Conflict in the Sahel

The Sahel region of Africa extends, in an ecological sense, from Senegal and Mauritania in the west to Somalia in the east. In a political sense, the region is often more narrowly defined as comprising Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad; many accounts, including this article, include Senegal as well. All six of these countries became independent from France in 1960 and, except for Chad, experienced relatively limited armed conflict prior to the 1990s. In 1990 a rebellion in northern Mali touched off cycles of conflict that have continued through the time of writing. Another rebellion in northern Mali in 2012 became the tipping point for the central Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger), as conflict spread from northern Mali into central Mali and then into Burkina Faso and Niger; meanwhile, Niger and Chad also experienced considerable spillover from Nigeria’s Boko Haram conflict, even as Chad continued to grapple with periodic armed rebellions. In the central Sahel, the primary purveyors of conflict since 2012 have been jihadists, ethnic militias, state security forces, external military forces, and, more recently, private security contractors such as the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group. The violence inflicted by each of these actors has tended to elicit reprisals from the other actors, feeding into a matrix of conflict whose causes include both structural factors and self-perpetuating violence. In terms of structural factors that drive conflict, these include the region’s poverty, underdevelopment, state weakness and corruption, demographic pressures, farmer-herder tensions, the politicization and securitization of ethnic and religious identities, and citizens’ lack of trust in judiciaries and politicians. Conflict has further exacerbated these factors, especially in terms of precipitating a collapse of faith in elected officials who are often seen—with some justification—as inept and aloof. In 2012, Mali experienced a military coup amid the northern rebellion of that year, and since 2020 the region has seen multiple coups: in Mali in 2020 and 2021, in Chad in 2021, in Burkina Faso in January 2022 and September 2022, and in Niger in 2023. The political upheavals in the region, combined with the Malian and Burkinabè military regimes’ hostility to France, have intensified geopolitical competition among France, Russia, and the United States for influence in the Sahel. As of 2023, the region’s trajectory remains largely grim, especially with intensifying violence and displacement in much of Mali and Burkina Faso and high levels of continued turmoil in parts of Niger. At the same time, Senegal, Mauritania, and, to a lesser extent, Chad retain a significant level of baseline political stability and internal security.