Western military interventions in West Africa’s Sahel region risk producing the dangers they aim to abate

On 6 September 2019 the Danish government presented its new plan for increasing the Danish military contribution to the fight against transnational terrorism in the Sahel region through support to the French counter-terror operation, Barkhane, and the UN mission, MINUSMA. Since the 2013 launch of France’s unilateral military operation in Mali, Western military deployments have been informed by the idea that threats of terrorism, migration and organized crime deriving from ungoverned weak Sahelian states, could directly affect Europe’s own safety, occasioning, for example, a return of European troops to the UN stabilization operation, MINUSMA. In a new IPSI commentary published by the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, DIIS researcher Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde discusses why, despite the presence of multiple military actors in West Africa’s Sahel region, a steady growth in jihadi activity seems to thrive in the presence of foreign military operations.