Fear and Loathing in the Sahel

In recent times, as the military knocked off one civilian regime after another across the Sahel, observers were disconcerted by the prospect of a region-wide capitulation to autocracy and the rapturous reception accorded the ascendant juntas by the civilian populace. Instead of demanding that the soldiers return to the barracks, as might have been expected of a populace eager to protect the slender gains of democratic governance, throngs of people, clearly disgusted at the ineptitude and corruption of the civilians, laid out the red carpet for their new saviors.

Unsurprisingly, the soldiers were quick to cash in on the favorable public mood. Not only did they promise instant success where the civilian governments had failed, particularly in rolling back a decades-long Islamist insurgency which had effectively defied everything that had been thrown at it, they also made sure to point an accusing finger at Western governments whose supposedly unwelcome intrusion they collectively blamed for the unwholesome political situation in their respective countries. This assumption of foreign (Western, to be specific) malevolence was the impulse behind (1) the eviction of the United States, France, and Britain from military bases across the region; (2) the embrace of the Kremlin, seen, as implausible as it might sound, as a more genuine and trustworthy ally; and (3) the spike in the rhetoric around the idea of (political and fiscal) sovereignty.

To say that the juntas’ soaring rhetoric has failed to match their actions is an understatement. While the idea that the military can succeed where their civilian counterparts have failed still enjoys relative appeal in some quarters, there is no denying that the marked deterioration in civil-military relations has given occasion to doubts as to the soldiers’ capacity to keep their original promise: restore security and rebuild trust in the government.

In this regard, matters have not been helped by the growing lethality of ordinary military-civilian encounters. Across the Sahel, a pattern of deliberate slaughter of civilians by members of the armed forces appears to have been instituted. In November 2023, the European Union (EU) had called for an official investigation after nearly one hundred villagers of Zaongo in Burkina Faso’s  Centre-North were allegedly massacred by soldiers who reportedly carried out their attack “with mounted pickup trucks, guns, and drones.” This February, the Burkinabè military allegedly summarily killed an estimated two hundred twenty-three people, many of them women and children, in the villages of Soro and Nondin, both in the country’s northern Yatenga Province.  According to the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), “civilian deaths at the hands of security forces increased by 70% from 2022 to 2023—to 735 people killed from 430” across Burkina Faso.

Similar security forces-led summary executions of unarmed civilians have been reported in Mali, where, in March 2022, and in what the Human Rights Watch (HRW) described at the time as “the worst single atrocity reported in Mali’s decade-long conflict,” armed troops massacred at least five hundred people in the central town of Moura.

In effect, not only, so far as we know, has Russian military and technical support for the juntas done little in helping them counter violent extremism, increasingly, civilians have borne the brunt of the spike in everyday violence as frustrated military regimes have lashed out in every direction.

While the extent to which this open season on innocent civilians is responsible for the noticeable stiffening of opposition to the regimes may be open to debate, there can be no questions as to how the respective juntas have responded, which is harshly. For instance, when, back in April, more than eighty political parties and civil groups issued a joint statement calling for presidential elections and an end to military rule in the country, the Assimi Goïta-led Malian regime used the familiar pretext of “reasons of public order” to suspend all political activities and bar the media from coverage of politics. This was by no means an isolated move, as the junta has also, in the same vein, dissolved popular and civil society organizations, notably the Association of Pupils and Students of Mali (L’ Association des Eleves et Etudiants du Mali, AEEM); cracked down on peaceful dissent by placing influential opposition figures under arrest; and forced into hiding whistleblowers and others who have dared criticize the government by labeling them as “public enemies.”

Burkina Faso has been no different. “Interim president” Ibrahim Traoré, caudillo since the ouster of Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba in September 2022, has led a calculated assault on civil society, suspending or forcing the closure of more than a dozen media outlets. The whereabouts of Atiana Serge Oulon, editor of L'Événement, a leading Burkinabè investigative newspaper, and two television commentators, Adama Bayala and Kalifara Séré, widely believed to have been abducted by members of the secret service in June, remain unknown. Where such direct methods have been ineffective in a country with an estimated seventeen thousand nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the regime has resorted to internet shutdowns and social media blackouts, and, according to unconfirmed reports, unlawful conscriptions into the armed forces.

In Niger, deposed president Mohamed Bazoum and his wife, Hadiza, remain under house arrest (in June, the country’s highest court stripped Mr. Bazoum of immunity, apparently clearing the way for his trial by a military court), while at least thirty officials from his ousted government as well as several journalists, especially those who have been outspoken in their condemnation of the July 2023 military takeover, have been detained without trial.

In its 2024 World Press Freedom Index, international nonprofit Reporters Without Borders (RWB) expressed regret at “the rising violence and threats against journalists” in the military-run Sahel states, citing, among other key concerns, the manner in which “patriotic information has taken precedence over independent, quality journalism.”

While the situation in the region clearly calls for concern, it is encouraging that decades of corrupt and bungling leadership, including under the current cohort of military rulers, have not attenuated the hunger for good governance. After all, if the need for constant surveillance by the military state confirms anything, it is the persistence of the demand for reform. Without widespread civic disaffection, there would be no need for pacification.

The unpleasant experience of the military-led states also goes to confirm what experts have long recognized: that military rule is no solution to the problem of state fragility, and that the military in power, especially in this gangsta mode, offers nothing but more sorrow, tears, and blood. As a matter of fact, the military itself is one of the many key institutions that need to be reformed, and under a liberal democratic canopy no less.

Sahelians—and watchers of the Sahel—can take solace in the fact that the last chapter of the political story of this critical region is yet to be written.

Nathan Schoonover contributed to the research for this article.