The Coup Belt. Interview with Rahmane Idrissa – 30 April 2026

Gavin Jacobson: To what extent is the current offensive in Mali unprecedented?

Rahmane Idrissa: The violence itself isn’t unprecedented by the standards of the Sahel. What is spectacular is the way this particular insurgency was organised – the jihadists and rebels were able to strike multiple points simultaneously – particularly in Kidal, the symbolic capital of the region claimed by the Tuareg rebels, and Kati, the headquarters of the Malian army. These two places are 1500 kilometres apart.

In Kidal, they managed to expel both the Malian army and their Russian auxiliaries. At Kati, they killed the defence minister – an extremely important figure, the man who brought the Russians in, who spoke Russian, and who had received military training in Russia. He drove that whole policy. The intelligence chief was also seriously wounded. So the insurgents have essentially decapitated the security apparatus of the Malian state. Assimi Goïta was in hiding until 29 April, leaving the state silent and its citizens disorientated. The junta can no longer offer a solution to this crisis, and it has in fact turned into an obstacle to a solution. People are now asking who is really in charge and who might succeed them.

How surprised are you by their level of success?

It’s not the first time they’ve attacked Kati; there was a previous attempt in 2022. But the level of success, and its consequences, are new. Mali might reconsider its alliance with Russia, were it not for the fact that it has become so dependent on it. In any case, there are a lot of accusations flying around about how the Russians betrayed Mali by negotiating their surrender in Kidal. And bases are falling: Malian soldiers are negotiating with jihadists and leaving positions across the northern parts of the country, including Labbezanga, a major outpost south of Gao near the Niger border. So the question is: will jihadists start taking cities? Until now they’ve operated in the countryside, but if they control the bases that protect urban centres in the north, what is the game plan? We don’t know yet.

Can you tell us about the junta that rules Mali? It once promised to transition back to civilian rule but has long since abandoned that agenda. What does it actually want? Does it have a coherent governing vision, or is it primarily focused on self-preservation?

Or maybe just power, which is a motivation of many politicians, not just in Africa. We have this perhaps delusional idea that people want power as a means to an end, but it can be the end in itself. The military in the Sahel see themselves as a political elite. The political history of modern Mali can really be summarised as a power struggle between civilian and military elites. The military has ruled for longer than the civilians.

How popular is the junta?

The junta has been generally supported by the population, who see the military as legitimate political leaders. When the military came to power they did so with the usual claim that they were there to end corruption, restore integrity, and pursue development under a stricter kind of rule. People buy that. But I doubt the military themselves buy it, because if you look at what they’ve done you see plenty of corruption. What’s more, it’s difficult to denounce their corruption, because they’ve done away with the institutions of oversight. They say, for instance, that no one can scrutinise the defence budget because it’s a state secret. Which of course means they can do whatever they want with that money.

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Abdourahmane (Rahmane) Idrissa is a political scientist at Leiden University’s Africa Studies Centre (Netherlands) and at Sharjah’s Africa Institute (UAE). He is the author of ‘The Politics of Islam in the Sahel‘ and a forthcoming history of the Songhay Empire.

The interview was conducted by Gavin Jacobson, a founding editor of Equator.

The Coup Belt. Interview with Rahmane Idrissa – 30 April 2026

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