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The Central Sahel
The Mali–Burkina Faso–Niger borderlands, epicenter of the world's deadliest jihadist insurgencies
The central Sahel, the semi-arid belt where Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger meet, is now the region with the most deaths from terrorism in the world, about half of the global toll by the count of the Global Terrorism Index. Two jihadist movements dominate: Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), al-Qaeda's Sahel affiliate, and Islamic State Sahel Province. Both fight the military governments that seized power in all three countries between 2020 and 2023 and now form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). Since September 2025 JNIM has besieged Mali's capital economically, attacking fuel convoys bound for Bamako, and in April 2026 it and Tuareg separatists launched coordinated attacks across Mali.
The heart of the conflict is the Liptako-Gourma tri-border area, about 370,000 square kilometers of flat savanna, seasonal rivers and the great bend of the Niger River, with towns such as Mopti, Gao, Ménaka, Djibo, Dori and Tillabéri. JNIM operates across central and southern Mali and much of rural Burkina Faso, where it has blockaded towns such as Djibo for years. Islamic State Sahel is strongest around Ménaka and in Niger's Tillabéri region, and in 2026 it carried out an unprecedented attack on Niamey's international airport. In northern Mali the Tuareg-led Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) took Kidal in April 2026 as Malian forces and Russia's Africa Corps withdrew. The capitals Bamako, Ouagadougou and Niamey remain under government control.
The insurgency spread south from northern Mali after a 2012 Tuareg rebellion and jihadist takeover that French troops pushed back in 2013. Violence moved into Burkina Faso and Niger, and anger over insecurity fed coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021, Burkina Faso in 2022 and Niger in 2023. The juntas of Assimi Goïta, Ibrahim Traoré and Abdourahamane Tiani expelled French forces, saw the UN mission in Mali leave in 2023, turned to Russia for security support, and left ECOWAS in January 2025. JNIM's fuel blockade emptied pumps in Bamako in late 2025 and resumed in 2026, and Mali's defense minister Sadio Camara was killed in the April attacks. UNHCR counted more than 400,000 internally displaced in Mali in mid-2026, and Burkina Faso reported over 2 million at its last official count in 2023.