JNIM Sets the Tempo: A Capital Strangled by Road, Not Siege
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.
On July 18 a JNIM–FLA ambush struck a Malian army convoy leaving Anéfis for Gao; the army confirmed the attack, withheld its losses, and noted "its partners were also attacked" — the Africa Corps. It capped a coordinated July 4–9 assault in which a convoy Reuters sources put at 200-plus Russian fighters and 100-plus Malian soldiers was hit in the north. Behind it runs the siege that matters: JNIM's fuel blockade, declared September 2025, has torched more than 300 tankers in a country that imports some 95 percent of its fuel by road, forcing the junta to run military-escorted convoys and name a general to fight the "fuel war."
Assessment: This is the closest jihadists have come to strangling a Sahel capital without taking it, weaponizing Mali's landlocked geography. Every ambushed convoy erodes the junta's core bargain — Russian muscle for legitimacy — by showing that partnership cannot secure even its own supply line.