Maïga’s Message Cannot Leak Without A Green Light From Some Party!

The retired diplomat, Mr. Mustapha Zeghlache, interpreted the call from former Malian Prime Minister, Choguel Maïga, who is imprisoned in Bamako, as a desire from some party within Mali’s ruling regime to build bridges of communication with the Algerian authorities, amidst the estrangement characterizing bilateral relations, following gratuitous provocative decisions and statements by the military coup authorities and some of their figures.

Mr. Zeghlache told “Echorouk”: “A message with such content cannot leak from a prominent political figure like Choguel Maïga, who held high positions in the Malian state, from inside his prison,” noting that this Malian politician has been in prison since August 2025, due to corruption charges, according to the judicial authorities in that country.

Choguel Maïga, who served as Prime Minister in the Bamako government from 2020 to 2024, published a message on his “X” account on the fourteenth of this month, calling for reconciliation between Algeria and Mali, which had exchanged the withdrawal of their ambassadors from their respective capitals. However, Algeria took an additional decision to close Algerian airspace to Malian civilian and military aircraft.

The retired diplomat did not rule out that this call expresses a desire among the ruling authorities in Bamako and a “green light” to work towards rebuilding the severed bridges with the Algerian authorities, a reckless decision by the military coup authorities in Mali, at a time when those authorities thought they were in a position of strength, after bringing in Russian Wagner mercenaries for a military decisive option against the Azawad movements in the north, which demand their legitimate political rights, such as participation in governance and equitable distribution of wealth and development.

In Mr. Zeghlache’s opinion, the political, security, economic, and social conditions in the southern neighbor do not bode well, after a not-so-short period of the iron fist policy adopted by the ruling military authorities in dealing with the internal situation, and that there is no prospect for improvement in the situation, which may be behind what can be perceived as a trend towards a new approach that is not based entirely on security in addressing the multi-dimensional financial crisis.

He pointed out in this regard that Niger, Mali’s neighbor, is no longer even able to send trucks loaded with fuel to supply Bamako with this vital material necessary for the normal functioning of the state, because truck drivers refused to travel there for fear for their lives, due to the deteriorating security situation, knowing that Bamako has experienced and continues to experience an unprecedented fuel crisis that caused the closure of many Malian state institutions last autumn, where studies were suspended for many weeks.

In light of this data, the analyst believes that Maïga’s message, calling for reconciliation between Algeria and Bamako, expresses a trend towards reconsidering the method adopted by the ruling military authorities in addressing the current crisis at both internal and external levels, especially since Algeria was considered the prominent outlet for Mali before the decision to withdraw ambassadors, when crises exhausted it, as it used to overlook the infiltration of some essential materials into Mali, such as fuel, which has become impossible to smuggle given the closure of borders between the two countries.

Mr. Zeghlache also drew attention to the influence that Cheikh Mahmoud Dicko, who resides in Algeria, has within Mali. He was recently chosen to head a political coalition opposing the ruling military authority, a coalition that includes many influential parties and figures in the Malian scene, making him a card in Algeria’s hand that can be played to pressure the ruling authorities in Bamako to come to their senses.