Violent extremist organisations profoundly impact the Sahel and West Africa. Since the early 2000s, their expanding ambitions, capacities, and geographical reach have wrought devastation on human security and economic development. Recently, the ECOWAS Commission President H.E. Dr. Omar Alieu Touray briefed the UN Security Council during its 10047th meeting on regional counter-terrorism cooperation in West Africa and the Sahel. He warned of the existential threat posed by terrorism to both Sahelian and coastal States, noting that extremist groups are increasingly waging “economic warfare” by disrupting fuel supplies and trade routes.
The continuing collapse of international counterterrorism support, as well as weakening leadership in regional efforts, has created a vacuum in which violent extremism can expand. Organisations including Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), Islamic State in the West African Province (ISWAP), and others have already taken advantage of that vacuum, using countries in the region as platforms to launch indiscriminate attacks on government forces and civilians alike.
The north of Mali has been the location and battleground of rebellions by the Tuaregs, an ethnic group with a nomadic pastoralist life-style who are found in the Saharan parts of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Algeria, and Libya. Living in Mali since independence in 1960, the Tuareg people have suffered from political and economic marginalisation.
Nevertheless, Mali’s approach has failed because it is a counterterrorism strategy rather than a counterinsurgency one. Counterterrorism operations may subdue high-value targets or clear areas temporarily, but Malian and partner security forces have not held areas or prevented jihadist groups from regrouping.
Consequently, jihadists have regrouped in ungoverned spaces after being pushed out of population centres. This is due to both manpower restraints over a vast geographic area and an ineffective strategy. Counterterrorism operations are not coupled with efforts to establish effective governance, especially in rural areas.
The same factors that contributed to the outbreak of the Malian civil war—ethnic marginalisation and lack of basic services—remain unaddressed. Security force abuses have reinforced civilians’ belief that the government cannot protect its population. Jihadist groups have thereby sustained their insurgencies among a population distrustful of the government and susceptible to jihadist recruitment.
From Insurgency to Economic Strategy
JNIM has become one of Africa’s deadliest jihadist groups within the space of just a few years. The al-Qaeda-affiliated militia has been attacking tankers bringing fuel into Mali, broadening its years-long insurgency to include economic warfare. Also, studies maintain that illicit economies play a critical role in the successful expansion of JNIM from its comfort zones in the north to the central and southern regions. This expansion extends beyond the ideological aspiration of promoting Sharia to a keen interest in controlling key trade corridors from Mali to many countries in West Africa.
Since 2014, jihadists have avoided large-scale, conventional battles for control of population centres. However, this does not mean they are satisfied with controlling mostly rural areas. Rather, they besiege the centres to gradually pressure and delegitimize security forces at little cost to themselves.
Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) has done this in Timbuktu since August 2023, while ISSP has done so in Menaka since May 2023. They are taking a lower-risk, long-term approach; their goal is to drive out security forces and persuade a weary population to accept their governance. In areas that jihadist groups control or contest, they move quickly to establish forms of governance.
Mali is landlocked, so fuel supplies must be brought in by road from neighbouring states, such as Senegal and Ivory Coast. By cutting off fuel – the lifeblood of transport, electricity, and logistics – JNIM is forcing the government into a defensive position.
The blockade also points to the geographic expansion of its insurgency, as JNIM’s fighters are targeting highways linking Mali to its neighbours to the west and south. The fuel has had a large impact on hospitals – diesel shortages mean many health facilities cannot run generators for long and therefore experience power cuts that threaten emergency services.
Two researchers, Lamine Doumbia and Mahamadou Bassirou Tangara, who are familiar with this issue noted that while Bamako faces shortages and rising prices, the epicentre of economic suffering lies further north and east, in the Mopti, Kayes and Ségou regions. Recent studies show how armed groups have inserted themselves into everyday economic life, controlling markets, taxing trade routes and regulating mobility.
For instance, in Mopti, “jihadist” factions have established parallel systems of governance, collecting “zakat” taxes, enforcing their own codes of justice, and offering minimal security in exchange for compliance. In Ségou, transport networks are heavily monitored; farmers and traders are often forced to pay informal levies to move goods between villages. These measures have distorted local economies, redirected value chains and imposed new hierarchies of control. What began as localised insurgency in nomadic peripheries has now reached the urban heart of Mali’s political and economic life.
Regional and International Responses
However, there is a very long way to go before the appeal and the threat of violent extremism in the West African Sahel are suppressed. Violent extremist groups, particularly in Mali and the upper Sahel, are just some of the many armed and militant groups competing and collaborating in pursuit of personal, ethnic, social, regional, and economic interests. Extremist groups blend with a broader infrastructure of competition, conflict, and insecurity and cannot be understood—or addressed—in isolation from it.
Furthermore, experts attribute the expansion of violent extremism in the Sahel to persistently weak governance, characterised by corruption, democratic backsliding, legitimacy deficits, and human rights violations. Many countries in the region share similar internal dynamics of inequality —state power tends to be concentrated in southern, urban regions while rural, northern areas remain underdeveloped and ripe for exploitation by extremist groups.
While the Malian government and its newfound Wagner partners are making significant territorial gains in the northern and central regions, they are overstretched and struggling to address complex crises. French and European military forces, along with the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), have withdrawn from the country at the request of the military government.
The military junta, which has repeatedly ignored timetables to transition to a legitimate, civilian authority, has systematically alienated security partners from neighbouring states, ECOWAS, France, the European Union, and the United Nations. It has effectively ceded territorial control of Mali’s northern region to the militant Islamist groups, inflaming tensions with the Tuareg groups that had been cooperating with the government to combat the militant Islamists.
While Mali teeters under the strain of the escalating security threat, the junta appears focused on consolidating its hold on power. Meanwhile, President Touray outlined ECOWAS’ kinetic and non-kinetic efforts, explaining that the Commission’s approach integrates robust security responses with prevention-focused, community-centred strategies.
Way Forward
Governments of the region counter these extremist threats predominantly through military force, without committing to tackling the drivers of militancy or changing how they connect with their citizens in marginalised communities. External partners should avoid reinforcing a singular emphasis on military solutions that only enable national governments to sidestep the difficult path of accountability and reform.
At the same time, military services need more training, appropriate equipment, and professionalisation for occasions requiring force. With strong political will, concerted action and the continued support of the international community, it is possible to build the foundations for lasting peace, enhanced security and real opportunities for the people of the region.
The Malian crisis has demonstrated, time and again, the limits of a purely military response. The social and economic despair we are witnessing today reinforces the urgency of a social political dialogue, not as a sign of weakness, but as a pragmatic acknowledgement of reality. In addition, negotiation must go beyond the binary of “state versus armed groups”.
It must include religious leaders, market actors, civil society groups, university scholars and local communities. Such a process will be difficult, especially given the commitment to laïcité (secularism) in Mali’s constitutional framework. Yet, refusing dialogue only deepens isolation (political, social, and humanitarian).
Writer and researcher at Alafarika for Studies and Consultancy.