In the central regions of Mali, blockades have become a recurring tactic in the region’s turbulent history. From the ancient wars of the Ségou State to the Caliphate of Hamdallahi in the 19th century, entire villages have endured encirclement, severed mobility, and halted supplies until surrender became inevitable. Today, however, the expansion of the Katiba Macina—an affiliate of the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM)—has transformed this age-old strategy into a systematic, modern tool of governance. No longer merely a punitive measure, the blockade now serves as a calculated means to enforce obedience without formal administrative control.
How the JNIM blockade reshapes daily life
The study Living 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 evolving reality across key locations in Mopti and Bandiagara, including Marébougou, Saye, Kori-Maoundé, and the Parou-Songobia bridge on National Road 15. These cases reveal that blockades extend far beyond military closures, disrupting mobility, agriculture, trade, education, gender relations, and even local authority structures. The objective is unmistakable: to render life unbearable for those who refuse submission.
In these besieged communities, fighters often attempt to impose what locals refer to as a benkan—a term in the Bamanan language typically associated with pacts or compromises. In practice, however, this arrangement is less an agreement than a set of unilateral demands: forced payments of zakat (Islamic alms) on harvests and livestock, school closures, mandatory veiling for women, bans on music, and restrictions on social ceremonies. The local vocabulary masks a deeply unequal relationship, rooted in coercion and violence.
Marébougou: A brief stand against the blockade
Across Mali’s central belt, the pattern is consistent: suffocate until compliance—or at least resignation—is achieved. Yet the methods vary depending on local power dynamics. Where armed resistance is weak or dismantled, blockades can force surrender. But where self-defense groups persist, isolation intensifies, hardening into prolonged sieges that civilians bear the brunt of.
In Marébougou, within the Djenné district, resistance crumbled in 2021 when residents rejected demands from the Katiba Macina, including school closures, mandatory veiling, and agricultural levies. Their defiance stemmed partly from regular security patrols and the presence of a donso camp—traditional hunter-warriors—who had been framed as a counterterrorism force. During 2019–2021, self-defense groups in central Mali were widely celebrated for resisting jihadist advances, with some leaders even collaborating closely with state forces. Yet this armed resistance proved short-lived. After the hunters’ defeat in October 2021, a total blockade was imposed for six months, cutting off markets, roads, and farmlands while halting food and medical supplies.
Targeted assassinations and the collapse of resistance
By the blockade’s end, Marébougou capitulated—not out of conviction, but as a desperate survival tactic. Villagers faced mass starvation (“even salt ran out,” one resident recalled, despite its usual abundance), immobility, and frozen local economies. In exchange for relief, they accepted sweeping social and religious changes. The defeat’s ripple effects extended across the flooded delta, into Djenné and Macina districts, where Katiba Macina fighters targeted influential hunters—some of whom had organized Marébougou’s defense—accusing them of colluding with security forces and seizing pastoral resources like livestock and water access.
In Saye, blockades tightened between 2023 and 2025, grinding the village’s economy and social fabric to a halt. Unlike Marébougou, Saye’s resistance was fierce and sustained, driven by a refusal to submit to external religious authority. Residents argued they were already “good Muslims” and had nothing left to lose after years of raids, arson, and market closures. Organized around traditional leaders, youth groups, and donsow fighters, the village’s defiance relied on community cohesion and historical pride.
Humanitarian overload as a weapon of surrender
The blockade in Saye trapped men inside the village, where venturing beyond its limits meant abduction or death. Women, perceived as less threatening, could forage for food, firewood, and materials to weave mats and fans—but even this limited mobility came at a cost. The siege’s psychological toll reshaped social roles, exposing how blockades weaponize vulnerability.
Saye’s refusal to yield drew displaced people from neighboring villages, swelling its population and straining already scarce resources. Food and medicine shortages intensified, while local services—already crippled by blockades and isolation from urban hubs like Djenné and San—buckled under the strain. The siege wasn’t just confinement; it was a calculated humanitarian overload designed to break resistance.
Kori-Maoundé: A bastion of unyielding defiance
In Bandiagara’s Kori-Maoundé, the story diverged again. Since 2018, the village has hosted fighters from Dan Na Ambassagou, a self-defense movement that refuses all negotiation with jihadist groups. Local authorities—village chiefs, imams, and mayors—uphold this hardline stance, leaving no room for dialogue with the Katiba Macina. The blockade here is purely punitive, escalating through targeted attacks, assassinations, and travel restrictions. By 2024, access to fields was nearly impossible, and the village’s role as a refuge for displaced people from surrounding areas only deepened its isolation.
Kori-Maoundé’s defiance is rooted in collective memory. The village’s history of resisting French colonial forces—culminating in the 1892 Battle of Kori-Kori—fuels its refusal to negotiate. For Dan Na Ambassagou’s fighters and residents alike, the idea of submission is unthinkable, even as the blockade tightens. Civilians pay the price by fleeing to Bandiagara, Sévaré, or Bamako, or enduring increasingly precarious conditions within the village.
Schools, farms, and livestock: The pillars of survival
Across these villages, schools are more than classrooms; they symbolize state presence, social cohesion, and a future for children. When Katiba Macina fighters arrived, teachers fled, classes shut down, and students dispersed. School closures aren’t collateral damage—they’re part of a broader retreat of administration, replaced by armed or religious rule. When an education system collapses, so does the collective hope it represents.
Agriculture, the backbone of rural economies, suffers first. Fields become inaccessible, farmers are attacked, and harvests are burned. In Marébougou, only plots near the village remain cultivable. Livestock and cattle markets—vital for families in Ségou and Mopti—are raided or shuttered, while weekly fairs disappear. Women, who often manage market gardens, food processing, and small trade, see their autonomy shrink. The blockade doesn’t just destroy livelihoods; it erodes the networks that sustain communities.
Community solidarity in the face of siege
Yet survival under blockade isn’t solely defined by suffering. Interviews in Marébougou, Saye, and Kori-Maoundé reveal remarkable acts of mutual aid: shared food, water pooling, support for the sick, task distribution, and protection for vulnerable households. In Saye and Marébougou, many describe strengthened community bonds as a bulwark against collapse.
These solidarities don’t eliminate hunger or fear, but they delay—if only temporarily—the total unraveling of social fabric. They prove that residents aren’t passive victims; they actively shape their survival through locally forged protections in the absence of state support.
Marébougou, Saye, and Kori-Maoundé expose the blockade as far more than a military tactic. It’s a territorial control technology, reshaping daily life by dominating roads, markets, schools, and social norms. Though fighters don’t occupy every village, their influence seeps into the rhythms of existence. From forced surrender to prolonged resistance, from pragmatic arrangements to partial flight, the question remains the same: How do you live when the threads connecting a territory to the world—roads, fields, schools, markets—can vanish overnight? In Ségou and Mopti, the blockade doesn’t just create shortages; it enforces an order of fear.
