Algiers and Bamako have restored everything except the one file that broke them
Ambassadors are back, airspace is open and Mali’s prime minister has been received by Tebboune. Northern Mali — the subject of the accord Algeria wrote — has not been on the table.
The rupture dates to 6 April 2025, when Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger withdrew their ambassadors from Algiers after Algeria said it had shot down a drone near the Malian border on 31 March. The repair has been methodical. On 15 February 2026, Nigerien president Abdourahamane Tiani visited Algiers at Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s invitation and the two announced normalisation, a sequence documented by the International Crisis Group in Report No. 256, « Algérie-Mali : consolider la détente ». On 10 July Algiers ordered its envoy Kamal Retieb back to Bamako and Mali announced the return of its own ambassador the same day, with airspace reopened after fifteen months; Al Jazeera reported the restoration of ties on 11 July. On 24 August, Malian prime minister Major-General Abdoulaye Maïga was received in Algiers by Tebboune, per the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute.
What has not been reported is any Algerian engagement with the northern file. Algeria brokered the 2015 Algiers Accord covering northern Mali; Bamako abandoned the framework in January 2024. Kidal is now reported under the control of the Azawad Liberation Front, and the accord Algiers authored remains the only existing text written for the territory Bamako has lost — a reading this desk offers as its own, not as a sourced claim by any party. The counter-framings are instructive and both partisan. Sahel Tribune argues the thaw amounts to supervised coexistence rather than reconciliation, « voisinage négocié ». Algérie Patriotique, an overtly Algiers-aligned outlet, cast the Maïga visit on 23 August as « le temps du réalisme après les désillusions marocaines ». The Timbuktu Institute notes Bamako has kept solid relations with Rabat in parallel.
Assessment: Normalisation this careful is usually designed to be reversible. Both capitals got something cheap: Algiers recovered standing in a neighbourhood it had been shut out of, Bamako recovered an air corridor and a border it cannot police. Neither has conceded anything on the question that actually separates them, which is who speaks for the north. Watch for the tell: if Algerian officials begin naming the 2015 accord again, or if FLA interlocutors appear in Algiers, the thaw has become mediation and Bamako has quietly accepted that it needs a broker. If the file stays bilateral housekeeping through the winter, the junta is still betting on Moscow.