Source: The Conversation – Africa (2) – By Lamine Doumbia, Research Associate – Dep. African History /Institute for Asian and African Studies, Humboldt University of Berlin
Mali has been struggling for over a decade to defeat “jihadists” around Gao, Kidal and Ségou. Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), linked to al-Qaida, is believed to be the most vicious of the terrorist groups operating there, based on the scale of its attacks.
The group’s aims include an imposition of its strict interpretation of Islam and sharia. Recently it raised the ante with attacks in certain zones in Mali. This has put strain on trade routes and the supply of essential commodities, including fuel.
Consequently, there have been media reports raising concerns about the deepening security crisis in the country. Yet, as Malian researchers, we think some of these claims are exaggerated. We work in African studies, social anthropology, history, economics and development studies, and have been conducting fieldwork in Bamako over the past six months. Our view also draws on our broader research on urban market dynamics and social resilience in west Africa.
We argue that what is being reported is more like guesses based on certain conditions than solid conclusions backed by evidence.
For instance, the fuel crisis in Bamako has been interpreted as the direct consequence of terrorist activity. A contributing factor may be the limited institutional and governmental capacity to effectively coordinate fuel and energy procurement and storage of the country.
Indeed, since September 2025, Mali has a fuel shortage and a sharp rise in prices. Government efforts have not yet brought the crisis under lasting control. But this does not necessarily mean the capital city is under siege.
Our field observations suggest a different picture. Bamako is indeed under immense pressure and activities have been disrupted. But markets continue to function, and people display remarkable solidarity and adaptability in their daily lives.
The distinction matters, not to minimise the crisis, but to capture it with the nuance, complexity and empirical sensitivity that local realities demand.
Beyond the narrative of collapse
Framing Bamako as “blockaded” risks obscuring these complex social realities. While insecurity on key transport corridors is real, the city remains functional.
Markets continue to operate, albeit under difficult conditions. Schools, though intermittently closed, have reopened after a shutdown of two weeks, and many urban communities are mobilising local forms of resilience. External analyses too often overlook these.
To call this situation a “blockade” is to conflate logistical disruption with military encirclement. A blockade would imply that no movement of people or goods is possible, which is not the case. What we are witnessing is a progressive suffocation of the city’s economic arteries, not a total siege.
Everyday realities: markets and hardship
To understand the present crisis around Bamako, one must trace its history. As the emeritus social anthropologist Georg Klute explains, conflict in the Sahara-Sahel region has long taken the form of asymmetric, nomadic “small wars”.
These were not total wars but mobile and negotiated confrontations, rooted in strategies of autonomy and survival in marginal environments. What we see today is a continuation of this tradition of localised contestation.
The asymmetric “small war” has evolved into hybrid insurgencies blending historical modes of resistance, political grievances from the 1990s onwards, and transnational terrorists’ ideology.
This trajectory was already visible more than a decade ago, when the 2012 coup was followed by the occupation of northern Mali by Tuareg separatists and terrorists Islamist groups.
Once celebrated as a model democracy, Mali entered a prolonged cycle of fragility, marked by military coups, fragmented authority and the erosion of public trust.
While Bamako faces shortages and rising prices, the epicentre of economic suffering lies further north and east, in the Mopti, Kayes and Ségou regions. Recent studies show how armed groups have inserted themselves into everyday economic life, controlling markets, taxing trade routes and regulating mobility.
In Mopti, “jihadist” factions have established parallel systems of governance, collecting “zakat” taxes, enforcing their own codes of justice, and offering minimal security in exchange for compliance.
In Ségou, transport networks are heavily monitored; farmers and traders are often forced to pay informal levies to move goods between villages. These measures have distorted local economies, redirected value chains and imposed new hierarchies of control.
What began as localised insurgency in nomadic peripheries has now reached the urban heart of Mali’s political and economic life.
Yet, as we observed during our recent fieldwork in Bamako’s Grand Marché, this is not a war fought solely with weapons, it is also a struggle for survival, dignity and sovereignty.
Resilience and solidarity
During our recent field research on urban market dynamics and contestations in west Africa, we witnessed how the current crisis has reshaped everyday life in Bamako.
In the Grand Marché, the city’s commercial heart, traders and consumers alike are facing hardship. The shortage of fuel has disrupted the circulation of goods and people, making transport scarce and expensive.
This shortage has set off a chain reaction. Prices of basic commodities have soared and electricity cuts have multiplied, undermining cold storage, small-scale industries, and household livelihoods. Although we don’t have official data, we have observed “unregistered” workers – the majority of Bamako’s labour force – seeing their income sources collapse.
Yet resilience and solidarity remain striking. Many traders continue to walk long distances to reach the market, often uncertain whether customers will come at all. On Saturdays, when fuel becomes slightly more available, market areas come alive with crowds of vendors and buyers.
Across the city, long queues form at petrol stations, and people wait patiently, sharing water, information and small acts of support.
What emerges from these scenes is a remarkable atmosphere of mutuality, a collective will to endure and to adapt. In the face of scarcity, Bamako’s residents are reinventing everyday life through cooperation, perseverance, and a sense of community.
In this context, the lesson is that military escalation cannot resolve what began as an asymmetric, socially embedded crisis. As both our field observations and long-term research suggest, negotiation (rooted in local realities and historical understanding) offers the only sustainable path forward.
Negotiation, not militarisation
From the vantage point of the Grand Marché, Bamako’s current crisis is not one of imminent collapse, but of cumulative exhaustion. The people’s resilience cannot indefinitely compensate for the paralysis of governance.
The Malian crisis has demonstrated, time and again, the limits of a purely military response. The social and economic despair we are witnessing today reinforces the urgency of a social political dialogue, not as a sign of weakness, but as a pragmatic acknowledgment of reality.
Negotiation must go beyond the binary of “state versus armed groups”. It must include religious leaders, market actors, civil society groups, university scholars and local communities.
Such a process will be difficult, especially given the commitment to laïcité (secularism) in Mali’s constitutional framework. Yet, refusing dialogue only deepens isolation (political, social, and humanitarian).
Rather than framing Mali’s capital as a city under siege, we should recognise it as a city struggling under immense strain; one that still breathes, resists and adapts. Negotiation, not militarisation, remains the only credible route to sustainable peace in Bamako.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
– ref. Bamako is under pressure, not under siege: the difference and why it matters – https://theconversation.com/bamako-is-under-pressure-not-under-siege-the-difference-and-why-it-matters-269447
