Amid fears of a jihadist advance on Bamako, Washington must decide whether backing a failing junta would make the situation worse

Since September, the al-Qaida affiliate Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam wa-l-Muslimin (the Group for Supporting Islam and Muslims, JNIM) has been waging intensive economic warfare against the Malian authorities.

JNIM’s blockade on fuel supplies has upended daily life in the capital Bamako. Citizens queue in interminable lines for gasoline, Western powers have urged their nationals to evacuate, and major news outlets are speculating that Bamako — or Mali as a whole — may soon be ruled by jihadists.

There are certainly plausible scenarios that could bring a jihadist takeover, or a forceful attempt at one. JNIM could be waiting for a moment of maximum weakness to march into the capital, perhaps hoping that a desperate population would accept or even welcome jihadist rule as an alternate to the failing military junta in power since 2020. JNIM could be playing an even longer game, calculating that asphyxiating the capital will provoke a military coup, a fragmentation of the military into competing factions, a popular revolution, or a militia-fication of Bamako (akin to Tripoli).

Perhaps JNIM sees its path to power not as a matter of weeks but of months or years.

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