Blockades are not a new phenomenon in Mali’s central regions. Historical conflicts, such as those waged by the Ségou State or the Hamdallahi Caliphate in the 19th century, left villages encircled, cut off from movement and supplies until they surrendered. Today, however, the Katiba Macina—an arm of the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), which co-organized a major attack in Mali on April 25—has transformed this tactic into a systematic tool of governance through coercion. No longer confined to military punishment, blockades now serve as a means to enforce compliance without formal administration.
The study Surviving under Blockade: Cases from Areas under JNIM Influence in Mali, published in December 2025 by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the REcAP network, examines this reality through key cases in Mopti and Bandiagara, including Marébougou, Saye, Kori-Maoundé, and the Parou-Songobia bridge on National Route 15. These examples reveal that blockades extend beyond mere military closures: they disrupt mobility, agriculture, trade, education, gender dynamics, and even local forms of authority. Their purpose is unmistakable: to make life unbearable for those who refuse to submit.
In these areas, fighters often impose what locals call a benkan—a term in the Bamanan language generally meaning a pact or compromise. In practice, however, this is less an agreement than a set of unilateral demands: forced payment of zakat (the mandatory annual alms under Islamic solidarity rules) on crops and livestock, school closures, mandatory veiling for women, bans on music, and restrictions on social ceremonies. The local vocabulary used to describe this arrangement masks an unequal relationship rooted in threat and violence.
Marébougou: A brief stand
The strategy remains consistent across regions: suffocate to force adherence or, at minimum, resignation. Yet the methods vary depending on the local balance of power. Where armed resistance is weak or dismantled, blockades can lead to forced submission. But where self-defense groups persist, isolation intensifies, hardening into a prolonged siege where civilians bear the heaviest burden.
In Marébougou, located in the Djenné district, resistance collapsed in 2021. Residents rejected orders from the Katiba Macina, including school closures, mandatory veiling, restrictions on markets, and agricultural and livestock levies. Their defiance stemmed from several factors, including regular security patrols and the presence of a donso camp—a traditional hunter’s encampment.
Between 2019 and 2021, central Mali experienced a surge of confidence in the ability of self-defense groups to confront jihadist factions. Armed engagement in these groups was framed as a form of grassroots counterterrorism, with some leaders enjoying close ties to state forces. Like the jihadists, some of these leaders enriched themselves through cattle rustling and various extortions under the guise of protection. But Marébougou’s armed resistance was short-lived. After self-defense fighters were defeated by jihadists in October 2021, the village faced a total blockade for six months.
Targeted assassinations of influential hunters
Over time, Marébougou was drawn into a deadlock. Markets were cut off, road travel became perilous, fields were nearly impossible to cultivate, and essential supplies were blocked. After months of isolation, the village accepted what many viewed as a survival pact—not out of conviction, but forced adjustment to end civilian deaths from starvation (as one witness recalled, “even salt ran out,” despite this commodity typically being abundant). This allowed limited mobility to transport food, medicine, and restart trade frozen by months of blocked access to local markets. In exchange, the village’s social and religious life was fundamentally altered.
Beyond Marébougou, the consequences of defeat spread across the flooded delta, including the Djenné and Macina districts in Mopti. Before the clashes, self-defense groups had mobilized several hundred fighters from diverse backgrounds. Their defeat eroded public trust in these groups, and the delayed response from security forces emboldened Katiba Macina fighters to pressure neighboring villages—Sofara, Macina, even Niono. In addition to harassment, the group carried out targeted assassinations of influential hunters, some of whom had led the mobilization for the Marébougou battle. These targeted leaders were accused by jihadists of collaborating with state forces and seizing resources from herders, including cattle and access to water points and grazing zones.
In Saye, the 2023 blockade intensified through 2024 and 2025, completely disrupting economic and social life. While the dynamic resembles Marébougou’s, the situation differs. Resistance to the benkan is more direct and sustained. Residents argue they should not submit to an external religious authority, especially since they consider themselves “good Muslims.” Beyond religion, villagers feel they have already lost everything and see no reason to comply with a local agreement that has stripped them bare (burned crops, stolen livestock, blocked access to weekly markets). Resistance here is organized around traditional authorities, youth organizations, and donsow fighters.
Humanitarian overload to force surrender
The enforced immobility in Saye cut off access to farmland, pastures, and trade routes. Men were largely confined to the village perimeter. Those venturing outside risked abduction or death. Women, perceived as less threatening, sometimes slipped out to gather food, firewood, and straw for weaving mats and fans. This relative freedom did not shield them from structural violence; rather, it highlighted how blockades reshape social roles and risks.
Saye’s example shows how armed groups exploit population displacement to intensify pressure on villagers and force submission. Due to its historical influence in the area—having resisted the Ségou power in 1782—Saye became a refuge for displaced people from resistant villages starting in 2023. This influx suddenly increased food and medicine needs and intensified pressure on already weakened local services, cut off from supply centers like Djenné or San. The siege does not just confine; it deliberately creates humanitarian overload to push the village toward surrender.
In other villages within the Bandiagara district, the situation varies. Since 2018, Kori-Maoundé has been marked by fighters from Dan Na Ambassagou, a self-defense movement rejecting any negotiations with jihadist groups. Local authorities (village chiefs, imams, mayors) uphold this hardline stance. As a result, direct dialogue with Katiba Macina remains unthinkable, and the blockade grows increasingly punitive.
The legacy of resistance against the French
Isolation in Kori-Maoundé has intensified through targeted attacks, assassinations, mobility restrictions, and bans on transporters stopping or picking up passengers. By 2024, field access was almost entirely prohibited. The blockade is not just about control; it sends a message by targeting a territory seen as a bastion of resistance, where some authorities and residents remain loyal to Dan Na Ambassagou’s hardline armed resistance. Like in Saye, collective memory preserves fragments of resistance against French colonialism, including a decisive battle in the Kori-Kori hills in April 1892, the final step in the colonial takeover of Bandiagara. For self-defense fighters and villagers alike, the idea of a submission pact is unthinkable despite the pressure, and the village has become a refuge for displaced people from other areas.
In this context, the plateau’s topography and the presence of the self-defense group may slow direct offensives but do not halt the village’s gradual strangulation. Civilians pay the price of non-negotiation by being forced to flee to Bandiagara, Sévaré, or Bamako—or by surviving in increasingly precarious conditions on-site.
Mediators still play a role. Intermediary figures exist with some legitimacy, and dialogue can emerge even under severe constraints. In Marébougou, neighboring mayors acted as go-betweens between the village and fighters. In Saye, however, no such initiatives developed. In Kori-Maoundé, Dan Na Ambassagou’s influence prevents local mediation, and attempts by regional reconciliation support teams remain disconnected from the village’s realities. This comparison underscores a frequently overlooked reality: blockades are not solely military. They depend on the presence and ability of political, traditional, or religious intermediaries to turn armed power into dialogue. Without mediation, violence tends to persist.
Schools, agriculture, and livestock: The pillars of village life
Across these villages, schools represent far more than learning spaces. They are pillars for families, hubs of social interaction, symbols of hope, and tangible last witnesses of state presence. In Kori-Maoundé, Marébougou, and Saye, the arrival or pressure from armed groups led to teachers fleeing, classrooms closing, and students dispersing.
School closures are not mere collateral damage. They reflect a broader shift where the withdrawal of administration paves the way for alternative regulatory systems—religious or armed. When a school vanishes, it is not just education that declines; it is the collective future that diminishes.
Yet the first impact of blockades often hits agriculture. When fields become inaccessible, farmers face attacks, or harvests are burned, the rural economy’s core suffers. In Marébougou, only fields near the village remained cultivable. Elsewhere, insecurity drastically reduced arable land, forcing households to rely on external supplies—which became impossible due to the siege.
Livestock and cattle trade, which complement agriculture, also suffer under blockades. Mass cattle abductions destroy entire families. Weekly livestock markets, vital to the rural economies of Ségou and Mopti, become rare, inaccessible, or dangerous. Women’s autonomy margins shrink, particularly those involved in market gardening, processing, or small trade. Blockades do not just destroy income; they erode the exchange networks that sustain these territories.
Strengthening community bonds in crisis
Yet living under a blockade is not solely about suffering. Research in the three villages reveals essential forms of mutual aid for survival: food sharing, water pooling, sick care, task distribution, and support for vulnerable households. In Saye and Marébougou, many spoke of strengthened community ties in the face of hardship.
These solidarities do not eliminate hunger or fear, but they delay—at least temporarily—the total collapse of social fabric. They show that residents are not passive victims of armed conflict but active participants in their survival, creating local forms of protection amid the absence of the state.
Marébougou, Saye, and Kori-Maoundé reveal that blockades in Mali have evolved into a sophisticated territorial control technology. By controlling roads, markets, schools, and social norms, armed groups radically transform daily life conditions. Though they do not systematically occupy every village, their influence increasingly shapes the rhythms of civilian existence.
From village to village, responses vary: forced surrender, prolonged resistance, refusal to negotiate, partial flight, or pragmatic arrangements. But one question remains central: how to live when everything connecting a territory to the outside world—roads, fields, schools, markets—can be severed overnight? In Ségou and Mopti, blockades do not merely cause shortages. They establish a political order founded on fear.
