Security in the Sahel: the jihadist threat is redeploying towards the coastal states of West Africa

The visit of French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot to Lomé on April 24, 2026 — the first by a head of French diplomacy to Togo in ten years — sharply illustrates the geopolitical shift occurring in West Africa. In meeting with his Togolese counterpart Robert Dussey and then President Faure Gnassingbé, Barrot articulated what now constitutes an admission of strategic vulnerability: the terrorist threat in the Sahel, far from being contained, is migrating southward, now striking the northern regions of coastal states that have long been spared. “We have a common concern, namely the security of the sub-region and of course the terrorist threat that we all want to stem and contain,” he stated before the press.

This observation comes in the context of the accelerated dismantling of the French security architecture in the region. The withdrawal of French troops from Mali in 2022, Burkina Faso in 2023, and Niger in 2024, following the military coups that swept away the civilian regimes in Bamako, Ouagadougou, and Niamey, has left a security vacuum that the new military authorities are struggling to fill. The ruling juntas, which had promised to restore security as their primary justification for seizing power, are facing an unprecedented escalation of violence. The results, more than three years after the first of these coups, are at best mixed.

The report published by Human Rights Watch on April 2, 2026, paints a damning picture of the situation in Burkina Faso. According to the organization, the Burkinabè army, its civilian auxiliaries from the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP), and jihadist groups have killed at least 1,837 civilians during 57 recorded incidents in 11 regions of the country between January 2023 and August 2025. Government forces and the VDP are responsible for at least 1,255 civilian deaths in 33 incidents, while the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM), affiliated with Al-Qaeda, has killed at least 582 people in 24 attacks. These figures, established from the analysis of open-source information and more than 450 interviews conducted in Burkina Faso, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Mali, document what HRW describes as “war crimes and crimes against humanity” committed by all parties to the conflict.

One of the deadliest episodes documented by the report concerns the killings carried out by the army and the VDP in December 2023 in at least 16 villages north of Djibo, where hundreds of civilians were executed over several days. For its part, the JNIM launched a devastating assault on the locality of Barsalogho, a stronghold of the VDP, on August 24, 2024, killing at least 133 people and injuring more than 200 in less than two hours. These events reveal a conflict dynamic where civilian populations are caught in a vise between state forces engaging in indiscriminate repression and armed groups imposing their authority through terror.

The international dimension of this crisis should not be underestimated. HRW has called on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to open a preliminary examination into the crimes committed in Burkina Faso since September 2022, the date of Captain Ibrahim Traoré's coup. The organization recommends investigations into the criminal responsibility of Traoré himself, as commander-in-chief, as well as six other high-ranking military and diplomatic officials, including Burkina Faso's ambassador to Washington and former Minister of Defense Kassoum Coulibaly, current Minister of Defense Célestin Simporé, and Major General Moussa Diallo. On the jihadist side, the supreme leader of the JNIM Iyad Ag Ghaly, his lieutenant Amadou Kouffa, as well as local leaders Jafar Dicko and his brother Ousmane Dicko, are also targeted by these recommendations.

The striking paradox of this situation lies in the simultaneous withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger from the ICC, announced in September 2025 by the three juntas within the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). This move, which aims to exempt military leaders from any international jurisdiction, is part of a logic of asserted sovereignty in the face of what is perceived as Western interference. Russia, which has established security partnerships with these three regimes through the Wagner Group — now Africa Corps — capitalizes on this anti-imperialist discourse while offering security solutions whose effectiveness remains largely unproven on the ground.

It is precisely this dynamic of expansion southward that motivated Barrot's visit to Lomé. The northern regions of Togo, Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, and Ghana are facing an increasing infiltration of jihadist groups that exploit poorly controlled border areas and local socio-economic vulnerabilities. Togo, which maintains diplomatic relations with Paris while developing its ties with Moscow, embodies this pragmatic posture increasingly adopted by coastal states: not to choose sides, but to secure their territory by all available means. Barrot praised Togo's “pivot” role in seeking regional solutions, a diplomatic euphemism to acknowledge that Paris, deprived of its traditional alliances in the Sahel, must now work with second-tier partners.

France is also preparing for a major summit on Africa in Nairobi scheduled for May 2026, co-organized with Kenya. This summit represents an attempt to redefine the Franco-African relationship on new bases, shifting from a military-security partnership to cooperation focused on economic, scientific, and cultural development. It remains to be seen whether this strategic reorientation will be sufficient to counter the jihadist advance in a region where the lack of economic alternatives for youth, the structural weakness of states, and the proliferation of armed actors create fertile ground for extremism.

All these developments outline a crisis arc that, from a circumscribed Sahelian problem, transforms into a security issue affecting all of West Africa. Coastal states, which had been able to observe the deterioration of the situation in the Sahel from the periphery, are discovering that the threat is now at their doorstep. The capacity of the international community — and France in particular — to propose a coherent and credible response will be tested in the coming months, even as global attention remains absorbed by other conflicts.