The countries of this vast African region are going through a period of crisis and change: new military juntas have seized power, while the French and US presence is declining. In this complex scenario, Islamist movements in the region have changed their political goals and modus operandi
Last update: 2024-11-04 13:09:59
The Sahel’s crisis has deep historical roots, but the 2012 collapse of Mali is widely considered to mark the beginning of the current round of violence and instability.[1] Twelve years after those events, there is both continuity and change when it comes to Sahelian jihadism. On the jihadist side, a few familiar faces remain, even as the insurgency has spread over a vast territory. Hardened jihadists operating on a regional canvas have blended with herders and villagers drawn into jihadism as part of a matrix of survival, revenge, and power. On the government side, civilian regimes have fallen to military coups, French troops have largely been expelled from the region, American counterterrorism assistance has been marginalized, and Russian officials and mercenaries now cozy up to the new juntas. Yet beneath the diplomatic spats between Bamako and Paris, or Niamey and Washington, there are some shared assumptions among all these governments, namely the (mistaken) conviction that soldiers can kill their way out of the problem. The central Sahelian countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger appear poised to remain under military rule, all while jihadist insurgencies – and the violence they both provoke and exploit, including state security force abuses and the massacres unleashed by paramilitaries – rumble on.
Who Are the Jihadists?
An understanding of the Sahelian jihadist scene can begin with Iyad ag Ghali. Now in his sixties, ag Ghali is the head of Jama‘at Nusrat al-Islam wa-l-Muslimin (JNIM, the Group for Supporting Islam and Muslims), the Sahel’s preeminent jihadist coalition. JNIM’s parent organization is al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), itself an affiliate of al-Qaida central. AQIM, before it had that name and before it joined al-Qaida, was the initial expeditionary force that brought jihadism into the Sahel in the late 1990s and early 2000s, forging links with communities in northern Mali, Mauritania, and Niger throughout recruitment, intermarriage, economic partnerships, and perhaps even payoffs to local officials.[2]
Ag Ghali, from the Tuareg ethnic group, was a rebel leader in the 1990s and became an advisor to governments afterwards; as the emergent AQIM spread kidnapping through the Sahel and secured mounting ransom payments from European governments, ag Ghali was a key intermediary between the jihadists and Sahelian governments. In late 2011 and early 2012, when another rebellion took shape in northern Mali, ag Ghali found himself unpopular among a new generation of rebels – and so he turned to AQIM, whether out of opportunism or conviction, and entered the jihadist fold fully himself. His AQIM-aligned movement, Ansar al-Din (Defenders of the Faith), displaced the separatist rebels and took control of northern Mali.
A French military intervention called Operation Serval scattered the jihadists in early 2013. The French stayed, transitioning Serval into a more open-ended mission called Operation Barkhane in 2014. Between 2013 and 2022, French counterterrorism manhunts killed a score of top jihadists. The dead included longtime lieutenants of ag Ghali, for example the ex-army colonel Malick ag Wanasnat, killed in 2018. French forces also eliminated the top echelon of Algerian AQIM commanders in Mali including, in 2020, the overall leader of AQIM itself, Abdelmalek Droukdel.
From 2013-2015, there was a kind of lull: the French were on the offensive against jihadists, the jihadists were arguing with each other, and the French and their partners imposed a combination of would-be stabilization initiatives: a United Nations peacekeeping deployment, a European Union training program and, in 2015, a peace agreement between ex-rebels in the north and the Malian government in the south. Today, all of those stabilization initiatives are gone, leaving few traces.
As the French and their allies sought to stabilize Mali, jihadists bickered with each other but also, eventually, regrouped. Ag Ghali’s ally Amadou Kouffa, hailing from central Mali, presided over an insurgency there starting in 2015. The jihadist mobilization in the Malian regions of Mopti and Ségou gained ground with astonishing rapidity, activating latent tensions over land, power, and ethnicity. The Malian security forces responded brutally, practicing collective punishment against the Peul (Kouffa’s ethnic group) and tolerating the ethnic militias that also began targeting the Peul. In late 2016, an allied group announced its formation over the Burkina Faso in Burkina Faso, calling itself Ansaroul Islam (“Defenders of Islam”).
In 2017, as the conflict in the center raged, ag Ghali and AQIM pulled together most of the Sahel’s jihadist units into what became JNIM. Three of JNIM’s five founding leaders are dead, killed by the French, but ag Ghali and Kouffa have clung on. At key moments ag Ghali and Kouffa were even able to flaunt their existence: Kouffa appeared in a 2019 video, months after the French had proclaimed him dead, and ag Ghali hosted a party in the desert for freed jihadist prisoners in 2020 – being sure to disseminate images of the party afterwards, as if to say who the big man of northern Mali was.
Some new leaders have emerged, but they do not seem so different from the old. In Burkina Faso, Ansaroul Islam’s leader Ibrahim Dicko died, possibly of complications from diabetes, in 2017; he was succeeded by his brother Jafar. In central Mali, alongside Kouffa are others who operate in the mode of jihadist preacher, such as Mhamoud Barry. And back in Algeria, Droukdel was succeeded as AQIM emir by another aging veteran, Yusuf al-Annabi. Meanwhile, back in 2015, a dissident AQIM faction declared allegiance to the Islamic State and evolved into what is known today as IS-Sahel. That group, which has been led by a succession of figures hailing or claiming to hail from the disputed Western Sahara territory, is even more brutal than JNIM.
Increasingly since 2012, however, the basic structure of jihadism in the region has tended away from elite terrorist strike forces and towards mass rural insurgencies. The leaders matter, but so too do the footsoldiers, the bulk of whom appear to be young herders and villagers. They are drawn into the jihadist project as violent conflict reaches their doorstep, or some nearby zone, activating fears of annihilation and touching off domino effects wherein latent tensions – between farmers and herders and fishermen, between social strata or between former slaves and former masters, and between ethnic and caste groups – explode into open warfare.[3] Journalists and academics speak frequently of jihadists exploiting or manipulating local tensions, but this phrasing implies a roving class of professional jihadists taking advantage of local dupes. Rather, it is more accurate to say that the jihadists are in the fray and part of the fray. They are not puppeteers; they are integral participants in local politics and local conflicts.
To some extent, this Sahelian trend tracks with trends elsewhere on the continent: the most tenacious movements are those, such as Somalia’s al-Shabab or Nigeria’s Islamic State West Africa Province, that dig their teeth into a rural area, extorting and intimidating residents while defying the power of the state. Another trend is the shift from overt efforts at building jihadist “proto-states,” as al-Qaida and its allies did in northern Mali in 2012-2013,[4] to hybrid, unofficial, and locally variegated shadow governance projects. In Mali and in Burkina Faso, especially, jihadists pursued such governance through intimidation campaigns and blockades, community-level pacts, the presence of courts and judges, and other mechanisms. Again, this mirrors trends elsewhere in Africa; an Islamic State affiliate has periodically seized territory in Mozambique, especially since 2020, but has often eventually been beaten back by Mozambican or foreign forces.
If jihadists are not proclaiming emirates anymore, as they were in 2012 in Mali (or in 2014 in Nigeria, or in many places in the world circa 2012-2015), then what are they seeking? One pattern is geographical spread. In contrast to the alarmist maps one sees depicting half of the African continent as a zone of jihadist activity, the process of jihadists’ spread has always been uneven. Sahelian jihadism began with Algerian conflict entrepreneurs’ search for new military and economic opportunities, and their first military target was not Mali but Mauritania; today, Mauritania is relatively quiet. In some zones, such as central Mali and northern Burkina Faso in mid-2010s, jihadism quickly exploded into mass insurgency after jihadists’ initial attacks; in other zones, such as southern Mali or northern Cote d’Ivoire, jihadist attacks have proven more sporadic. And still other zones that journalists and analysts point to as likely zones of expansion, such as northwest Nigeria and northern Ghana, have remained surprisingly difficult for jihadists to dominate.
In their core territories, Sahelian jihadists have undertaken an extended phase of experimentation. At times, they bring the fight right to the region’s militaries: for example, JNIM assaulted the Malian military’s main military camp at Kati, less than twenty kilometers from the capital Bamako, in July 2022; in Burkina Faso, JNIM stormed another military base in the northern town of Djibo in November 2023. At other times, jihadists appear to be systematically encircling major administrative centers – since 2022, for example, IS-Sahel has taken control of many towns in the Ménaka Region of Mali, and has seemed poised to control the city of Ménaka itself. Yet jihadists hold back from proclaiming official, overt control.
Jihadists’ Enemies
As JNIM and IS-Sahel have become fixtures of the region, the biggest change in the conflict in the past few years is that Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have all experienced military coups. The current wave of putsches began in Mali in 2020 and then spread to the other two countries in 2022-2023. Indeed, from Nouakchott to Khartoum, now, there is no head of state who is not either a retired or active-duty military officer.
In the central Sahel, Sahelian populations have lost faith in a particular kind of Paris-oriented career politician. Members of “la classe politique,” such politicians have been familiar faces since the 1990s – well before most Sahelians were born. During the 2010s, frustrations mounted over what many citizens perceived as civilian leaders’ corruption and incompetence, particularly as insecurity spread. Elections did not necessarily represent the popular will, especially incumbents’ re-elections; of the three civilian presidents eventually overthrown in coups, two were on their second terms, and the third was the hand-picked successor of the previous president. Poll after poll showed that citizens trusted in soldiers, religious leaders, and chiefs, while viewing presidents and legislatures with contempt.[5] In that atmosphere, the trigger could vary – mass post-election protests in Mali, frontline soldiers’ outrage over battlefield casualties in Burkina Faso, or the attempted sacking of the presidential guard commander in Niger – but the outcome was the same. What was striking was not just the coups, but the very limited pushback from civil society or ordinary citizens. Many citizens, at least in the capitals, welcomed the coups.
Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have all experienced military rule in the past, including long stretches of military dictatorship during the Cold War. All three countries have seen post-Cold War coups as well. But the coups of the 1990s through the 2010s were relatively short-lived. They followed one of three patterns: First, some officers quickly wore out their welcome, such as Niger’s Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, shot by his own soldiers a little more than three years after taking power in 1996; or Mali’s Amadou Sanogo, pressured into ceding power just weeks after leading a coup in 2012. Second, some coup-makers considered themselves caretakers, such as the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy in Niger, which transferred power to an elected civilian just fourteen months after their 2010 coup. Third, some putschists quickly doffed their fatigues for civilian garb and ran in elections, such as Mauritania’s Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz. In contrast, the current juntas seem determined to remain in power for a long time. Tellingly, the Malian junta has already been in power for longer than any Sahelian military leader who took power between 1991 and 2020, and the Malian junta is currently moving to extend its “transition” through 2027. The military ruler who leads a coup and then refuses to budge, even just to step out of uniform, is something not seen in the Sahel since the 1980s.
The juntas all came to power promising to fight even harder against jihadists, but insecurity has worsened on their watch. The juntas did not start the war – before and after their arrival, violence has typically risen year on year. Even before the August 2020 coup in Mali, the first of the recent wave, Burkina Faso had one million internally displaced persons. Yet the juntas have exacerbated the violence in four key ways.
First, the juntas have shrunk the space that seemed to exist, especially from around 2017-2020 in Mali, from around 2020-2022 in Burkina Faso, and from around 2016-2023 in Niger, for negotiations with jihadists.[6] Negotiations were not producing anything more, during that time, than limited bargains (localized ceasefires, prisoner exchanges, etc.), but JNIM had indicated at least notional willingness to entertain a wider settlement, and even IS-Sahel had proven pragmatic in some ways. Through brutal crackdowns and heated rhetoric, the juntas have foreclosed even the limited opportunities that seemed to exist at one time.
Second, the juntas’ brutality has not just pushed peace back, it has directly enflamed conflict. The juntas’ own collective killings and human rights abuses have been horrific – the worst example is the March 2020 massacre by the Malian Armed Forces and their Wagner Group allies at the central Malian town of Moura, but there are many other incidents. Moreover, these collective killings frighten and alienate the very civilians whom juntas would need if they are to rebuild genuine national cohesion.
Third, the juntas – particularly in Mali and Burkina Faso – have licensed violent paramilitaries. In Mali, it is the Wagner Group, the Kremlin-aligned mercenaries who were rebranded as the Africa Corps after the dramatic death of leader Yevgeny Preghozin in August 2023. Wager/Africa Corps has abetted the Malian Armed Forces’ worst excesses. In Burkina Faso, it is the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland, an anti-jihadist militia that has both perpetrated numerous abuses and become a target for the jihadists; Burkina Faso’s President Ibrahim Traoré has also, journalists charge, used the Volunteers as a vehicle for getting rid of critics who annoy him, forcibly conscripting them into the group and hurling them into harm’s way.[7]
Fourth, the juntas have been inconsistent. In October 2020, fresh in office, the Malian junta was concluding a prisoner exchange with JNIM even as it was making a show of force against JNIM in the town of Farabougou. The juntas proclaim that they are there to secure their nations against the jihadists, but they often seem more interested in other enemies – including the journalists, labor union leaders, civilian politicians, and human rights activists they arrest in their own capitals. In late 2023, the Malian junta made a major push into the north, not to challenge JNIM but to compete with and enact revenge upon an ex-rebel group, which – partly in response to that campaign – has now once again turned to rebellion. Indeed, JNIM appears eager to capitalize on the situation and win back old ex-allies.
A fifth cause for rising violence might also be added: the end of French counterterrorism. The juntas in Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey have all expelled French troops in the name of sovereignty, and Niamey has also bucked against America’s efforts to dictate the terms of that security partnership.
Does the severing of these partnerships contribute to violence? Probably. And yet things were violent before the coups as well. Moreover, the French mission carried the seeds of its own frustrating end. French counterterrorism was ostensibly paired with a political strategy and a multifaceted approach to the region’s political and economic challenges. Yet the French deployment leaned heavily, in a political sense, on the cooperation of civilian leaders with shaky legitimacy. And all the while, as noted above, violence grew and also became more complex: alongside jihadists, national armies, and foreign militaries, there also arose communal militias, paramilitaries, bandits, and more. Civilians increasingly questioned what the French were doing on Sahelian soil. The coups did not derail political or security progress – they responded to a crisis and then exacerbated that crisis.
Ironically, moreover, the juntas’ language sometimes mirrors that of the departed French. In April, the Malian Armed Forces bragged that they had “neutralized an important terrorist leader of foreign nationality during the course of a large-scale operation” in eastern Mali.[8] Such phrases – the “neutralization” or “elimination” of top “terrorist leaders” – recurred again and again in the statements from Operation Barkhane, even as the situation steadily degraded in the Sahel. Whether it is a civilian in the presidency or a colonel, and whether it is Sahelian forces during the killing or foreign ones, almost every decision-maker seems to believe that the problem is primarily one to be solved through violence. And behind so many stories of daring raids against the jihadists, there is often more than the official version lets on – as appears to be the case with the April raid.
Solutions?
It is hard to articulate potential solutions for the Sahel’s crisis without devolving into platitudes. The vocabularies, in reports by think tanks or at the seemingly endless European policy conferences on the Sahel, are stale. “Good governance,” “security sector reform,” “empowering civil society,” “countering violent extremism” – the staleness of the terminology points to the staleness of the underlying ideas. Would-be external interveners still want to cajole leaders, undertake social engineering projects, and claim (even after American disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq) that counterinsurgency is a straightforward application of textbook doctrines. Within the Sahel, those in charge inherited unimaginably bad situations, but have also greeted those situations with a marked lack of imagination – military rulers have resembled civilian ones in being concerned more with power grabs in capitals than with mass death in the hinterlands.
Eventually, the graybeards leading the jihadist forces will exit the scene one way or another. And eventually, under domestic and international pressure, there will be elections – perhaps only token ones, as occurred in Chad in May – that restore some semblance of constitutional order in the central Sahel. The real unknown is what happens to all the young fighters, and whether someone can offer them a political alternative to endless war.