The US’ West Africa And Sahel Challenge

 

BY LIAM KARR

Washington needs to counter Russian propaganda in the region, and highlight that a US partnership is a win-win for the Sahel and West Africa.

The Trump administration’s push for greater US engagement with West Africa is a smart move. The region is a focal point for geopolitical competition with China and Russia, counterterrorism efforts that bolster US security, and business potential for American investors.

However, the United States will face obstacles from within and without as it works to grow partnerships in the Gulf of Guinea, which lies along Africa’s western coast, and the Sahel, which includes neighboring landlocked countries in the lower reaches of the Sahara Desert. American officials should develop a framework that balances competing US priorities on defense, democracy, human rights, and immigration with the needs of regional partners.

To address counterterrorism interests, US officials have traveled to the Sahel to re-engage with the Alliance of Sahel States, comprising Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. In this region, defense is a top priority, as the United States and African partners seek to degrade rapidly strengthening Al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates. American military officials describe the Sahel as the “epicenter” of global terrorism and warn that these groups could develop the ability to attack the US homeland.

The military juntas that control the three countries distanced themselves from the West after taking power and turned to Russia for support. Niger’s junta kicked out 1,000 US troops who were helping fight the terror groups and assumed control over a $110 million US-built drone base in 2024. Russian private military corporation Wagner Group has troops in all three countries.

Russia’s failures have left these countries in need, but the military regimes’ poor democratic and human rights track records limit possible US assistance. US law restricts most foreign and military aid to coup governments until a democratically elected government retakes office. US law also prohibits government assistance to foreign security forces credibly implicated in gross human rights violations. These laws exist to align US aid with American strategic interests by avoiding American support for abusive security forces that can create anti-American sentiment and agitate insurgencies.

To bridge this gap, US officials should encourage their Sahelian counterparts to take credible steps to address these issues, thereby qualifying for waivers that would enable greater US aid. This will be a challenge, as Burkinabe and Malian security forces have perpetrated several atrocities that violate US laws, and all three junta leaders have repeatedly extended their stay in power.

How American officials frame the issue will be critical. US officials should focus on discussing human rights abuses as a shared security concern, given their counterproductive nature, instead of overemphasizing US values. Until then, US officials should focus on providing non-lethal assistance and intelligence sharing as legally allowed. This cooperation will facilitate more effective counterinsurgency operations, save lives, and rebuild trust with these partners.

Greater cooperation could unlock future opportunities for critical mineral access, although this is highly unlikely in the short term. While gold, lithium, and uranium deposits can be found across the Sahel, US companies are highly unlikely to invest given the precarious security situation. This authoritarian shift has also created a hostile business environment, further limiting US private investment.

Counterterrorism is also on the agenda in the Gulf of Guinea. Countries like Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Togo have sought to grow defense ties with the United States to help confront insurgents. They are seeking to distance themselves from France, and the United States can help ensure Russia does not further fill the void. All three countries receive funding from America’s Global Fragility Act and are becoming increasingly important US defense partners. Congress and the administration should ensure this trajectory continues.

Through strengthened ties, the United States can also open economic opportunities. The Togolese port of Lomé—partially owned by a multinational shipping company with US stakeholders—is poised to become a regional shipping hub and gateway. Côte d’Ivoire ranks among the top ten countries on the continent in terms of GDP and GDP growth, and can serve as a conduit for American investment across the region.

A clear approach is key to preventing Russia, which is playing a zero-sum game and seeks to lock the United States out, from playing spoiler. The Kremlin views its Sahel alliance as a strategic project to help strengthen Russian influence on the continent. Russia’s position in Libya and the Sahel creates a suite of opportunities—ranging from conventional threats to irregular tools, such as weaponizing migration—for Russia to destabilize Europe. The Kremlin’s growing inroads into coastal West Africa threaten US partnerships and strengthen Russia’s ability to project power into the Atlantic, posing a long-term risk for NATO and ultimately the United States.

Moscow’s favored strategy is to use pro-Russian politicians, civil society actors, and media to falsely portray America as an exploitative power—a tactic that consistent messaging and engagement from the United States can stymie. The Trump administration is well-positioned to speak the sovereigntist, “Africa First” language prevalent in West Africa, and capitalize on it by highlighting how a US partnership is a win-win for all involved. This framing can make clear—to African officials and the public—that any anti-US Russian activities are for Moscow’s benefit, not the region’s gain.

The United States will have to balance its immigration priorities as it works with these countries, having already restricted the entry of Nigerien and Togolese citizens due to high visa overstay rates. Benin, Burkina Faso, and Côte d’Ivoire could also face a travel ban—a move that has recently drawn backlash from African leaders.

The opportunities for the Trump administration in West Africa are numerous and go beyond efforts in the Gulf of Guinea and Sahel to include Trump’s summit with leaders of five other coastal West African countries in early July. However, the challenges in the Gulf of Guinea and Sahel are unique, and US officials must be prepared to deftly navigate internal obstacles while standing strong against Russia to make serious headway.

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Africa: Uprisings Against Western Exploitation Are Inevitable

BY ROGER MCKENZIE

IF WE want to understand what’s happening now in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and other places in West Africa that are rising up against colonialism, we could do worse than starting with the work of the great Walter Rodney.

Rodney argued that core colonial activities such as the mining of resources for the benefit of the colonial powers sped up the erosion of “traditional” African life.

Not only did the colonial powers steal the natural resources by ruthlessly exploiting the labour of colonised people, they also stripped away the connection of those people with the past.

The colonised were taught to see themselves in the same way as the colonisers saw them: not just inferior, but less than human.

The Tunisian writer and activist Albert Memmi once said: “The most serious blow suffered by the colonised is being removed from history and from the community.”

As the old brutal colonialism was always resisted, even as much of the history of resistance has been erased or left to the African griots to keep alive, the legacy of the exploitative system continues for both the colonisers and the colonised.

The winning of independence across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and elsewhere never meant freedom. So-called independence certainly never tackled the deep and lasting psychological attack on the formerly colonised peoples.

Colonisation continues to oppress nations attempting to develop economically and politically. But still the former colonisers believe that they have a divine right to interfere in the former colonies.

Of course, much of their meddling has been made possible by compliant leaders prepared to take the many pieces of silver and gold on offer from their former colonial masters to sell their country down the river.

Recent events in Niger and the general uprising in West Africa against the former colonial ruler France have also prompted me to re-read The Wretched of the Earth by the brilliant Frantz Fanon.

In this landmark book, Fanon makes the case for the right of colonised peoples to fight for their freedom by, in the words of Malcolm X, “any means necessary,” including violence.

This right, Fanon argues, is based on the notion that as colonisers generally consider the colonised to be subhuman they should not be bound by principles that apply to humanity in the way that they conduct their fight against the coloniser.

For Fanon, violent resistance to colonialism is inevitable as the presence of the coloniser is largely based on military strength. In fact, more than an inevitability, violence is something of a necessity imposed on the colonised by the colonisers.

As a descendant of colonised and, before that, enslaved people, I have every sympathy with people who live under the boot of oppression using force to remove the iron heel of their oppressor.

A glance through examples of colonial rule provides enough evidence of the vicious use of violence to enforce colonialism and the unfortunate need of the colonised to use force to resist their oppression and win their freedom.

The resistance to the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and their treatment of the Palestinians provides an obvious example.

I do not point the use of violence out with any glee. Far from it. But I have not been able to find a single instance where any country colonising another land has voluntarily given up that land out of the goodness of their heart.

Factors external to the colonised land, such as domestic troubles in the land of the colonisers or occupying forces being needed to quell attacks against their interests elsewhere, are amongst the reasons they might leave.

Usually, as far as I can see, colonisers leave because the colonised no longer co-operate with them and have made their lands ungovernable.

Given the response to non-co-operation to colonial rule is always, without exception, violent, that seems to me to leave oppressed people with little choice but to either take the violent response or resist it.

So, in many respects, the only surprising things about events in Niger are that it didn't happen sooner and that it is not more widespread given the way that colonial powers such as France still continue to profit off the backs of people in Niger.

Many people in Niger live in the sort of gut-wrenching poverty that many in the global North can only ever imagine. But they know their country possesses vast resources of gold and uranium that makes the global North, particularly their former colonial ruler France, both rich and powerful.

They also realise that “Fortress Europe” bars them from moving northwards to get a slice of the wealth that they helped to produce.

They see their country being talked of as an important strategic place where space-age drone stations are built from which attacks can be launched against anyone seen as an opponent of an empire many thousands of miles away — but not necessarily a foe of theirs.

They can easily see themselves being used as a pawn in someone else’s global game of dominance. But mostly they see themselves struggling to survive while others just get richer and more powerful off their backs.

France, in common with other European states, depends heavily on the uranium produced in Niger to fuel its domestic electricity supply.

Around a third of France’s electricity supply depends on uranium.

While the famous Eiffel Tower in Paris and many parts of France can afford to keep their lights on for show or even for security purposes, just 18 per cent of Nigeriens have access to the electricity that their hard labour has produced.

Niger is the world’s fifth-largest uranium producer.

Figures in 2021 showed that Niger provided nearly a quarter of the European Union’s uranium supplies.

The French nuclear company, formerly Areva and now Orano, began mining in Niger in the 1970s.

In 2021 one of the four pits, in the northern town of Arlit, closed down leaving thousands unemployed and the local population having to live next to around 20 million tonnes of radioactive mud on the site.

The soil and underground water tables are severely contaminated, but the local population of around 100,000 have little alternative but to continue drinking the polluted water leading to cancer and birth defects amongst other things.

It escapes me why anyone would think this sort of treatment in Niger, or the exploitation of people for cobalt, gold, diamonds and so much more in Africa will go unchallenged.

People always eventually rise up against exploitation and this is essentially what we are saying across parts of West Africa — the land of my ancestors.

The colonisers are still exploiting Africa; they need to remove themselves and allow any problems, within the artificial borders created by them, to be dealt with by the people of the continent themselves.

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QUESTIONS OF DEFINITION: CONFLICT IN THE WEST AFRICAN SAHEL AND IHL

LIEBER INSTITUTE, WESTPOINT

BY TOSIN OSASONA

This post is drawn from the author’s article-length work, “The Question of Definition: Armed Banditry in Nigeria’s North-West in the context of International Humanitarian Law” appearing in the International Review of the Red Cross.

Geographically, the West African Sahel region is the semi-arid expanse of grassland lying just to the south of the Sahara desert and stretching approximately 5000 km horizontally across Africa, from east to west. It extends from the arid Sahara to the humid savannah at around 10° North. This expansive region includes a substantial part of Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, and Niger, as well as the northern borders of Burkina Faso and Nigeria.

Across multiple indicators, the region is one of the most blighted in the world. The poverty rate is above 50% across all countries in the region, the area has one of the worst health outcomes obtainable globally and throughout the region, less than half of adult females are literate. The West African Sahel is also the most impacted by climate change, as temperature increases are projected to be 1.5 times higher than in the rest of the world, with only about 6% of the population having access to safe drinking water. Critical infrastructural deficits, food insecurity, wealth inequality, weak State capacity and unwieldy demographic growth have combined to make the region a center of concern for regional and global governance institutions.

While the region has huge natural resource endowments, its primary strategic relevance is in its capability to disrupt global security. A persistent and now expanding security crisis has made the region one of the top global conflict hotspots and home to some of the world’s fastest growing and deadliest terrorist groups. That the West African Sahel is one expansive theatre of many conflicts, with catastrophic humanitarian consequences, is a little contested fact. The crucial question remains the influence and ability of international humanitarian law (IHL) to protect the vulnerable in this complicated setting with multiple and often vaguely defined armed non-State actors. Do the fundamentals of IHL need to evolve to accommodate this new reality in armed conflict, or should the hapless victims of these conflicts seek solace in alternative avenues within customary international law?

Banditry as the New Face of Conflict in the Sahel

The starting point for conflict analysis and classification in the Sahel is the understanding that the situation in the region is complex and dynamic, with multiple conflicts intertwining and evolving over time. The complexity of conflicts in the region is attributable to several factors. Over the past decade, conflicts in this area have primarily taken place at the fringes and have been largely fought by non-State actors in pursuit of pecuniary ends rather than for control of State power. Also, a great number of conflicts in the region involve multiple stakeholders, including formal State actors, ethnic militias, private armed groups, and opportunistic criminal organizations. Many of these groups defy clear definition due to their unknown interests, decentralized operational structures, and vague political and economic agendas.

A third feature of conflicts in the Sahel is the dearth of information and knowledge about the nomenclature of these conflicts. These conflicts occur in remote and often inaccessible locations, so there is always the constant challenge of collating comprehensive information about the violence. There is also a critical gap in the documentation of organized violence in the region and data regarding casualties and victims are often unreliable or contested.

Despite the highlighted complexities in the region, conflicts in the Sahel in the last decade can be aggregated into four main domains: the fundamentalist Islamist insurgency driven by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), and Boko Haram; inter-communal conflicts driven by access to resources; conflict driven by organized criminal groups as represented by bandits and other outlaw groups; and clashes between State forces and militant armed groups.

From whichever perspective they are examined, conflicts driven by Jihadist movements and organized criminal groups have dominated the headlines. This post focuses on conflict driven by organized criminal groups. Nigeria’s most populous zone at the edge of the Sahel, the north-west geopolitical zone, is the site of a deadly conflict driven by groups of violent non-State actors, widely referred to as bandits. This security crisis is one of the most vicious in the Sahel, with the deaths of more than 13,000 persons in the last seven years, over 500 communities destroyed and more than 250,000 persons displaced.

Bandits are a loose collection of various criminal groups involved in kidnap-for-ransom, armed robbery, cattle rustling, rape and other sexual violence, pillage and attacks on traders, farmers, and travellers – particularly in Nigeria’s north-west region. Essentially, banditry is a composite crime. It underlines the absence of a jurisprudential definition of banditry as a crime in itself, although the component crimes are criminalized in extant legislation.

Organizationally, bandit groups operate independently; they do not have formalized structures and identities and are organized around personalities. There are instances of intergroup collaboration: operationally and resource-wise, bandit groups collaborate. However, there are also records of intergroup conflicts and turf wars between and among bandit groups. Profit and personal enrichment drive banditry rather than political, ideological, or any sectional interest. Bandits are indiscriminate in their attacks, and they have plundered different communities of faith and ethnicity across the region with the same levels of brutality.

While bandits as organized criminal groups are akin to the Russian mafia in operational outlook, with loose, opportunistic, flexible, and adaptive networks, there is insufficient information available on membership composition and group dynamics. According to different stakeholders, the number of active bandits in the region ranges from between 30,000 and 100,000 and the number of groups between 60 and 120. Banditry serves as a vivid emblematic representation of the nature of most ongoing conflicts in the Sahel. It predominantly takes place in rural out-of-sight communities, there is a paucity of information, it creates grave humanitarian impacts, and conflict is driven by shadowy groups of armed non-State actors. Moreover, like everywhere else in the region, there is lack of respite from national governance institutions and international human rights mechanisms.

Adequacy of IHL to Protect in the Sahel

The second dominant conflict in the region, the Islamist fundamentalist insurgency, clearly amounts to a non-international armed conflict, not only for the purposes of Article 3 common to the four Geneva Conventions but also in line with Article 1 of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions. However, violence unleashed across the region by organized criminal groups and other armed non-State actors, which has even worse humanitarian impacts, fails to meet the set jurisprudential thresholds for IHL to apply.

A non-international armed conflict is deemed to exist whenever there is “protracted armed violence between governmental authorities and organized armed groups or between such groups within a State.” Essentially, beyond the classifications provided by common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II, the cases of Tadić and Haradinaj et al.have provided jurisprudential direction on the twin thresholds of application: the level of organization shown by the non-State armed group and the degree of intensity characterizing the violence between this group and its adversaries.

It is the view of many IHL scholars that banditry and other non-ideologically driven acts of violence that predominate in the Sahel are excluded from the definitional parameters of armed conflict. According to an International Committee of the Red Cross Opinion Paper “in order to distinguish an armed conflict, in the meaning of common Article 3, from less serious forms of violence, such as internal disturbances and tensions, riots or acts of banditry, the situation must reach a certain threshold of confrontation.” According to Eric David, “the nature of hostilities and the quality of the actors are used as defining criteria to distinguish an armed conflict from banditry, terrorism, and short rebellions.” Also, Yoram Dinstein and Anthony Cullen distinguish between banditry and armed conflict in IHL.

While the catastrophic humanitarian impact of banditry is undeniable, it fails to satisfy the twin thresholds of intensity and organizational coherence established by case law and customary international law. Conflicts driven by bandits and other criminal entrepreneurs as part of organized criminal groups are therefore excluded from the application of IHL rules in non-international armed conflict. This leaves the question of how IHL (that primarily exists to promote humane standards of behaviour in situations of armed conflict) intervenes in Nigeria’s and other Sahelian security crises. If IHL does not apply, which body of law can interdict indiscriminate brutality by non-ideological armed non-State actors, particularly with the seeming impotence of many national governments across the region?

Banditry and Necessity of a Third Category

IHL recognizes only two categories of armed conflict: international armed conflict and non-international armed conflict. The prevailing consensus among jurists and courts as exemplified in the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld and the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision in the Targeted Killing Case, emphasizes that the constituent elements of the definition and the prevailing criteria for classifying these two forms of conflict cannot be used or interpreted to create new categories of conflict that are not covered by IHL.

Importantly, armed confrontation between and among other groups which do not fall into these strict categories cannot be treated under IHL as an armed conflict, but rather remain under the realm of domestic law or other domains of international law. This is very important in the context of the irregular conflicts that predominate in the West African Sahel, where the outcomes are often deadlier than those from regular conflicts. Organized criminal groups in the region are in conflict with communities, with other groups of outlaws and against State institutions, turning the whole region into an expansive battle ground dominated by hordes of armed men numbering in the tens of thousands and unbound by any laws.

This raises fundamental questions about the relevance of IHL in these 21st century irregular theatres of conflict and the ability of the laws of war to evolve with time. Unfortunately, the established rules of IHL exclude the humanitarian crimes of bandits from the current legal framework, raising questions about the ability of IHL and even international human rights law to confront future and evolving conflicts in the zone. Although IHL may not apply to banditry in north-west Nigeria and other conflicts in the region, the activities of bandits can constitute crimes against humanity, and they can be prosecuted nationally or by the International Criminal Court, whenever international and national politics allows justice for victims.

Spain PM In Morocco To Mend Ties After Western Sahara Shift

In this photo provided by the Royal Palace, Moroccan King Mohammed VI, center, Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, second left, Crown Prince Moulay Hassan, second right, Prince Moulay Rachid, the king's brother, right, and Morocco's Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, left, pose before an Iftar meal, the evening meal when Muslims end their daily Ramadan fast at sunset, at the King Royal residence in Sale, Morocco, Thursday, April 7, 2022. Sanchez is on a two-day visit to Morocco that promises to mark an easing of diplomatic tensions centered on Morocco's disputed region of Western Sahara. (Moroccan Royal Palace via AP)

BY JOSEPH WILSON AND TARIK EL BARAKAH

RABAT, MOROCCO (AP) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez traveled to Rabat on Thursday to meet with Moroccan King Mohammed VI seeking to mark the end of diplomatic tensions centered on Morocco’s disputed region of Western Sahara.

“Today is an important day for Spain and Morocco because we initiate a new phase of bilateral relations,” Sánchez said after meeting with the King before they shared, along with family members, the Iftar meal to break the day’s fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Relations between the two countries separated by the Strait of Gibraltar were severely frayed last April. Morocco was angered by Spain allowing the leader of the pro-independence movement for Western Sahara to receive medical treatment for COVID-19 at a Spanish hospital on request by Morocco’s neighbor Algeria, an ally of pro-independence Sahrawis.

Morocco responded by loosening its border controls around Spain’s North Africa enclave of Ceuta, provoking the unauthorized crossing of thousands of young Moroccans and migrants from other African countries.

The mood did not improve until last month, when Sánchez took the surprising decision that angered many of his political allies back home to alter Spain’s long-standing position on Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony that’s largely barren but rich in phosphates and faces fertile fishing grounds in the Atlantic Ocean. Morocco annexed it in 1976.

In a letter to King Mohammed, Sánchez backed Morocco’s plan to give more autonomy to Western Sahara as long as it remains unquestionably under Moroccan grip.

Morocco, in turn, sent back its ambassador to Spain 10 months after she was recalled.

After their meeting on Thursday, King Mohammed’s Royal Office issued a statement saying Sánchez “reaffirmed the position of Spain on the Sahara issue, considering the Moroccan autonomy initiative as the most serious, realistic and credible basis for resolving the dispute.”

The Royal Office added that the leaders “agreed in particular to implement concrete actions in the framework of a roadmap covering all areas of the partnership, integrating all issues of common interest.”

Facing immense political pressure back in Spain for the policy change regarding Western Sahara, Sánchez needed to show some real gains from the meeting. He emerged with a commitment by Morocco to “progressively” reopen the frontiers with Ceuta and its sister enclave, Melilla, which had been closed since the start of the pandemic starting at a date to be determined. Maritime traffic of ferries that carry hundreds of thousands of travelers from Europe to visit family in Northern Africa at holidays will also be reinitiated, Sánchez said.

The Spanish leader said that both governments agreed to hold another meeting of high-level officials before the end of the year.

Morocco has grown in strategic importance to Spain over the past decade. Rabat is considered critical both in the fight against radical jihadi groups as well as in holding back increasing numbers of African migrants who want to reach Europe as they flee violence and poverty.

Sánchez and Spanish Foreign Minister José Albares have insisted that Spain continues to support the resolution of the Western Sahara question via a United Nations-backed referendum.

But the drive to appease Morocco has earned Sánchez sharp criticism both in Madrid and in Algiers.

His Socialist Party on Thursday lost a parliamentary motion backed by all the other parties, including the junior member in the government coalition, condemning the tilt toward Rabat. Its political opponents accuse Sánchez of having betrayed the Sahrawi people while getting nothing tangible in return from Morocco.

“Morocco has achieved one of its permanent demands in foreign policy, but I don’t think my country has received anything in exchange,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the conservative leader of the main opposition party, after meeting with the primer minister ahead of the trip to Rabat and calling the government’s move “inadmissible” and a U-turn on 40 years of diplomacy.

Potentially even more problematic for Sánchez is the damage to relations with Algeria, which has recalled its ambassador to Spain in a sign of its continued support for the Western Sahara independence movement. Spain, while having a relatively low dependence on fossil fuel imports compared to other European Union countries, receives natural gas from Algeria via a pipeline and tankers carrying liquified natural gas.

Laurence Thieux, professor of Islamic Studies at the Autonomous University of Madrid, said that she was surprised by the “scant consideration of Algeria in the decision” by Spain to tilt toward Morocco in the Western Sahara dispute.

“I have the feeling that Spain’s government, like many other European governments, is managing crises that force them to take short-term decisions,” Thieux said. “From the other shore (of the Mediterranean) there is a different sense of time because they are authoritarian governments that have perspectives that stretch beyond the next election.”

___ Joseph Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain