SlamDunk02

BLUF: The current crowd forecast is 9%. This strikes me as a bit high. I'm going with 6%.

I reached this conclusion by analyzing a dataset of 181 insurgencies from the book Waging Insurgent Warfare.

• 12.5% of insurgencies that at least 15 calendar years long end in their 15th calendar year. (The Mali insurgency began in 2012; as of January 2026 its duration so far as of January 2026 is 15 calendar years.)

• 3.57% of insurgencies that last last least 15 calendar years end in their 15th calendar year AND result in an insurgent victory.

• I'm taking these numbers with a grain of salt, because we don't have enough cases to estimate a smooth conditional probability distribution for insurgency duration. So let's say the probability of JNIM victory this year is the midpoint: 8.04%.

• BUT the question is asking the probability of JNIM taking Bamako in the next five months, not the next year. 5/12 * 8.04% = 3.35%. 

• The midpoint of 3.35% and the current crowd forecast (9%) is approximately 6%.

• These calculations assume that if JNIM takes Bamako for any period of time, it will win the insurgency. I had to make this assumption in order to use the Waging Insurgent Warfare dataset, which does not track within-conflict events like the taking of a capital city.

Confirming previous forecast.

Passage of time -> declining likelihood. 

Passage of time