The dominant narrative of jihadi threat in the Sahel has pushed international actors to intervene to regulate local conflicts that have little to do with global terrorism or religious indoctrination.
The management of conflict in the Sahel risks repeating the mistakes made in Mali over many years. International efforts have been made to professionalize Sahelian armed forces, and thus to improve the effectiveness, conduct and oversight of the military actors at the forefront of tackling non-state armed groups. However, the structural failures of military cooperation are well known. They are not new, and are not limited to countries in the Sahel. International efforts have largely focused on technicalities around manpower, funding, equipment and training, and have come up against numerous problems of human rights violations, coordination and interoperability. The challenges are high, and the task of reforming Sahelian armies while they are actively engaged in combating insurgent groups has been compared to ‘fixing a car while driving it’. Usually, governments think that the solution is to recruit new soldiers on a large scale. Thus Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger have increased their military personnel to an unprecedented extent since 2019; in 2020, for instance, the Nigerien government announced that it would double the number of its troops, to 50,000, over the next five years. As a result of this rapid expansion, new soldiers are being sent to the front – into unfamiliar and inhospitable territory – after minimal training.
More importantly, military cooperation does not address the underlying problem, which is fundamentally political. Undoubtedly, the solution to the conflicts in the Sahel lies in strengthening and legitimizing weak states, which is a long-term project. But in the absence of effective security sector (and political) reform, the current approach effectively defaults to a proxy system in which foreign actors support African armies that – particularly in Mali and Burkina Faso – subcontract militias to fight jihadist groups. However, as noted above, the use of vigilante groups has not yet proved to be effective either in combating terrorist movements or in preventing communal violence. On the contrary, militias now kill more civilians than the jihadi groups themselves, according to many in Mali and Burkina Faso.
An acute policy dilemma
This highlights a serious dilemma for the international community, the French soldiers participating in Operation Barkhane and the ‘blue helmets’ of MINUSMA (the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali). International governments and organizations continue to see engagement in the Sahel as critical, above all to contain and end a terrorist threat that is perceived as global, but also to promote regional stability, reduce irregular migration and limit human suffering. But they have a very limited range of policy levers available to them.
Continuing to train and equip armies that violate human rights is tantamount to complicity, especially when – as has often been the case for French officials – diplomats knowingly avoid denouncing abuses.
Continuing to train and equip militaries that violate human rights, such as the anti-terrorist unit that killed civilian demonstrators against the Malian government in Bamako in July 2020, is tantamount to complicity. This is especially true when diplomats knowingly avoid denouncing abuses, as has often been the case for French officials. On the other hand, committing more international forces to the front line might mean taking direct responsibility for a ‘dirty war’ and provoking nationalist rejection by sovereign states. In Niger, the opening of a US military base in Agadez in 2019 gave rise to some criticism because the site was closed to local authorities, and its quasi-extraterritorial status has given the impression of infringing national sovereignty.
Such challenges highlight the limitations of the international community’s capacity to respond when ‘terrorists’ look very much like insurgent groups or social bandits supported by some communities, and the dynamics of conflict are rooted in local politics rather than global ideological struggle. In this context, the predominant focus on religious extremism has been misleading, and resulting interventions incoherent and ineffective, with short-term or counterproductive outcomes. Deradicalization centres in the Sahel have not produced the intended results, and community outreach and sensitization has not stopped Islamist extremist groups from co-opting local resentment at corrupt government. Moreover, the emphasis on countering Islamist groups has sometimes resulted in international actors lending support to ‘secular’ non-state armed groups that have subsequently allied with the jihadi groups they were meant to counter.
Beyond counterterrorism
The way out of this bind may be first to recognize the way that the designation of insurgents as ‘terrorists’ has shaped and limited the policy options open to external actors. During the Cold War era, counter-insurgency typically dealt with guerrillas and populations, and paid attention to winning the hearts and minds of residents. But counterterrorism has a predominant focus on networks and individuals, and targets them regardless of the needs of the wider population. In the Sahel, this has resulted in interventions lacking the local support that is crucial to fight an ‘invisible enemy’ hidden among civilians. Counterterror imperatives have also closed the door on any prospect of negotiation, have justified heavy military responses, and have pushed rebels to continue fighting. Unlike Mali (or the US in Afghanistan), France has taken a very hard line and has systematically refused to engage in peace talks with groups labelled as terrorists, fearing that this would legitimize them and force its president to publicly admit the failures of Operation Barkhane.
The counterterror paradigm makes even less sense when seen from the ground up. The word ‘terrorist’ simply does not exist in vernacular languages. In central Mali or southeastern Niger, residents talk rather of ‘bushmen’ or ‘bad boys’ when they refer to members of Katiba Macina or Boko Haram. For many people, their main security challenge is not jihadism but cattle rustlers, armed robbers or communal tensions. Available surveys confirm this perception gap. In 2018, out of 8,307 respondents in 10 regions of Mali, including Ménaka, Kidal, Gao and Tombouctou (Timbuktu), none reported having been a victim of a terrorist attack since 2014. Likewise, less than 16 per cent of 7,275 villagers interviewed in 2018 in the Nigerien region of Tillabéri – close to the border with Mali and near where ISGS (Islamic State in the Greater Sahara) had killed four US soldiers in October 2017 – mentioned terrorist attacks as a security issue. Rather than highly militarized counterterror operations, a policing approach would more effectively meet local security needs.
The dominant narrative of a global jihadi threat has disguised the key role played by military nepotism, prevarication and indiscipline in generating and continuing conflict in the Sahel – problems that long predated the ‘war on terror’. Moreover, it has pushed the international community to intervene to regulate local conflicts that have little to do with global terrorism or religious indoctrination. Counterterrorism or counter-insurgency interventions, carried out by UN or French military personnel, cannot replace failing armies or heal predatory states.
