How Covid-19 Exposes the Wounds of the Sahel

One of the best examples of the link between the security crisis and Covid-19 must be examined in the case of pastoral communities, who have faced serious challenges long before the coronavirus outbreak. In the last decades, and even more so due to climate change, these communities have had to deal with significant fodder shortages and competition with landlords over land access, water and resources all across West Africa. Now, they also need to face the closure of markets and closed borders. This has been causing a major displacement of pastoralists to peri urban areas, adding pressure to the large metropolises, where criminality and impoverishment are on the rise, and where there is already a lack of basic services.

Pastoral and rural Fulani communities have also been heavily targeted by military forces and armed militias all across the Sahel. Human Rights Watch recently stated that 180 bodies, thought to have been killed by government forces, had been found in Djibo, in Burkina Faso. The men killed were mostly Fulani, the largest ethnic group in pastoral communities. Their grievances and sentiment of injustice has often been leveraged by terrorist organizations for recruitment purposes. Having long been discriminated against, and lacking access to basic services and economic opportunities, the Fulani are now especially exposed to the consequences of Covid-19. To bring the loop back to full circle, jihadist or criminal networks will probably find it even easier to recruit among young unemployed Fulani, based on their experience of ethnic discrimination and injustice in the face of this pandemic. 

Another example of the additional crisis that might be fostered by Covid-19 is the proliferation of counterfeit medicine. A high number of counterfeit testing kits and protection gear has been reportedly sold all across West Africa.Data on this matter is scarce, but most of this medicine is believed to originate in India and China, and enters West Africa through the Gulf of Guinea, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana and Senegal. The selling of counterfeit medicine in the region, especially tramadol and ephedrine, has been thriving for the last two decades. Coronavirus-related medicine therefore provides yet another financial opportunity for well-established illicit networks.

What impact has the Covid-19 crisis had on state authority across the Sahel? Has it eroded or been reinforced, why? 

State presence in the Sahel is complex and is debatable in many territories. As already mentioned, there has been considerable action taken by a number of state and extra-state authorities across the Sahel. Governments have implemented strict lockdowns, closed down airports, closed key passages in cross-border points and restricted them only for essential trade.

At the same time, we’ve seen that many of them have already lifted lockdowns, out of fear that the momentum, if not properly used, could have devastating economic consequences. Uninformed decisions undermine the imposition of lockdowns just as much as their easing. Both of them can increase the sentiment and reality of economic injustice that many segments of society already feel. Ultimately, what can be observed across multiple Sahel states is their inability to properly provide for their populations. 

As it currently stands, there are many areas in the Sahel that are deprived of food, health or education. Because of the severity of lockdowns, humanitarian access has become even more difficult as logistical hurdles now impede aid delivery. Due to the closure of schools, UNICEF has reported that millions of children across the Sahel have now lost their only stable access not only to education, but to basic nutrition and sanitation services as well. Restriction of cross-border movements has considerably limited market access and hampered intra regional trades in seeds and fertilizers. Curfews and closed markets have had harsh impacts on commercial trade upon which millions are dependent on. 

States have prepared response plans, accounting for millions of euros. Mali, for example, has put in place financial measures to support the agriculture sector. In Burkina Faso, small shops have opened in order to sell cereals, and Senegal has delivered a million food kits to the most vulnerable population. Several important donors have stepped up their intervention (ECOWAS, the World Bank, the WFP, AFD, and the EU’s "Team Europe" with its 20 billion support package to Africa). The implementation of any of these measures is however challenging, given the absence of state capacities in a lot of regions. 

It is important to mention that this erosion of the state in the Sahel is a dramatic consequence of the structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s. Under the Washington Consensus, the IMF and the World Bank imposed conditions on their loans to governments in the Sahel, to create attractive fiscal and monetary environments for foreign investors. These included eliminating tariffs and market liberalization, encouraging the privatization of state enterprises and encouraging the restructuring of local economies in order to foster comparative advantage in local markets, leading them to abandon their least profitable activities. 

States became overly dependent on international capital flow, which in turn was dependent on highly volatile international markets. It also meant that access to public positions became a matter of military power, foregoing any meritocracy. That enhanced corruption, kleptocracy and nepotism and considerably reduced the capacity of states to address the basic needs of the population. This brings us back to the present-day and the grotesque consequences of Covid-19. It is hard to imagine how the state can efficiently respond to the crisis, and absorb the millions of euros that it will receive in aid, equipment and food, when there is such an endemic level of corruption and diversion of public money. 

A lot of these questions remain unanswered right now by international institutions. Blindly giving international aid and support to local authorities could potentially just trigger additional issues. If Covid-19 just becomes yet another source of income for local governments, it will only reinforce the existing security issues and further destabilize state capacity.

What has been the role of non-state actors (local leaders, religious leaders, communities, militias, NGOs) facing Covid-19?

We’ve seen that the presence of international actors and development agencies has been important. In terms of local authorities however, we cannot ignore the armed groups and organized crime. As far as criminal networks are concerned, their operation has barely been affected by the response to Covid-19. They have strong territorial implementation and strong capacity to transport either illicit drugs, weapons or counterfeit medicine. In many ways they were already prepared for the crisis. 

Precisely because of that, if these illicit networks are overlooked, the consequences could be devastating. At the end of the day, criminal networks will be reinforced by this crisis. The informal sector will play an important role in providing food and basic wages, and informal jobs in illegal mining, logging and hunting will be even more attractive for a lot of young people across the region. 

As for terrorist groups active in the Sahel region, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State subsidiaries have both peddled conspiracy theories about the origin of the virus, which they frame as divine punishment against the Chinese and Occidentals because of their "oppression and repression against Muslims". Internally, however, they have however managed the crisis differently. Following Al Qaeda’ senior leadership, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which has its very own centralized health department, was very quick to draft and implement health measures, which goes to show how well-oiled the jihadi machinery really is. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara has had more difficulties on the other hand. Instead of reacting quickly and pragmatically, the IS-GS decided to rely mostly on Quranic and prophetic medicine.

Obviously the expansion of Al Qaeda and the IS-GS have had serious effects on the capacity of the state to respond to the crisis. They’ve blocked humanitarian aid in conflict areas, and are also controlling borders. A third of Burkina is controlled by armed bandits and local militias. On the contrary to Al Qaïda, Abdoul Hakim al-Sahraoui, a commander of IS-GS, has deliberately targeted civilians as well as humanitarian workers. On July 5 a UN aid helicopter was shot down in northeastern Nigeria, by suspected Islamist extremists. Unsurprisingly, many NGOs have suspended their activities as a result. 

In parallel, there is another group of non-state actors that has seen its influence grow during the Covid-19 crisis: religious leaders. In Senegal, Macky Sall forbade social gatherings of any kind apart from in mosques.The fact that the opinion of religious actors becomes such an important element in public policy is revealing. If imam Mahmoud Dicko in Mali would not have recommended the measures of the WHO, many people would not have followed them. States have therefore found themselves needing to negotiate with such actors in order to maintain legitimacy and efficiency in their response to the crisis. 

The influence and presence of islamic NGOs and charities has strengthened and expanded as the result of this situation. They are well structured, well funded and actively collaborate with local decision-makers. Moreover, they have managed to grow considerably in terms of territorial influence thanks to the outreach of their social services. Some of these religious NGOs have built maternity hospitals where no other institutions are present, and they provide massive medical donations all across the Sahel countries. Salafi associations conduct medical caravans in rural areas that have been abandoned by the state, making them indispensable in the fight against Covid-19. Far from basic religious zealots, they are extremely important and efficient social actors upon which a lot of communities rely on. This crisis has highlighted the genuine need for their presence, as well as their social and political power.

Copyright: Nicolas Réméné / AFP