Since 2022 Western forces have been reshaping their footprint in the Sahel by returning a string of forward operating bases to local authorities and partners. What was presented publicly as a reorientation of counterterrorism posture has produced a strategic gap on the ground. The initial French handovers in Mali, culminating with the departure of Barkhane units and the transfer of bases such as Gao and Gossi, removed a persistent platform for intelligence, logistics and rapid air support across the central Sahel.

That repositioning accelerated into a broader withdrawal of Western fixed infrastructure in 2023 and 2024. Niger in particular moved from hosting French forces to managing rapid foreign exits during and after the 2023 coup, and the United States completed a high profile turnover of its drone and ISR facility at Agadez in August 2024. The immediate operational effect is less persistent ISR coverage, fewer partnered strike and advisory options, and a lower threshold for contestation of border zones that transcend national boundaries.

Jihadist organisations have not been slow to exploit that change. The operational logic is straightforward. Where fixed sites and allied patrols once constrained movement and complicated logistics for insurgent formations, those constraints have relaxed. Groups such as JNIM and IS-affiliates have demonstrated the capacity to conduct massed ambushes and to seize materiel from poorly defended outposts, as exemplified by the Mansila attack in June 2024 where an assault on a military post resulted in extraordinarily heavy government losses. Attacks of this scale change battlefield calculus. They are force multipliers for insurgent recruitment and bargaining power in local security economies.

Three discrete mechanisms explain how base handovers translate into jihadist opportunities. First, sanctuary and mobility. Base closures remove dependable checkpoints and aerial observation nodes, turning crossborder corridors into lower cost avenues for movement, resupply and exfiltration. Second, migration of materiel and know how. When installations change hands in haste some stores and maintenance assets are abandoned, captured or repurposed. Videos and post-attack imagery in 2024 repeatedly show insurgents displaying captured weapons and ammunition, a visible reminder that seizures and attrition of state stocks are a persistent source of escalation.

Third, political and intelligence friction. Withdrawals have coincided with the consolidation of military-led governments in parts of the Sahel and with new regional alignments. That political realignment has complicated information sharing, constrained external access, and, in some cases, led governments to prioritise regime survival over coordinated counter-insurgency. The formation of alternative security groupings among junta-led Sahel states is a strategic response, but it is not yet a substitute for the dense networks of ISR, liaison and operational integration that Western bases provided.

Operationally minded policymakers should consider two uncomfortable but actionable inferences. One, the loss of persistent bases increases the value of expeditionary, low-signature intelligence capabilities and of partnerships that can rapidly surge ISR and strike when local forces face large scale attacks. The Agadez turnover illustrates the costs of losing a fixed ISR node and the corresponding need for alternative architectures.

Two, stabilisation cannot be outsourced to single-point security providers, whether foreign militaries or private contractors. The pattern since 2022 shows that when political relationships with host governments fray, the infrastructure that underpinned counterterrorism is the first casualty. Long term risk reduction requires resilient local institutions, transparent stocks management, and interoperable regional information sharing that survive political rupture. The Global Terrorism Index and other datasets through 2023 and 2024 record a sharp concentration of lethality in the central Sahel, which underlines that tactical withdrawals without parallel investments in governance and sustainment will likely yield higher insecurity over time.

Conclusions for strategy and policy flow directly from this assessment. Donors and shaping partners should treat base handovers not as finished business but as transition processes that require sequenced mitigation: audited materiel transfers, joint monitoring of key transit routes, mobile ISR tasking agreements, and contingency rapid reaction options that are politically deconflicted in advance. Absent those measures, the practical effect of handing over bases will be to transform fixed, constraining nodes into opportunities that insurgents will use to consolidate territorial advantage, extract resources and project violence further into coastal West Africa.

A longer view is unavoidable. Military presence and infrastructure are instruments within a political bargain. If Western actors intend to reduce permanent footprints they must accept the political and financial responsibility to build durable, local capacity and to underwrite regional intelligence architectures. If they do not, the physical handover of bases will be remembered not as a sovereign reclamation but as a handoff of operational space to actors who will exploit it with brutal efficiency.