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Among the thousands of refugees who have fled the Malian conflict since a extremist insurgency began over ten years back, one group is united by a grim commonality: their spouses are presumed dead or captured.

One woman, who we'll call Amina is one of them.

Her husband was a police officer who ended up confronting jihadists. In Mbera, a refugee settlement across the border sheltering over 120 thousand refugees, she has had to start life afresh with no idea if her spouse is dead or alive.

“We fled here due to violence, leaving everything behind,” she said quietly while sitting among her fellow members of Femme Resource, a women's organization who do community outreach in the camp to help expectant mothers and combat gender-based violence.

“Numerous women lost spouses during the conflict,” she added, her voice breaking while children chased one another barefoot in the sand. “We came here with empty hands.”

Women cooking meals at the Mbera refugee camp in eastern Mauritania.

Countless individuals have been disrupted in the last twenty years across the Sahel area – which spans a group of nations from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea – due to the actions of extremist organizations and other violent non-state actors that have multiplied in countries with often weak state authorities.

The conflict has been fuelled by a range of reasons, including the instability and access to weapons and mercenaries that stemmed from the 2011 Nato invasion of Libya.

In recent years, concern has been growing inside and beyond government circles about armed groups expanding their operations towards West Africa's coastline.

Between January 2021 and October 2023, an monthly average of 26 security events were attributed to extremist fighters across Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo. In January of this year, fighters from the al-Qaida-linked JNIM attacked a army base in northern Benin, leaving 30 troops killed.

Fighters of the Islamic group Ansar Dine at the Kidal airport in Mali's north in 2012.

An official in the city of Douala, the nation of Cameroon, told media outlets without attribution that there was information about Islamic State West Africa Province cells coming and going across the Cameroonian frontier with neighboring Nigeria and expanding their influence.

“These groups have developed attack capacities to attack so many military formations,” the diplomat said.

Nigerian officials have sounded warnings about fresh militant units emerging in the country’s Middle Belt, while experts on Central Africa warn about a developing partnership between various armed groups in the so-called “triangle of death”: the zone from specific regions in the nation of Chad to northern Cameroon and Lim-Pendé in CAR.

Earlier this month, the UN said about 4 million people were now uprooted across the Sahel area, with conflict and instability forcing growing populations from their homes.

While 75% of those displaced stay inside their nations, cross-border movements are increasing, straining host communities with “scant assistance” available, a UNHCR regional director, the UN refugee agency's lead for West and Central Africa, told reporters in the Swiss city.

An Effective Strategy?

The present anti-extremist strategy is divided: three Sahel nations – which has openly hired the Russian Wagner Group – have formed the AES alliance, issuing passports and coordinating defense plans.

The trio were formerly members of the G5 Sahel, which was disbanded in 2023 after the withdrawal of AES nations, and the Economic Community of West African States, which “deployed” a 5,000-soldier reserve unit in March.

“As extremist dangers move towards the south, the more security measures will need to consider a more efficient and broadly regional approach to dealing with the issue,” said an analyst, an expert based in Abuja and research fellow at the International Centre for Tax and Development.

Schoolchildren who fled from armed militants in the Sahel attend a class in Dori, the nation of Burkina Faso in several years ago.

Mauritania, another past participant of the G5 Sahel, experienced frequent attacks and abductions in the early 2000s. As a traditional Muslim nation with significant disparities and extensive arid lands, it was an archetypal fertile ground for radical elements.

“Relative to its population size, no other country in the Sahel and Sahara region generates more extremist thinkers and high-ranking terrorist operatives as Mauritania does,” wrote a researcher, expert on extremism and anti-terror efforts at the an African research center, a defense academic institution, in 2016.

But the nation, which has had no jihadist attack on its soil since over a decade ago, has been praised for its anti-militant actions.

“More than 10 years ago, they provided those extremists who want to surrender some kind of pardon and had these theological reorientation courses,” said an analyst, regional program head of the regional Sahel programme at a European policy institute.

“They also funded village construction and water supply, unlike neighboring Mali where state authority is restricted to the capital,” he said. “This wins over locals and ensures cooperation, making it easier to control dangerous elements.”

Funding were made in border security, backed by a multimillion-euro deal with the European Union, which was keen to stem the migrant influx.

At custom duty posts, officers use satellite internet to share live information with the army, which launched a camel corps that monitors arid zones. Satellite phones are forbidden for civilian communication and authorities have also recruited assistance from villagers in intelligence-gathering.

French soldiers join a joint anti-militant operation with a soldier from Mali (left) in 2016.

“The nation has 5-6 million inhabitants and many are relatives who all know each other,” said the analyst. “Whenever strangers enter a community, they immediately call security agencies to report people who don’t belong.”

Aside from successes, the country also stands accused of using the same tools of protection for repression.

In late summer, a Human Rights Watch report alleged law enforcement of physically abusing refugees and other migrants over the last five years, allegedly exposing them to sexual violence and torture. Officials in Nouakchott denied the allegations, saying they have improved conditions for holding migrants.

Returning Home

Several thousand miles away, in the nation of Ghana, there are whispers about an informal arrangement: militant factions avoid targeting the nation and Ghana's government turns a blind eye while wounded fighters, food and fuel are transported to and from neighbouring Burkina Faso.

In Algeria and Mauritania, speculation has been rife for years about a similar accord, which some see as an additional factor why the violence has not spread from nearby Mali, which both have extensive frontiers with.

“There are reports of an unofficial deal [that] if militants visit the country to see their families, they don’t carry or use weapons and don’t carry out attacks until they return to Mali,” said the analyst.

In 2011, the United States claimed to have found papers in the facility in Pakistan where former al-Qaeda head Bin Laden was killed mentioning an attempted rapprochement between the organization and Mauritania's government. The national authorities continues to reject the idea of any such deal.

At Mbera, only a few miles from the most recent recorded militant strike in Mauritania, refugees prefer not to discuss the history of conflict or the conflict’s present dynamics.

Their attention is on a tomorrow that remains unpredictable, much like the fate of missing men including Amina’s husband.

“We just want to go home,” she said.