Sahel : what assessment can be made of operations serval and barkhane?

Eight years after setting foot on Malian soil, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a reduction in France’s military presence in the Sahel region. “We are going to initiate a profound transformation of our military presence in the region,” he declared at a press conference, referring to the five thousand soldiers deployed under the framework of the French Force Barkhane (FFB) to combat jihadist groups. Accelerated by the deterioration of relations between Paris and Bamako, it was without much glory that the French withdrawal was ultimately announced on 17 February 2022, while the head of operations oversaw the repatriation of the first troops.

The Sahel region, or Central Sahel, encompasses several African countries: Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Chad. Since the 2010s, it has been experiencing a severe humanitarian crisis, and its population has been facing multiple armed conflicts from which civilians cannot protect themselves, leading to massive internal displacement.

Who are the actors in these conflicts, what causes are they fighting for, where do they come from, and how are they trained? Finding answers to these questions is essential in order to understand the reasons for the French presence, its operations, and their overall assessment.

Mali, a jihadist breeding ground

Among these five African countries, one in particular poses a problem. It is toward Mali that French soldiers direct the bulk of their efforts. Since 2012, three major jihadist groups have been present there, mainly in the north. The group AQMI (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), of Algerian origin, relocated there after being pushed southward out of its home territory by the anti-jihadist policies implemented by President Bouteflika. MUJAO (Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa) was founded in Mali in 2011 by former AQMI members who decided to break away. Finally, the armed group Ansar Dine, created more recently in 2012, has its roots directly in Mali. To confront them, a small portion of the 56,000 Malian soldiers cooperates with French troops and their allies.

While it does indeed come to the aid of populations in distress and facing violence, French—and to a lesser extent European—intervention is not driven solely by benevolence or a sense of duty. Similarly, there are clear reasons explaining the extent of jihadist power in the region, its effectiveness, and the support it receives from various actors. This armed conflict pits its participants against one another in a far more complex way than a simple divide between terrorists and soldiers. To understand it, one must rewind the film of Malian history.

Instability in northern mali, between separatists and jihadists

Mali is the main theatre of operations in the Sahel. Like most African countries, its borders were drawn during the colonial partition, and it only gained independence in 1960. These borders therefore have little to do with the logic of a nation-state. Within its population of 18 million, various communities coexist, whose interests, histories, and rivalries shape national politics. It is in the north of the country that tensions have emerged. For some sixty years, Tuareg groups have been demanding independence. Ignored and scarcely considered by Bamako and its policies, the Tuaregs of the north launched several rebellions between 1963 and 2012 (1963, 1990, 2006, 2012).

It was in the north that the first jihadists exploited the separatists’ sense of abandonment in order to conquer territory and assert their authority. The porous boundary between these two groups led them to assist one another, then to break alliances and form new ones according to their shared interests. The founder of the jihadist armed group Ansar Dine, Iyad Ag Ghali, who originally fought within a separatist movement, used his network to promote jihad with notable effectiveness.

In northern Mali, three main actors thus pursue different struggles. Jihadists work toward the establishment of an Islamic state governed by Sharia law; Tuaregs fight for regional autonomy; and the Malian state seeks to reassert its authority. This lawless zone politically and economically excludes impoverished populations, who sometimes choose to join jihadist or separatist rebel groups—more often out of survival instinct than ideology.

The libyan question

To bolster their ranks, these rebel groups also recruited fighters from… Libya. After the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, celebrated by former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a large part of the Libyan army found itself without command and joined jihadist groups, bringing with it weapons, military equipment, combat experience, and training techniques. Northern Tuaregs who had served as mercenaries also returned “with rifles on their backs,” dreaming of breaking away from southern Mali, with which they had never identified, and proclaiming the independence of Azawad as a new autonomous region.

While these lines outline the relationships among armed groups, the reality is far more complex. The extreme fragmentation of jihadist movements into numerous sub-categories and battalions makes them difficult to identify. Effective local leaders allow for easy replacement of leadership when one figure is eliminated. Their deep knowledge of the terrain and high degree of autonomy enable the jihadist hydra to continue extending its heads.

Operations serval and barkhane

It is within this context that France decided to intervene, driven both by concern for the instability of a former colony and by the wealth of its soil. On 11 January 2013, President François Hollande announced the launch of Operation Serval. Its aim was to halt the terrorist advance that had seized northern Mali and was increasingly threatening the capital, Bamako. French and Malian forces recaptured the cities of Gao (25/02), Timbuktu (27/01), Kidal (30/01), and Tessalit (08/02). The undeniable success of this operation, which ended on 1 August 2014, nonetheless contained a dark side. Rural and mountainous areas—too difficult to access and considered detours on the “liberation route” north—became refuge zones and later strongholds for jihadists, still deeply embedded in several villages and ready to strike back.

The terrorist threat, far from being eradicated but temporarily pushed back, now had to be fought throughout the Sahel region. This area, as large as Europe, needed to be secured, and jihadist strongholds—constantly active and rebuilding—had to be hunted down. From an economic perspective, another operation in the region would also protect natural resources in the long term and help establish diplomatic ties linked to profits from resource exploitation by foreign companies, such as Areva in Niger or Total in Mauritania.

Thus, on 1 August 2014, the French army, encouraged by its European allies, launched a large-scale anti-terrorist operation to replace Operation Serval, whose efforts had been concentrated on Mali, while expanding its actions to the countries of the “G5 Sahel” mentioned above (Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso). For eight years, more than six thousand soldiers were deployed across the Sahel belt, tasked with tracking down thousands of terrorists while protecting local populations. More than twelve temporary logistical and military bases were established, contributing to the weakening of MUJAO and Ansar Dine.

While noting the peak deployment of 5,500 French soldiers and lamenting the deaths of 50 of them in combat since 2013, the assessment and consequences of this operation appear more significant than its conduct alone. The causes of the French withdrawal from this unfinished struggle vary depending on the narrative. Macron’s official discourse—omitting certain admissions and analytical frameworks—primarily denounces the hostile policy of the new junta in power since the previous year, its lack of legitimacy, and the ambiguity of supporting a government willing to negotiate with terrorists. On the other side, the discourse of Assimi Goïta, at the head of Mali since May 2021, likewise omits key elements, decries French abandonment, and seeks to have the final word by accelerating the departure of French forces.

The failure of the operations in the face of mali’s renewal

The causes of the French withdrawal are in fact numerous and complex. Both states committed errors, of varying severity in the eyes of their counterparts. Mali, plagued by corruption, was guilty of diverting funds intended to fight terrorism. President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta (“IBK”) protected his son from accusations related to the murder of investigative journalist Birama Touré, and allowed a Breton company to secure the Malian passport contract under pressure from Jean-Yves Le Drian. He is also known for having allowed Airbus to invest in a gold mine in southern Mali to generate cash, bribe Malian officials, and sell them helicopters.

Backed by popular support, the army overthrew IBK on 18 August 2020. His successor, Bah N’Daw, was not hostile to Paris. Yet it was during his presidency that the French president chose to turn a blind eye to the coup in Chad, and through inaction effectively gave Mali the green light to violate its constitution. It was in response to this excessive tolerance that Assimi Goïta organised a second coup in less than a year and announced, on 24 May 2021, that he had seized power after arresting his predecessor. Less favourable to France, the new leader in Bamako refused to take orders from Paris and contributed to the deterioration of France’s image in Mali, notably by calling upon the infamous Russian Wagner Group mercenaries. Following this rupture, President Emmanuel Macron described the Malian prime minister as “the child of two coups,” underlining the government’s “democratically null” legitimacy.

France and its share of responsibility

Yet France itself cannot claim complete innocence. Some Malian intellectuals argued—perhaps more justly than the French government admitted—that French intervention in Mali was natural: it came to extinguish the fuse ignited by Gaddafi’s fall in Libya. As explained above, President Nicolas Sarkozy played a significant role in the dictator’s overthrow. He later had no choice but to witness, lacking sufficient foresight, the consequences of the dispersal of Libya’s army.

During Operation Barkhane, France was sometimes criticised for its lack of effectiveness. Mediapart argued that “terrorism can only be fought with a full stomach and a full mind,” while a Le Monde article dated 17 October 2022 highlighted that the poorest regions of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—among the world’s five poorest countries—constituted extremely fertile ground for jihadism.

If counter-terrorism policies could at times have been improved, it is in the actions of its own army that the country of human rights hesitates to set an example. In 2013, the French army retook the northern city of Kidal but did not return it to the Malian state, instead handing it over to Tuareg separatists who negotiated and allied with jihadists—an act contrasting sharply with Macron’s condemnation of the Malian junta’s ambiguity. In 2014, French services refrained from eliminating Iyad Ag Ghali, a jihadist leader protected by Algeria, now at large and head of JNIM (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims), notably responsible for the kidnapping of journalist Olivier Dubois. In 2018, the French army chose to “delegate crime” to Tuareg auxiliaries from the MSA (Movement for the Salvation of Azawad), who used this power to settle old scores with the Fulani community and perpetrated violence against unarmed civilians. In 2021, two French Mirage 2000 jets bombed what was believed to be a terrorist gathering that turned out to be a wedding, killing 19 civilian guests.

Moreover, Macron’s firm condemnation of the illegitimate and murderous Malian junta and its collaboration with Russian mercenaries raises questions about France’s own relations with Egypt, Togo, and Congo. Finally, during protests against French presence last November, the French army chose to use force to break through barricades erected by young Nigeriens and Burkinabés, causing three deaths and two injuries.

Bamako’s new allies

On 26 July 2022, the French president declared from Cameroon: “We will not abandon Africa’s security, nor its interests,” in a paternalistic tone reminiscent to some of colonial administrators. French soldiers would therefore continue to operate against jihadists in other high-risk areas, under different circumstances. From Chad under Déby Jr., from Niger under Mohamed Bazoum, or from Burkina Faso under Lieutenant-Colonel Damiba—whose coup appeared to trouble France far less.

These dynamics help explain Malian resentment and the deterioration of France’s image. The putschist spokesperson’s hostile stance, calling for the “immediate” departure of French troops, forms part of a propaganda strategy aimed at showing that it was not France leaving, but Mali expelling its former coloniser. Perhaps France would have benefited from a more critical examination of its own policies and military command in the Sahel. France, which responded to this provocation within fifteen minutes, thus ended the operations, agreeing to a withdrawal timeline of four to six months.

The consequences of what the Malian prime minister described as “abandonment mid-flight” have deeply damaged Franco-Malian cooperation. France and its Barkhane Force lost their special detachment status in Mali, which turned toward new partners from the East. Defence Minister Sadio Camara travelled to Moscow during the week of 10 August 2022 to discuss future cooperation, and Russian Wagner mercenaries have, for several months, replaced French soldiers in abandoned bases, using their AK-47s with far less restraint, sometimes against Malian civilians.

What future after the french withdrawal?

Despite the French withdrawal, more than 3,000 troops will remain in Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso to continue the fight against terrorism, now restructured around an international alliance bringing together European states and special forces. According to AFP and forecasts from the “Horizon 2023” programme, 2,500 French soldiers will still operate under the banner of this new framework. Yet this “imperialist great replacement” once again marks a loss of French influence in the Sahel and more broadly in Africa. Macron’s decision raises an eternal question that troubles many leaders, particularly in relation to Afghanistan, China, or Iran: how should one deal and negotiate with a regime considered illegitimate? Should sovereignty be prioritised? Interests? Image? Or should action be guided by national values?

Did the French president make the right choice? The question remains open.