Sahel 2026: Between Apparent Decrease in Violence and Security Drift of Government Forces

The Sahel remains in 2026 the global epicenter of jihadist terrorism, despite a statistical decrease in violence recorded in 2025. This apparent improvement masks a far more troubling reality: the government forces of Mali and Burkina Faso are now killing more civilians than the terrorist groups they are supposed to combat. This deadly inversion, documented by several conflict monitoring organizations, reveals a deep crisis of security governance at the heart of a region that now accounts for more than fifty times the number of terrorism-related deaths compared to 2007.

According to the Global Terrorism Index 2026 published in early April, Burkina Faso shows the largest global decrease in terrorism-related deaths, with a 45% reduction compared to the previous year. Mali, for its part, records a third consecutive year of decline, with 42% fewer victims, while Niger, although still heavily affected, also sees a reduction in the number of attacks and victims. These statistics, which may seem encouraging at first glance, must be put into perspective with data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and Human Rights Watch, which paint a much darker picture of the security situation in the region.

Between January 2023 and August 2025, Human Rights Watch documented 57 major incidents that resulted in the deaths of at least 1,837 civilians in the Sahel region. Of these incidents, 33 were perpetrated by government forces and their auxiliaries, resulting in 1,255 civilian deaths. According to ACLED data, in 2025 alone, Burkinabè armed forces and pro-government militias known as Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland killed 523 civilians, compared to 339 for jihadist groups Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and the Islamic State's Sahel Province. In Mali, the disproportion is even more pronounced: the Malian army, supported by Russian paramilitary groups Wagner and Africa Corps, killed 918 civilians in 2025, while JNIM and ISSP killed 232.

This widespread state violence takes various but equally deadly forms. In eastern Burkina Faso, in July 2024, a civilian convoy under military escort witnessed a massacre in Sakoani, 30 kilometers west of Kantchari. A witness, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals, told Reuters: "When the army arrived in this village and saw that it was populated, they surrounded the entire village and exterminated everything – every living being. People tried to flee, but if you run, they shoot you." He estimates having seen at least 100 bodies. In Mali, the increasing use of armed Turkish drones, acquired from 2022 onwards, has led to a surge in strikes against civilians: incidents involving drones rose from 4 in 2022 to 66 in 2025, causing 155 deaths. In July 2024, government drone strikes killed at least 50 civilians at the artisanal gold mining site of Inatiyara in northern Mali.

This massive state violence serves as a factor for the expansion of jihadist groups rather than a hindrance to their progress. As Ilaria Allegrozzi, a senior researcher for the Sahel at Human Rights Watch, points out, Burkinabè security forces and their allied militias "seem to be more brutal and violent" than militant groups like JNIM, the local affiliate of Al-Qaeda. This brutality is part of a regional pattern that raises concerns about military indiscipline and its consequences for counterinsurgency efforts. The Global Terrorism Index notes that 71% of jihadist recruits join extremist groups after experiencing abuse, and the lack of economic opportunities remains a decisive driver of armed engagement. In this context, the abuses committed by government forces directly fuel terrorist recruitment.

The Islamic State in the Sahel, which operates mainly in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, has significantly evolved since its local origins. Initially a dissident group of Al-Qaeda, ISSP transformed into a full-fledged province of the Islamic State's global governance structure in 2022. The central leadership based in Syria identified the Sahel as a priority theater to compensate for the decline of the Iraqi and Syrian heart of the caliphate. Libyan and Syrian operatives were sent to the region, and ISSP was integrated into the terrorist organization's West and North Africa office.

The rise of ISSP was facilitated by a wave of coups between 2020 and 2023 in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, which fractured already fragile civil-military relations. The new military leaders empowered abusive auxiliaries and alienated communities in contested border areas, allowing ISSP to establish itself in newly unprotected regions, tax trade and pastoral routes, and present itself as a provider of security and income. The juntas also expelled and marginalized international forces, contributing to the withdrawal of Western actors. France withdrew its last troops from Mali in August 2022, while Washington agreed to withdraw from Niger after the July 2023 coup, dismantling the main hub for drones and intelligence for the United States in the central Sahel.

In 2024 and 2025, the central command of the Islamic State based in Syria issued directives to fill these power vacuums, ordering the West African branch to support its Sahelian affiliate in Mali and Niger. ISSP is shaped as a dual-use hub – both a destination for foreign fighters and a platform to project violence northward. In February 2025, Moroccan authorities dismantled an ISSP terrorist cell operating as an external operations wing responsible for recruitment beyond the region. The group has expanded its online networks, connecting radicalized sympathizers in the West with mentorship and operational advice – including target selection guidance – from facilitators in the Sahel and West Africa.

The internationalization of the Sahelian branch has followed a gradual trajectory since 2020, particularly in Morocco and Spain. In 2023, Moroccan security statements identified ISSP, rather than Middle Eastern countries, as one of the two most common destinations for recruits, alongside the Horn of Africa affiliate. In February 2025, Morocco's Central Bureau of Judicial Investigations thwarted a terrorist plot and arrested a cell of 12 members across nine cities. Searches revealed signs of advanced operational preparation, and investigators identified a logistics hub operating along existing smuggling routes to Algeria. The same corridors that move migrants and contraband were preparing to move operatives and equipment for attacks.

Meanwhile, Spanish services arrested around 90 people suspected of links to jihadist movements in just the first eight months of 2025, some of whom intended to travel to Mali before turning to planning attacks in Spain. The volume of arrests, including the dismantling of over 40 cells linked to the Sahel and more than 1,000 terrorism-related arrests in Morocco since 2015, indicates that the pool of recruits is only expanding.

In the face of this evolving threat, the Unified Force of the Confederation of Sahel States, formalized in December 2025 by Malian President Assimi Goïta, represents an attempt at a structured regional response. Authorities from the Sahel States Alliance claim that joint operations conducted since 2024 have led to the neutralization of several terrorist leaders and the destruction of armed bases, thanks to intelligence sharing and coordination of forces on the ground. However, the Global Terrorism Index 2026 reminds us that the activity of jihadist groups has significantly increased in certain countries, particularly in Niger. The observed improvement remains fragile, localized, and reversible.

As Heni Nsaibia, a senior analyst at ACLED for West Africa, points out, "as state responses increasingly rely on reprisals and collective punishment, more civilians find themselves trapped in jihadist-controlled areas, where JNIM consolidates its influence through coercion and strategic engagement with local populations." The cross-border dynamics of Liptako-Gourma, facilitated by the porosity of borders between Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, continue to fuel the expansion of JNIM and the Islamic State in the Sahel.

What is unfolding in the Sahel in 2026 is not a victory against terrorism, but a precarious rebalancing among armed actors, at a heavy human cost for civilian populations. The deep-rooted factors of violence – economic predation, breakdown of trust between the state and communities, lack of prospects for youth, and the erosion of traditional governance structures – have not been resolved. Military initiatives, while necessary, will not suffice if they are not accompanied by a political and social strategy commensurate with the crisis. The region may be buying time statistically, but the clock is inexorably ticking toward a larger humanitarian and security catastrophe if Sahelian governments and their partners do not radically change their approach.