Fighting in the Sahel has forced 1.7m people from their homes

WESTERN GOVERNMENTS have long debated whether the costs of intervening in dangerous parts of the world exceed the risks. In February the United States signed a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan. But just as America extricates itself from one conflict, a power vacuum in Africa’s Sahel may drag it into another.

The Sahel, a semi-arid strip south of the Sahara desert spanning 4,000 miles (6,400km), is unusually troubled. Its hinterlands are far from any city and mainly populated by nomads. The state’s writ does not hold; public services barely exist. The Sahel’s borderlands have long been dangerous: just 3.5% of the population of north and west Africa lives within 10km of an international frontier, but 10% of deaths from armed violence occurred in these areas between 1997 and 2019.

Jihadists are now entrenching themselves in ungoverned spaces. After Islamic State was ousted from the Middle East, it began to regroup in the Sahel. At times it has co-operated with al-Qaeda; at others, the two groups have clashed. To sow terror and conquer territory, the jihadists have committed atrocities, such as murdering a mentally disabled man, hiding a bomb on his corpse and blowing up 17 mourners at his funeral. Some 4,800 people died in battles or acts of terror in 2019, a six-fold increase on 2016. Another 3,900 have died so far this year.

The recent surge in conflict cannot be attributed to Islamists alone. Ethnic militias, such as Dan Na Ambassagou (“hunters who trust in God”) and Koglweogo (“guardians of the bush”), have been involved in 17% of deaths since January 2019. The governments of Mali and Burkina Faso have allegedly helped arm the groups so that they can protect civilians. In practice, the groups are mostly killing Fulanis, a largely Muslim minority. That has led some Fulanis to join the jihadists or to form their own militias. The killing has displaced 1.7m people across the central Sahel. In 2020 an average of 3,000 people a day have fled.

Armies of all stripes are trying to regain control, sometimes brutally. Soldiers from Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have murdered hundreds of civilians this year. Meanwhile, the UN has 15,000 peacekeepers in Mali. France has 5,100 troops in the Sahel to fight jihadists. America has 1,200, mainly for intelligence and logistics—though Donald Trump is considering withdrawing some of them. That would be a boon for jihadists, who on June 3rd lost Abdelmalek Droukdel, the head of al-Qaeda’s network in the region, to a French raid helped by American intelligence.

These various troop deployments are not large enough to police the area, which is as large as India. To dislodge the jihadists, governments will have to govern. Besides security, locals crave jobs and health care. However, given the West’s fatigue after its failures in Afghanistan and elsewhere, countries in the Sahel can expect only modest help from abroad for their own nation-building efforts. ■

Sources: Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project; UNHCR