Centuries ago, the heartlands of Mali bore witness to blockades that choked villages into submission. From the medieval wars of the Ségou State to the Caliphate of Hamdallahi in the 19th century, entire communities were encircled, starved of movement and supplies until they yielded. Today, these historical echoes reverberate under a modern, more systematic form: the blockades imposed by the Katiba Macina, an arm of the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), have evolved into a calculated strategy of control. No longer mere wartime tactics, these sieges serve as a governance mechanism, a silent enforcer of obedience without the need for formal administration.
Field research conducted in late 2025 across villages in Mopti and Bandiagara regions—including Marébougou, Saye, Kori-Maoundé, and the critical Parou-Songobia bridge on National Route 15—reveals the wide-reaching devastation of these blockades. They do not merely sever physical access; they dismantle mobility, agriculture, trade, education, gender relations, and even local authority structures. The intent is unmistakable: to make life unbearable for those who refuse to submit.
In these besieged localities, fighters attempt to impose what locals call benkan, a term in the Bamanan language traditionally associated with pacts or compromises. But in practice, it is a one-sided dictate: forced payments of zakat (annual Islamic alms) on harvests and livestock, school closures, mandatory veiling for women, bans on music, and restrictions on social gatherings. The local terminology belies a stark reality—one rooted in coercion and violence.
Marébougou: a brief stand against the tide
Across these villages, the pattern is consistent: suffocate to force compliance or, at least, resignation. Yet the methods adapt to local power dynamics. Where armed resistance is weak or dismantled, blockades swiftly lead to forced submission. But where self-defense groups persist, the siege hardens, stretching into a prolonged ordeal where civilians bear the heaviest burden.
In Marébougou, a village within the Djenné district, resistance crumbled in 2021. Residents defied orders from the Katiba Macina—school closures, mandatory veiling, the abandonment of weekly markets, and seizures of crops and livestock. Their defiance stemmed from a combination of factors: regular patrols by state forces and the presence of a donso camp, a traditional hunters’ militia. During 2019–2021, central Mali was gripped by a wave of confidence in local defense groups, often framed as grassroots counterterrorism. Some of their leaders, like their jihadist counterparts, enriched themselves through cattle raids and extortion under the guise of protection. But Marébougou’s armed resistance was short-lived. After the self-defense groups were defeated by jihadists in October 2021, a total blockade was imposed for six months.
Targeted killings of influential hunters
The siege gradually strangled Marébougou. Markets vanished. Road travel became perilous. Fields became inaccessible. Essential supplies vanished—even salt, a staple commodity, grew scarce. When the blockade lifted, the village accepted what many saw as a survival pact. It was not a surrender of conviction, but a grim adjustment to end the deaths of villagers from starvation (“even salt was missing,” one resident recalled), to restore limited mobility for food and medicine deliveries, and to revive a frozen local economy. In return, the village’s social and religious life was reshaped under the new rules.
The fallout extended far beyond Marébougou. The defeat eroded public trust in self-defense groups across the flooded delta, from Djenné to Macina in the Mopti region. The state’s delayed response emboldened the Katiba Macina to tighten pressure on neighboring villages like Sofara, Macina, and Niono. Alongside harassment of locals, the group systematically assassinated influential hunters—some of whom had led the mobilization for the Marébougou battle. The jihadists accused them of collaborating with state forces and exploiting resources like cattle, water points, and grazing lands.
In Saye, the blockade that began in 2023 intensified through 2024 and 2025, grinding the village’s economy and social fabric to a halt. While the dynamics mirrored those in Marébougou, Saye’s resistance was more direct and sustained. Residents refused to accept an external religious authority, especially when they saw themselves as “good Muslims.” Beyond faith, they had little left to lose after years of looting—harvests burned, livestock stolen, access to local weekly markets severed. Resistance there was anchored in traditional authorities, youth organizations, and the donsow fighters.
Humanitarian overload as a weapon of surrender
In Saye, the blockade meant more than immobility. It meant denied access to farmland, grazing areas, and trade routes. Men were largely confined to the village perimeter; those who ventured out risked abduction or execution. Women, perceived as less threatening, could sometimes slip into the bush to forage for food, firewood, or straw for mats and fans. This fragile freedom highlighted how blockades reshape social roles and risks, not how they spare civilians.
Saye’s historical significance amplified its defiance. In 1782, it resisted the rule of Ségou. Since 2023, it became a refuge for displaced people from surrounding villages refusing to submit to the benkan. This influx triggered a surge in demand for food and medicine, overburdening local services already weakened by the blockade and cut off from nearby urban centers like Djenné or San. The siege didn’t just confine—it deliberately engineered a humanitarian overload to break the village’s will.
In Bandiagara’s Kori-Maoundé, the story diverged. Since 2018, the village has hosted fighters from Dan Na Ambassagou, a self-defense movement that rejects any negotiation with jihadist groups. Local leaders—village chiefs, imams, mayors—have embraced this hardline stance, ruling out dialogue with the Katiba Macina. The result: a punitive blockade tightening year after year.
Resistance rooted in colonial memory
In Kori-Maoundé, the blockade manifests through targeted attacks, assassinations, movement restrictions, and bans on transporters stopping or picking up passengers. By 2024, access to fields was nearly impossible. The siege wasn’t just about control—it sent a message to a territory seen as an enemy bastion, where many still cling to armed resistance as a legacy of defiance against French colonialism. One pivotal battle took place on the Kori-Kori hills in April 1892, marking the final step in the colonial takeover of Bandiagara. For both the self-defense fighters and villagers, the idea of a submission pact is unthinkable, despite relentless pressure from the Katiba Macina. Kori-Maoundé has also become a haven for displaced people from other villages.
While the plateau’s rugged terrain and the presence of the self-defense group slow direct assaults, they cannot halt the village’s slow strangulation. Civilians pay the price of non-negotiation by fleeing to Bandiagara, Sévaré, or Bamako, or by surviving in increasingly precarious conditions on the spot.
The fragile role of mediation
Mediators do exist and can wield legitimacy. In Marébougou, neighboring mayors acted as intermediaries between the village and the fighters. In Saye, no such initiative gained traction. In Kori-Maoundé, Dan Na Ambassagou’s influence blocks local mediation, and regional reconciliation teams remain disconnected from the village’s concrete struggles. This comparison underscores a neglected truth: blockades are not just military tools. They depend on the presence and capacity of political, traditional, or religious intermediaries to turn armed confrontation into dialogue. Without mediation, violence endures.
Schools, farms, and livestock: the pillars of village life
Across these villages, schools are more than classrooms. They are anchors for families, hubs of social connection, symbols of hope, and one of the last tangible signs of state presence. In Kori-Maoundé, Marébougou, and Saye, the arrival or pressure from armed groups triggered teacher flight, school closures, and student dispersal. School closures aren’t mere collateral damage—they are part of a broader shift where the retreat of administration paves the way for alternative, often armed or religious, forms of regulation. When a school vanishes, it’s not just education that declines; it’s the future of an entire community.
The first impact of blockades, however, often strikes agriculture. Inaccessible fields, attacks on farmers, or burned harvests devastate rural economies. In Marébougou, only plots near the village remained cultivable. Elsewhere, insecurity slashed arable land, forcing households to rely on external supplies—supplies that became impossible to obtain under siege.
Livestock and cattle trade, which complement farming, also suffer. Mass cattle abductions destroy families. Weekly livestock markets, vital to rural economies in Ségou and Mopti, become rare, dangerous, or inaccessible. Women—often engaged in market gardening, food processing, or petty trade—see their autonomy shrink. Blockades don’t just wipe out income; they sever the exchange networks that sustain territories.
Community solidarity in the face of blockades
Yet life under blockade is not only about suffering. Research in the three villages reveals vital forms of mutual aid: shared food, water rationing, care for the sick, task-sharing, and support for vulnerable households. In Saye and Marébougou, many speak of strengthened community bonds in the face of hardship. These solidarities do not erase hunger or fear, but they delay, at least temporarily, the total collapse of social fabric. They show that villagers are not passive victims—they actively shape their survival by creating local protections in the absence of the state.
Marébougou, Saye, and Kori-Maoundé reveal that blockades in Mali have become more than tactics. They function as a technology of territorial control. By dominating roads, markets, schools, and social norms, armed groups are reshaping daily life. Though they do not occupy all villages, they increasingly dictate the rhythm of existence for those who remain.
Responses vary—forced surrender, prolonged resistance, refusal to negotiate, partial flight, or pragmatic arrangements—but the question is the same everywhere: how do you live when everything that connects a territory to the rest of the world—roads, fields, schools, markets—can be severed overnight? In Ségou and Mopti, blockades don’t just cause shortages. They establish a political order rooted in fear.
