Sahel Monitor

The Bamako fuel story has a standing encyclopaedia entry and a year of think-tank commentary behind it. What it does not have, today, is a single current figure The Files is willing to print.

Anadolu and TRT Afrika carried the security minister’s claim in January. Named defendants, charges and a trial are the test of such a claim, and the desk retrieved none of them.

Two outlets confirm an agreement at Mali’s flagship gold complex, eight months after a production restart and ten after a $430m settlement with the junta. The terms have not been published.

Two regional outlets place trade ministers of the Alliance of Sahel States in the Malian capital this week, working on internal commerce. No communiqué, no named ministers and no trade figure has emerged.

PesaCheck rated a speech by General Abdourahamane Tiani circulating as September 2026 material ‘partially false' because it is not from September 2026. Three other claims moving through the same ecosystem have no originating outlet.

Base 101 hosts the headquarters of Russia’s Africa Corps in Niger and of the AES joint force. It was stormed by Islamic State fighters in January and by Nigerien soldiers in August, and the central claims about both remain unconfirmed on the record.

JNIM announced the blockade on 3 September 2025 and tightened it onto the capital in April. The most-cited numbers — 300 tankers destroyed, 1,000 delivered by convoy — both trace to open-source tracking rather than any auditable count.

Human Rights Watch reported on 26 September that Niamey refused key Universal Periodic Review recommendations, including reconsidering its exit from the International Criminal Court. Nine days earlier, Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani signed a decree removing the nationality of five exiled critics.

The group says it killed more than 100 soldiers at an army camp and 33 more at Sévaré and Konna, and released video of dozens of captured troops. The Associated Press said it could not verify the numbers.

Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine told the General Assembly on 26 September that Niger is standing because Algeria chose to back it — three weeks after a mutiny his government says was put down with Russian help.

ACLED recorded one JNIM roadside bomb attack in Mali in the first four months of 2026, and at least 32 since the 25 April offensive — at least ten of them against joint Malian–Russian convoys.

The al-Qaeda affiliate released video of captured troops and a precise body count. What has been confirmed is the video, not the arithmetic — and thirteen months into the fuel blockade, that gap is the story.

Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani signed a decree on 17 September provisionally stripping five exiled Nigeriens of their nationality. Human Rights Watch says they are opposition figures; Niger’s own state agency confirms the decree.

Al Jazeera reported from Bamako on 22 September that a year-old jihadist fuel blockade has exposed the capital’s supply routes. A specialist tracker now assesses that JNIM is going after the air assets meant to relieve them.

The installation next to Niamey’s airport houses the general staff of the Sahel bloc’s unified force and, per FPRI, more than a thousand tonnes of yellowcake loaded on trucks that have not moved. It was also at the centre of last month’s mutiny.

JNIM says it killed 150 Malian troops and captured 93 at the Dioura camp on 10 September, and released video to prove part of it. The army spokesman declined to comment.

More than 900 tankers reached Bamako on 14 September under armed protection, according to the government. The escort is the measure of the corridor, not the relief of it.

Human Rights Watch says a 17 September decree removed the citizenship of five Nigeriens abroad, including a former prime minister. The instrument is a terrorism database created by junta order in 2024.

Russia’s ambassador says Africa Corps neutralised the 29 August revolt at Air Base 101. AP reported ground and air support. Niamey has said nothing on the record.

Al Jazeera reports the 66th anniversary against a blockade on supply corridors into Bamako and growing coordination between JNIM and the Tuareg-led FLA.

Reuters sources put the death toll from the 10 September attack on the Dioura camp between 120 and 130; JNIM claims 150 killed and 93 captured. Bamako has given no number at all.

JNIM says it struck air defence systems at the base that houses Mali’s aircraft and drones. The corroborating detail comes from a single unnamed resident, and it is the most consequential unverified claim of the week.

The blockade of Mali’s capital has run in cycles since September 2025 — squeeze, escorted convoy, partial relief, squeeze again. The most recent hard figure available is a government claim four and a half months old.

The 28–29 August attempt against General Abdourahamane Tiani is confirmed by multiple outlets. Everything that would tell you how deep the fracture runs — arrests, units, casualties — is not.

Niger’s junta has released no count, no names and no charges since late August. The gap is being filled by second-hand reporting the desk cannot yet match against a primary source.

Maliweb reported the shortage over in August; a commercial risk vendor described the blockade as active through July. The desk is not able to say which is true.

Nine days after JNIM overran the Mopti camp, an agency revision has converted an army claim of a repelled assault into one of the heaviest single losses the Malian military has recorded. Every figure in it is anonymously sourced.

Sifi Ghrieb met Goïta on 14 September as the two capitals revive a commission dormant for a decade. The reporting on what was agreed comes almost entirely from Algerian and regional outlets.

Sifi Ghrieb carried a written message from Abdelmadjid Tebboune to Assimi Goïta on 14 September. The reported deliverable — a Goïta trip to Algiers — rests so far on a single regional outlet.

Bellingcat counted more than 130 tankers destroyed in three months of the blockade that began in September 2025. The territorial claims stacked on top of that campaign are far less solid than the tanker count.

Two administrative announcements in Niamey within a week are being reported separately. Read in sequence, they look like one exercise in consolidation — though the event that would explain it remains unverified.

Sifi Ghrieb’s trip is the first operative test of the Algeria–Mali normalisation agreed in July. The only readout so far is the Algerian government’s own.

Brigadier General Mamane Sani Kiaou was named chief of staff in a decree signed 11 September and read out on state television. It is the first visible personnel consequence of the 28–29 August fighting in the capital.

Sifi Ghrieb was reported to be carrying a message from President Tebboune to General Assimi Goïta, continuing a reset that ended fifteen months of closed airspace. Three days on, there is no communiqué, no photograph and no APS statement.

Issue 564 of Al-Naba', published 10 September, carries the assertion as an exclusive. No location, no date range, no independent corroboration — and a clear audience for it.

Sifi Ghrieb’s Monday visit is the second high-level exchange between Algiers and Bamako in three weeks, fourteen months after the two capitals expelled each other’s ambassadors and closed their skies.

Bamako’s fuel supply has been restored three times since September 2025 and has failed again each time. What has never been restored is open road freight.

The junta says the 28–29 August revolt was contained. It has published no arrest figure, no casualty count and no charge sheet, and the defence minister’s only public description avoided naming the presidency.

The blockade on tankers entering Mali was declared in September 2025 and has now run twelve months. The most recent Malian reporting available, dated 8 August, said the shortage had eased — and nobody has published a September count.

Decrees published on 11 September appointed four generals and senior officers to top posts in the Nigerien Armed Forces. The report rests on a single regional aggregator, and the names have not surfaced.

JNIM’s tanker blockade began on 3 September 2025 and has held continuously. The anniversary came and went this month without a published pump price, convoy count or import volume.

RFI reports supply has substantially improved in the Malian capital after a year of tanker ambushes and convoy escorts, while provincial supply remains uneven. The newest datum is nine days old.

Niger’s 28–29 August coup attempt is the most consequential event on this desk and the worst documented. Two accounts of who mutinied come from the same publisher.

The only in-window event on the desk is a Burkinabè ribbon-cutting built around locally made furniture. Three years after the confederation’s founding, its monetary independence remains a document.

The 13th session of the Grande Commission mixte met in Bamako on 9 and 10 September. The convening is confirmed; what it produced is not, and the gap matters more than the handshake.

Dozens of soldiers were arrested after the 28–29 August attempt against Abdourahamane Tiani. The assertion that Russia’s Africa Corps helped put it down has not been independently established, and nothing has been published about the detainees.

The 13th Mali–Algeria joint commission convened in Bamako on 9 September, the first since November 2016. No communiqué had surfaced by the time the session was due to close.

The blockade that began on 3 September 2025 has not broken Bamako and has not been broken. Its documented pattern is shortage, partial restoration, shortage again.

Ten days after gunfire around Niamey’s airport and presidency, the most useful reporting reframes the 29 August attempt as a symptom of the counter-insurgency rather than a coup plot in isolation.

The confederation’s new parliament sat in the Nigerien capital in late August. Its own sponsors describe a body with no legislative or budgetary power.

The Africa Report says the officers who attacked Base Aérienne 101 came from the units fighting Islamic State and JNIM in the southwest — the war Abdourahamane Tiani seized power in 2023 to win.

The Sahel bloc’s institution-building keeps arriving on schedule while the money does not, and the resources its members have reclaimed still have to be sold through someone else’s system.

The freshest datapoint on the Malian fuel blockade is a four-day-old wire headline. The last hard tanker-loss figure is nine months old. Both facts describe the same problem: the siege is now being fought on roads no one is measuring.

An airstrike finding on 31 July and a massacre finding on 20 August put Russia’s Africa Corps on the record twice in three weeks. What is missing is any acknowledgement from the governments named.

The junta’s own inventory of captured materiel describes a unit-scale operation, not a handful of malcontents — even as the government avoids the word coup and blames France, ECOWAS and neighbouring states.

The Alliance of Sahel States condemned the attempt on Tiani only after it was over. Its founding charter promised collective defence.

A week after gunfire at Air Base 101, Niger’s government has put an official name to the plot. Which name it chose — and which one it declined to use — is the more revealing decision.

Bénin Web TV reported on 3 September that fuel and electricity are again available in the Malian capital, with distribution still erratic elsewhere. The gap between the two is the point of JNIM’s campaign.

Niger’s defence minister has confirmed hours of fighting at unnamed “sensitive sites” and state television says dozens of soldiers were detained. The second phase of the 28–29 August revolt is now a policing operation whose limits are unclear.

France 24 says Algiers sent four fighter aircraft and two other military planes the day after the mutiny. Nothing from the Algerian defence ministry has confirmed it, and the difference between deployment, transit and evacuation is the whole story.

Six days after gunfire near Niger’s Base aérienne 101, the only firm facts are dozens of arrests and a naming dispute. The least reliable outlets are the most certain about what happened.

Nothing surfaced on the JNIM fuel blockade between 1 and 3 September. On this file the oscillation is the story, and quiet periods have preceded both relief and renewed scarcity.

State media say the 29 August attack was repelled. What is verifiable is the pattern: three armed incidents in Niger’s capital in eight months, two centred on the same airport complex.

The blockade began on 3 September 2025. Twelve months on, the clearest evidence of its effect is not a casualty count but the reordering of who in Mali is allowed to buy diesel.

Abdoulaye Maïga was received by Abdelmadjid Tebboune in Algiers on 24 August. The détente is being consolidated at the same moment Mali’s foreign security guarantor narrows its footprint to Bamako.

Fighting at the military base beside Niamey’s international airport was contained over the weekend. Russia’s ambassador has publicly claimed a role for Africa Corps that Niamey has not confirmed.

Studio Tamani’s Monday bulletin carried two small items that describe the Malian information environment precisely. JNIM’s fuel blockade reaches its first anniversary on Thursday.

Gunfire hit the airport, the presidency district and state broadcasting early Saturday. Within 24 hours the government had described the same event as both a jihadist attack and a mutiny by its own soldiers.

The mutiny follows a year of overrun positions in Tillabéri, Dosso and at the capital’s own airport. The pattern explains the politics better than any government communiqué.

Mutinous troops challenged General Abdourahamane Tiani in the Nigerien capital on Saturday. State media said the situation was under control; a Dakar-based outlet’s military sources said mutineers still held ground at dusk.

General Abdoulaye Maïga’s 24 August visit completes an eighteen-month Algerian re-entry into the Sahel that began with Niamey in February. The unresolved file is northern Mali.

General Abdoulaye Maïga’s one-day visit on 24 August converted a technical restoration of ties into a political one. What it has not yet produced is a text.

JNIM’s fuel blockade is the most consequential story in Mali and the least documented. The gap is not accidental: the three juntas have been steadily closing the instruments that would measure them.

Abdoulaye Maïga’s 24 August audience with Abdelmadjid Tebboune lifted a six-week-old rapprochement to head-of-state level. What was actually agreed was a visit with no date.

Nigerien outlets put the figure at 2,980 billion CFA francs, a nominal rise that in a war economy with inflation is a real-terms contraction. No wire has confirmed it.

Abdoulaye Maïga carried a message from Assimi Goïta and left with Goïta’s agreement to visit Algeria himself. No joint communiqué, no signed instrument, no named portfolio was announced.

Human Rights Watch says Africa Corps killed nine civilians at Bombori in Mopti on 10 July. The ratio in its account describes the sovereignty bargain better than any communiqué.

General Abdoulaye Maïga was received by Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Monday and said the Malian transition leader had accepted an invitation to Algeria. No date has been set, and no international wire service has reported the meeting.

Niger’s Council of Ministers adopted a first rectification raising the general budget to 2,980.54 billion FCFA. The communiqué names defence credits, a cabinet reshuffle and the Middle East crisis' effect on crude as the drivers.

Deputies of the Alliance of Sahel States were installed in Niger’s capital on 24 August. The presence of Chad’s National Assembly president — Chad is not a member — is the part worth watching.

The 20 August investigation describes more than 100 Russian Africa Corps fighters, accompanied by Malian soldiers, rounding up at least 80 men and boys. Neither Bamako nor Moscow has been recorded responding.

Abdoulaye Maïga’s 24 August visit was reported on both sides of the border. What was announced is a presidential visit; what has been confirmed is a working trip by a prime minister.

Abdoulaye Maïga was due in Algiers today at Sifi Ghrieb’s invitation, sixteen months after Algeria shot down a Malian drone. The visit is announced, not yet confirmed.

The 20 August investigation reconstructs a dawn raid on Bombori on 10 July: more than 100 Russian fighters, four Malian soldiers as interpreters, 80 men and boys rounded up under a tree.

The convoy figures climb week by week under FAMa escort, and the 82 freed soldiers came with a communiqué that avoids the word negotiation. Both are announced numbers with an incentive attached.

A report published 20 August says Russian government-controlled forces summarily executed nine civilians, four of them children, in early July. Neither Bamako nor Moscow had answered as of our last check.

Alger reopened airspace and returned its ambassador to Bamako on 10 July, and its prime minister was at a Nigerien wellhead on 13 August. Jeune Afrique reports Russia helped broker the reconciliation.

An advisory dated 21 August is the first document from a third country’s foreign ministry to treat the overland corridors into Senegal as unsafe. It measures the reach of the Mali fuel blockade better than any casualty claim.

Senior officials from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger wrapped three days of work on the confederation’s “Year II” roadmap on Wednesday. The document goes to the heads of state — at a summit whose date and venue were not announced.

Nearly a year into JNIM’s fuel campaign, the last independent assessment describes a slow tightening rather than a thaw — and Human Rights Watch’s finding on an Africa Corps airstrike remains, three weeks on, without a public response from Bamako or Moscow.

An Ivorian outlet, citing a Kremlin readout, says Mali’s transition president requested Wednesday’s call. The reported text contains no new agreement and no additional Russian deployment.

The Confederation’s financial arm was inaugurated in Bamako in December. A specialist regional financial outlet reports it has still not disbursed. The same week produced a mining-harmonisation process and a health-cooperation meeting.

Reuters reported industrial production of 23.5 tonnes in the first half of 2026, well above the government’s own forecast. Eight months after its launch in Bamako, the Confederation’s investment bank has still not disbursed a first financing, according to Financial Afrik.

A specialist military outlet argues the offensive that began in April has reversed Russian-backed gains in northern Mali. The supporting numbers are contested, the force size is contested, and the fuel corridor into Bamako has no reliable update this week.

The Alliance of Sahel States has been producing institutions on paper since its Bamako summit. On 16 August, a regional financial publication put the obvious test question in a headline: does the bank exist?

Niger’s most recent confirmed casualty figures — sixteen soldiers at Téra in July, thirty-one civilians at Bosiye in January — illustrate how narrow the documentary record on the three-borders zone has become.

Nearly a year into JNIM’s blockade of the roads into Mali’s capital, the numbers that circulate are convoy sizes and tanker losses — figures each party has a reason to shape. The blockade’s target is not the city but the junta’s legitimacy.

Two accounts of the same attack on a Malian army base carry the identical casualty figure with the subject reversed. The week’s incident log shows the pattern extending south into Burkina Faso’s cotton and gold belt.

Bamako and Algiers have returned their envoys and reopened their airspace fifteen months after the recall. Neither capital has said what was traded, and the only account of who brokered it comes from a single outlet.

A Malian outlet declared the fuel shortage over on 8 August. The blockade regime on the Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire axes has not been reported lifted, and both things can be true at once.

The general staff announced the release on 13 August of soldiers held since the 25 April JNIM–FLA offensive. The same day, Goïta pardoned a French DGSE officer serving twenty years. Neither announcement states a condition.

Two datelines a day apart describe the same first-ever confederal mining meeting. What both versions agree on is that a harmonisation process was launched and no text was signed.

Energy, mines and petroleum ministers of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger met as a confederal body for the first time in Ouagadougou on 13 August, with five harmonisation documents on the table. What the session actually adopted is still not in the public record.

Pravda Niger on 8 August and Pravda France on 10 August reported that roughly one third of the uranium stock Orano holds in Niamey could be bought by a Romanian company, both citing unnamed “media.” No buyer, tonnage or official is named anywhere in the chain.

Capmad and the West African Voice Network both report that Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso are aligning mining and energy policy. Neither is a wire, and the primary text behind the reports has not been published.

The only number in circulation — at least ten soldiers killed — rests on a single unnamed security source quoted by AFP. Bamako’s communiqué contains no toll at all.

An AFP dispatch filed 10 August gives the first casualty figure from Sunday’s assault on the San garrison, sourced to one unnamed security official. The army’s reported claim of around 40 militants killed could not be traced to any primary document.

Mining Magazine says analysts will press Barrick on Mali when it reports H1 numbers this week. The state enters that call having recovered 761 billion CFA francs in mining arrears while national gold output fell almost a quarter.

At least ten soldiers were reported killed in Sunday’s attack on the army camp at San, in Mali’s Ségou region. No official Malian toll has been published, and the two figures in circulation do not match.

Maliweb published on or about 8 August that the end of the shortage has relieved users and restarted activity. Three weeks earlier a commercial threat-intelligence vendor assessed that Bamako was still running escorted convoys under a JNIM blockade.

Burkina Faso’s foreign minister delivered a joint Mali–Niger–Burkina protest over Bola Tinubu’s 30 July remarks linking Nigerian kidnappings to the Sahel. It is the clearest instance yet of the Alliance of Sahel States acting as a single diplomatic actor.

A Malian General Staff communiqué relayed by a Russian state-aligned agency claims a joint FAMa–Africa Corps operation destroyed a militant base in Kidal city. If accurate, it describes a strike on an urban centre the government does not hold.

Gen. Abdoulaye Maïga told a five-year Transition review in Bamako that Mali and Algeria never broke relations, and claimed a total convergence of views with Tebboune. No Algerian statement in the window uses that language.

Across 6–8 August our sweep recovered a single wire-standard item on Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. The rest of the retrievable record came from a Russian-aligned aggregator network and a booster account on X.

The AU Peace and Security Council receives a Sahel briefing on Friday, according to a preview published a day ahead by the Addis Ababa tracker Amani Africa. No outcome document existed at filing.

HRW’s investigation into 15 June airstrikes in central Mali found eight civilians killed, three of them children, and no confirmed JNIM fighters among the dead. Neither Africa Corps nor the Malian authorities have responded in material reviewed here.

A new ACLED study of armed-group activity in Sahel mining zones reports that predation has moved off mine perimeters onto the roads, villages and market hubs around them. The only version of the finding available to us is a summary published by a magazine of US Africa Command.

The Malian trade ministry says 36.95 million litres of fuel reached Bamako in a week and that stocks are sufficient. Both figures are the government’s own, and nothing published reconciles the volume with the rate.

The figure surfaced on 4 August at the first meeting of a Bamako fund committee, reported by a Russian-aligned aggregator carrying TASS. Nothing in the item says what period the money covers or whether it has been received.

Al Jazeera and Reporters At Large both published near-identical assessments of Burkina Faso’s leader on 4 August, each carrying an April statement telling Burkinabè to “forget about democracy” that neither traced to a speech, a date or a venue.

Pravda Mali, part of the Russian-aligned news-pravda network, published items on 2 and 3 August presenting a Shahed strike on a Tin Zaouatine medical facility and an Africa Corps air raid in Mopti as operational wins. Neither claim is independently confirmed; both are being advertised rather than reported.

International Crisis Group’s 15 July report on the Algiers–Bamako thaw records that Algerian authorities refused several mediation attempts, Qatar’s among them, before settling the rupture bilaterally. The Gulf’s Sahel portfolio was declined at the door.

An Africa Center for Strategic Studies analysis dated 6 May 2026 records nearly 20% of JNIM’s violent activity in Mali occurring in the country’s west and south over the preceding year, up from 8%, with fatalities in those regions doubling to over 450. The coverage cycle is still fixed on Kidal.

On 30 July a Russian-aligned Mali aggregator described a failed jihadist offensive and clashes near Gossi alongside Russian House cultural programming. Days earlier, Africa Defense Forum relayed a report attributing 278 civilian deaths in northern Mali to Africa Corps and Malian forces.

An aggregator timestamped 1 August reports that Moscow has “formally deepened” its military pact with Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. The substance matches the Lavrov ministerial of 8 July, and even that produced a consultation framework rather than a troop commitment.

Al Jazeera reports the Burkinabè leader escalating a public confrontation with Muslim scholars. The only casualty figures from the same period come from an army communiqué, and a separate investigation says the military is stopping civilians leaving besieged towns.

Two convoy figures a week apart — 880 tankers, then 850 — are the closest thing to a measure of whether JNIM’s fuel embargo on Mali is being broken. Both rest on the same partisan network, and no wire has matched them.

Human Rights Watch put eight civilian deaths at Africa Corps' door on Friday. By Saturday the two governments with an interest had said nothing, and the only adversarial document remains the unit’s own June post claiming it killed field commanders.

A report published Friday from Nairobi finds a 15 June airstrike in Mopti killed eight civilians, including three children. The strongest evidence in it is material the Russian unit published itself.

The 10 July agreement to reopen airspace and restore envoys ended fifteen months of rupture on paper. Crisis Group’s own summary uses the verb ‘announced'.

The figure originates with the man announcing it and reached the wires through Niger’s state broadcaster. By the time Russian-aligned outlets had rewritten it two days later, the same expansion had grown by 40 percent.

No new verified incident in Mali was recorded in the past 48 hours. What moved instead was the same set of claims, through outlets whose sponsors each have a separate reason to move them.

A tracker update says joint FLA–JNIM forces have begun withdrawing from the town on the Gao–Kidal road. The same entry carries the Malian government’s claim of fifteen airstrikes and about a hundred fighters killed.

An investigation published on 26 July documents the closure of the AES information space. It is also the explanation for why claims of a hundred dead in Mali and four hundred in Burkina Faso go uncontradicted.

On the eve of the third anniversary of Mohamed Bazoum’s removal — a date Niamey now marks as National Sovereignty Day rather than a coup anniversary — Gen. Abdourahamane Tiani said he holds evidence of French involvement in attacks on Niger’s main airport. No evidence has been published and no French response has surfaced.

The Africa Report says dozens of armoured vehicles and new Russian equipment were hours from Bamako on 23 July, on a route it describes as built to circumvent sanctions. The claim rests on one publishing group’s unnamed sources.

In the space of a week Burkina Faso’s transitional president opened a public confrontation with Muslim scholars who once backed him and moved to shut down talk of a power struggle inside his junta.

The junta in Niamey promised a maximum three-year transition after the July 2023 coup. That deadline is passing this week with no electoral calendar — and with the Alliance of Sahel States building the paperwork of a new sovereignty instead.

A US air campaign in Mali would put American aircraft over the same ground as Russia's Africa Corps. The junta's answer was not refusal but a condition: respect our sovereignty.

Footage of surrendering Malian soldiers being shot has drawn a war-crimes warning that lists the FLA and JNIM together — collapsing the separation the separatists have spent two years selling.

Mali's war worked because the separatists and the jihadists fought each other. A joint July 18 ambush near Gao says that is over — and the junta's northern spine is the first thing at risk.

The al-Qaeda fuel blockade has loosened enough for daily life to resume — but the corridors stay contested, the convoys still need escorts, and the lever over the junta stays in jihadist hands.

An eleven-month fuel blockade and a July offensive bloodying both the army and its Russian backers show the jihadists dictating the terms of daily life without entering the city.

Algeria and Mali restore ambassadors and reopen airspace after a fifteen-month rupture — handing Algiers a foot back in the Azawad file just as the Tuareg rebellion reignites.

The junta's sudden reconciliation with Algiers is being sold as sovereign statecraft, but the order to make the gesture came from its Russian patron.

The al-Qaeda affiliate cannot storm Bamako, so it is strangling the fuel that keeps the capital and its Russian-backed war machine running.

Satellite imagery shows the capital's nighttime lights measurably dimming. Ten months into JNIM's fuel blockade, the siege of Bamako has a scientific instrument reading — and it points down.