As the West African country of Mali reels from becoming the first country on the continent to be ruled by an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist organization, a State Department spokesperson warned American citizens against leaving or traveling there.
The U.S. Embassy in Mali also posted on their website: “U.S. citizens should depart using commercial aviation as overland routes to neighboring countries may not be safe to travel due to terrorist attacks along national highways.”
It also warned Americans against traveling outside the capital. “The U.S. Embassy in Bamako is rarely able to provide emergency services or support to U.S. citizens outside the capital,” noting that the information was still relevant Monday.
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A general view of Modibo Keita International Airport in Bamako, Mali, as the State Department warns Americans to avoid the country and urges those already there to leave amid rising terror threats, blocked routes and rising insecurity, officials say. (AFP via Getty Images)
Islamist JNIM fighters have surrounded the capital Bamako, preventing fuel tankers from reaching the city and setting fire to some vehicles. The Malian army has tried to break the blockade by mounting armed convoys in front of the trucks, but JNIM has attacked several.
“The US still has security interests in West Africa,” he said. “An external operations threat to the U.S. homeland is intolerable, increasingly likely, and far more difficult to detect given the lack of remaining U.S. troops and intelligence assets in the region.”
Terrorists from the Al Qaeda affiliated group in Timbuktu, Mali, on April 24, 2012. (AP)
He continued: “This threat also impacts the safety and security of U.S. diplomats and their families in Bamako, Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Niamey (Niger) and other West African countries.”
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Referring to the risk of the Al Qaeda-linked group taking over Mali’s capital, Ekman said: “Both Bamako and Ouagadougou are at risk.”
He continued, “JNIM appears to be gaining strength and appears to have both expanded objectives and greater resolve.”
Geese walk on the road as trucks cross the border between Ivory Coast and Mali in the village of Nigoun, near Tengrela, on October 31, 2025. In northern Ivory Coast, truck drivers prepare to return to neighboring Mali, aboard their tankers full of fuel and fear. One acronym strikes fear in the hearts of all truck drivers: JNIM, the name of the Al Qaeda-linked jihadist group that two months ago decreed that tankers from a neighboring country were no longer allowed to enter Mali. (Issouf Sanogo/AFP via Getty Images)
“During and after the withdrawal of US troops from Niger in 2024, the US (under the Biden administration) also chose to refrain from keeping those troops in the region,” the former major general added. “As a result, the US has abdicated its ability to monitor and respond to the activities and growth of terrorist organizations in the Sahel, to come to the aid of US embassies under threat, and to resolve crises such as the October kidnapping of an American missionary.”
The missionary, a pilot, was kidnapped in Niger on October 21 and has not been heard from since.
JNIM has been designated by the Department of State as both a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT).
“The Malian army is fighting an irregular and asymmetric enemy,” Wahba said, adding: “They are ultimately jihadists, and the government is struggling to outsmart them. If this continues, Bamako could fall within days or weeks.”
Mali’s battle with terrorist group al-Qaeda is on the government’s threat radar. Last month, Deputy Foreign Minister Christopher Landau flew to Bamako and posted on X that he met with the junta’s foreign minister, Abdoulaye Diop, “to discuss our shared security interests in the region.”
Weiss continued, “The regime in Bamako is absolutely overstretched, and its allies in Russia’s Wagner/Africa Corps are proving ineffective.”
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“JNIM is also consolidating its position in other parts of Mali, where they are allowed to enforce Sharia law to end a blockade, siege or violence in general. It is possible that this is also what they are looking for at Bamako. It is much less likely that JNIM will accept anything other than a Mali governed by its strict interpretation of Sharia law,” he said.
Ekman said things could have turned out differently: “Whatever access and relationships other U.S. government agencies can develop in countries like Mali will likely fall short of what the U.S. could have achieved in redistributing its military capabilities when it left Niger.”
