EgyptAir has cancelled Hajj flights to and from Mali as separatist and Islamist militants intensify their assault on the country's military junta. Fletcher and Octavio dig into why Mali has been caught between coups, jihadists, and foreign powers for decades, and what it means when a pilgrimage becomes impossible.
EgyptAir cancela los vuelos del Hajj hacia y desde Mali por la crisis entre la junta militar y los grupos separatistas e islamistas. Fletcher y Octavio exploran por qué Mali lleva décadas atrapado entre golpes de estado, yihadistas y potencias extranjeras.
6 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| junta | military junta, ruling council | La junta controla el gobierno de Mali. |
| peregrinación | pilgrimage | La peregrinación a La Meca es muy importante para los musulmanes. |
| orgulloso | proud (also: arrogant, depending on context) | Estoy muy orgulloso de mi familia. |
| separatista | separatist | Los separatistas quieren un país nuevo. |
| acuerdo | agreement, deal | El acuerdo de paz no funcionó bien. |
| opción | option, choice | No hay buenas opciones para la junta. |
What caught my attention this week wasn't the headline, it was the detail buried inside it.
EgyptAir cancelled its Hajj flights to and from Mali.
Not because of a storm.
Not because of some logistical problem.
Because the country is too dangerous to land in.
Sí, es una noticia muy importante.
Yes, it's very significant news.
Mali tiene problemas graves.
Mali has serious problems.
And the thing that gets me is the Hajj specifically.
This isn't a canceled business trip or a delayed cargo run.
For a Muslim in Mali, the pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the central acts of a lifetime.
You save for years.
You plan for years.
And now EgyptAir says: we can't get you there.
El Hajj es muy especial para los musulmanes de Mali.
The Hajj is very special for Muslims in Mali.
Muchas personas esperan muchos años.
Many people wait many years for it.
So walk me into this.
What's actually happening on the ground?
Because the wire story describes separatists and Islamist militants both targeting the military junta, and I want to make sure I understand who is fighting whom here.
Hay dos grupos diferentes.
There are two different groups.
Los separatistas son del norte.
The separatists are from the north.
Los islamistas son terroristas.
The Islamists are terrorists.
Right, and those two groups are not the same thing, even though the junta and a lot of Western reporting tends to lump them together.
The separatists in Mali's north are primarily Tuareg, nomadic Berber people whose territory cuts across Mali, Niger, Algeria, and Libya.
They've been fighting for an independent homeland called Azawad for decades.
Los tuareg tienen una historia muy larga.
The Tuareg have a very long history.
No son árabes.
They are not Arabs.
Son del desierto.
They are people of the desert.
The desert, exactly.
I spent a few weeks in the Sahel in 2011 covering the aftermath of the Libyan civil war, and one of the things that stayed with me was how completely porous those borders are.
Gaddafi had employed thousands of Tuareg fighters as mercenaries.
When he fell, they came home armed and trained.
And that lit the fuse for everything that followed.
Sí, Libia cambió todo en el Sahel.
Yes, Libya changed everything in the Sahel.
Muchas armas, muchos soldados sin trabajo.
Many weapons, many soldiers without work.
And into that vacuum stepped groups like JNIM, Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, which is the main jihadist coalition in the region, affiliated with al-Qaeda.
These are ideologically completely different from the Tuareg separatists.
They don't want a Tuareg homeland.
They want an Islamic state across the Sahel.
Los dos grupos no trabajan juntos siempre.
The two groups don't always work together.
A veces son enemigos.
Sometimes they are enemies.
That's a crucial point, actually.
There have been periods of tactical cooperation between the Tuareg rebels and jihadist groups, and then periods of brutal fighting between them.
The junta in Bamako portrays them as one unified enemy, which is useful propaganda but terrible strategy, because the two groups respond to completely different pressures.
La junta necesita un enemigo simple.
The junta needs a simple enemy.
La realidad es más complicada.
The reality is more complicated.
Let's talk about the junta itself, because Mali has had three coups in less than fifteen years.
Three.
The 2012 coup, the 2020 coup, the 2021 coup.
And I keep asking myself, what does that tell you about the legitimacy of the state, or the lack of it?
Los golpes en Mali tienen una razón.
The coups in Mali have a reason.
Los militares dicen que los políticos no hacen nada.
The military says politicians do nothing.
Which is what every military government says when it takes power.
The interesting thing is that Assimi Goïta, the current junta leader who has run the country since the 2021 coup, initially had genuine popular support.
People were genuinely fed up with the elected civilian government.
They saw it as corrupt, paralyzed, and incapable of dealing with the security crisis.
Al principio, muchas personas en Bamako pensaban que la junta era buena.
At the beginning, many people in Bamako thought the junta was good.
And then the junta expelled the French.
Operation Barkhane, the French counterterrorism operation that had been running for years, was told to leave.
And the junta invited in Wagner, the Russian private military company, instead.
I'm curious what you make of that swap.
Para muchos africanos, los franceses son el problema.
For many Africans, the French are the problem.
No la solución.
Not the solution.
That's a sentiment with real historical roots.
France colonized Mali for nearly a century.
The relationship was never clean.
There's a French phrase, 'Françafrique,' that captures the whole murky web of post-colonial economic deals, propped-up governments, and quiet military interventions that France ran across its former African empire.
That resentment didn't come from nowhere.
La palabra 'Françafrique' es muy importante.
The word 'Françafrique' is very important.
Significa que Francia controla a África.
It means France controls Africa.
But here's where I push back a little.
Wagner's record in Mali has been, to put it charitably, catastrophic for civilians.
Human rights organizations documented mass killings in villages like Moura in 2022, where hundreds of civilians were executed over the course of several days.
And the security situation has not improved.
It's gotten worse.
Los rusos no protegen a los civiles.
The Russians don't protect civilians.
Solo protegen a la junta.
They only protect the junta.
Which is why we're sitting here in May 2026 talking about EgyptAir cancelling the Hajj flights.
The junta made a bet, replaced one foreign military patron with another, and the security crisis is still spiraling.
The separatists control large portions of the north.
JNIM is attacking in the center.
And ordinary Malians are caught in the middle.
La gente normal de Mali quiere paz.
Ordinary people in Mali want peace.
No quiere política.
They don't want politics.
Let me come back to the Hajj for a second, because I think it carries more political weight than it might seem.
Mali is roughly ninety percent Muslim.
The Hajj is not just a religious obligation, it's a social institution.
When you return from Mecca, your standing in the community changes.
You're called Hajji.
It marks a transition.
Sí, el título 'Hajji' es muy importante en Mali.
Yes, the title 'Hajji' is very important in Mali.
La familia está muy orgullosa.
The family is very proud.
So when EgyptAir cancels those flights, the junta isn't just losing an airline route.
It's losing another piece of its claim to legitimacy.
Because what kind of government can't guarantee its citizens the ability to fulfill a religious duty that ninety percent of them share?
Es verdad.
That's true.
La junta habla de Islam, pero no puede proteger el Hajj.
The junta talks about Islam, but it cannot protect the Hajj.
And the Islamist groups understand this dynamic very well.
JNIM has been strategic about presenting itself as the defender of Muslim interests against both Western-backed governments and now junta governments.
They can point to cancelled Hajj flights and say: this is what happens when you trust these people.
Los terroristas usan la religión como propaganda.
Terrorists use religion as propaganda.
Es muy peligroso.
It's very dangerous.
I want to zoom out for a second, because Mali doesn't exist in isolation.
What's happening there is happening in Burkina Faso, in Niger, in northern Nigeria.
This entire belt across the Sahel is facing the same combination, state fragility, Islamist insurgency, climate stress, and a rejection of the old Western security framework.
El Sahel tiene muchos países con los mismos problemas.
The Sahel has many countries with the same problems.
No hay agua, no hay trabajo.
No water, no work.
The climate dimension is real and it tends to get underreported.
The Lake Chad basin has lost roughly ninety percent of its surface area since the 1960s.
Entire fishing and farming communities lost their livelihoods.
Young men with no economic future and no functioning state to turn to become recruitable.
That's not an excuse for terrorism, but it is a mechanism.
Cuando no hay trabajo, los jóvenes buscan otras opciones.
When there is no work, young people look for other options.
Es un problema muy grave.
It's a very serious problem.
So what does the junta do now?
Because the honest answer is they're in a corner.
They expelled the French, they invited Wagner, Wagner hasn't fixed the security problem, and now they're facing what looks like a two-front war.
They can't invite the French back without completely destroying what's left of their domestic legitimacy.
La junta no tiene buenas opciones.
The junta doesn't have good options.
Todas las opciones son malas.
All the options are bad.
There's actually a model for a negotiated settlement with the Tuareg that has been tried before, the 2015 Algiers Peace Agreement.
It granted significant autonomy to the north.
It was never properly implemented, partly because the Malian military never wanted to give up that ground, literally and figuratively.
But the architecture for a political solution exists.
El acuerdo de Argel era bueno, pero nadie lo usó.
The Algiers agreement was good, but nobody used it.
Es una tragedia.
It's a tragedy.
That's the recurring theme, isn't it.
In the Sahel, in the Middle East, in a dozen other conflicts I've covered.
The framework exists.
The political will doesn't.
Los políticos prefieren la guerra.
Politicians prefer war.
La paz es más difícil.
Peace is harder.
What do you think happens to Mali in the next five years?
Genuinely.
Because I can construct two scenarios.
One where the junta eventually negotiates, maybe through Algerian mediation again, and some kind of federal structure emerges.
And one where the state simply contracts further, more territory falls under non-state control, and the international community just...
stops paying attention.
Creo que el mundo ya no mira mucho a Mali.
I think the world doesn't look much at Mali anymore.
Hay otras guerras.
There are other wars.
And that's the third scenario I didn't mention, which is essentially the status quo, grinding violence, a shrinking state, millions of people living in insecurity, the occasional news item about a cancelled flight, and then nothing.
The world moves on to the next crisis.
La gente de Mali merece más atención.
The people of Mali deserve more attention.
Su situación es muy seria.
Their situation is very serious.
Before we wrap up, there was something you said earlier that I want to come back to.
You used the word 'orgullosa.' La familia está muy orgullosa.
And I knew what it meant from context, but I wasn't sure if I'd heard it before.
Orgullosa, proud.
Sí, 'orgulloso' es para hombres.
Yes, 'orgulloso' is for men.
'Orgullosa' es para mujeres.
'Orgullosa' is for women.
Muy simple.
Very simple.
Right, the adjective changes ending depending on whether you're talking about a man or a woman.
So if I wanted to say I'm proud, I'd say 'estoy orgulloso.' Because I'm a man.
Theoretically.
Sí, muy bien.
Yes, very good.
Pero 'orgulloso' también puede ser malo.
But 'orgulloso' can also be negative.
'Es muy orgulloso' significa arrogante.
'Es muy orgulloso' means arrogant.
Oh, that's actually useful.
So the same word can mean proud in a good sense or arrogant depending on context.
I feel like that's a trap waiting for me.
Somewhere between here and my next family dinner in Madrid, I'm going to tell someone I'm arrogant when I mean I'm honored.
Fletcher, ya tienes bastantes errores.
Fletcher, you already have enough mistakes.
No necesitas más.
You don't need more.