Washington’s Mali gamble – POLITICO

On Aug 17, 2026

Traffic moves along a main road in Bamako, Mali on July 4, 2026. | AFP via Getty Images

For more than a year, Washington and other Western capitals have fixed their attention on a deadly campaign being waged across Mali by an al-Qaeda affiliated group known as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, one of the Islamist militant groups fighting against the junta government.

As it expands its terrorist operations across the entire region, JNIM has emerged as one of the Sahel’s most powerful militant actors, stepping up its attacks on towns and military bases, including a joint offensive that seized the northern city of Kidal and led to the killing of Mali’s defense minister. In September, JNIM imposed a severe fuel blockade that contributed to an energy crisis in the landlocked West African nation.

The escalating violence has the Trump administration reportedly weighing military action but Washington’s potential intervention would force it to contend with a different problem — Russia’s foothold in Mali. The military junta there turned to Russia for security support after a breakdown in relations with France and other Western allies in 2022.

Joshua Meservey, an Africa security expert from the Hudson Institute, said one of the biggest hurdles for any prospective American reengagement in Mali would be protecting U.S. intelligence from Russian access. If Washington launched airstrikes, American forces would likely have to coordinate with Russian forces to avoid a direct clash, he said.

“The question is how do you carry out operations with intelligence sharing? Can you trust that if you share intelligence with the Malians, that they’re not just going to turn around and give it to the Russians?” Meservey said.

The renewed U.S. interest in Mali — which has rich deposits of gold, lithium and uranium — comes after relations deteriorated during the Biden administration. Mali experienced military coups in 2020 and 2021, plunging the country into political crisis and prompting Western countries to scale back their involvement.

The Biden administration responded to the coups by cutting off military aid and cooperation, and also lobbed sanctions on Malian officials for their ties to Russian forces in 2023.

But America’s frayed relations with Mali also weakened its ability to counter jihadist groups across the Sahel. In 2024, Washington lost its intelligence base in neighboring Niger; it was barred from conducting intelligence-gathering flights in Mali during Biden’s term.

The second Trump administration has taken a different approach, ramping up intelligence sharing and lifting sanctions on officials as it seeks to rekindle ties with Mali. In July, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Frank Garcia met with the Malian prime minister Abdoulaye Maiga and other key ministers during a visit to Bamako. Peter Pham, a former U.S. special envoy for the Sahel under the first Trump administration, said that Washington would still need to rebuild its weakened diplomacy with Mali before realistically considering any military reengagement.

“You can’t pivot on a dime,” Pham said. “Even if the U.S. decided to strike, we’re far away from actually doing anything because it first needs the access and relationships required to identify targets.”

“The U.S. continues to monitor the situation closely,” said a senior administration official, granted anonymity to discuss recent developments between Mali and the U.S. “We are continuing to reach out to the government of Mali to assess their needs and offer our assistance where appropriate.”

A separate State Department official said in a statement that “in the Sahel, the United States is committed to promoting regional ownership and cooperation against terrorist threats, and monitoring indicators and warnings of threats to our homeland.”

The Malian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Europe has a significant stake in what happens next — rising instability in the region could increase migration pressures since Mali is connected to a series of migration routes that run through the Sahel into Europe.

The European Union Agency For Asylum found that in the 12 months through May 2026, Malian asylum applications in the EU and other non-EU European nations rose 34%, from about 16,000 to 22,000. The organization also found that Spain saw a 58% increase in Malian applications, reaching about18,000 applications.

“The mindset in Europe has been more disjointed since it pulled out, and more consumed by other broader regions,” said Tobias Rüttershoff, a West African security expert at the German foundation Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. “I have this feeling that in policy circles in Germany and in Europe, the Sahel is a bit forgotten with attention shifts, certainly to Ukraine, attention shifts to Iran and the Red Sea.” But he added that if the situation isn’t contained in Mali, there are also concerns of terrorism spreading to Europe.

If the U.S. were to engage in Mali, European countries “would have an interest in that certainly” as an added layer of security protection, he said.

“Countering Russian influence in the region, that’s always a plus,” Rüttershoff said. “I don’t see this as a bad thing necessarily, but you never know, this is the problem with the slippery slope of engagement. Strikes are usually not sufficient, but you need other aspects. You need to support governance and strengthen institutions.”

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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese shakes hands with rugby players ahead of the a match against Fiji on July 6, 2025 in Newcastle, Australia. | Matt King/Getty Images

Australia’s oldest and deepest relationship recently got a reset when U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham made his introductory call to his counterpart, Anthony Albanese.

The agenda seemed obvious: Intelligence sharing. Tariffs. Hot war and simmering conflict.

In the past, if that conversation turned to sport, cricket was the obvious choice, But this time, write POLITICO’s Ryan Heath and Tim Ross, the two world leaders found a different source of common ground in their July 23 leader-to-leader call: an obsession with rugby. The two men talked animatedly about the sport, swapping support for each other’s national teams.

But their shared claim to rugby, historically a working-class sport, has political implications too. Both leaders are trying to hold onto working-class voters in the face of growing far-right movements.

“The pair talk about rugby league in the way Labor leaders were once able to talk about their own parties: mass movements marked by their sense of tightly-knit community,” Heath and Ross write:

“It wasn’t just small talk. The AUKUS military alliance requires London and Canberra to operate at a level of trust that treaties and memorandums can’t manufacture. Delivering nuclear-powered submarines to Australia to ward off Chinese aggression will take decades of shared industrial secrets, shipyard schedules and nuclear technology.

Personal chemistry between leaders is not a substitute for institutional machinery, but it is the lubricant.

Burnham and Albanese have a shared, unfakeable claim to a working-class sport at exactly the moment both left-wing leaders are trying to hold onto working-class voters in the face of a right-wing populist challenge. …

Burnham’s urgent political mission is to stem the flow of working-class voters who have switched from Labour to Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform UK, in many post-industrial Northern towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and nearby Cumbria and Cheshire, where rugby league is played.

Reconnecting with these communities is critical for Burnham’s hopes of saving Labour from defeat at the next U.K. general election, which is not due until 2029 but could potentially come sooner.

And the culture of rugby league is one that aligns closely with Labour’s left-wing history and its mission in these very same parts of the country: The sport only exists because of a fight about money and class.”

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