Bottom Line
- Since 2020, the Sahel has experienced a string of coups and attempted coups from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.
- Six Sahel nations account for eight unconstitutional actions in a region that is the poorest in the world which has suffered from an increasing level of extremist violence.
- Russia has moved in to replace the vacuum caused by the withdrawal or ejection of US and French forces.
- While the prospects for democracy are dim in the short and medium term, the focus must be on the long game, with economic development as a priority to lift the overwhelmingly young population out of poverty.
- US policy towards the Sahel, as with all of sub-Saharan Africa, should be on developing long-term, democratic, stable relationships for the mutual benefit of all parties.
The COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the human toll and negative economic impact in sub-Saharan Africa, also contributed to a decline in democracy. According to a May 26, 2021, article from the Council on Foreign Relations, more Africans were living under fully or partially authoritarian states than at most points in the previous two decades. Citizen discontent with leaders' attempts to remain in power through circumvention of the electoral process has led to political instability, demonstrations, and violence even in relatively democratic countries like Kenya and South Africa. While the average level of democracy across the continent remains relatively stable in 2024, the continual incidents of military takeovers and conflicts in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Cameroon, pose challenges to consolidating democracy. Despite continuing progress in countries like Gambia and Zambia, and with nine African countries in the top fifty in the world in levels of democratic participation, the continental averages in representation and rule of law have declined over the past five years.
The Sahel: A Belt of Instability
The region of sub-Saharan Africa demonstrating the most severe decline in democratic governance has been the Sahel, the semi-arid belt connecting North Africa across the Sahara Desert with the tropical savannahs to the south.
Since 2020, there have been four coup d'etats and three attempted coups in West Africa and the Sahel. The four military takeovers in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, were ostensibly because of economic stagnation and continuing insecurity and were initially received positively by the civilian populations. That support seems to continue despite the juntas not delivering on promises to improve security. The median age of populations in the Sahel ranges from fourteen to twenty-six, and one would think that such a youthful population would be a seed-bed for popular uprising as it has been in other regions of the world, but this has not happened. The security situation in the countries of the Sahel has worsened, and despite being one of the world's richest regions in terms of natural resources, in April 2023, the United Nations estimated that food insecurity and malnutrition were on track to reach a ten-year high. Some 45,000 people were at risk of experiencing "catastrophic levels of hunger." Up to 80 percent of the people of the Sahel live on less than $2 a day, with poverty more widespread than in most other parts of Africa.
One-by-One, They All Fall Down
While there has been a distinct shift to the right and autocracy in a number of regions, the Sahel leads the way in unconstitutional and attempted takeovers since 2020. Between 2020 and 2023, there were eight combined successful and attempted coups in the Sahel in six countries, from Guinea on the Atlantic to Sudan on the Red Sea.
Mali
Of the five coups that Mali has suffered since gaining independence in 1960, two of them were in 2020 and 2021. The country has faced an insurgency by the Tuareg (a minority ethnic group), jihadists, and criminal gangs since 2012, with limited success despite years of US, French, and other international support to strengthen Mali's national army. In 2020, a colonel who had been trained by US, French, and German forces overthrew the elected president. This led to France withdrawing its forces from Mali and the junta subsequently toppling its own appointed civilian president, then turning to Russia's Wagner Group for security support. This move has not lessened the insurgency and has led to massive human rights abuses against the civilian population.
Chad
Military officers seized power in Chad in 2021 after the death of President Idriss Deby, who had taken over in a coup in 1990. Deby had ruled for thirty years as a hardnosed autocrat but enjoyed US and western support because he'd aligned himself with international counterterrorism efforts. The leader of the coup was Deby's son, Lieutenant General Mahamat Deby. Although the junta allowed national dialogue and a transition to democracy, there are signs that it is repressing opposition and taking steps to improve relations with Russia and eject US military trainers from the country, in a move to retain power indefinitely. Insurgencies continue in the north and south of the country.
Guinea
A US and French trained officer led a coup in 2021, overthrowing the corrupt eleven-year rule of President Alpha Conde, who had come to power under questionable circumstances after the country had suffered decades of autocratic rule with a promise to restore democracy. However, once in power, he proceeded to undermine it. Conde's decision to change the constitution to allow him to run for a third term in office was very unpopular and the main reason stated by the junta for the takeover.
Burkina Faso
Between January and September 2022, Burkina Faso suffered two military takeovers. On January 24, 2022, soldiers ousted President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, replacing him with Lieutenant Colonel Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba. Then, on September 30, Damiba was removed from his post and replaced by Captain Ibrahim Traore. Demonstrators supporting Traore attacked symbols of French presence in the country. After Traore's installation as "transitional" president, he ordered the removal of French troops and approached Russia and Mali for security support. In September 2023, the elections intended to restore democracy to the country, which had been scheduled for July 2024, were deemed "not a priority" and indefinitely postponed. Increased violence in the capital Ouagadougou have fueled rumors that the country might be edging close another coup.
Niger
Niger had five coups after independence in 1960 but had experienced a decade of relatively stable progress toward democracy until July 2023, when a group of soldiers overthrew democratically elected President Mohamed Bazourn, who had held office since 2021. The coup leaders' excuse was the continuous deterioration of the security situation. The army had received training from the United States and France and was home to a US drone base and 1,100 American military troops engaged in counterterrorism operations. Subsequently, the junta ended its military agreement with the United States, demanded withdrawal of American troops, and invited Russian military "advisers" into the country.
Sudan
After independence in 1955, Sudan suffered six coups and fifty-three years of military rule. Popular protests in 2019 motivated army officers to overthrow the autocratic ruler General Omar al-Bashir and work with civilian activists to transition to democracy. That transition was junked in 2021 as the coup leaders began fighting over who would control the country. The conflict between General Abdel-Fattah Burhan, commander of the Sudanese military, and General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, has cost the lives of many civilian noncombatants, created a humanitarian crisis, and forced many nations, including the United States, to evacuate their embassies.
Playing the Long Game
With Russia moving into the region to fill the void left by the departure of US and French military forces, the short- and medium-term prospects for democratization of the Sahel seems exceedingly dim.
According to a June 6, 2023, Rand Corporation article, the Sahel is now the epicenter of global terrorism, accounting for 43 percent of deaths attributed to global terrorism in 2022. Burkina Faso and Mali accounted for 73 percent of terrorism-related deaths in the Sahel in 2022 and 52 percent of all such deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. With both terrorism and coups on the rise, the United States needs to take a new look at its policy towards the Sahel. Washington must move away from the security-first approach of providing weapons and tactical training, which has not worked, to a policy of institution building with a focus on civilian control and responsible use of military forces.
Such a policy should be uniformly implemented across the entire region, without exception, with human rights and laws of warfare violators held accountable for their actions. Rather than defaulting to a tactical response to extremist movements, the primary focus should be on identifying and addressing the root causes of such extremists. While it will be difficult in the short-term future to work with Sahelian militaries that have engaged in unconstitutional power grabs, when the United States can re-engage, the emphasis should be on good defense governance, development of proper doctrine, and establishment of effective civil-military relations, with a view to building effective, professional military forces that serve the nation rather than specific interest groups or those who seek power.
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The American response to coups of any kind should be consistent and definite. The US government should condemn all takeovers and immediately suspend all military assistance and apply visa restrictions on coup leaders regardless of the motivation for the coup or the level of prior cooperation in US counterterrorism operations.
This fundamental shift in Washington thinking will not be easy to implement and will require a long-term focus rather than the short-term, quick results focus that unfortunately characterizes much of current US strategy. The United States should also be willing to stay for the long haul and not be turned off by lack of short-term success of its strategy. While it must be aware of other external players in this long game, some who will oppose the States and others who are ostensibly on the government's side, it should be wary of over-estimating competitors or outsourcing to putative friends. The US approach should be based on what's in the best interests of the country first, and the people of the specific African country secondly. It must be prepared to present itself as a reliable and consistent partner in the long-term economic and political development of the Sahel and be a desirable alternative to the current cast of characters aiding the region.
The long-term objective should be the development of professional, democratic, stable partners in the interest of peace and prosperity for everyone involved.
Image: MINUSMA/Harandane Dicko
Charles A. Ray, a member of the Board of Trustees and Chair of the Africa Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, served as US Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia and the Republic of Zimbabwe.
