Africa’s 6,000-kilometre corridor that’s one of world’s most dangerous places

It’s a 6,000-kilometre long corridor of land connecting the Atlantic to the Red Sea that’s been called “one of the most troubled, poor and environmentally damaged places on the planet”.

Welcome to The Sahel, the region directly below the Sahara that stretches from Africa’s west coast to its east.

It is a region that millions are desperate to escape (or already have done), where the terrorists of Al-Qaeda prey on the vulnerable and where the armed forces of some of the world’s most powerful countries have seen their soliders killed as they try to maintain order (and their influence) in the area.

While much of the world’s attention is focused on the war between Russia and Ukraine and on Israel’s conflicts in the Middle East, there are serious and long-running conflicts happening in the Sahel which, Forbes says, amounts to a “growing threat to Africa”.

And journalist Tim Marshall, author of The Power of Geography, says the threat does not remain limited to Africa but spreads far wider, including to Europe, as millions of people are displaced from their homes and seek safer, wealthier countries to live in.

The Sahel takes in several enormous countries, most of them far larger than the United Kingdom. In the west, the region begins in Mauritania and northern Senegal and takes in Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan before ending in Eritrea on Africa’s east coast.

Other countries like Burkina Faso and Nigeria are also sucked into the region’s troubles.

The Sahel is a hot and semi-arid region where 64.5% of the population are aged under 25, according to the UN. Conditions and temperatures there are only mildly less brutal than the Sahara to the north, regularly topping 40C.

“The Sahel is a region which brings together a dangerous mix of religious extremism, poverty and environmental decline,” said Saleem H Ali, professor of geography at the University of Delaware, writing in Forbes.

“This troika of ‘threat multipliers’ makes the existing ethnic and tribal fault lines even more seismically active and dangerous.”

The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) group, which collects information on reported political violence and protest events around the world, said: “The central Sahel states of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger — all of which are now ruled by military juntas — are engulfed in a decade-long regional jihadist insurgency driven by al-Qaeda’s Sahelian branch Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State Sahel Province (IS Sahel).

“High levels of violence in all three central Sahel states are likely to persist in 2024 as counter-insurgency efforts escalate to meet the insurgency’s increasingly aggressive tactics.”

ACLED said Burkina Faso faced “a severe escalation of deadly violence in 2023, with more than 8,000 people reportedly killed” with “mass atrocities” at a “regular frequency”.

It said conflict in Mali involved armed groups including the notorious Russian mercenary armed force, Wagner Group, saying “elements of the Wagner Group were similarly involved in the indiscriminate killing of hundreds of civilians, destruction of infrastructure, and looting of property, as well as triggering mass displacement”.

ACLED said “the escalation and spread of deadly violence in Burkina Faso and Mali have contributed significantly to the vulnerability of civilians, who are increasingly caught in the crossfire” and that “ongoing military offensives are likely to continue” in a region that is already among the worst in the world for humanitarian crises and displacement.

The Sahel region has faced crises for decades but the last decade has seen a surge in violence. Terrorists attacked hotels in 2015 and 2016, with the Radisson Blu in Mali, the Splendid Hotel in Burkina Faso, and L’Etoule du Sud Hotel in Ivory Coast all hit. There have been around 25 military coups in Sahel countries since the 1960s.

The USA and France have sent in special forces to try and help but without success so far. Some have been killed.

The Center for Preventative Action, which aims to help policymakers devise timely and practical strategies to prevent and mitigate armed conflict around the world, says: “Experts attribute the expansion of violent extremism in the Sahel to persistently weak governance, characterised by corruption, democratic backsliding, legitimacy deficits, and human rights violations.

“Many countries in the region share similar internal dynamics of inequality— state power tends to be concentrated in southern, urban regions while rural, northern areas remain underdeveloped and ripe for exploitation by extremist groups.

“The persistent and growing strength of violent extremist organizations in the Sahel threatens to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis and spread instability across Africa, posing significant security and financial risks to the United States and Europe.”