Mali’s fuel war has had no verified front line since the third of September
The blockade on Bamako’s fuel roads is the most consequential campaign in the Sahel and the least legible. The last solid public datapoint is two months old.
JNIM announced the fuel blockade by video in September 2025. The chronology that followed is partially wire-confirmed and partially aggregated, and the difference matters. AFP, carried by Al Arabiya and others, confirmed that a convoy of several dozen tankers was destroyed on the Diboli–Kayes road on 29–30 January 2026; Africanews, citing AFP and local sources, reported on 2 February that at least fifteen drivers were killed. Malian authorities announced nationwide fuel rationing on 22 January 2026, a datapoint that still rests on secondary compilation. RFI reported on 3 September 2026 that fuel and power had returned to Bamako while supply remained erratic across the rest of the country. A reimposition of the blockade on 28 April 2026 appears in the specialist tracker theopscon and in secondary compilation, and has not been confirmed to The Files by a wire.
Nothing reliable has surfaced since the RFI report. Whether the blockade is currently on, off or partial as of 7 November 2026 is not publicly established, and the figures most often repeated are weaker than their circulation suggests: the widely cited claim that 95 percent of Mali’s fuel arrives by road comes from theopscon with no stated methodology, and a cumulative count of more than 300 tankers torched comes from a secondary outlet with no cut-off date. The firmest economic detail retrieved is Jeune Afrique’s report that 82 tankers reached Bamako under Nigerien army escort around December 2025 — a small number that carries the AES argument whole: one junta’s soldiers guarding another junta’s diesel, because no one else will.
Assessment: An insurgency that taxes roads rather than holds capitals produces a war that is hard to score, and the scoring gap is itself an asset for Bamako. Rationing announcements, pump queues and school closures are the only legitimacy metrics the public can see, which is precisely why they stop being reported when they worsen. Treat any current price or supply claim with suspicion: crowdsourced consumer sites now fill the vacuum left by absent wire coverage, and they are not evidence. The connection to the Mopti claim is direct — Africa Corps is being bought to secure corridors, not territory, and corridor security is measured in tanker convoys, not communiqués.