group of West African States (ECOWAS) bloc, accusing it of serving international pursuits reasonably than African ones.
This month, leaders from the three international locations converged in Bamako for the Confederal Summit of Heads of State of the AES, the second such assembly because the alliance was fashioned. And we had been there to cowl it.
The summit was a ribbon-cutting second. Leaders of the three international locations inaugurated a brand new Sahel Funding and Improvement Financial institution meant to finance infrastructure initiatives with out reliance on Western lenders; a brand new tv channel constructed round a shared narrative and introduced as giving voice to the folks of the Sahel; and a joint army pressure supposed to function throughout borders in opposition to armed teams. It was a second to have a good time achievements greater than to signal new agreements.
However the motive behind the urgency of these bulletins lay past the summit corridor.
On this layered terrain of fracture and identification, armed teams have discovered room not solely to manoeuvre, however to develop. Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an al-Qaeda affiliate, has expanded from rural Mali, launching assaults throughout the area and reaching the coast of Benin, exploiting weak state presence and long-unresolved grievances.
As our airplane descended towards Bamako, I appeared out at an infinite stretch of earth, questioning how a lot of it was now beneath the management of al-Qaeda associates.
From the airport, our minders drove us quick by means of town. Motorbikes swerved round us, avenue hawkers peddled their wares, and Malian pop blared from audio system. At first, this didn’t really feel like a capital beneath siege. But since September, armed teams have been working a blockade round Bamako, choking off gas and items, the army authorities stated.
We drove previous petrol stations the place lengthy queues stretched into the evening. Life continued at the same time as gas grew scarce. Folks sat patiently, ready their flip. Anger appeared to have given option to indifference, whereas rumours swirled that the authorities had struck quiet offers with the very fighters they claimed to be combating, merely to maintain town shifting.
‘To grow to be one nation, to carry one another’s hand’
Our minders drove us on to the Sahel Alliance Sq., a newly created public house constructed to have a good time the union of the three international locations and its folks.
On the best way, Malian forces sped previous, maybe towards a entrance line that feels ever nearer, as gunmen linked to JNIM have arrange checkpoints disrupting commerce routes to the capital in latest months. In September 2024, additionally they carried out coordinated assaults inside Bamako, hitting a army police college housing elite items, close by neighbourhoods, and the army airport on town’s outskirts. And but, Bamako carries on, as if the battle had been happening in a faraway land.
At Sahel Alliance Sq., just a few hundred younger folks gathered and cheered because the Malian forces glided by, drawn by loud music, trivia questions on stage and the MC’s promise of small prizes.
The questions had been easy: Identify the AES international locations? Identify the leaders?
A microphone was handed to the kids. The alliance leaders’ names had been drilled in: Abdourahamane Tchiani of Niger. Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. Assimi Goita of Mali. Repeated time and again till they caught.
Right solutions received a prize: a T-shirt stamped with the faces of the alliance leaders.
Moussa Niare, 12 years outdated and a resident of Bamako, clutched a shirt bearing the faces of the three army leaders.
“They’ve gathered collectively to grow to be one nation, to carry one another’s hand, and to combat a typical enemy,” he informed us with buoyant confidence, as the federal government’s try and promote the brand new alliance to the general public seemed to be cultivating loyalty among the many younger.
France out, Russia in
Whereas Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger went by means of separate political transitions, the paths that introduced them right into a shared alliance adopted the same sample.
Between 2020 and 2023, every nation noticed its democratically elected management eliminated by the army, the takeovers framed as vital corrections.
In Mali, Colonel Goita seized energy after months of protest and amid claims that President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita had did not curb corruption or halt the advance of armed teams.
In Burkina Faso, the military ousted President Roch Marc Christian Kabore in early 2022 as insecurity worsened; later that yr, Captain Traore emerged from a counter-coup, promising a extra decisive response to the rise up.
In Niger, troopers led by Normal Tchiani detained President Mohamed Bazoum in July 2023, accusing his authorities of failing to safeguard nationwide safety and of leaning too closely on international companions.
What started as separate seizures of energy have since grow to be a shared political challenge, now expressed by means of a proper alliance. The gathering in Bamako was to provide form to their union.
One of many key conclusions of the AES summit was the introduced launch of a joint army battalion aimed toward combating armed teams throughout the Sahel.
This follows months of escalating violence, as regional armies assisted by Russian mercenaries push again in opposition to armed teams who’ve been launching assaults for over a decade.
Below the earlier civilian governments, former colonial ruler France had a robust diplomatic and army presence. French troops, whose presence within the area dates again to independence, at the moment are being pushed out, as army rulers recast sovereignty as each a political and safety crucial. The final troops left Mali in 2022, however at its peak, France had greater than 5,000 troopers deployed there. Once they withdrew, the nation grew to become an emblem of strategic failure for France’s Emmanuel Macron.
However even earlier than that, French diplomacy appeared tone deaf, and patronising at greatest, failing to understand the aspirations of its former colonies. The widespread regional foreign money, the CFA franc, nonetheless anchored to the French treasury, has grow to be a robust image of that resentment.
Now, French state tv and radio have been banned in Mali. In what was as soon as the guts of Francophone West Africa, French media has grow to be shorthand for interference. What was misplaced was not solely affect, however credibility. France was not seen as guaranteeing stability, however as producing instability.
Throughout the Sahel and past, anti-French sentiment is surging, usually expressed in French itself – the language of the coloniser is now additionally the language of resistance.
‘Like a wedding of motive’
On the finish of the summit, Mali’s Goita was making ready at hand over the AES’s rotating management to Traore of Burkina Faso.
Younger, charismatic, and the brand new rock star of Pan-Africanism, Traore, particularly, has captured younger audiences with assist from a free ecosystem of pro-Russian messaging and Africanist influencers. Throughout social media platforms, brief movies flow into relentlessly: speeches clipped for virality, pictures of defiance, and slogans lowered to shareable fragments.
In the meantime, in Burkina Faso, journalists and civil society actors who’ve criticised the army guidelines have been despatched to the entrance line beneath a conscription coverage launched by Traore. Human rights teams outspoken about alleged extrajudicial killings say they’ve been silenced or sidelined. However a lot of it’s dismissed as collateral, the value, supporters argue, of sovereignty lastly reclaimed.
Earlier than the ceremony, we met Mali’s finance minister. At first, he was assured, rehearsed, assured. However when pressed about financing for the bold infrastructure initiatives the three governments have laid out for the Sahel, his composure faltered and his phrases stuttered. This was a authorities official unaccustomed to being questioned. The microphone was eliminated. Later, away from the digicam, he informed me, “The IMF received’t launch loans till Mali has ironed out its relations with France.”
The spokesperson, irritated by my questions, took me apart. As he adjusted the collar of my go well with, slowly and patronisingly, he stated he typically thought of placing journalists in jail “only for enjoyable”.
He didn’t query the organisation I labored for. He questioned my French passport; my allegiance. I informed him my allegiance was to the reality. He smiled, as if that reply confirmed his suspicions.
Within the worldview of Mali’s army authorities – males formed by years on the entrance line, dwelling with a everlasting sense of risk – journalists and critics are a part of the issue. Creating security was the problem. The alliance, the spokesperson defined, was the answer to what they might not discover inside regional physique, ECOWAS.
The half-century-old West African establishment is a bloc that the three international locations had as soon as helped form. Now, the AES leaders say its ageing, democratically elected presidents have grown indifferent, extra invested in sustaining each other in workplace than in confronting the area’s crises. In response, they’re selling the AES in its place.
Because the Sahel alliance grows, it’s additionally constructing new infrastructure.
At its new tv channel in Bamako, preparations had been beneath approach. The ON AIR signal glowed. State-of-the-art cameras sat on tripods like polished weapons.
The channel’s director, Salif Sanogo, informed me it might be “a software to combat disinformation,” a option to counter Western, and extra particularly French, narratives and “give voice to the folks of the Sahel, by the folks of the Sahel”.
The cameras had been purchased overseas. The set up was overseen by a French manufacturing firm. The irony went unremarked.
To defend the alliance, he provided a metaphor. “It’s like a wedding of motive,” he stated. “It’s simpler to make choices whenever you’re married to 3. While you’re married to fifteen, it’s a multitude.” He was referring to the 15 member states of ECOWAS.
‘We are going to survive this, too’
Two years into the AES alliance, they’ve moved quicker than the legacy regional bloc they left behind. A joint army pressure now binds their borders collectively, introduced as a matter of survival reasonably than ambition. A mutual defence pact recasts coups and exterior stress as shared threats, not nationwide failures. A typical Sahel funding and growth financial institution, meant to finance roads, power, and mineral extraction with out recourse to Western lenders, provides sovereignty, they are saying, with out situations. A typical foreign money is beneath dialogue.
A shared information channel is meant to challenge a single narrative outward, at the same time as house for unbiased media contracts at residence. And after withdrawing from the Worldwide Legal Courtroom, they’ve proposed a Sahel penal court docket, one that may strive critical crimes and human rights violations on their very own phrases. Justice introduced residence, or justice introduced beneath management, relying on who you ask.
What’s taking form is not only an alliance, however another structure, constructed rapidly, intentionally, and in full view of its critics.
The place ECOWAS constructed norms slowly, by means of elections, mediation, and consensus, AES is constructing construction. The place ECOWAS insists on endurance, AES insists on velocity.
To supporters, that is overdue self-determination, dignity restored after many years of dependency. To critics, it’s energy concentrated in uniforms, accountability postponed, repression dressed up as emancipation.
From the summit stage as he took over the alliance’s management, Traore redrew the enemy: Not al-Qaeda. Not ISIL. Not even France. However their African neighbours, forged because the enemy inside. He warned of what he known as a “black winter”, a speech that held the room and travelled far past it, drawing tens of millions of viewers on-line.
“Why are we, Black folks, attempting to domesticate hatred amongst ourselves,” he requested, “and thru hypocrisy calling ourselves brothers? We now have solely two selections: both we put an finish to imperialism as soon as and for all, or we stay slaves till we disappear.”
Away from the summit’s “black winter”, beneath a sunlit sky in Bamako, life moved on with a quieter rhythm. Music drifted by means of public squares and streets, carrying a familiarity that minimize throughout the stress of speeches and slogans. It was Amadou and Mariam, Mali’s most internationally identified musical duo, whose songs as soon as carried the nation’s on a regular basis joys far past its borders. Amadou died out of the blue this yr. However the melody lingers.
Its lyrics maintain the key of the biggest alliance of all. Not one solid by treaties or uniforms, however by folks, throughout Mali and the Sahel, in all their variety.
“Sabali”, Mariam sings.
“Forbearance.
“We now have survived worse. We are going to survive this, too.”
