Why West Africa is now the world's terrorism hotspot
Rain pattered on the leaves in Barcelona's Ciutadella Park as a 20-year-old orphaned migrant sat on a concrete bench, scrolling through WhatsApp messages and puffing a cigarette. His thoughts were thousands of kilometres away, on his village in Mali where jihadists had upended his life.
"I travelled for two years, and I left because of the war," he says, eyes fixed on the wet pavement. Islamic militants killed his parents and his siblings were missing.
Believing he was the last of his family, the young man packed his bags for a perilous, two-year journey that ultimately brought him to Spain, where he is now seeking asylum.
"The day I left the village, there was another attack," he said. "From the morning, everyone already knew there were terrorists."
Just as they had in the young migrant's village, jihadis struck Mali's capital, Bamako, just before dawn prayers early last week. They killed dozens of students at an elite police training academy, stormed Bamako's airport and set the presidential jet on fire.
The September 17 attack was the most brazen since 2016 in a capital city in the Sahel, a vast arid region stretching across sub-Saharan Africa south of the Sahara Desert.
It showed that jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda or Islamic State, whose largely rural insurgency has killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, can also strike at the heart of power.
Overshadowed by the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan, conflict in the Sahel rarely garners global headlines, yet it is contributing to a sharp rise in migration from the region towards Europe at a time when anti-immigrant far-right parties are on the rise and some EU states are tightening their borders.
According to the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration (IOM), the route to Europe with the steepest rise in numbers this year is via West African coastal nations to Spain's Canary Islands.
IOM data shows the number of migrants arriving in Europe from Sahel countries (Burkina, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal) rose 62% to 17,300 in the first six months of 2024 from 10,700 a year earlier, a rise the U.N. and the IOM have blamed on conflict and climate change.
Fifteen diplomats and experts told Reuters the swathes of territory under jihadist control also risk becoming training grounds and launchpads for more attacks on major cities such as Bamako, or neighbouring states and Western targets, in the region or beyond.
Jihadi violence, especially the heavy toll it has taken on government troops, was a major factor in a wave of military coups since 2020 against Western-backed governments in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the countries at the heart of the Sahel.
The military juntas that replaced them have since swapped French and U.S. military assistance for Russians, mainly from Wagner's mercenary outfit, but have continued to lose ground.
"The entire situation in those countries is screwed up ever since the military coups," Van Ostaeyen said. "So the only ones that are now trying to fill the gap, but are actually making it worse, is the former Wagner group."
Western powers that previously invested in trying to beat back the jihadists have very little capacity left on the ground, especially since the junta in Niger last year ordered the U.S. to leave a sprawling desert drone base in Agadez.
U.S. troops and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used drones to track jihadists and shared intelligence with allies such as the French, who launched air strikes against the militants, and West African armies.
But the Americans were booted out after they angered Niger's coup leaders by refusing to share intelligence and warning them against working with the Russians. The U.S. is still looking for a place to reposition its assets.
"Even if during certain periods acts are becoming smaller in number, they are deadlier," said Heni Nsaibia, a researcher at the U.S. crisis-monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED). "So the fatalities, they are skyrocketing."
A Reuters analysis of ACLED data found that the number of violent events involving jihadi groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has almost doubled since 2021.
Since the start of this year, there have been 224 attacks a month on average, up from 128 in 2021.
Insa Moussa Ba Sane, regional migration and displacement coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross, said conflict was a major factor behind the increase in migration from the West African coast, with rising numbers of women and families seen along the route.
"Conflicts are at the root of the problem, combined with the effects of climate change," he said, describing how floods and droughts are both contributing to the violence and driving an exodus from rural to urban areas.
In Burkina Faso, perhaps the worst affected of all, jihadists affiliated with al Qaeda slaughtered hundreds of civilians in a day on August 24 in the town of Barsalogho, two hours from the capital Ouagadougou.
The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) in Sydney said Burkina Faso topped its Global Terrorism Index for the first time this year, with fatalities rising 68% to 1,907 - a quarter of all terrorism-linked deaths worldwide.
About half of Burkina Faso is now beyond government control, the U.N. has said, a factor contributing to soaring rates of displacement.
A U.N. panel of experts that monitors the two organisations' activities estimates that JNIM, the al Qaeda-aligned faction most active in the Sahel, had 5,000-6,000 fighters while 2,000-3,000 militants were linked to Islamic State.
The jihadi groups operate in different areas, at times fighting each other, though they have also struck localised, non-aggression pacts, reports by U.N. experts say.
The groups receive some financial support, training and guidance from their respective global leaderships, but also collect taxes in areas they control and seize weapons after battles with government forces, the reports say.
European governments are divided on how to respond to the conflict. Southern European nations who receive most migrants favour keeping communication with the juntas open, while others object because of human rights and democracy concerns, nine diplomats in the region told Reuters.
One African diplomat said the EU needed to remain engaged as the issue of migration was not going to go away.
"If the context continues, the way it's structured at the moment, we can't expect a decrease in migratory flows," Ba Sane said. "Conflicts are ... recurring."
Why West Africa is now the world's terrorism hotspot
Rain pattered on the leaves in Barcelona's Ciutadella Park as a 20-year-old orphaned migrant sat on a concrete bench, scrolling through WhatsApp messages and puffing a cigarette. His thoughts were thousands of kilometres away, on his village in Mali where jihadists had upended his life.
"I travelled for two years, and I left because of the war," he says, eyes fixed on the wet pavement. Islamic militants killed his parents and his siblings were missing.
Believing he was the last of his family, the young man packed his bags for a perilous, two-year journey that ultimately brought him to Spain, where he is now seeking asylum.
"The day I left the village, there was another attack," he said. "From the morning, everyone already knew there were terrorists."
Just as they had in the young migrant's village, jihadis struck Mali's capital, Bamako, just before dawn prayers early last week. They killed dozens of students at an elite police training academy, stormed Bamako's airport and set the presidential jet on fire.
The September 17 attack was the most brazen since 2016 in a capital city in the Sahel, a vast arid region stretching across sub-Saharan Africa south of the Sahara Desert.
It showed that jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda or Islamic State, whose largely rural insurgency has killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, can also strike at the heart of power.
Overshadowed by the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan, conflict in the Sahel rarely garners global headlines, yet it is contributing to a sharp rise in migration from the region towards Europe at a time when anti-immigrant far-right parties are on the rise and some EU states are tightening their borders.
According to the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration (IOM), the route to Europe with the steepest rise in numbers this year is via West African coastal nations to Spain's Canary Islands.
IOM data shows the number of migrants arriving in Europe from Sahel countries (Burkina, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal) rose 62% to 17,300 in the first six months of 2024 from 10,700 a year earlier, a rise the U.N. and the IOM have blamed on conflict and climate change.
Fifteen diplomats and experts told Reuters the swathes of territory under jihadist control also risk becoming training grounds and launchpads for more attacks on major cities such as Bamako, or neighbouring states and Western targets, in the region or beyond.
Jihadi violence, especially the heavy toll it has taken on government troops, was a major factor in a wave of military coups since 2020 against Western-backed governments in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the countries at the heart of the Sahel.
The military juntas that replaced them have since swapped French and U.S. military assistance for Russians, mainly from Wagner's mercenary outfit, but have continued to lose ground.
"The entire situation in those countries is screwed up ever since the military coups," Van Ostaeyen said. "So the only ones that are now trying to fill the gap, but are actually making it worse, is the former Wagner group."
Western powers that previously invested in trying to beat back the jihadists have very little capacity left on the ground, especially since the junta in Niger last year ordered the U.S. to leave a sprawling desert drone base in Agadez.
U.S. troops and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used drones to track jihadists and shared intelligence with allies such as the French, who launched air strikes against the militants, and West African armies.
But the Americans were booted out after they angered Niger's coup leaders by refusing to share intelligence and warning them against working with the Russians. The U.S. is still looking for a place to reposition its assets.
"Even if during certain periods acts are becoming smaller in number, they are deadlier," said Heni Nsaibia, a researcher at the U.S. crisis-monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED). "So the fatalities, they are skyrocketing."
A Reuters analysis of ACLED data found that the number of violent events involving jihadi groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger has almost doubled since 2021.
Since the start of this year, there have been 224 attacks a month on average, up from 128 in 2021.
Insa Moussa Ba Sane, regional migration and displacement coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross, said conflict was a major factor behind the increase in migration from the West African coast, with rising numbers of women and families seen along the route.
"Conflicts are at the root of the problem, combined with the effects of climate change," he said, describing how floods and droughts are both contributing to the violence and driving an exodus from rural to urban areas.
In Burkina Faso, perhaps the worst affected of all, jihadists affiliated with al Qaeda slaughtered hundreds of civilians in a day on August 24 in the town of Barsalogho, two hours from the capital Ouagadougou.
The Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP) in Sydney said Burkina Faso topped its Global Terrorism Index for the first time this year, with fatalities rising 68% to 1,907 - a quarter of all terrorism-linked deaths worldwide.
About half of Burkina Faso is now beyond government control, the U.N. has said, a factor contributing to soaring rates of displacement.
A U.N. panel of experts that monitors the two organisations' activities estimates that JNIM, the al Qaeda-aligned faction most active in the Sahel, had 5,000-6,000 fighters while 2,000-3,000 militants were linked to Islamic State.
The jihadi groups operate in different areas, at times fighting each other, though they have also struck localised, non-aggression pacts, reports by U.N. experts say.
The groups receive some financial support, training and guidance from their respective global leaderships, but also collect taxes in areas they control and seize weapons after battles with government forces, the reports say.
European governments are divided on how to respond to the conflict. Southern European nations who receive most migrants favour keeping communication with the juntas open, while others object because of human rights and democracy concerns, nine diplomats in the region told Reuters.
One African diplomat said the EU needed to remain engaged as the issue of migration was not going to go away.
"If the context continues, the way it's structured at the moment, we can't expect a decrease in migratory flows," Ba Sane said. "Conflicts are ... recurring."