In September 2025, France suspended all counterterrorism efforts with Mali. This severing of relations followed Mali’s arrest of a French agent accused of plotting to destabilize the government. Mali and France, once teammates in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel, had already begun to experience growing tension back in mid-2021. To understand the full scope and implications of this break, we must first examine the history of terrorism in the Sahel and France’s role in counterterrorism in the region.
The Sahel, a semi-arid belt south of the Sahara stretching from Senegal to Sudan, has become a hotbed for terrorism, driven by weak governance, corruption, and porous borders. Countries like Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso have faced escalating extremist threats, prompting international intervention. Starting in 2013, France launched Operation Serval at Mali’s request, later expanding it into Operation Barkhane to counter militant groups across the region. Alongside the G5 Sahel Force formed in 2017, France became the principal foreign actor supporting regional counterterrorism.
However, the campaign’s results were mixed. Militants dispersed rather than disappeared, and resentment toward France deepened in its former colonies. By 2022, France and its European allies ended up withdrawing from Mali, ending a decade-long intervention and leaving a power vacuum. In response, Mali turned to Russia’s Wagner Group for support, cutting all remaining defense ties with France and the EU. Despite their new alliance, violence surged in the Sahel. Mali’s military and its new partner, the Wagner Group, were enabling and exacerbating this violence through mass executions, arbitrary detentions, and torture of civilians in missions that they carried out. These operations deepened anti-government resentment and strengthened extremist movements in the Sahel. Mali’s government forces and the Wagner Group were even accused by the UN of committing war crimes. This extreme uptick in violence highlighted the full collapse of regional counterterrorism operations and their effects—demonstrating how vital France’s presence had been despite its mixed success, and how detrimental Russia’s intervention proved to be.
Despite France’s troop withdrawal, intelligence cooperation between Mali and France persisted until recently. Diplomatic tensions escalated in August after Mali arrested a French intelligence officer working at the French Embassy. The final break came in September 2025, when Mali expelled five French Embassy employees, declaring them persona non grata and ending all counterterrorism cooperation.
Even with Western international military and intelligence support, terrorism in Mali and the Sahel remained rampant; its escalation after the withdrawal of foreign assistance, however, underscores how vital that support was. Now, with the complete end of French and Western intelligence aid, the Sahel has become fertile ground for juntas and terrorist organizations to gain power. As foreign involvement recedes, insurgency and instability will almost certainly expand. The region risks becoming a hub for jihadist coordination, training, and recruitment, reminiscent of Afghanistan in the early 2000s. As extremist groups consolidate power, they can more easily plan transnational attacks and exploit weak neighboring governments. The stronger these networks grow, the harder they become to contain—raising the risk of a resurgence in global terrorism similar to its 2015 peak, when attacks and civilian fears surged worldwide.
Beyond security, the Sahel’s pivot from Western (French) to Russian support signals a broader erosion of Western influence. It opens the door for Russia—and potentially China—to fill the power vacuum, using security aid as a tool for political leverage. If Moscow continues aligning with unstable regimes, it will strengthen its geopolitical position and expand its sphere of influence, making the United States’ and its allies’ efforts to counter authoritarian powers even more difficult. Given current tensions between Russia and the U.S., this new alignment is especially troubling. In recent years, non-Western powers have risen—China’s economic expansion, India’s growth, and Russia’s resurgence all reflect this shift. Globalization and the diffusion of technology, capital, and information have dispersed critical resources worldwide, while allowing them to reconcentrate in certain non-Western states. Meanwhile, political and social divisions within Western democracies like the United States make global leadership increasingly difficult. Between 1996 and 2023, four Western countries increased their embassies in sub-Saharan Africa from 151 to 159, whereas four non-Western states rose from 95 to 143 embassies. This trend marks not the disappearance of Western power, but the waning of its dominance, as emerging actors step forward to shape global norms. Given these shifts, it may only be a matter of time before the conflicts in the Sahel escalate into something larger.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons.