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The Sahel region of Africa has undergone a dramatic transformation into the world’s epicenter for extremist violence, responsible for 51 percent of global terrorism fatalities in 2024. Put simply, this translates to nearly 4,000 deaths in a single year, and nearly 20,000 since 2019. Such a rapid surge, from a mere 1 percent of terrorism-related deaths worldwide 18 years ago, is not an organic flare-up of insurgency but the direct outcome of calculated maneuvering and the wholesale collapse of traditional security frameworks.

Firstly, the unraveling of the Sahel accelerated following the withdrawal of an increasingly unwelcome, yet persistent, French security presence and a much more muted UN stabilization mission. Together, these interventions fielded approximately 13,000 personnel and spent billions in the hopes of stabilizing this restless region.

Into the inevitable vacuums created when the last French boots departed stepped enterprising, externally backed paramilitary forces, the deployment and goals of which aligned less with counterinsurgency success than with mineral extractions and the cultivation of political influence.

Concurrently, Islamist factions — in particular Al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam Wal-Muslimin (or JNIM) and Islamic State Sahel Province, professionalized their operations, capitalizing on communal grievances, corrupt governance, and vast ungoverned spaces to entrench their control over rural territories and sprawling illicit economies.

The result? A self-perpetuating ecosystem of violence in which militant groups, foreign mercenaries and national armies vie for dominance, effectively rendering the Sahel a laboratory for hybrid warfare and a woeful monument to the failure of conventional counterterrorism.

In hindsight, while France’s approach was rightly criticized for its operational limitations and perceived paternalism, its presence nonetheless maintained a tenuous degree of containment, securing key urban hubs and border zones. The void created by the French departure resulted in an actively contested battlefield that was immediately weaponized by extremist formations to execute brutal territorial expansion campaigns buoyed by intercommunal fractures.

In the wake of this we have seen a security collapse of historic proportions. In Niger, for example, fatalities related to militant violence nearly doubled to 930 in 2024, while military casualties alone reached 499, the highest national toll among security forces worldwide. Burkina Faso experienced a relentless onslaught in which JNIM-attributed deaths surged by more than 50 percent.

Such escalations were the natural result of these groups exercising relative operational freedom following the erasure of the minimal, but critical, deterrence that had previously confined the conflict to rural peripheries.

Into this chaos stepped the Africa Corps, a rebranding of the infamous Wagner Group, the Russian state-funded private military group. It offered security partnerships to junta leaders in exchange for mineral rights and a platform through which to challenge perceived Western overreach and hegemony. Now, its arrangements with Sahelian counterparts prioritize resource extractions and the “coup-proofing” of regimes over any meaningful counterinsurgency efforts.

These deployments are accompanied by sophisticated disinformation networks. In Burkina Faso, for example, eight distinct foreign-influenced campaigns have targeted more than 28 million social media users. Such operations have eroded any residual trust in Western-backed interventions, institutions and democratic norms, entrenching the type of chaos and despair that creates entry points for non-state actors adept at exploiting governance and security vacuums.

Recent reports confirm that Al-Shabaab in Somalia has received military equipment and training from the Houthis in Yemen.

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Any security dividends that were promised have proven to be a mirage. In Mali, for instance, the Africa Corps contingent has dwindled to an estimated 1,000 personnel, a fraction of the international presence that preceded it. It has been routed in key engagements, such as an ambush in July last year that killed 84 foreign troops near the border with Algeria.

Across the region, far from being contained, militant extremist factions have expanded their control of territory to an estimated 950,000 sq. km, approximately equivalent to the size of Tanzania, and the frequency and audacity of their attacks have increased.

The groups’ brutal tactics have further militarized the environment. Malian and allied foreign forces have been responsible for 82 percent of all civilian fatalities in the past year; a perverse approach to counterterrorism that serves as a potent recruitment tool for the very groups they purport to fight. This is not a security partnership but a predatory enterprise that accelerates the disintegration of the region.
Moreover, the accelerating professionalization of militant violence in the Sahel represents a dangerous new phase in global insurgency, characterized by the external transfer of advanced tactical capabilities.

This is not an organic evolution but is facilitated by a form of Islamist “outsourcing” in which expertise in drone warfare, precision targeting, and complex logistics is brokered by external actors. For instance, recent reports confirm that Al-Shabaab in Somalia, which generates an estimated $200 million in annual revenue, has received military equipment and training from the Houthis in Yemen, including armed drones and ballistic missiles.

Such knowledge transfers are only a small part of the evolution of dynamics in the Sahel that result in tangible effects on the battlefield. JNIM’s lethality rate, for example, has reached an unprecedented average of 10 fatalities per attack, making it the deadliest terrorist group in the world. Its operational sophistication is demonstrated by its ability to launch coordinated, multistage assaults on high-security targets in national capitals such as Bamako.

This tactical convergence, in which groups across continents adopt standardized drone operations and complex armaments, signals an erosion of the technological and doctrinal advantage once held by state security forces, and creates a level battlefield on which militant groups can contest control over vast territories with increasing effectiveness.

The long-term implications of these shifts are dire. Security vacuums have allowed terrorism to metastasize southward toward coastal West Africa. Benin and Togo have experienced a 250 percent increase in violence linked to Sahelian militant groups over the past two years. JNIM claimed responsibility for attacks that killed 41 people in Togo in 2024, for example.

This expansion threatens to undo decades of development progress. In Burkina Faso, 6,100 schools have closed as a result of insecurity, while in Nigeria’s Borno State, one-third of health facilities have been destroyed, leading to surges in child mortality and preventable diseases.

Furthermore, the political instability is now self-reinforcing; military juntas in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have formed alliances to insulate themselves from any mechanisms for enforcement of accountability.

The response of the global community so far has been fragmented and ineffective. Western counterterrorism initiatives have prioritized military solutions over governance reforms, neglecting root causes such as poverty, climate change, and ethnic marginalization. Regional partnerships such as the G5 Sahel have collapsed, while UN missions such as the Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali have been forced to withdraw, resulting in further destabilization in areas previously under their protection.

The repeated tragedies in the Sahel are testament to the folly of treating militant extremism as a purely military challenge. As non-state actors proliferate and professionalize, and are measured by escalating violence spilling into neighboring regions, the world must recognize that without inclusive governance, sustainable economic development, targeted aid, and community-led security, the Sahel will remain a breeding ground for global terror and a harbinger of devastating conflicts to come.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is senior fellow and program director at the Stimson Center in Washington D.C. and senior fellow at the Center for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies. X: @HafedAlGhwell