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Owing to its rich underground resources, its strategic location, and the influence of the intellectual and political currents of the period, the African continent has, for centuries, been the target of expansionist policies shaped in line with the economic and political interests of European states. The European presence spread from the coastal regions toward the interior of the continent and turned into a colonial structure based on territorial domination. England, Spain, Portugal, and France were among the principal European countries that established domination over the continent at that time. Among these states, France, which established dominance over a vast geography particularly in West and North Africa, stood out as one of the main actors of colonial activities on the continent. Its expansion into West Africa accelerated particularly in the 19th century, and toward the final period of the century it took on an institutional structure that instrumentalized the local people as a labor force or as soldiers and that was based on exploiting the people of the region and natural resources in line with its own interests. However, in the mid-20th century, under the pressure of the anti-colonial movements that flared up in the international arena and of local independence movements, France was forced to withdraw from the majority of its colonies in Africa. Thus, countries that had remained under colonial rule for many years gained their independence and stepped into the process of nation-state building.
In the post-independence period, however, along with freedom, African states faced various new political, social, and economic problems. In addition to the administrative and economic structures inherited from the colonial period, the insufficient development of state institutions, power struggles, and socioeconomic problems made it difficult for the newly established states to ensure political stability. One of the regions where this instability was intensely observed was the Sahel countries in West Africa. Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, which were located within Françafrique, attained their formal sovereignty in 1960; however, France maintained its influence in the region after independence as well, through the defense agreements it signed with these countries, military bases, the common currency (the CFA Franc), raw material transfers, and economic privileges. The historical background of the subject is quite important for making sense of the Sahel’s relationship of tutelage and for understanding the present. For the fact that the wave of coups that broke out in the 2020s and the discourses of “sovereignty” have resonated to such an extent actually stems from a search for shaping the future in a more independent manner by breaking free from the traces left by the past.
The consecutive military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger between 2020 and 2023 were the most distinct political manifestation of the desire to distance themselves from structures centered on foreign intervention. Claiming that radical armed groups in the region could not be contained despite over a decade of French military presence and security partnership and had instead spread the junta governments that came to power systematically severed ties with Paris. Instead, they turned to seeking alternative partnerships, primarily with Russia. The institutional equivalent of this break became the Alliance of Sahel States, established through the Liptako-Gourma Charter signed in September 2023, and subsequently the Confederation of Sahel States (AES), which emerged when this alliance was transformed into a confederation in July 2024.
The establishment of the AES is generally presented, both within the region and in international public opinion, with the discourse of a “break from the West” or “strategic autonomy.” However, the extent to which this discourse has been realized on the ground is open to debate: Has the Sahel states’ ending of the security relationship they had established with France completely removed them from an externally dependent security order, or has it merely changed the address and the form of the dependency? In order to be able to answer this question in a meaningful way, it is first necessary to clarify how the concept of “strategic autonomy” is operationalized in this analysis. Strategic autonomy can be addressed, in a way reduced to a minimum, under three main headings. First, decision-making independence refers to a state’s ability to determine its security policy without subjecting it to the approval or interest of an external actor. Second, operational capacity is the ability to respond to security threats directly with its own resources or at least through alternative and replaceable partnerships. Finally, resource diversity defines the state of not being dependent on a single supplier in terms of weapons, training, intelligence, or finance. Unless these three headings are strengthened at the same time, the claim of “autonomy” is doomed to remain at the discursive level.
The aim of this study is to question the on-the-ground counterpart of the AES’s “strategic autonomy” discourse. In this direction, the study proceeds around the question of whether the Sahel states’ ending of their security relations with France has completely removed them from an externally dependent security order, or has merely changed the address and the form of the dependency. In the first section, the transformation that the security structures in the Sahel have undergone along the axis of the coups and the deterioration of relations with ECOWAS will be addressed; in the second section, by also touching upon the security threat posed by the armed organizations operating in the region, the externally dependent security order that was formed before the AES will be examined. In the third section, the AES’s common defense understanding and capacity-building initiatives, and in the fourth section, the extent to which the new partnership has differed in quality from the old one in the process of the transition from France to Russia, will be evaluated. In the fifth and final section, the limitations faced by the claim of strategic autonomy and the possible scenarios regarding the future of the AES will be discussed.
The Transformation of Security Structures in the Sahel
To understand the radical transformation experienced by the security structure in the Sahel in the 2020s, it is first necessary to look at how the Arab Spring acted as a trigger. The instability that broke out in the country with the overthrow of Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 spilled beyond Libya’s borders. The Gaddafi regime had developed close relations, particularly with Malian Tuaregs for many years, employing a large number of Tuaregs as mercenaries under the Libyan Armed Forces. With the overthrow of the regime, the Tuaregs returned to northern Mali with munitions and weapons from Libya, and the previously known Azawad issue re-emerged on the agenda. The relations of the Tuareg communities living in the Azawad region, which covers northern Mali, with the central government followed a tense course in various periods starting from the country’s independence. These tensions, shaped around demands for the administration of northern regions, political representation, and regional autonomy, led to various Tuareg rebellions from the 1960s onward. Despite previous agreements and reconciliation attempts, the failure to permanently resolve the issue was carried into a new phase with the participation of armed Tuaregs returning from Libya.
With the coming together of different Tuareg movements, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) was established, and the movement went beyond previous demands for autonomy, aiming for Azawad to secede from Mali and become an independent state. Strengthened by the military experience and firepower provided by fighters returning from Libya, the MNLA launched an armed rebellion against the Malian army in January 2012. Within a short time, large areas in the north, particularly Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu, fell out of the central government’s control, turning the security crisis in Mali into a political crisis. In the subsequent period, the involvement of armed groups such as Ansar Dine, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) alongside these rebels significantly weakened the central government’s control in the north, further complicating the conflict environment. The crisis, which initially formed around Azawad, transformed into an environment where militia forces ran rampant, and security became a major problem.
When the Malian administration proved incapable of halting the advance in the north through its own means, France launched Operation Serval in January 2013. Although the advance of armed groups toward the south of the country was largely stopped through the operation, the security problem could not be permanently eliminated. While France created a successful impression during this operation by serving as a buffer in the region, it caused radical groups to spread over a broader area. Following Serval, Operation Barkhane, which encompassed a wider geography, was put into effect in 2014; nevertheless, armed groups restructured over time and expanded their operational domains into the central regions of Mali and the border regions of Burkina Faso and Niger. Thus, the crisis that began centered in Mali in 2012 transformed in subsequent years into a regional security problem that spread across the Sahel as a whole.
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