Sahel’s Security Crisis: the Fragile (Im)balance

Burkina Faso and Niger are holding elections in the midst of the coronavirus and security crises, and Mali is still grappling with its post-coup transition, how do they relate?

Against this background, the upcoming elections in several countries could actually represent an additional opportunity for Al-Qaeda. Let’s first take the example of the elections that already took place in Ivory Coast. The official winner is Alassane Ouattara, who secured a third term. The legality of the outcome has been highly disputed, prompting a boycott of the result by the opposition leaders and riots. The unrest that followed has been highly problematic, as it is increasingly drawn upon ethnic, communitarian and religious lines. On the one hand, the northern Muslim communities, perceived to be quite closed off, voted mostly in favor of Ouattara. On the other hand, the Christian and animistic communities mostly supported the opposition. While resilience factors exist, knowing that the issue of territorial control and competition over resources is also central to these divisions, any deterioration of the situation would have a serious impact over the entire region. 

As for the elections in Burkina Faso, more than in any other country, we can say that access to voting rights has been a major issue for many people across the country. Government authorities have been unable to reach large shares of their territories, and local armed militias should be expected to attempt to disrupt the post-electoral process. This is particularly risky for the Burkinabe government, which has been severely criticized for its inability to secure peace in the country. Hence, the security and alleged ability of the future government to restore peace and stability in the country will be key factors in this election. 

Presidential elections will also be held in Niger in December, in an equally unfavorable context of deteriorating public services and insecurity. The growing power struggles between these various armed groups are significantly threatening the integrity of the Nigerien state. Until now, the government has been holding together a somewhat peaceful equilibrium, through the coordination of multiple state institutions, security services, the army, but also traditional chiefs and criminal networks, in what Morten Bøås describes as a hybrid governance system. Any new government will have the very difficult task of maintaining this very fragile equilibrium. Niger remains an important diplomatic actor for Mali and Burkina Faso, and any post-electoral crisis would certainly have spillover effects, potentially triggering new armed rebellions. 

All that naturally leads up to an important question: if anything goes wrong, or if the electoral results are not accepted as legitimate, what will the army do? In Burkina Faso, where the army has been very much downplayed under former president Blaise Compaoré, there isn’t really a risk of it playing a detrimental role in a post-election context. That is not the case in Niger, where the army is on the one hand a respected institution, but whose leadership has also come under a lot of negative scrutiny for money and weapon mismanagement, human rights violations and extrajudicial killings against local civilians. In this context, the army freeing itself from its obligations towards its civilian electorate could be a dangerous prospect. 

A new 22.6 million euro budget was approved from the EU Trust Fund for Africa, in order to help stabilize the situation. What is your assessment of the EU's contribution to the region?

The EU’s cooperation with the Sahel does not stop at this budget. The EU has also announced that it would give 92 million euros to strengthen the response against coronavirus in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Niger and Chad. All in all, it is doing a lot to be perceived as a reliable partner that can bring short term responses to the most urgent needs of the population. However, there are increasing worries that most of this budgetary support might have a highly detrimental impact. There is a significant multiplication of actors and NGOs in the humanitarian landscape in Africa, and granted, EU funding is crucial for them. However, the success and actual impact of this financial outpour is hardly straightforward, and often exposes the degree of miscoordination and mismanagement between local actors. 

Funding that has been allocated to curbing the migration flows is a typical example. The EU made a number of mistakes in its conception of migration policies in the Sahel, which turned out to have significantly harmful consequences. The criminalization of migration in the region ended up making it more costly overall, dangerous and less possible to control by authorities. It facilitated a climate that is repressive of migration flows, but based on narratives of good governance and humanitarian needs. Yet as long as migration remains a government priority across the region it is a sure way to obtain funding and diplomatic support from the EU.

If the technical support that is given to local partners ends up being diverted by a kleptocratic and corrupt elite, it means that you’re creating a new rent out of migration. The same goes for the aid allocated to the fight against Covid-19 and terrorism (or the next crisis). The EU’s current approach echoes these same strategic mistakes, and risks reinforcing the same ill-functioning structures and practices, and in turn, strengthening the root causes behind a possible uprising within the army ranks. 

There is growing anti-international community sentiment in the region. Where does it come from and how is it to be reconciled with the international community’s prospects for the Sahel? 

This anti-international community sentiment in the region is indeed very much spreading, through social media, in the press, and sometimes also through political rhetoric. The international community must seriously assess the danger this poses to their presence in the region, and to their security operations. There is an amalgamation of a feeling of neocolonialism attached to the French presence on the ground, but also the success of conspiracy theories in very large portions of Sahelian populations. The international community is seen as collaborating with the political elitesto impose on the population a certain way of life, manifested in things such as "Western clothing", secularism, the use of French in the administration and so forth. 

One of the rallying cries in this regard is the shared belief that the French and international community are present in northern Mali, or in the Sahel in general, for their own political and economic gains, which range from the exploitation of Malian gold and Nigerien uranium, to the sale of weapons. Salafi networks have assisted in spreading many of these currents of thought, on social media, local radio and newspapers. Let’s remember that this is unfolding against a background of France’s alleged islamophobia. This very large amalgam is being used efficiently by Dr. Ahmad Lo in Senegal, among others. 

What we need to realize is that this sentiment won’t stop. There are backers who will feed into this narrative and continue to frame and structure this anti-French/anti-international propaganda. The role of traditional religious figures in moderating and mitigating such calls to violence is important, but I’m not sure that this time they will suffice to curb this trend. 

It is crucial to understand the ideological matrix of the multiple populations in the Sahel right now. The success or containment of the growing anti-West sentiment should be observed in the long term, and should be a key element in the way we communicate with these countries and their populations, and in the way we seek to protect the more vulnerable communities in the region. 

Copyright: OLYMPIA DE MAISMONT / AFP