Editor’s Note: Federica Saini Fasanotti is a historian and analyst specializing in contemporary conflicts, security dynamics, and the evolution of Western counterinsurgency thought. She holds a PhD in European society and international life from the University of Milan, where she also earned degrees in Contemporary History and in the History of Art Criticism. Her career bridges academia, policy advising, and international consultancy. She has provided expert testimony to the Council of Europe and the U.S. House of Representatives. Since 2023, she has been a member of the High-Level Groups at the Centre Condorcet in Brussels. She lectures at Bocconi University. She is a Senior Associate at ISPI and a specialist on Libya for the Geopolitical Intelligence Service. Her expertise has led to briefings at the Pentagon, including to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Her publications include monographs and edited volumes on counterinsurgency, armed groups, and the geopolitics of Libya, with works released by Routledge, the United States Naval Institute, and the Italian Army’s Historical Office. Dr. Saini Fasanotti’s research combines historical depth with strategic analysis, making her a leading voice on hybrid warfare, militias, and the transformation of modern conflict.
By Hafed Al-Ghwell, Senior Fellow and Director, North Africa Program
Examining the Sahel over a 20-year timeline, it becomes difficult to deny that something has gone profoundly wrong. If we conceive of the region as a single organism composed of distinct but interrelated bodies – its states – then what appeared relatively stable in 2004 had, by 2024, become afflicted by a widespread and deepening inflammation across nearly its entire surface. The clusters of red on conflict-tracking maps represent episodes of violence of various kinds, directed overwhelmingly against civilian populations. This phenomenon warrants interpretation on multiple levels.
Most immediately, it signals that national governments across the region have lost their grip on spaces increasingly contested by armed groups operating along social, religious, political, or purely opportunistic lines. In areas where the state is absent or where its presence manifests solely through systematic coercion, citizens inevitably begin to self-organize, attempting to compensate for their governments’ failures. The result is the proliferation of armed groups that erode what has, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, been a foundational attribute of sovereign statehood: the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. What emerges instead is what I have previously termed an “oligopoly of violence,” a fragmentation of the security architecture echoed by a multiplicity of localized micro-conflicts that resist containment. The resulting sociopolitical structure bears a striking resemblance to a neo-medieval order.
Structural Roots
The underlying dynamics, however, are considerably more complex. The structural roots of this endemic instability must also be located in climate change and specifically in the intensifying competition between sedentary farming communities and nomadic pastoralists driven by the progressive desertification of the Sahel. This environmental pressure is compounded by one of the highest fertility rates in the world: a predominantly youthful population coming of age in contexts where the state offers neither education, nor employment, nor meaningful prospects. The result is a near-inexhaustible recruitment pool for any armed actor willing to provide belonging, purpose, support, and social recognition. In states where citizens feel abandoned – or worse, actively preyed upon – young men tend to coalesce around larger causes, seeking both identity and social legitimacy. This dynamic has manifested not only across the Sahel, where civilians have organized into armed self-defense groups, but also in Libya and Somalia, two now-proto-states that stand as the most instructive examples of what the collapse of leadership ultimately produces.
The Militia Phenomenon: Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger
In Burkina Faso, the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), established in 2020 under then-President Roch Kaboré as a counter-jihadist instrument, numbered approximately 28,000 fighters by 2022 (see Human Rights Watch, 2023). Under President Traoré’s subsequent administration, the VDP were significantly expanded and elevated to the status of the country’s fourth military actor, yet they have increasingly operated against civilian populations, particularly targeting the Fulani ethnic group, thereby transforming what were ostensibly territorial control operations into a deepening civil conflict. In this instance, the militia did not position itself in opposition to the state; rather, it was absorbed into it. A comparable dynamic is observable in Mali, where the government has trained ethnically based independent militias.
Niger presents a somewhat different case: Nigerien authorities have, on multiple occasions, prohibited civilian armament – a stance informed in part by the experience of the Lake Chad Basin, where vigilante groups initially mobilized against Boko Haram gradually became a threat to the very populations they were intended to protect (see UNDP Lake Chad Basin Report, 2022).
The Geopolitical Reconfiguration
An analysis of the conflict map published by ACLED in March 2026 leaves little room for ambiguity regarding the gravity of the situation across the Sahel belt. The activities of jihadist groups – present and active in the region for decades – are now compounded by those of undisciplined armed forces, unaccountable militias, and foreign mercenary contingents. Equally consequential has been the destabilizing posture adopted by the juntas of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, which, following their respective coups, withdrew from ECOWAS and severed substantive ties with Western partners. France was compelled to withdraw its forces entirely, and the United States followed suit, abandoning its $110 million air base in Agadez, Niger in the summer of 2024.
The monitoring of Islamist extremism previously conducted by these Western presences has since been assumed by Russia’s Africa Corps, a private military company that succeeded the notorious Wagner Group following the death of its patron, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Security conditions, however, have not improved, as a series of recent attacks, particularly in Niger, demonstrates (see Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2024). China, meanwhile, constitutes another actor warranting close attention: While Beijing’s approach is diametrically opposed to Moscow’s – operating through infrastructure investment, extraction of mineral resources, and concessional lending – its expanding presence nonetheless shapes local power balances and deepens the structural dependency of regional regimes on external partners.
The Strategic Blind Spot
Medium-term prospects show little sign of improvement, not least because international attention has shifted decisively toward other theaters, driven mostly by the foreign policy priorities of the Trump administration. The analytical and diplomatic focus is currently concentrated on the Gulf and on the trajectory of the war against Iran, a conflict unlikely to be resolved in the near term, and one that has already generated reverberations across this part of Africa. Yet the impulse to look away from the Sahel will not make the region disappear from the global security agenda. The Sahel functions as a force multiplier of instability: migration flows crossing the Mediterranean, trafficking routes for arms and narcotics that fuel conflicts far beyond the region’s borders, and the demonstrated capacity of jihadist networks to project violence beyond sub-Saharan Africa are only the most visible dimensions of a broader structural crisis.
Solutions, if they are to be found, can be neither exclusively military in nature nor externally imposed. Two decades of Western intervention, led above all by France, have established this with sufficient clarity. What might prove more durable in resolving the vacuum of the international departure, are slower, less visible approaches: the reinforcement of local governance structures, sustained engagement with moderate religious communities that, in many areas, still constitute a credible bulwark against extremism, and a negotiated management of the tensions between agricultural and pastoral communities, tensions that climate-driven desertification will only continue otherwise to exacerbate.
Uncovering the Roots of Crisis in the Sahel
By Federica Saini Fasanotti
Middle East & North Africa
Why is the Sahel, from Mauritania to Sudan, slipping deeper into crisis despite years of international intervention? Violence against civilians is rising, governments are losing control, and armed groups are multiplying. This paper examines the structural drivers behind this breakdown, including climate change intensifying competition over land, rapid population growth with limited economic opportunity, and the erosion of state authority that fuels militia expansion and extremist recruitment. It also explores how shifting geopolitics, including the withdrawal of Western forces and the growing presence of Russia and China, are reshaping the region. As global attention moves elsewhere, instability in the Sahel continues to generate wider consequences, from migration pressures to transnational security risks. This analysis offers a clear and accessible framework for understanding the crisis and identifying more sustainable, locally grounded responses.
Editor’s Note: Federica Saini Fasanotti is a historian and analyst specializing in contemporary conflicts, security dynamics, and the evolution of Western counterinsurgency thought. She holds a PhD in European society and international life from the University of Milan, where she also earned degrees in Contemporary History and in the History of Art Criticism. Her career bridges academia, policy advising, and international consultancy. She has provided expert testimony to the Council of Europe and the U.S. House of Representatives. Since 2023, she has been a member of the High-Level Groups at the Centre Condorcet in Brussels. She lectures at Bocconi University. She is a Senior Associate at ISPI and a specialist on Libya for the Geopolitical Intelligence Service. Her expertise has led to briefings at the Pentagon, including to Secretary of Defense James Mattis. Her publications include monographs and edited volumes on counterinsurgency, armed groups, and the geopolitics of Libya, with works released by Routledge, the United States Naval Institute, and the Italian Army’s Historical Office. Dr. Saini Fasanotti’s research combines historical depth with strategic analysis, making her a leading voice on hybrid warfare, militias, and the transformation of modern conflict.
By Hafed Al-Ghwell, Senior Fellow and Director, North Africa Program
Examining the Sahel over a 20-year timeline, it becomes difficult to deny that something has gone profoundly wrong. If we conceive of the region as a single organism composed of distinct but interrelated bodies – its states – then what appeared relatively stable in 2004 had, by 2024, become afflicted by a widespread and deepening inflammation across nearly its entire surface. The clusters of red on conflict-tracking maps represent episodes of violence of various kinds, directed overwhelmingly against civilian populations. This phenomenon warrants interpretation on multiple levels.
Most immediately, it signals that national governments across the region have lost their grip on spaces increasingly contested by armed groups operating along social, religious, political, or purely opportunistic lines. In areas where the state is absent or where its presence manifests solely through systematic coercion, citizens inevitably begin to self-organize, attempting to compensate for their governments’ failures. The result is the proliferation of armed groups that erode what has, since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, been a foundational attribute of sovereign statehood: the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. What emerges instead is what I have previously termed an “oligopoly of violence,” a fragmentation of the security architecture echoed by a multiplicity of localized micro-conflicts that resist containment. The resulting sociopolitical structure bears a striking resemblance to a neo-medieval order.
Structural Roots
The underlying dynamics, however, are considerably more complex. The structural roots of this endemic instability must also be located in climate change and specifically in the intensifying competition between sedentary farming communities and nomadic pastoralists driven by the progressive desertification of the Sahel. This environmental pressure is compounded by one of the highest fertility rates in the world: a predominantly youthful population coming of age in contexts where the state offers neither education, nor employment, nor meaningful prospects. The result is a near-inexhaustible recruitment pool for any armed actor willing to provide belonging, purpose, support, and social recognition. In states where citizens feel abandoned – or worse, actively preyed upon – young men tend to coalesce around larger causes, seeking both identity and social legitimacy. This dynamic has manifested not only across the Sahel, where civilians have organized into armed self-defense groups, but also in Libya and Somalia, two now-proto-states that stand as the most instructive examples of what the collapse of leadership ultimately produces.
The Militia Phenomenon: Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger
In Burkina Faso, the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), established in 2020 under then-President Roch Kaboré as a counter-jihadist instrument, numbered approximately 28,000 fighters by 2022 (see Human Rights Watch, 2023). Under President Traoré’s subsequent administration, the VDP were significantly expanded and elevated to the status of the country’s fourth military actor, yet they have increasingly operated against civilian populations, particularly targeting the Fulani ethnic group, thereby transforming what were ostensibly territorial control operations into a deepening civil conflict. In this instance, the militia did not position itself in opposition to the state; rather, it was absorbed into it. A comparable dynamic is observable in Mali, where the government has trained ethnically based independent militias.
Niger presents a somewhat different case: Nigerien authorities have, on multiple occasions, prohibited civilian armament – a stance informed in part by the experience of the Lake Chad Basin, where vigilante groups initially mobilized against Boko Haram gradually became a threat to the very populations they were intended to protect (see UNDP Lake Chad Basin Report, 2022).
The Geopolitical Reconfiguration
An analysis of the conflict map published by ACLED in March 2026 leaves little room for ambiguity regarding the gravity of the situation across the Sahel belt. The activities of jihadist groups – present and active in the region for decades – are now compounded by those of undisciplined armed forces, unaccountable militias, and foreign mercenary contingents. Equally consequential has been the destabilizing posture adopted by the juntas of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali, which, following their respective coups, withdrew from ECOWAS and severed substantive ties with Western partners. France was compelled to withdraw its forces entirely, and the United States followed suit, abandoning its $110 million air base in Agadez, Niger in the summer of 2024.
The monitoring of Islamist extremism previously conducted by these Western presences has since been assumed by Russia’s Africa Corps, a private military company that succeeded the notorious Wagner Group following the death of its patron, Yevgeny Prigozhin. Security conditions, however, have not improved, as a series of recent attacks, particularly in Niger, demonstrates (see Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 2024). China, meanwhile, constitutes another actor warranting close attention: While Beijing’s approach is diametrically opposed to Moscow’s – operating through infrastructure investment, extraction of mineral resources, and concessional lending – its expanding presence nonetheless shapes local power balances and deepens the structural dependency of regional regimes on external partners.
The Strategic Blind Spot
Medium-term prospects show little sign of improvement, not least because international attention has shifted decisively toward other theaters, driven mostly by the foreign policy priorities of the Trump administration. The analytical and diplomatic focus is currently concentrated on the Gulf and on the trajectory of the war against Iran, a conflict unlikely to be resolved in the near term, and one that has already generated reverberations across this part of Africa. Yet the impulse to look away from the Sahel will not make the region disappear from the global security agenda. The Sahel functions as a force multiplier of instability: migration flows crossing the Mediterranean, trafficking routes for arms and narcotics that fuel conflicts far beyond the region’s borders, and the demonstrated capacity of jihadist networks to project violence beyond sub-Saharan Africa are only the most visible dimensions of a broader structural crisis.
Solutions, if they are to be found, can be neither exclusively military in nature nor externally imposed. Two decades of Western intervention, led above all by France, have established this with sufficient clarity. What might prove more durable in resolving the vacuum of the international departure, are slower, less visible approaches: the reinforcement of local governance structures, sustained engagement with moderate religious communities that, in many areas, still constitute a credible bulwark against extremism, and a negotiated management of the tensions between agricultural and pastoral communities, tensions that climate-driven desertification will only continue otherwise to exacerbate.
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