Is Mali’s crisis playing to Algeria’s advantage? In 2020 Mali was rocked by the first in a series of coups that swept across West Africa, a transformation documented by Anne-Cécile Robert in 2023. Since then, the country has endured deepening insecurity and an ongoing jihadist insurgency. Algeria, meanwhile, has been looking to return to the Great Game in the Sahel. In our June 2026 edition, Akram Belkaïd and Robert write that recent events — the fall of the symbolically important town of Kidal and the 25 April attacks, in which defence minister Sadio Camara was assassinated in his home — ‘have enabled Algiers to regain a foothold in the Sahel theatre and portray itself once again as a regional power, no longer isolated but working for stability and peace’.

In Colombia, will Gustavo Petro’s successor seek to reverse his programme? Did the UK’s local elections signal the beginning of the end for Labour? And how did Slovenia go from, last summer, being the first European country to impose an arms embargo on Israel to, on 12 March, announcing that it would not be joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice?

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