Vatican newspaper sounds alarm about jihadist advances in the Sahel
April 29, 2026
The Vatican newspaper warned of an “explosive crisis” in Mali and other nations of Africa’s Sahel region because of jihadist attacks.
“Considered a strategic linchpin in the geopolitical balance of West Africa, Mali—a nation in the central Sahel—is currently undergoing a phase of severe instability because of an intensification of attacks launched by jihadist groups and Tuareg militias against government forces,” Andrea Walton reported in a front-page article in L’Osservatore Romano’s April 28 edition. “These offensives—often coordinated or occurring simultaneously across various areas of the country’s north and center—highlight the persistent fragility of the Malian state, which has already been weakened by years of internal conflict, coups d’état, and difficulties in maintaining territorial control.”
Walton warned:
The violent incidents have affected both the capital, Bamako, and the key cities of Kidal and Mopti ... Kidal has fallen under the control of jihadist forces, which have seized settlements and military bases ...
Jihadist forces have been active for years throughout the Sahel region—in nations such as Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—and the violence they have perpetrated has claimed thousands of lives and forced hundreds of thousands of others to flee their homes ... Mali is considered the epicenter of the Sahel crisis, as it was precisely here that jihadist groups began to consolidate their presence in 2012, capitalizing on the independence insurgency of the Tuareg—an ethnic group inhabiting the country’s north.
“The evolution of the jihadist insurgency in the Sahel carries humanitarian, economic, and strategic implications for West Africa,” Walton concluded. “The presence of terrorist groups across several nations in the region—coupled with the widespread vulnerability of local democracies (often undermined by misrule and the presence of authoritarian forces)—could trigger a further expansion of terrorism in the coming years if the Sahel crisis is not resolved in the near future.”
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