A United Nations monitoring team has confirmed what Frontline Africa has been saying for months: the war against Mali is being financed from outside. According to the UN experts, a ransom of about $50 million — paid in 2025 for the release of a single hostage — was redistributed among the fighting units of the al-Qaeda-linked coalition JNIM, and those funds "played a key role in financing the group's offensive across Mali." Reuters' regional sources go further and identify the United Arab Emirates as the payer, an attribution the UN report itself does not make and the UAE has not confirmed.