🔗 Share this article

Out of the many thousands of refugees who have escaped Mali since a jihadist uprising began more than a decade ago, one community is united by a tragic shared experience: their spouses are presumed dead or captured.

Amina (not her real name) is among them.

The 50-year-old’s husband was a gendarme who ended up confronting extremist fighters. In Mbera, a Mauritanian camp across the border housing over 120 thousand refugees, she has had to rebuild her life with little certainty if her spouse is dead or alive.

“We fled here due to violence, leaving everything behind,” she said quietly while meeting with her fellow members of Femme Resource, a women's organization who do community outreach in the camp to help expectant mothers and combat violence against women.

“Numerous women lost spouses during the conflict,” she continued, her voice cracking while children chased one another barefoot in the sand. “We arrived with nothing.”

Women preparing food at the Mbera settlement in eastern Mauritania.

Countless individuals have been disrupted in the last two decades across the Sahel region – which spans a group of nations from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea coast – due to the actions of terror groups and other armed militias that have proliferated in countries with frequently fragile central governments.

The conflict has been driven by a range of reasons, including the turmoil and access to weapons and mercenaries that resulted from the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya.

In recent years, concern has been mounting inside and beyond government circles about militant factions expanding their operations towards West Africa's coastline.

From early 2021 to late 2023, an average of 26 security incidents each month were attributed to jihadists across Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo. In January of this year, fighters from the al-Qaida-linked JNIM attacked a army base in Benin's north, leaving 30 soldiers dead.

Members of Ansar Dine at the Kidal airfield in Mali's north in 2012.

One diplomat in Douala, Cameroon, informed media outlets without attribution that there was information about Islamic State West Africa Province units coming and going across the Cameroonian frontier with neighboring Nigeria and expanding their influence.

“These groups have developed attack capacities to strike so many military formations,” the diplomat said.

Nigerian officials have sounded warnings about new cells popping up in the country’s central region, while experts on Central Africa caution about a developing partnership between different militias in the so-called “triangle of death”: the zone from Mayo-Kebbi Ouest and Logone Oriental in the nation of Chad to northern Cameroon and a Central African area in Central African Republic.

Recently, the UN said about four million individuals were now displaced across the Sahel area, with conflict and instability forcing increasing numbers from their homes.

While three-quarters of those displaced stay inside their nations, cross-border movements are increasing, putting pressure on receiving areas with “limited aid” available, a UNHCR regional director, UNHCR’s regional director for West and Central Africa, told journalists in Geneva.

An Effective Strategy?

The current counterinsurgency approach is divided: three Sahel nations – which has publicly engaged the Russian Wagner Group – have formed the Association of Sahel States, issuing passports and coordinating military strategy.

The trio were previously part of the G5 Sahel, which was disbanded in 2023 after the AES members’ exit, and the ECOWAS bloc, which “activated” a 5,000-troop standby force in March.

“The more these jihadist threats shift southward, the more security measures will need to consider a more effective and truly regional approach to dealing with the issue,” said Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, an expert based in Abuja and predoctoral researcher at the International Centre for Tax and Development.

Students escaping extremist violence in Sahel region attend a class in the town of Dori, the nation of Burkina Faso in several years ago.

The nation of Mauritania, another past participant of the G5 Sahel, experienced frequent attacks and abductions in the early 2000s. As a conservative Islamic country with huge inequality and extensive arid lands, it was an ideal breeding ground for radical elements.

“Compared to its inhabitants, no other country in the Sahel and Sahara region generates more extremist thinkers and senior militant leaders as Mauritania,” wrote a researcher, expert on extremism and anti-terror efforts at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, National Defense University, several years ago.

But the nation, which has had no extremist assault on its soil since 2011, has been applauded for its anti-militant actions.

“Over a decade back, they offered those extremists who want to lay down arms some kind of amnesty and had these religious retraining programs,” said Ulf Laessing, Bamako-based director of the Sahel regional initiative at German thinktank Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

“Mauritania also invested in building villages and water infrastructure, unlike neighboring Mali where government presence is limited to the capital,” he said. “This gains local support and guarantees collaboration, making it simpler to manage dangerous elements.”

Funding were made in border security, backed by a multi-million euro agreement with the EU, which was eager to stop the inflow of migrants.

At custom duty posts, officers use Starlink to share real-time intelligence with the army, which launched a desert patrol unit that patrols the desert. Satellite communication devices are banned for public use and authorities have also recruited assistance from local residents in intelligence-gathering.

French soldiers join a joint anti-militant operation with a soldier from Mali (left) in several years ago.

“There are 5–6 million people living in the country and many are relatives who all know each other,” said the analyst. “When someone new comes into a village, they immediately call law enforcement to notify about people who are outsiders.”

Beyond the positive outcomes, Mauritania also stands accused of using the identical security measures for repression.

In August, a Human Rights Watch report alleged security officials of physically abusing refugees and other migrants over the last five years, allegedly exposing them to rape and electric shocks. Officials in Nouakchott rejected the claims, saying they have improved conditions for holding migrants.

The Homecoming

Far from there, in Ghana, there are whispers about an informal arrangement: armed groups avoid targeting the nation and Accra looks the other way while injured militants, food and fuel are moved to and from adjacent Burkina Faso.

In neighboring Algeria and Mauritania, speculation has been widespread for years about a similar accord, which some see as another reason why the violence has not spread from nearby Mali, which both share long land borders with.

“There are reports of an unofficial deal [that] if fighters visit Mauritania to see their families, they don’t carry or use weapons and avoid conducting assaults until they return to Mali,” said the analyst.

In over ten years ago, the United States claimed to have found documents in the Pakistani compound where former al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden was killed mentioning an attempted rapprochement between the group and Mauritania's government. The Mauritanian government continues to reject the idea of any such arrangement.

At the Mbera camp, only a few miles from the most recent recorded militant strike in Mauritania, refugees prefer not to discuss the violent past or the conflict’s present dynamics.

Their focus is on a future that remains uncertain, much like the destiny of disappeared males including Amina’s husband.

“We simply wish to return,” she said.