The West African nation Shuts Down Educational Institutions and Higher Education Centers as Islamist Militant Restrictions Intensifies Fuel Crisis

The landlocked West African country has suspended schools and universities countrywide due to a critical petrol shortage caused by a embargo on petroleum supplies enforced by militant groups.

The Education Minister announced on public media that all learning centers would be inactive until the ninth of November, noting that the transportation of staff and students had been impacted by the blockade.

He stated that the authorities were “doing everything possible” to alleviate the crisis so that academic sessions could continue on the tenth of November.

For weeks, the nation has been experiencing a energy deficit, especially in the main city, after militants from an al-Qaeda affiliate initiated a restriction by attacking fuel trucks on major highways.

The country is surrounded by land, so all fuel supplies are transported by truck from adjacent nations such as Senegal and Ivory Coast.

Long queues have been snaking around gas pumps in the capital in recent weeks, and the city's typically busy streets have now reportedly become deserted.

The junta-led administration had previously promised residents that it was only a short-term problem, but the emergency has endured.

In the past few days, the US Embassy in Bamako stated that non-essential diplomatic staff and their relatives would evacuate the country amid the deteriorating petrol scarcity and growing safety issues.

It explained that the petroleum supply issues had affected the supply of electricity and had the “ability to disturb” the general safety conditions in unpredictable ways.

The West African nation is presently governed by a military junta headed by General Goïta, who took control in a coup in two years ago.

The ruling council had public backing when it assumed control, promising to deal with the long-running security crisis caused by a separatist rebellion in the northern territories by ethnic Tuaregs, which was then hijacked by extremist groups.

The UN peacekeeping mission and France's military had been deployed in previously to deal with the growing rebellion.

Both have left since the junta took over, and the current administration has hired private military contractors to address the instability.

Nevertheless, the militant uprising has persisted and large parts of the northern and eastern zones of the state remain beyond state authority.