Can Algiers regain influence in the Sahel?

A large-scale rebel offensive in northern Mali has reopened one of Algeria’s defining geopolitical questions: can Algiers reassert itself as an important mediator in the Sahel, or has that window closed for good? The question features in a May 26th report by Muslim Brotherhood-friendly Middle East Eye.

The crisis broke open on April 25th, when Tuareg separatists from the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) joined forces with the al-Qaeda-affiliated coalition Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) in a coordinated strike against government positions across the north. The results were devastating: Key towns fell, military bases were overrun, Bamako found itself blockaded, and Mali’s Defence Minister, Sadio Camara, was killed. It was the most dramatic blow to the junta since it seized power in a 2020 coup.

For Algeria, watching the chaos unfold from across a 1,300-kilometre shared border, the offensive is anything but a distant crisis. Algiers has long treated Mali’s stability as a core national security interest. A collapsed Malian state with expanding militant control in the north could flood Algeria’s southern desert regions with arms, fighters, and people on the move.

Algeria’s credentials in this arena are real. It brokered the 2015 Peace and Reconciliation Agreement, a deal that offered northern rebels local autonomy and integration into state institutions in exchange for disarmament. For years, Algiers was the room in which Sahelian disputes were resolved.

Relations between Algiers and Bamako have deteriorated sharply since the coup. The junta formally scrapped the 2015 agreement in January 2024, calling it an affront to Malian sovereignty. Tensions escalated further in April 2025, when Algerian forces shot down a Malian military drone near the border. But the deeper wound is one of trust.

Malian officials, some speaking anonymously, accuse Algeria of quietly maintaining ties with Tuareg rebel leaders and opposition figures, playing both sides while presenting itself as a neutral party. Algerian analysts counter that these relationships are a practical necessity for managing shared ethnic communities and keeping the frontier stable. Bamako doesn’t buy it.

Meanwhile, the junta has reoriented itself entirely. French troops are out. UN peacekeepers are gone. In their place: the Africa Corps, Russia’s state-run paramilitary outfit, now the military government’s security partner of choice. That shift has considerably squeezed Algeria’s diplomatic leverage.

Algiers has responded by quietly working the phones with neighbouring governments, trying to prevent the Alliance of Sahel States, the mutual defence bloc Mali formed with Niger and Burkina Faso, from hardening into an anti-Algeria bloc.

According to Malian journalist Omar al-Ansari, quoted by Middle East Eye, no other outside actor understands the Saharan political landscape as well as Algeria does. However, understanding a conflict and being trusted to mediate it are two very different things. According to Middle East Eye, whether Algeria gets back to the table depends almost entirely on whether the men running Bamako decide they need it there, and right now, that’s far from certain.

Maghrebi.org, Middle East Eye.