As of November 30, 2023 the arc of security in the central Sahel has shifted decisively. What began as a localized insurgency in northern Mali a decade ago has metastasized into a regionwide contest in which state authority is eroding, jihadist groups are expanding their footprint, and external actors are rearranging the balance of influence. The withdrawal of French forces and the sidelining of traditional partners have not by themselves caused the insurgency. Yet these strategic reversals have altered incentives and created operational space that both violent nonstate actors and opportunistic external militaries have exploited.

France’s long-running Operation Barkhane formally wound down its posture in Mali in 2022 and French forces have been progressively reduced across the Sahel in 2022 and 2023. That drawdown removed a stabilizing albeit imperfect security presence that had provided air mobility, logistics, intelligence sharing, and direct force projection against militant strongholds for nearly a decade. The practical effect has been to leave gaps in rapid-response capabilities and to increase the burden on often under-resourced national armies.

Those gaps matter because jihadist groups in the Sahel developed sophisticated operational patterns during the years of counterinsurgency. They now exploit porous borders, weak governance, and localized grievances to move, recruit, and hold terrain in rural areas. Regional data through 2023 show a sharp rise in militant-linked fatalities and events across the Sahel, with organizations such as Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara driving much of the trend. In short, the underlying insurgency strengthened even as external force structures changed.

The political context magnified the security problem. Between 2020 and 2023 a series of military takeovers in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger eroded cooperation with European partners and complicated multilateral options. The juntas sought new patrons and alternative security arrangements while limiting access for traditional partners and international mechanisms. The political realignment reduced transparency, constrained foreign intelligence cooperation, and altered the local legitimacy calculus for counterinsurgency operations.

Into this breach marched private paramilitary actors aligned with Russia. From late 2021 and throughout 2022 and 2023, evidence accumulated of Russia-linked fighters and contractors operating alongside Malian forces and providing training, force multipliers, and advisory functions. Human rights organizations documented patterns of abuses linked to joint operations involving Malian forces and personnel believed to be associated with Russian contractors. These operations frequently substituted for the capabilities once concentrated in multinational frameworks led by France and the UN. The arrival of such actors should be read less as a direct solution to insecurity and more as a geopolitical reordering that trades one set of risks for another.

Wagner-style involvement is opportunistic in two linked ways. First, it steps in where Western forces are no longer welcome and where states with limited budgets want immediate kinetic results. These regimes pay with mineral concessions, political alignment, or other strategic concessions. Second, the mercenary model privileges short-term battlefield gains over long-term political stabilization. The result is that security operations can become more violent, less discriminating, and more likely to alienate civilians whose cooperation is essential to deny insurgents safe havens. Human rights reporting from 2023 flagged extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, and abuses associated with units operating in partnership with state forces. Those practices delegitimize governments and can feed insurgent recruitment drives.

The withdrawal of multilateral peacekeepers amplifies the problem. The United Nations MINUSMA mission was in the process of an orderly drawdown requested by Bamako and scheduled to complete its mission by the end of 2023. MINUSMA played a distinctive role in civilian protection, monitoring, and mediation. Its exit removes an important international presence that had constrained rights abuses, preserved fragile political processes, and provided a modicum of deterrence against territorial predation by armed groups. The simultaneous reduction of French and UN footprints concentrates the leverage of any actor prepared to supply the vacuum with security capacity.

The practical effect for battlefield dynamics has been visible during 2023: high-casualty ambushes, massed attacks on military convoys, and an expanding geographic reach by both al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates. Independent monitoring groups recorded record or near-record levels of militant-linked fatalities and violent events in the central Sahel during 2022 and 2023, with particularly severe surges in Burkina Faso and Mali. These trends are not monolithic. They reflect local campaigns, inter-group competition, and periodic territorial control that differs from conventional state occupation. Still the aggregate pattern is unmistakable: greater lethality, more civilian harm, and more territory under contested control.

That combination of factors creates three structural problems for Sahel stability. First, a securitized short-termist response—whether by mercenaries, expanded national militaries, or militias—risks trading insurgent governance for abusive suppression without building resilience in local institutions. Second, geopolitical competition substitutes transactional alignments for deeper state-building. External patrons win influence quickly but rarely accept accountability for long-term costs. Third, shrinking space for multilateral diplomacy reduces the ability to integrate reconciliation, development, and security planning at the scale required. Each problem reinforces the others.

Policy implications are stark. External partners concerned about counterterrorism cannot simply replicate past military footprints. The Sahel requires a calibrated mix of civilian and security investments that combine protection, accountability, and political inclusion. Donors and regional organizations should prioritize restoring intelligence sharing, rebuilding partner force professionalism, and reconstituting oversight mechanisms for any external security providers. Pressing for transparency in contracts and ensuring that any external training is conditional on human rights compliance are essential. At the same time the international community must accept that kinetic gains alone will not restore state legitimacy. Sustainable stabilization requires economic opportunities, local reconciliation, and credible governance in contested rural spaces.

Finally, observers should not mistake geopolitical pivoting for immediate victory. Wagner-style offers may appear attractive to fragile regimes because they promise visible force and political signaling. In practice those arrangements can amplify fragmentation, provoke reprisals, and deepen the humanitarian toll, which in turn strengthens the insurgency’s social base. The Sahel’s trajectory will hinge on whether regional governments, external powers, and multilateral actors can reconstitute a blended approach that is at once security-capable and politically rooted. Without that recalibration the combination of jihadist gains, weakened multilateral presence, and predatory external opportunism will continue to drive instability across the region.