Mali: navigating jnim blockades amid hunger, fear, and forced agreements

Afrique

Mali: navigating jnim blockades amid hunger, fear, and forced agreements

A critical assessment reveals that blockades have emerged as a primary tactic for the Jnim in Mali’s ongoing conflict. This armed group strategically employs these closures, cutting off essential routes, denying access to agricultural lands, disrupting local markets, and imposing stringent social and religious doctrines. Their objective appears less about outright territorial conquest and more about systematically suffocating communities. Across locations such as Marébougou, Saye, and Kori-Maoundé, residents are striving to endure, navigating a delicate balance of determined resistance, pragmatic adaptation, and unavoidable, often coerced, arrangements to survive.