The bitter harvest of French interventionism in the Sahel

Abstract

This article has tentatively unpacked the anti-French sentiment in the Sahel which became particularly ubiquitous in the Malian public arena in the autumn of 2019. While the French intervention is primarily driven by security concerns, it is designed and delivered through a depoliticized, bureaucratic logic, at odds with the deeply political claims around sovereignty made by protesters in Sahelian capitals. Although this trait per se does not make the French intervention drastically different from other counterterrorism interventions in Africa, France's reluctance to promote a dialogue among the belligerents leads to a major distortion in domestic political landscapes, and creates a space for vocal contestation articulated around national sovereignty. This constitutive effect of the intervention places domestic leaders in a tug of war between two audiences, respectively domestic and foreign. To assess how sustainable this situation is in the long run would require additional research. Injunctions to comply with the French agenda may well widen the gap between Sahelian leaders and their domestic constituencies and, in the worst but not improbable case, prop up their authoritarian inclinations.