🏳️🇹🇷🇷🇺🇲🇱 The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) in Mali is seeking Turkish mediation in the conflict with Bamako and its Russian ally.

The Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) in Mali has disclosed direct contacts with Russia’s Africa Corps and called for dialogue with Turkey to help find a political solution to the country’s crisis.

In an exclusive interview with Middle East Eye, FLA spokesperson Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane said the Tuareg separatist group hopes for engagement with Ankara, whose growing influence has made it an important player in the country.

While the two factions are coordinating their offensives, seizing towns and army bases, blockading Bamako and killing the Defence Minister Sadio Camara, they have different objectives: the FLA seeks an autonomous Tuareg state in Mali’s northeast while JNIM wants to topple the government.

An FLA/JNIM offensive in April exposed the vulnerabilities of that Russian deployment in the north. Africa Corps personnel withdrew from the strategic city of Kidal before the FLA seized it.

And in July, reports emerged of possible arrangements between the FLA and Africa Corps amid fighting around Anefis, 100km southeast of Kidal.

Ramadane said that the FLA have been in direct contact with the Africa Corps, but stressed that those exchanges did not amount to political negotiations or a strategic rapprochement.

“I can confirm that there were direct contacts in certain contexts, notably around questions related to movements, withdrawals and the situation in certain areas,” he said.

“In a conflict, there are sometimes channels of communication with the adversary to avoid incidents, manage certain situations or facilitate occasional arrangements,” he added.

“This does not mean that the political objectives of the parties have become compatible.”

Ankara has sold armed drones and other equipment to Mali’s military government since 2023, while bilateral trade has tripled over the past decade.

Defence has become an increasingly important part of that relationship: since 2024, arms and ammunition have accounted for 20 percent of Turkey’s exports to Mali, ahead of electronic equipment, industrial machinery and cereals, according to a report by Le Monde.

The FLA wanted channels of dialogue through which it could explain its position directly to Ankara and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he added, rather than via the Turkish military alone.

Ramadane said the FLA’s appeals to Erdogan were not an attempt to recruit another foreign patron.

“We do not ask Turkey to take a military side with the FLA. We ask it first to listen and understand,” he said.

He argued that Turkey’s influence in Africa and the Muslim world, combined with its close relationship with Bamako, gave it a particular responsibility.

🔗 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-malis-tuareg-separatists-seek-turkey-talks-reveal-russian-contact

📢 🇺🇸 🗳 Thomas Massie introduces Articles of Impeachment against Sec. of War Pete Hegseth.

📎 Breaking911

🏠 🇺🇸 📈 U.S. Homes are now the most unaffordable in history

📎 Barchart

🔼 🇺🇸 💵 The 10Y Note Yield rises to 5.04%, its highest level since July 2007.

This pushes the average interest rate on a 30Y mortgage up to 7.17%.

Homeownership is officially a luxury.

📎 KobeissiLetter

🌎 🇺🇸 🇺🇸 The U.S. is stripping $52 million in military aid to Europe and the Middle East to back Trump-allied governments in Latin America.

The State Department on Tuesday notified Congress that it will reprogram $52 million in foreign military financing from Slovakia, North Macedonia, Tunisia and Iraq to Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Colombia, Ecuador and Peru last week and pledged to them additional support as the Trump administration has prioritized the Western Hemisphere in its foreign policy with an emphasis on combating drug trafficking and illegal immigration.

It is just the latest in a series of moves that have reduced either money or troop deployments to Europe in response to President Donald Trump’s complaints about NATO allies not spending enough on their defense budgets and other matters. Both North Macedonia and Slovakia are NATO members.

The State Department said the funds would be used to “combat narcoterrorism in our backyard and help continue to secure the Panama Canal,” adding that the Western Hemisphere has been historically neglected in U.S. military assistance.

“These funds will prevent adversaries from establishing strategic footholds in our hemisphere,” the department said in a veiled jab at China, which has increasingly sought to boost its presence in Latin America.

https://apnews.com/article/foreign-military-financing-trump-rubio-c92157ab38b809a9faef9fa19be50cf7

🛢 🌐 📉 Global oil inventories have fallen to 7.6 billion barrels since the Iran war began

📎 Hedgeye

🇾🇪❌🇸🇦 — Alerts in Abha City and Khamis Mushait, southwestern Saudi Arabia.

🇾🇪❌🇸🇦 — Alerts in Abha City, Khamis Mushait, and Jazan Province, southwestern Saudi Arabia, have been lifted.

💵 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 The Trump administration is preparing a $2.8 billion sale of 40,000 2,000-pound bombs to Israel, the largest single sale of conventional explosive ordnance from the US in modern history, with 20,000 MK-84s, 20,000 BLU-117s and 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads, paid for with US taxpayer dollars, per a US official to WaPo.

The package eclipses the $2.04 billion sale in 2025 that completely bypassed congressional review. Israel opened the war alongside the US in February and has not struck Iran since June, and Iran's missile bases and launch sites are tunneled into rock, the class of target the I-2000 penetrator exists for.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/09/15/trump-preparing-send-massive-shipment-2000-pound-bombs-israel/

https://archive.ph/vPqLp

📎 The Hormuz Letter