Chatham House, Crisis Group Issue Policy Assessments: Mali Crisis Proves Security Cannot Be Delivered by Military Means Alone

As of May 4, 2026, leading policy research institutions — including Chatham House (UK) and the International Crisis Group (ICG) — released detailed assessments concluding that the April 25–30 JNIM-FLA nationwide offensive and its aftermath definitively demonstrated that the AES juntas' military-only approach to Sahel security has failed. Chatham House published a briefing titled 'Mali Attacks Show Security Cannot Be Delivered by Military Means Alone,' arguing that the collapse of FAMa-Africa Corps defenses across multiple simultaneous fronts — Kidal, Ménaka, Tessit, Bamako/Kati — within 72 hours confirmed that external military partnerships (Africa Corps) without genuine political engagement cannot secure the state. Crisis Group had released 'Report 306: Mali — Enabling Dialogue with the Jihadist Coalition JNIM,' exploring whether backchannel engagement with JNIM's coalition might be possible, and noting that JNIM's April 30 coalition manifesto — for all its propaganda dimensions — represented an opening for political framing that Western and AES actors had not prepared a strategic response to. A Just Security analysis noted that the Mali crisis and the Chatham House assessment marked a turning point: for the first time, Western policy analysts were openly discussing the possibility that engagement, rather than exclusion, of JNIM-adjacent political actors might be necessary to prevent complete state collapse in Bamako. The Malian junta did not respond to either assessment. Algeria — which mediated the Africa Corps withdrawal from Kidal — remained the only regional actor maintaining active diplomatic contacts with all parties, including JNIM intermediaries through Tuareg networks.