The Siege That Never Ended: Bamako Breathes, But JNIM Still Holds the Roads
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.
JNIM's blockade, declared September 3, 2025, has torched more than 300 fuel tankers on the Senegal and Côte d'Ivoire corridors in a country that imports some 95 percent of its fuel by road; a February attack near the Senegalese border killed at least fifteen. Bamako has escorted 1,000-plus tankers into the capital since late October 2025 and named a general to run the "fuel war." The easing is attributed to negotiations and JNIM repositioning ahead of its April offensive — convoys move again, but the siege has held in some form through mid-2026, and Western embassies drew down staff at its peak.
Assessment: The blockade proved a landlocked capital can be strangled without being entered, and that Russian and Turkish hardware cannot reliably keep a road open. "Eased" is a reprieve the insurgents grant, not a defeat they suffer — the lever is still theirs to pull, and Ouagadougou and Niamey are watching the template. Read the escorts, not the traffic: the day convoys move unescorted is the day the siege is actually broken.