Since 2013, France has sent troops to Mali to help local forces repel jihadist groups, initially with the Serval Operationin response to the Malian president’s request. The 2013 Livre blanc sur la défense et la sécurité nationale describing France’s external strategic and military priorities in terms of defense illustrates the sensitivity of the Sahelian strip.
This operation was envisaged by President François Hollande as an indispensable means to both ensure France’s security against jihadism but also to “save” the endangered Malian regime, the country being far too poor to defend itself alone against better armed terrorist groups sowing chaos in the north of the country. The urgency was felt to the point of threatening Bamako, which represented an ultimate objective to defend. The context is also important, raising issues for Western power.After a Harmattan operation in Libya that made France look like impulsive mercenaries in 2011 and the gradual withdrawal of French troops in a Pamir operation in Afghanistan where its soldiers appeared subordinate to the United States (USA), France intends to restore its image.The Army is showing here in Mali that it is indispensable, on a known ground, by defending a just cause: the fight against Islamist groups (Roy, 2013). This intervention has also found a relative consensus in France in the media and among intellectuals, where one speaks either of a “just war” or of a “necessary war”: we fight to defend secularism and territorial integrity against terrorists who support Sharia law (ibid).
This operation ended in 2014 when the countries concerned joined a larger operation through Operation Barkhane, in partnership with the young formed G5 Sahel: Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. The 16th of July 2014, the franco-malien defense agreement is signed in Bamako, defining the general framework of the operation and “identifies the main areas of defense cooperation: exchange of information and regular consultations on security issues, education, advice, training and equipment” (Reuters, 2014). In 2017, the Strategic Review of Defense and National Security confirmed that the Sahel-Saharan region was “a priority for France in the fight against terrorism and trafficking,” and that “the long-term entrenchment of jihadist movements” threatened both the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa, especially since Daech had established itself in the region, that “the different Qaeda movements” had come closer together, and that the “risks of connection with Libyan Islamist groups and the permeability of certain local communities to Islamist influence” also had to be monitored. Thus, France had to ensure its security by taking the fight against jihadism to its new development zone: a “southern front” running through the Sahel zone – from Mali to Chad (Prost, 2019). In shifting to Operation Barkhane, the goal was no longer to push the jihadists north, but to ensure that local forces maintain control over their territory until they are able to do so alone. The presence of the French to this day in the tri-border area testifies to the failure, at least until now, of this objective.
Shy involvement of International allies
It is difficult to envisage a real international coalition in the Sahel, France having in most cases gone it alone. Although the European Union has been able to define a coherent global “security and development strategy” to solve the conflicts (Gaulme, 2013), its member states are reluctant to commit themselves militarily. In addition, the previous operations in Libya when France led alone the military initiative and the feeling that EUROFOR Chad was used to protect a dictatorship (Leboeuf & Quénot-Suarez, 2014) makes France’s European partners suspicious. Germany, which France is trying to persuade to join, is a perfect example. Since the Bundestag is much more competent nationally to define foreign policy than the National Assembly is in France, and since the German population is opposed to this operation, the blockage persists, and inaction takes hold (The Economist, 2018).
However, and this from 2018, some European countries brought their timid support in these operations, through the sending of equipment mainly, and some soldiers. Among these late allies were the United Kingdom, which, despite having the second largest army in Europe, sent only 90 men and a few helicopters, Estonia, the Czech Republic and Denmark. It was not until 2020 that Sweden confirmed the sending of a 150-man commando unit and 60 for Czech Republic (Lagneau, 2020). This reluctance can be explained by an inherent reluctance on the part of Europe to take part in real external conflicts by its objective of protection of the peace, as it has shown in the past with Libya. It favors policies of sanctions and incentives to settle disputes, as it does not have its own military force and the Europe of defense has shown its weaknesses on too many occasions.
It is also important to underline the support of the United States to this operation which provides the French with about 50% of the intelligence of the forces on the spot with the help of drones and the presence of agents in certain key cities such as Tamanrasset (Rfi, 2020). We can therefore see that despite some support, which is at times tenuous, it is impossible to speak of a real international coalition in the Sahel.
The demographics of the Sahel are also exponential, and its population could double by 2080. 66% of the population is currently under the age of 25 (Châtaignier, ibid), which poses a major problem of access to employment in very poor countries. This phenomenon is added to that of global warming which accentuates the scarcity of resources, making the Sahel a land without hope for young people. This inevitably leads to clashes between locals over property, but also to the development of an illicit parallel economy to compensate for the lack of jobs and prospects. We are then witnessing the creation of a “grey zone”, a phobia of the Western powers in that they generate migration, trafficking and pools of violence of all kinds. While the EU does not seem inclined to get involved militarily, the migration issue has raised its interest, generating a change in perspective regarding the issues at stake in the Sahel: migration issues have become a priority. Since Sahelian migrants are considered economic migrants, this is what motivated Europe to make massive investments in the countries of origin through the emergency trust fund (ETF). France and Germany individually did the same, with respectively the development public aid and the Merkel plan for Africa. The Sahel Alliance, created at the initiative of President Emmanuel Macron in 2017, also brings together an envelope of €6 billion to promote employment, investment, governance and security. It can therefore be observed that the international community, or at least the Western community, sees the Sahelian problem primarily as a migration issue, which explains the attitude of the European states.
A Sahelian jihadism like any other?
Jihadism in the Sahel, and in Africa more generally, has little in common with that which has plagued the Old Continent. A study of captured jihadists found that 57 per cent had little or no knowledge of religious texts at the time they joined their movement, and 71 per cent did so as a result of a murder or arrest of a relative by security forces (UNDP, 2017). It appears that, less than radicalization and adherence to salafist values as in Europe, African jihadism is a reaction to a tragic loss of confidence in local public systems. Far from a global context and a deterministic allegiance to an international organization, the Sahelian crisis has its own endogenous factors (Châtaignier, 2019).
First of all we can mention the difficult control of long borders and huge desert areas, with very low population densities, coupled with insufficient means dedicated to security. Indeed, the tri-border area (between Burkina, Niger and Mali), which constitutes a major strategic tripoint in the fight against jihadism in the region, is an area with hazardous boundaries, making any action delicate. Secondly, the corruption and clientelism that corrode the regal and financial administrations, whose means are already limited, and that allow trafficking in arms, human beings, drugs and medicines to flourish and spread from one country to another. Then the disintegration of the administrative structures of states, which has gradually lost the support of the population. The latter feels abandoned and neglected by authorities deemed corrupt, incapable of establishing a justice service and ensuring basic services such as health, education or security. The structural adjustments that took place at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, under the impetus of the IMF, which encouraged these countries to reduce their public social spending, have aggravated this phenomenon, slowing down or even making impossible the development of the region. Finally, extreme poverty, which affects between 40 and 50% of the region’s population (La Croix, 2018), the G5 Sahel countries are among the poorest in the world, as evidenced by their human development indices (HDI) (UNDP, ibid). Jihadism in the Sahel is therefore first and foremost a problem of governance that culminates in the expression of this unprecedented violence. It cannot therefore conform to a classical analysis such as those applied to groups in the northern Sahara, its history being much more rooted in local and tribal particularisms. Ethnic, regional or national particularities prevail over the religious argument, and the jihadisms do not manage to merge into a large African islamist movement that would finally achieve the unity of the ummah in the region (Pérouse de Montclos, 2018). If Western powers prolong their fight against jihadism as they might do in North Africa with a hard military fight against a single ideology, they will only make the situation worse. Indeed, Europe, to take this example, considers the Sahel as “the Southern Front”, as if it were a single geographical area with common stakes. However, by ignoring regional particularities and the oppositions between each of the jihadist groups, the risk is that the stabilization of the regimes will not be possible afterwards. Jihadism appears to be a cause rather than the source of instability. Without addressing issues of poverty, employment and demographics, violence will continue to occur, embodying the anger of a population that feels abandoned.
Jihadist affiliates in the Sahel are separated into two groups – to simplify their analysis. To begin with, the Islam and Muslim Support Group (IMSG) is the result of the merger of the four main Sahelian jihadist organizations linked to al-Qaeda: AQIM led by Yahia Abou Hammam, Ansar Dine led by Tuareg Iyad Ag Ghali, Al-Mourabitoune led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, and the Macina Katiba led by Peul Amadou Koufa (Lounnas, 2019). The creation of the IMSG can be read in several ways. First, it can be seen as a response to the creation, under the aegis of France, of a joint armed force between Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and Chad, better known as the G5 Sahel. Second, the IMSG can be seen as a response to the second great Islamic group, the Islamic State in the Great Sahara (ISGS) created in 2015, affiliated with Daech (ibid). The two groups have long been fiercely competitive, coming from different sensibilities. Ideologically, the IMGS, as an al-Qaeda affiliated organization, belongs to the Salafist-jihadist school of thought -via an individual jihad pledging allegiance to a Salafist group and whose goal is to return to an original Islam-, while the ISGS, as a Daech affiliated organization, is believed to be close to the neo-Takfirist school – followers of a violent ideology that considers Muslims who do not share their views as apostates. But after the fall of the Islamic State, both sides nevertheless chose to ally rather than kill each other in the face of common enemies that they themselves identify as Christians, Jews, and the French and their allies. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) has noted the collaboration of two jihadist groups (AFP, 2018). Thus, the ideological divergence between al-Qaeda and Daech, which has led to violent clashes in the Middle East, has no similar echo in the Sahel, which makes the situation even more special.
France Strategy in Sahel and current stakes
The French strategy in Mali and in the Sahel in general is largely based on its colonial past. Today, however, it is a view that sees jihadism in the Sahel as part of a global jihadist context in the Arab vein of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, as we outlined earlier. However, Operation Barkhane focuses on a few border areas between the G5 Sahel countries, far from the vision of a global cross-border threat. In these areas, the French army mingles with the national army on the one hand, but also with a myriad of militias and informal improvised armies that fight daily against the jihadists. On the other hand, the G5 Sahel Multinational Joint Task Force pales in comparison, depending on the respective national agendas of each country: Chad, for example, withdrew its troops from Cameroon in 2015, and Niger did the same in 2017, more concerned about its northern border with Libya, which is going through the situation we know (Pérouse de Montclos, 2019). The only multinational force on the ground is the UN peacekeepers, who unfortunately have suffered so many attacks that they have the highest casualty rate in the world (ibid). Algeria has proposed a mediation agreement with the aim of pacifying the area, but suffers from many flaws. First, the agreement is seen as a ploy by Algiers to secure its southern border, and second, the Malian president never submitted it to the people for approval, too concerned about his re-election in 2018.
This is the context of conflict that gets bogged down in which French operations have been taking place since 2013. The French have a fundamentally military vision of the area where, in order to “defend secularism”, it is necessary to oppose the Jihadist obscurantism. Their approach makes the effect of religious radicalism decisive, while it does not correspond, as we saw earlier, to the local realities of defending their family or being indignant against a system. A sense of injustice, social inequality, law enforcement abuses, the breakdown of basic public services, and the deep corruption of the state apparatus have all contributed to jihadist revolts in sub-Saharan Africa. However, this discourse does not manage to penetrate the French diplomatic spheres, because it applies to allied countries, and thus far from any suspicion.
France’s policies toward the Sahel are also extremely militarized, meaning a systematic use of armed forces. Yet France relies heavily on local military forces that carry brutal techniques that legitimize rallying to terrorists. In Mali the inability of government forces to resolve conflicts among pastoralists encourages the population to join the terrorists. Nowadays, the scorched earth strategy of counter-terrorism coalitions also sustains economic crises that undermine the resilience of populations and prolong conflicts (Magrin & Pérouse de Montclos, 2018). Moreover, France’s actions did not seem to meet the security needs as expressed by the population. Indeed, the so-called “jihadist” terrorism was not their main problem, knowing that from 2014 onwards the Aqmi nebula took care to kill mostly military personnel, more than civilians (Hanne, 2016). According to According to these surveys, the population was more concerned about agropastoral conflicts, the abuse of power by traditional chiefs, the exactions of the forces of order, petty crime, highway banditry, chronic unemployment, and the lack of and the lack of future prospects. Moreover, France is perhaps not the best placed to act. As a former colonizer, it is far from being perceived as a neutral or even disinterested force by the population – with regard to the exploitation of uranium for example. The presence of France, initially intended as a peacemaker, has sometimes led to tensions of its own. Indeed, the feigned anti-colonialism of terrorist groups is such that its presence has sometimes led to reprisals by these groups against villagers accused of collaborating with “occupation troops”. It was to compensate for this dislike of the local population that France, together with Germany, launched the Sahel Alliance, which we mentioned earlier, even encouraging the insurgents to retrain. However, this miraculous help is contested by many researchers, especially because it is based on the idea that ignorance and illiteracy is the matrix of terrorism, which tends to be countered by the sociological studies of its founders (Pérouse de Montclos, 2018).
The effectiveness of these pacification operations, and that of the fight against the terrorists in itself, are to be put into perspective. Indeed, it is difficult to observe that the situation is calming down; on the contrary, jihadist attacks have been multiplying lately, transforming the tri-border area into a real battlefield. The 6th of June, Jihadists massacred at least 130 people in Burkina Faso in a genuine plundering. The terrorists fired the houses, and slaughtered indiscriminately men, women and childs (Wall Street Journal, 2021). In Mali at least 11 Tuareg civilians were killed in the North East of the country (Le Figaro, 2021) by an unknown force: barbarism and vandalism now mingle with jihadism in northern Mali, highlighting the success of the French army. The latter is withdrawing temporarily, suspending Barkhane operations in Mali for an indefinite period. The reason is simple: a local warlord, Colonel Assimi Goïta, has declared himself the transitional president of Mali, after having staged two coups d’état in one year. In the first, officers overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on August 18, 2020, who had been weakened by months of protests led by the June 5 Movement – Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP), a group of opponents, clerics and members of civil society. Under international pressure, the junta committed itself to a transition period limited to 18 months and led by civilians. On May 24, Colonel Goïta, who remained the real strongman, trampled on this commitment by arresting the transitional president and prime minister, both civilians. The officer has since been declared president of the transition by the constitutional court (Le Monde, 2021). He affirmed his willingness to organize “credible, fair and transparent elections at the scheduled time”… In eight months! (ibid) Until then, the shadow hangs over the fate of civilians during this period, he who comes from a military socialization and having spread violence for so long. France sent a strong signal by canceling joint operations with the Malian army, but also by sending only delegates to the inauguration ceremony of the president, instead of real diplomats as is the procedure. It is not boycotting the ceremony, but it is sending a signal of discontent and warning. The Western country expects, among other things, a guarantee from the military junta that civilians will be heard and that elections will be held in 2022, if not earlier. The second point of contention concerns dialogue with terrorist groups: the newly self-appointed Malian president says he is open to dialogue with Salafist groups, which is unthinkable for France, which intends to repel and eradicate them. But the former Malian Prime Minister reminded us that the “inclusive national dialogue,” a broad national consultation held in late 2019 in Mali, “very clearly indicated the need for an offer of dialogue with the armed groups” jihadists (Le point, 2020), once again demonstrating the distance from local needs and desires. Anyway, the international community unanimously condemned the putsch, and the United Nations called for the immediate release of the civilian president to restore the rule of law as soon as possible (L’Express, 2020).
Recommendations
France thus finds itself trapped in fighting alone on the international scene, where its allies are beginning to look elsewhere. It is obvious that this situation of hesitation must not last, and that French diplomacy must work to find a rapid solution, which must avoid involving military action that would only make things worse. With regard to the situation in the Sahel, it seems wise to apply the two traditional theories of the 4Ds – Diplomacy, Defense, Development and Law- and the 3Is – Innovation, Inclusion, and Integration. The commitment is articulated around local, national, regional and international actors, each of which promotes readings that combine development, security and politics (Châtaignier, ibid). The establishment of an inclusive national army in Mali is an absolute priority to end the militias dynamic, but this seems really compromised with the new junta in power. The development of diplomacy also seems necessary to respond politically to the inter-community tensions at work in the country. The Development pillar focuses on the creation of sustainable prospects for the Sahelian populations, particularly for youth, in the face of a future that may seem hopeless. Funding initiatives must therefore continue and intensify. It is also essential to address the financing of terrorist groups and the causes of radicalization. Hence the adoption of preventive measures, such as “the promotion of dialogue and economic and social development […] without forgetting to invest in human capital, education and job creation”, which is one of the priorities of Alliance Sahel. This approach must also include a human rights dimension, referring to the fourth D of the integrated strategy. In addition to promoting access to essential services such as health, education, access to water and respect for international humanitarian law, human rights refer to the fight against impunity, the promotion of decentralization and access to justice. On this last point, some progress has been made (ibid). It is imperative that France take this approach in order to improve the situation in the Sahel and the living conditions of its inhabitants if it hopes one day to withdraw its troops and break this embarrassing deadlock.
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By Mahmoud Refaat: The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
