JNIM’s tanker campaign turns one, and Bamako’s fuel supply has cycled four times in twelve months

JNIM began attacking fuel tanker convoys on 3 September 2025, targeting the overland routes from Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania and Senegal. Bellingcat, in work cited by ACLED on 3 December 2025, counted more than 130 tankers destroyed between September and December 2025; a figure of at least 300 now circulates in aggregate compilations, including Rio Times on 15 June 2026, and should be read as an estimate rather than an audited count. Open-source analysis published by the private threat-intelligence firm The Ops Con on 16 June 2026 puts the share of Malian fuel imported by road at roughly 95%. The documented cycle: AFP reported shortage after one month of blockade in October 2025, drawing down the security stock of the Office national des produits pétroliers; Jeune Afrique reported a marked improvement in Bamako on 28 November; Maliweb recorded a fresh gasoil shortage on 5 March 2026, with heavy electricity and water cuts by 16 March; and on 8 August 2026 Maliweb reported queues disappearing again.

Convoy escort is what the Russian relationship buys. The Carnegie Endowment, publishing on 3 June 2026, found that the Malian army with an estimated 1,000 Africa Corps combatants was able to secure convoys, but that fuel access had still not fully resumed in Bamako in early 2026. Human Rights Watch reported on 20 August 2026 that Africa Corps forces summarily killed nine civilians, including four children, and beat dozens of others in central Mali in early July; no Malian or Russian response has surfaced in the twenty days since. Wassim Nasr of The Soufan Center, quoted in a 12 May 2026 IntelBrief on the spring reverses, said the events “will consolidate the relationship because the objective of the relationship is to preserve the junta.”

Assessment: The tanker count is the wrong metric and the reason coverage of this file keeps overshooting. A blockade that is neither lifted nor total is a throttle, and the throttle is held by whoever controls the last two hundred kilometres of road into Bamako. Four cycles in twelve months is the finding. THE FILES could not establish Bamako’s supply state on the anniversary itself — Studio Tamani’s 9 September roundup opens on closed literacy centres and turns to Mopti transporters, and that item is the thread to pull. Note also what the escort bargain costs: HRW’s July finding has drawn neither denial nor investigation, and silence is a choice Bamako is making.