The Sahel: Europe’s Front in the War on Terror
Robert Cole
Few regions get less media attention in western media than the Sahel. Located between the Sahara desert to the north and the Sudanian savanna region to the south, it spans a vast land area in the middle of Africa. This is not for lack of western involvement in the region, most notably French colonialism, which ended in 1958 in Mali and Chad, two of the largest Sahelian states. Nor is it for lack of relevance to western interests and security. The region is a major smuggling route for cocaine traffickers supplying the European market, as well as the base for both ISIL and al-Qaeda affiliate groups.
In particular, Mali and Chad have experienced extreme instability recently, with two coups in a year in Mali and the death of Chad’s president Idriss Déby in a combat zone in April. International military forces are present in both nations, led by France. The UN mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA, has proven to be the deadliest ongoing UN mission in the world. The continued instability and looming spectre of Islamist takeover should sound familiar as America ends its decades-long engagement in Afghanistan, and in many ways the international military presence has been similar, seeking to prop up friendly rulers while fighting back any attempts by extremist groups to seize power. France has gone as far as endorsing the suspension of Chadian democracy in the name of stability.
Similar too has been the apparent endgame plan. Mere weeks before the end of the US presence in Afghanistan, France announced it would be halving its military presence in the Sahel even as the political situation in Mali worsens. The decision is also likely driven by a domestic lack of enthusiasm for an intervention which has yielded few tangible results. President Emmanuel Macron is also facing elections in April, and preventing French casualties between now and election day is likely high on his list of foreign policy priorities. His rhetoric on the Sahel however does not appear to reflect the important role the region plays in European security and does not seem to take seriously the implications of further destabilization of the region. His claim that “France doesn’t have the vocation or the will to stay eternally in the Sahel” seems to discount the humanitarian and geostrategic consequences of abandoning the region, while also offering coalition partners little incentive to continue working with the existing French presence.
Beyond the consequences for European and Sahelian security, the issue has implications for broader French diplomatic objectives. Much like the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the situation risks increasing skepticism of French reliability as a future coalition partner and security guarantor. Given the recent diplomatic crisis over the US-UK-Australian submarine deal and subsequent French calls for independent EU security, a Sahel failure would undermine the French message. How France chooses to handle events as the unfold in the Sahel could therefore have serious implications for the future of not only Europe and Africa, but the future of global security.