Trump administration weighing military options in Mali, officials say

The Trump administration is weighing military action in the West African country of Mali to target an al-Qaeda-affiliated group known as JNIM, said current and former U.S. officials familiar with the deliberations.

If approved, it would add an eighth nation to the list of countries where President Donald Trump has ordered strikes since the start of his second term - a chapter of his presidency that he initially said would be dedicated to ending global strife and redirecting U.S. resources to Americans.

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There is disagreement, however, among senior U.S. officials over whether to proceed with attacking the militant group. A vocal advocate for using force is the National Security Council's senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka, said the current and former officials, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss military planning.

The militant group, whose full name is Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, has established a stronghold in Mali and increasingly launched attacks in coastal West African nations, establishing itself as the most well-armed militant group in the region and among the most powerful in the world.

A spokesman for Mali's government did not respond to requests for comment.

Gorka did not respond to requests for comment.

The Pentagon declined to comment.

When the White House was asked for comment, an administration official would not disclose whether the president intended to move forward with military strikes but said the United States has been urging governments in North and West Africa "to purchase U.S. equipment and services to support their war efforts against the terrorists."

The official said that terrorism in the Sahel, the vast semiarid region south of the Sahara, is a "multinational problem."

"We urge regional partners and NATO allies to support the Alliance of Sahel States in their war against JNIM and ISIS," the official added, referring also to the Islamic State, which rose to prominence in the Middle East before establishing affiliates throughout Africa.

The Alliance of Sahel States consists of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger - all West African nations where military leaders have in recent years ousted democratically elected governments in coups, largely cut ties with the West and turned to Russia for security help.

But the administration official pinned the blame not on those governments but on their Russian partners, saying that Moscow "has proven to be an ineffective security partner for Mali."

"We hope that other African nations take note of Russia's terrible performance in combating terrorism," the official said.

The Trump administration's contemplation of military options in the country has not been previously reported.

Mali, a landlocked nation of nearly 25 million, has in recent years been plagued by violence by Islamist militant groups - and by Mali's own junta government and the Russian mercenaries whom it hired to get the situation under control.

The militant groups, particularly JNIM, have grown increasingly powerful, turning Mali and its neighbors in the Sahel into the world's center for terrorism.

Last year, militants with the al-Qaeda affiliate mounted a fuel blockade that paralyzed much of the country. This spring, they launched coordinated, nationwide attacks that included militants roaming the streets of Bamako, the capital; seizing a strategic city in the north from Mali's military and the Russians; and killing the country's defense minister in a suicide attack.

Meanwhile, IS Sahel - an Islamic State affiliate and a JNIM rival - has consolidated power near Mali's border with Niger, where last year its militants kidnapped American missionary Kevin Rideout, who is believed to be held now in Mali.

To combat the violence, Mali's junta government hired Russian mercenaries, first with the Wagner Group and now with Africa Corps, which is more closely linked with Russia's defense ministry. The Russians have been accused of a string of atrocities, according to rights groups and The Washington Post's previous reporting.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Héni Nsaibia, West Africa senior analyst for the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, said that Mali's military and its Russian backers were responsible for killing hundreds more civilians than JNIM and IS Sahel combined. Last year, the Malian military and its Russian partners were responsible for 925 civilian deaths, according to ACLED, compared with 232 by Islamist militants.

"It is extremely problematic that a government like the U.S. or any Western partner would provide support to these regimes whose legitimacy remains contested, and which are incredibly fragile and repressive," he said, referring to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Still, last year, as part of a push by the Trump administration to reengage with Mali, the United States ramped up intelligence sharing with Mali's government, current and former American officials said at the time. The intelligence was used in strikes by Mali's military, which had been largely shunned by the Biden administration for its refusal to set a timeline for a return to democratic elections and its work with the Russians.

But such cooperation has so far remained limited, nowhere near the scale of the U.S.-Nigeria security partnership that ramped up last year and has included U.S. airstrikes and a ground mission that killed one of the Islamic State's top leaders in Africa.

Any direct U.S. military involvement in Mali runs the risk of hostilities with Russian forces in the region. It also could require deconfliction efforts between Washington and Moscow akin to ones that existed in Syria during that country's civil war.

When asked if Secretary of State Marco Rubio supports military action in Mali, the State Department sidestepped the question, saying the U.S. "unequivocally condemns the terrorist activity in Mali."

The department said the Trump administration is "committed to promoting regional ownership and cooperation against terrorist threats, and monitoring indicators and warnings of threats to our homeland."

U.S. military action against JNIM would add Mali to the list of countries where Trump has ordered strikes: Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela. The administration also has waged a controversial military campaign against alleged drug runners in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific that has resulted in scores of deaths.

Wassim Nasr, a Sahel specialist and senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, said that the U.S. could be most useful by getting involved instead in "conflict resolution," forcing Mali's junta government to talk with JNIM, which has focused not on global aims but on applying Islamic laws in local governance, and other political opponents whom the junta has largely silenced.

"Opting for the military solution one more time won't get things resolved," Nasr said. "The French tried that for 10 years. The Russians have been trying for five years. The situation has only gotten worse and worse."

France launched its military intervention in the Sahel in 2013 at the request of Mali's then-government. French forces quashed the insurgency in Mali and restored a measure of order. That initial mission was followed by a second, Operation Barkhane, that eliminated prominent militant leaders but ultimately failed to stop the spread of various armed groups.

Anger at France - fueled by its neocolonial missteps and by Russian disinformation - grew over the years, helping propel coups in Mali in 2020 and 2021 and in neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger. President Emmanuel Macron later withdrew French forces.

Nasr added that if U.S. strikes weaken JNIM, they conversely could help IS Sahel, whose growth has been limited by the rival al-Qaeda-affiliated group.

Peter Pham, a former Trump administration official, was less pessimistic about the use of military force but said a precondition should be reestablishing trust with the governments of Mali and Niger ahead of security cooperation efforts.

"While we may have very limited direct economic or other interests in these countries, we do not want jihadists like ISIS and al-Qaeda gaining a foothold there," Pham said.

Gorka has long made aggressive counterterrorism policies a cornerstone of his ideology. But his impact on policy since the start of Trump's second term has been modest, said a U.S. official - a source of relief for his critics, who object to his hard-line approach, and a disappointment to his supporters.

In the spring, Gorka engaged in conversations about becoming Trump's next director of the National Counterterrorism Center following the resignation of Joe Kent, who left the administration embittered by the president's decision to start the war in Iran. But those discussions have not materialized into a nomination for Gorka.

Current and former U.S. officials said that Gorka had been deeply involved with talks about how to bring home Rideout, the captured missionary. One key aim of the administration last year was to get "overflight" rights in Mali, a former official said, so that U.S. officials could fly airplanes and other surveillance technology over Malian skies to better track his movements.

That desire for overflight rights was behind the administration's decision to lift sanctions on key junta members, including Defense Minister Sadio Camara, who was a key proponent of Russian intervention in Mali and was killed in the JNIM attack on April 25.

Gorka, current and former officials say, also was invested in an effort to kill Abu Ubaydah Yusuf al-Anabi, a leader in an Algeria-based al-Qaeda affiliate that has seen its influence wane in recent years. Although American officials were hopeful last summer that U.S. intelligence had been used in a Malian strike to take out al-Anabi, as The Post previously reported, his death was never confirmed.

Corinne Dufka, an independent expert on the Sahel, said that there is a risk that any U.S. strikes could lead JNIM to target the U.S. or Americans in the region - which it has not done so far - or to push the group closer to the main al-Qaeda organization, from which it has grown more autonomous in recent years.

"If the U.S. helps Malian authorities kill JNIM authorities, it could backfire," she said. "And they could be squandering an opportunity to de-radicalize and demobilize one of the world's most sophisticated jihadist organizations."

Chason reported from Dakar, Senegal.Alex Horton and Aaron Schaffer contributed to this report.

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