French President Emmanuel Macron recently sat down with the leaders of the five Sahel countries of Africa to declare a dubious success against jihadist terrorist groups in the region.
For more than six years, some 4,500 French troops had been battling the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and the al Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nasr al Islam wal Muslimin. The groups were controlling territory and recruiting in a vast, ungoverned space broader than the length of the U.S. border with Mexico and wider than the state of Texas.
France’s Operation Barkhane was spread thin but making progress training a joint force of African troops known as the G5 Sahel, comprising soldiers from Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania.
But violence was ticking up — and spreading.
Attacks against civilians, U.N. military trainers, and native forces were on the rise. Instability plagued Burkina Faso and threatened West Africa’s economically important coastal states.
France ordered 600 more soldiers to Barkhane in February.
“We couldn’t let a terrorist regime set up at the doors of Europe,” French Army Col. Frederic Barbry told the Washington Examiner in a video chat from the French Joint Defense Staff headquarters in Paris.
“We still think that the security in Europe derives directly from the stability in that region,” he said through a translator. “The turning point of Operation Barkhane took place six months ago.”
That’s when France secured the commitment of 11 European nations to send combat troops to the Liptako region, covering areas of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, as part of its new Task Force Takuba.
Estonian Navy Capt. Sten Sepper told the Washington Examiner that the commitment is urgently needed.
“The situation in the Sahel after 2017 has changed dramatically, and radicals have been rising to an unacceptable threat level to the entire region [and] into Europe,” he said, noting Estonia’s commitment of 50 troops to Takuba.
Sepper recalled visits with U.N. forces that year to the Malian capital of Bamako in the south of the country and Timbuktu in the north.
“You could see that there is something wrong. In the city picture, not so much, but if you went up to Timbuktu, the picture was totally different,” he explained. “It’s hard conditions to go outside the roads. It’s sand. You need to have special equipment. It’s very easy to conduct some ambushes.”
He continued: “In those 5,000 forces of Barkhane, it seems to be not enough because it is a huge, huge area.”
Special Operations Command Africa commander Maj. Gen. Dagvin Anderson told the Washington Examiner that coordination with the Europeans is helping reduce America’s footprint in the region while still keeping an eye on growing threats.
“I’m especially concerned about al Qaeda affiliate JNIM, who is quietly continuing to expand and consolidate gains across the region, he said. “We assume great risk if we don’t maintain an awareness of threats such as al Qaeda and Islamic State in the Sahel.”
African forces not ready
Experts say the United States and Europe are preventing terrorists from taking control of the weak states in the Sahel that native armed forces may need years of training to protect on their own.
“One cannot say according to these statistics that the situation has really improved. It can spread very well to neighboring countries,” Kalev Stoicescu of the International Center for Defense Studies told the Washington Examiner by phone from Tallinn.
Stoicescu said that marginalized people in the Liptako are offering support to terrorists and rely on multifaceted sources of revenue.
“The only thing you can do is try to win the populations on which they support, to win their hearts and minds not to support terrorists, and that is very difficult,” he said. “Without the U.S., it would be very, very difficult — if at all possible — to do certain things.”
He added: “If the Westerners pull out militarily, then I think it’s going to crumble in the chaos there. That is the idea of Talibanisation.”
Judd Devermont, the director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner that, like ISIS’s goal of a caliphate, the terrorist groups in the Sahel have big aspirations. Some even controlled northern Mali until the French pushed them out in 2012.
“It is a coalition of different groups that work together. It is operating in multiple countries. There are various ethnic groups,” he said.
Devermont said the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists also preach in the local languages of Burkina Faso and southern Mali.
“[The coalition] is particularly effective at finding latent divisions within communities, exploiting them, and then taking territory or exercising informal control of the region,” he explained. “They have almost two decades now of experience on the ground and governing.”
AFRICOM support at risk
U.S. Africa Command has approximately 1,200 troops spread across West Africa and provides vital intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance support to the Europeans, but a blank slate review of the combatant commands due in September could pull that vital support from the Europeans.
Barbry described U.S. capabilities as “essential and critical” in the theater, noting that the U.S. provides 40% of its in-flight resupply, 10% of tactical lift needs, and a classified but “essential” degree of intelligence support.
“We make the most of your UAVs and have very fruitful intelligence exchanges,” he said.
In early June, U.S. intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance helped the French launch an operation in northern Mali that killed the leader of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Abdelmalek Droukdel, and several of his top associates.
“For the neutralization of Droukdel, it was very significant,” Barbry underscored.
Sepper said the success of Barkhane is in protecting local populations and helping native forces hold areas that were recently under terrorist control. He also said American ISR is effectively helping to shrink the vast area.
“You need to have very good intel, a very, very good aerial intel picture, to be able to start to conduct the right operations in the right time — where are the radicals training areas?” he said.
A State Department official told the Washington Examiner that Sahel countries will have to step up before military assistance can create lasting improvement.
“The state’s role in governing, including providing services and earning the trust of all citizens, is equally if not more important for the establishment of a state’s authority and for stability and security,” the official said.
Between 2017 and 2019, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development gave out approximately $700 million in health and development assistance to the G5 Sahel member nations and $519.6 million in humanitarian assistance to the region.
A special envoy for the Sahel, appointed in March, helps assure that the aid is creating responsive governments.
Anderson said that as distant as the region is, preventing a terrorist safe haven like Afghanistan once was is vital to American national security.
“The threats in the Sahel will not stay contained in the Sahel without engagement,” he said.
The American military partners with both French and African forces to contain the al Qaeda threat, he said, noting the recent Pensacola shooting was coordinated by a terrorist group.
“Despite the great work done by France, the U.S., and other partners, the efforts in the Sahel have lacked unity up to this point,” Anderson said.
“I think Takuba will help unify the disparate efforts in the region by operationalizing the Malian forces allowing greater progress,” he added.
With the U.S. withdrawing troops from Germany and considering pulling back soldiers from outposts around the world, the U.S. commitment to the far-flung Sahel is far from assured.
Anderson cited Niger, where the U.S. has a $100 million drone air base, as an example of successful partnership.
“All of the African leaders I’ve spoken to want peace and stability in their nation,” he said. “But they need substantial help to get it.”
Meanwhile, the French are committed to long-term progress to train native forces and encourage more European partners to help.
Sepper summed up the danger of retracting from the Sahel: “Even if it doesn’t improve that much, at least it doesn’t get worse.”
