A joint military offensive launched on 25 April 2026 by the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a secular separatist group seeking independence for northern Mali, and JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate active across the Sahel, has fundamentally shifted the balance of Mali's long-running northern conflict. The partnership — described by Bamako as a "terrorist alliance" — has enabled coordinated simultaneous attacks, drone strikes, and convoy ambushes across a wide arc of territory stretching from Kidal to Sévaré, posing the gravest challenge in years to both the Malian army and Russia's Africa Corps, the Kremlin-backed force that replaced the Wagner Group. Though the two groups hold incompatible political goals — the FLA wants an independent Azawad while JNIM seeks to impose Islamist governance — their shared opposition to Bamako and its Russian backers has so far held the arrangement together, with analysts warning the alliance could have serious security consequences for the wider Sahel region.