Is France funding terrorism in the Sahel ?

Virtually absent before the turn of the century, terrorism has swept across the Sahelian countries of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, transforming the region into the global epicentre of jihadist violence and accounting for nearly half of all terror-related fatalities worldwide. Organisations such as the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State-Sahel Province (ISSP) have inflicted significant casualties and displacement upon civilian populations, while state security forces have demonstrated marked difficulties in decisively combating insurgencies that are both well-resourced and tactically sophisticated.

This raises a question of considerable analytical importance : how do non-state armed groups operating in one of the world’s most resource-constrained environments sustain the level of material capacity required for their continued operations ? In the absence of domestic arms production, the procurement of weapons, armoured vehicles, fuel, and related supplies necessitate external networks of support. Drawing on several months of fieldwork in Burkina Faso, during which fifty semi-structured interviews were conducted with military personnel, civil servants, civil society representatives, and non-elite citizens, this article engages with a perspective that recurs with notable consistency across the Sahelian context : that France bears some degree of culpability for the perpetuation of the region’s instability. What follows does not adjudicate this claim but rather takes it seriously as an analytical object — tracing the historical, political, and economic currents that have given it such enduring resonance.

French double-play
The revolutionary governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger rejected French cooperation and expelled the colonially inherited French military presence from their territory in 2022 and 2023. They decided to sever the French military cooperation agreements that were in operation for over 60 years and vowed to abandon the Franc CFA, a colonial francophone currency utilised by 15 francophone African countries and which continues to be managed by France. In addition, these countries departed from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which, in their eyes, was a regional body in West Africa that became captured by French interests. Instead, on September 16th 2023, the three states formed their own self-funded confederation called the Alliance of Sahelian States. Further, these three African rebel countries, after the French military departure, shifted their military alliance by starting a cooperation with Russia – a French military adversary. The collection of “anti-French” policies has resulted in a recent challenge to the French military hegemony of the Sahelian region.

France is accused by the respondents of supporting terrorism in the territory of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso notably through pro-French neighbouring countries where French military bases are located and where training, arms, logistical and medical support is being provided to jihadist groups that target the Sahel. This claim might come as a surprise to outsiders, given the apparent long-term efforts of France in combating terrorism in Africa – especially in recent years. Indeed, France was in fact militarily active in the Sahel under the banner of the Operation Serval and Barkhane from 2012 to 2022 to ostensibly fight terrorism. However, a closer look reveals that during this decade of intense French military activity in the region, local suspicions of a double-game had already started to arise.

The surprisingly poor results of the French military after spending 10 years in the Sahelian desert were pointed out by several interviewees, despite France possessing one of the most powerful armies in the world and enjoying direct support in their Sahelian operations from other powerful armies, including the United States, United Kingdom, Italy and Denmark. The French army is known to possess drones, helicopters and other air equipment with which these terrorist groups may have been localised and targeted, but France ostensibly failed in this regard during their 10-year attempt. Therefore, an apparent contradiction between the potency of French advanced assets and its inputs in the Sahel was noted by the Sahelian population.

While wars with asymmetrical powers between belligerents are sometimes won by the underdog because of an advantageous environment – think of the Vietnamese jungle facilitating the American loss to the Vietcongs, the Sahel did not seem to provide such a case. The environmental context of the 10-year French “war on terrorism” in the Sahel comprised a desert with vast planes of open-air sand in which prolonged hiding by enemies may prove difficult. In the open-air environment of the Sahara desert, it would be relatively hard for rebels to withdraw from the eye of the French military. Yet, despite the 10 years the military spent in the Sahel, France did not succeed in making meaningful progress in finding and defeating terrorist groups. On the contrary, casualties perpetrated by these terrorist groups have steadily risen during these French military missions with terrorism rising by 2000% between 2007 and 2022. This is the first observation that elicited a suspicion of French collaboration with the terrorist groups, as it is believed that France was not motivated to fight the terrorists but instead colluded with these groups.

Various soldiers and government officials in the region that were interviewed reported that the French army during its operations permitted itself to roam certain insecure parts of the Sahel, but barred the local African army from joining them. A situation was created in which France gained access to certain mineral-rich areas of the Sahel to which the Malian, Burkinabe or Nigerien militaries themselves did not have access. In this situation, it became difficult for African governments in question to verify the activity of French militaries in certain areas which strengthened suspicions that France may have utilised the space and secrecy to cooperate with terrorist groups in the region. Further, several military testimonies suggested that on the occasions that the Burkinabe army encountered terrorists, France demanded that permission be sought from their officials before the Burkinabe army could strike. The orders for permission would subsequently be given so delayed by France, that the terrorists would have already departed and regrouped – much to the anger of the Burkinabe soldiers. These military observations strengthened the idea that French failure to reduce terrorism in the Sahel may not be so much due to its incapacity but due to a lack of political will.

The suspicion of double-play became stronger when, the year after the French military operation withdrew from the Sahel in 2022 after pressure from the new Malian government , the Malian army succeeded in the recapture of the city of Kidal in November 2023. This recapture, which the French failed to do, became symbolically important for AES supporters. Malian army which is substantially underequipped, understaffed and underresourced as compared to the French military, was seen to make progress in the combat against terrorism in Kidal – a city that was not only a jihadist stronghold, but also a centre of northern Malian separatist politics, state contestation and foreign actors’ involvement. Four years since the French military mission in the Sahel ended, despite Western NGOs and media saying the inverse, people on the ground remark that the security situation in all three countries has remarkably improved with a significant recapture of territory from terrorist groups by government armies. Last year in Burkina Faso, for instance, a remarkable drop of 45% in terrorist-related deaths was recorded due to increasing military efficacy. Testimonies narrate that increased cross-regional Sahelian travel of persons taking place is another marker that regions which were previously inaccessible under terrorist control have become accessible again.

Interviewees also recalled a historical precedent of French support for opposition groups to destabilise a government unfriendly to French interests in Africa. Think of French covert arming of Biafra rebels which instigated a civil war in the 1960s in a French attempt to weaken anglophone influence in the region. French covert support for the assassination of anticolonial president Thomas Sankara who sought to reverse French neocolonial policies is another example engrained in the memory of Sahelian people. Blaise Compaoré who assassinated Sankara went on to rule Burkina Faso from 1987 till 2014 with French support. The French also allegedly provided covert support for Ivorian president Houphouët-Boigny, who supported the rebel leader Charles Taylor to destabilise the Liberian regime through a coup d’état in 1989. Charles Taylor was then propped up in the saddle of the Liberian presidency. Another example is how French-installed president Compaoré provided tangible logistical military training and support to Ivorian rebels in Burkina Faso to destabilise the government of anti-French Ivorian president Gbagbo in the 2000s. While expressing neutrality in official correspondence, France is alleged to have tacitly supported the Touareg separatist movement of Azawad in 2012. The separatists are being supported to rally for independence for a region that seeks to secede from Mali. This secession from Mali proclaimed by Touareg-led opposition deepens the longstanding internal ethnic fractures within Sahelian societies.

The recent case of Ukrainian public support for terrorists further elicited African suspicions of French involvement. On July 2024, the Ukraine embassy in Senegal publicly proclaimed pride in providing intelligence and support to separatist Touareg rebels and Al-Qaeda linked JNIM in the terrorist attack on 24th July 2024 in Northern Mali against the Malian Armed Forces. The Ukrainian embassy in Senegal celebrated the terrorist attack as a victory against Russia given the pro-Russian alignment of the government of Mali. When Ukraine made this public announcement of supporting separatist rebels in Mali, it was strongly condemned by various African governments and NGOs, but Western countries remained silent and refrained from condemning Ukraine.

Among the general population as well as among African leaders, it was believed to be unlikely that Ukraine had the capacity to operate alone in support of Touareg rebels in a region in which it traditionally holds no expertise. After all, Ukraine is currently deeply embroiled in a war in which it exerts high efforts to withstand the Russian invasion for which it depends heavily on other more powerful Western countries such as the USA and France. On the face of it, Ukraine may not have the luxury or the global standing to embark on a military “solo adventure” in distant Africa. France, as the historic hegemon of the region, on the other hand, holds much more detailed sociological, ethnographic and geographical expertise and knowledge of the territory of francophone Africa. Furthermore, according to a Le Monde report, a Touareg rebel leader representing the Azawad movement admitted links not only to Ukraine but also to the USA and France. A collaboration of Ukraine with other Western countries to successfully provide logistical support for terrorist attacks by the separatists and terrorists who work together, therefore, appears more likely.

Others point out how French support for opposition groups to undermine a government in power has not been limited to Africa. With regard to the Middle East for instance, French president François Hollande admitted providing arms and military aid to the Syrian opposition groups to undermine the Assad regime in 2014. Recently, French cement company LaFarge was found guilty by a French court for having funded terrorist groups in Syria, notably ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra, an affiliate of Al Qaeda. French senior partner USA also holds an extensive history of supporting opposition groups to topple governments worldwide, from arming Nicaraguan terrorists Contras against the Sandinista government in the 1980s to the current 2026 military aggression on Iran in which US president Trump admitted arming internal Iranian opposition groups with the objective to topple the government of Iran.

A convergence of interest ?
Even if a historical precedent and logistical plausibility exist for French involvement in funding terrorism in the Sahel, the motivations for such French involvement remain unclear. According to several interviewees, however, an apparent convergence exists between interests of terrorist groups and French interests. The Sahelian perspective goes that France did not accept its forced withdrawal from the region and seeks to regain influence by undermining the current regimes. The anti-colonial positioning of the governments in power may thus explain why the French may aid and abet civil unrest via terrorist military factions. Moreover, all three countries have announced a wish to depart from the French-led franc CFA currency by building an alternative currency, while the franc CFA is a system that holds significant advantages for French multinational corporations. Another point emphasised is that France has interests in the primary resources of the Sahel. French majority state-owned multinational corporation Orano held a virtual dominance over the uranium mines in Niger, which France utilises for nuclear energy. 70% of the electricity in the country relies on nuclear energy. Current Sahelian governments have now nationalised gold and uranium mines, demanding better prices. When terrorist groups target regime change, these groups thus undermine the current self-declared anti-imperialist governments in the Sahel that seek to “break all colonial links that keep them in slavery”.

The claim that France is actively sustaining the very instability it once promised to suppress will strike many in the West as conspiratorial, even absurd. Yet the historical record of French intervention in Africa, combined with the political and economic pressures bearing down on its former empire, means this belief cannot simply be waved away. Although France officially denies these allegations of destabilisation, among ordinary people in the Sahel — those living closest to the violence — it is not a fringe position but a widely held conviction, shaped by decades of experience with French power. Whether or not it is ultimately borne out, it deserves to be taken seriously rather than reflexively dismissed.

What is needed now is rigorous research that can trace, in concrete and verifiable detail, the financial architecture sustaining these groups. Until that work is done, there is no certainty. The accusation against France may prove exaggerated, or it may prove closer to the truth than comfortable. For now, the people of the Sahel have offered their testimony. It is worth listening to.

Jeffrie Quarsie is a PhD Candidate in International Relations at the University of Oxford. He examines the influence of contemporary French policies in West Africa on Sahelian sovereignties.