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Alumni Media

The US May Have Lost the Sahel – But Russia is No Savior

By Raphael Parens, Christopher Faulkner, and Marcel Plichta (Parens is a Fletcher alum and a Fellow in the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute)

On Monday, September 16, 2024, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) announced that the US had completed its military withdrawal from Niger, leaving behind only its embassy security detachment. Unlike the rapid and chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Washington’s exit from Niger has happened ahead of schedule and with little fanfare.

The US did not expect to find itself in this position. Policymakers walked a tightrope for several months following Niger’s military coup in July 2023, caught between condemning the coup and the potential blowback on a key regional security partnership. A diplomatic kerfuffle in March 2024 sealed Washington’s fate as a last-ditch effort aimed at discouraging Niger’s junta from working with Russia backfired. The Tchiani regime publicly condemned Washington for dictating terms and demanded a US military withdrawal. Since March, the US has been steadily shutting down its operations across the country. In early July, US forces withdrew from Airbase 101 in Niamey and vacated the $100 million-plus airbase in Agadez, Airbase 201, in August—well ahead of the September 15 deadline agreed to by Niger’s junta and US officials.

Washington’s unexpected retreat from Niger was just the latest in the great Western exodus from the Sahel. French forces, which had been the backbone of Western counterterrorism operations across the region for nearly a decade, had been unceremoniously kicked out of neighboring Mali and Burkina Faso before Niger’s military junta revoked its military agreement with the EU and broke with Paris in late 2023.

Pivot to Putin

In lieu of strategic military partnerships with the West, Sahelian regimes from Burkina Faso to Niger have pivoted to Moscow. Russia’s infamous Wagner Group first inked a deal with Mali, subsequently deploying in December 2021. This accompanied a significant foreign policy victory for Russia over France and the West, pushing out a ten-year French-led counterterrorism campaign and a long-standing UN peacekeeping mission. Now, Wagner’s presumed replacement, the Africa Corps, has opened missions in Burkina Faso and Niger. Yet, the latter two missions have been small—a few hundred personnel at best—and inadequate for providing the type of counterterrorism support that can degrade or even contain the region’s increasingly capable jihadist groups.

Still, the retrenchment of the West has afforded Moscow some symbolic and strategic wins with little in the way of genuine investment. Outside of Wagner’s 1,000-plus strong deployment in Mali, Russia has only rhetorically signaled its intention of bulking up its forces for the new Africa Corps. Recently, there have been rumors that the new outfit is on the verge of taking over Wagner’s operations in Mali. However, there is little evidence to suggest it will meet ambitious benchmarks for its new expeditionary corps. This is to say nothing of Russia’s limited economic investment in Africa.

In the meantime, while Moscow can cheer the Western withdrawal and Sahelian juntas can wash their hands of their former counterterrorism partners, Russia is no savior for the Sahel. Quite the contrary, rather than being an antidote for insecurity, Moscow is the poison that will ensure its persistence.

Worse than the West

On the heels of the US exit from Niger, terrorist threats continue to loom large across the region. Just next door, on the morning of September 17, 2024, smoke billowed through Bamako, Mali’s capital, after al-Qaeda affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM) militants attacked a military barracks. The unexpected strike, the first major attack in the country’s capital since 2015, underscores Russia’s failures in Mali. Years into this deployment, the Wagner Group has proven unable to secure Mali’s capital city, let alone other parts of the country. Although Western counterterrorism efforts were unsuccessful, Russian approaches are proving to be even worse, and the trajectory of violence in the Sahel is dire.

It is a truism that Western counterterrorism assistance was unable to quell the rising tide of jihadist violence inflicting Sahelian capitals from Ouagadougou to Niamey. For over a decade, counterterrorism operations anchored by France were largely unsuccessful. The inability to change the facts on the ground combined with poor strategic messaging, planning, and investment paved the way for the chaotic friction between Paris and its African partners. For a host of reasons, terrorists became more active and more violent despite the Western presence. A groundswell of popular support helped coup leaders ascend to political power. Russia capitalized on this reality.

But the Russians, and Wagner specifically, have little to no counterterrorism track record to speak of in Africa. Their relative success as a counterinsurgency force in the Central African Republic has been difficult to export and their only previous African counterterrorism deployment, an attempt to weed out an Islamic State affiliate in the Cabo Delgado region of Mozambique, failed miserably. Worse, their strategy—if one can call it a strategy at all—appears to be focused exclusively on trying to find a military solution to combat al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates when decades of counterterrorism studies and firsthand experiences show that terrorism cannot be defeated by the barrel of a gun.

Moscow has attempted to use nonmilitary tools to support Sahelian states in their plights against terrorists through hollow commitments of economic investment or through influence operations designed to garner support for Moscow and erode Western legitimacy rather than resolve insecurity. Online, Moscow-based disinformation centers run a variety of social media channels blasting the Sahel with pro-Russian and anti-Western content. The African Initiative, a new spin on Prigozhin-era disinformation operations, has stated that its main goal is to become the “information bridge between Russia and Africa.” While a disinformation pipeline funneling falsehoods may be useful for Russia, it certainly hurts its Sahelian recipients, particularly as terrorism and authoritarian governance continue amplifying.  

Moscow’s penchant for theatrics and slander pale in comparison to its brazen military approach to the Sahel’s insecurity. Moscow’s counterterrorism operations, spearheaded by Wagner and now Africa Corps, rarely accomplish objectives that benefit partner governments in any enduring and meaningful way. In Mali, their indiscriminate approach in targeting terrorists and engaging separatist groups only exacerbates conflict. But it is Wagner’s willingness to engage in previously off limits operations that has sold its value to partners.

Still, symbolic victories like Wagner’s support in the reclamation of the city of Kidal in November 2023 may appease Mali’s junta, but they ring hollow, doing little to resolve the fundamental issues that motivate separatists and terrorists alike. An ambush by Tuareg and JNIM forces against Wagner and Malian troops in late July near Tinzaouaten in northern Mali paints a more realistic picture of the complexities of the security landscape and Moscow’s limitations as a counterterrorism partner. The defeat, Wagner’s largest known on the continent, demonstrates a lack of strategic foresight in opening new fronts and a lack of shared vision with the Malian army. Such losses have hardly been assuaged in Burkina Faso or Niger where Africa Corps deployments appear more dedicated to propaganda activities than actual counterterrorism operations.

Fostering New Frameworks

It is easy and cheap to condemn Russia’s brash and ineffective counterterrorism policies, but citizens across the Sahel are suffering from an ever-growing array of security threats. Not only are civilians being slaughtered by violent jihadist groups who continue to make territorial gains, but they are also being massacred by increasingly brutal regimes who are actively encouraged by their new Russian partners. This is not just a problem for the Sahel; it threatens the stability of African nations on the Sahel’s periphery and drives large-scale migration into North Africa and Europe as people flee and security services buckle. A major problem for the US and European Union has been trying to balance the perception that African security is marginal to their interests with the reality that metastasizing violence in Africa is economically costly and politically untenable.

Strategic complacency from the West helped shape the landscape that allowed Moscow to exploit the fissures between Sahelian states and their former partners. There is little doubt that Moscow can pound its chest as a great champion for Sahelian sovereignty. Yet, its expeditionary experiments from Wagner to Africa Corps will not solve the pervasive insecurity that now defines the region.

Of course, there is no guarantee that Russia will abandon its new Sahelian partners in the near term. However, events like the Tinzaouaten defeat will pressure Moscow in ways it is ill-prepared for. Already, detachments from various volunteer brigades have departed Burkina Faso to return to Russia in support of the war in Ukraine. In the hierarchy of importance, Russia is far more concerned with its “near abroad” than with fledgling partnerships in the Sahel. At some point, Moscow will assess whether the strategic payoffs of investing in counterterrorism operations across the region are worth it. That reckoning may invite a recalibration that leaves capitals from Ouagadougou to Niamey isolated and shouldering the hefty counterterrorism burden alone.

There is little the US and Europe could or should do to try and kinetically dislodge Russian forces across the Sahel. Any boots on the ground approach would be met with Western domestic disdain and Sahelian outcry against threats to national sovereignty. That does not mean the US and Europe should stay asleep at the wheel. So far, the US is pivoting to littoral West Africa. Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Nigeria, Chad, Benin, and Senegal are all important partners in the fight to contain creeping jihadism; however, a new Western approach will require innovation beyond the stale military assistance model. This approach necessitates economic investments in education, infrastructure, and the information sphere. While jihadism is an immediate concern, such a whole-of-government approach will be critical in addressing future public health crises, the consequences of global warming on the continent, migration, and other unexpected developments in a key international hotspot. 

At every turn, US policymakers need to look at the problem as one of African security, not great power competition. Policy that solely exists to undermine Russia will accomplish little if the international community has no viable alternative. African leaders will be mistrustful of a return to Cold War dynamics at best and exploit it at worst. US policy needs to prioritize the security and welfare of American and African interests.

Image: US Air Force/1st Lt. Natalie Stanley

(This post is republished from Foreign Policy Research Institute.)

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