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Among the thousands of displaced persons who have escaped Mali since a jihadist uprising began more than a decade ago, one community is bound together by a grim commonality: their spouses are missing or held captive.

Amina (not her real name) is one of them.

The 50-year-old’s husband was a police officer who ended up confronting extremist fighters. In Mbera, a refugee settlement across the border sheltering more than 120,000 refugees, she has had to rebuild her life with little certainty if her spouse is dead or alive.

“We came here because of conflict, abandoning all our possessions,” she said quietly while meeting with her fellow members of a women's support group, a women's organization who do community outreach in the camp to assist pregnant women and fight against violence against women.

“Many lost their husbands in the war,” she added, her voice cracking 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.

Millions of lives have been disrupted in the last twenty years across the Sahel region – which stretches across a band of countries from the Atlantic coast to the Red Sea – due to the activities of extremist organizations and other armed militias that have multiplied in countries with frequently fragile central governments.

The conflict has been fuelled by a multitude of factors, including the turmoil and availability of ammunition and mercenaries that stemmed from the 2011 Nato invasion of Libya.

In recent years, alarm has been growing within and outside official channels about armed groups expanding their operations towards coastal west Africa.

Between January 2021 and October 2023, an monthly average of 26 security events were attributed to extremist fighters across multiple West African nations. In January of this year, militants from the al-Qaida-linked JNIM assaulted a military formation in Benin's north, leaving 30 soldiers dead.

Members of Ansar Dine at the Kidal airfield in Mali's north in 2012.

One diplomat in Douala, Cameroon, told journalists anonymously that there was information about Islamic State West Africa Province cells coming and going across Cameroon’s borders with neighboring Nigeria and widening their reach.

“These groups have built operational capabilities to strike so many army positions,” the official said.

Authorities in Nigeria have raised alarms about new cells popping up in the country’s central region, while central African analysts warn about a developing partnership between various armed groups in the so-called “deadly triangle”: the area from specific regions in Chad to Cameroon’s North Region and a Central African area in CAR.

Earlier this month, the UN said about 4 million people were now displaced across the Sahel region, with conflict and instability driving increasing numbers from their homes.

While three-quarters of those displaced stay inside their nations, cross-border movements are on the rise, putting pressure on host communities with “scant assistance” available, a UNHCR regional director, the UN refugee agency's lead for West and Central Africa, told journalists in Geneva.

A Winning Approach?

The present anti-extremist strategy is splintered: three Sahel nations – which has publicly engaged Russia’s Wagner mercenaries – have formed the AES alliance, issuing passports and collaborating on defense plans.

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

“As extremist dangers move towards the south, the more defensive actions will need to consider a more effective and truly regional approach to dealing with the issue,” said an analyst, an Abuja-based analyst and predoctoral researcher at the International Centre for Tax and Development.

Schoolchildren who fled from armed militants in Sahel region study in Dori, Burkina Faso in several years ago.

The nation of Mauritania, another past participant of the G5 group, experienced regular raids and kidnappings in the early 2000s. As a traditional Muslim nation with significant disparities and vast desert space, it was an ideal breeding ground for radical elements.

“Relative to its population size, no other country in the Sahel-Saharan area generates more jihadist ideologues and senior militant leaders as Mauritania,” wrote Anouar Boukhars, expert on extremism and counter-terrorism at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a defense academic institution, in 2016.

But the nation, which has had no extremist assault on its soil since over a decade ago, has been applauded for its anti-militant actions.

“Over a decade back, they offered those extremists who want to lay down arms some kind of amnesty and had these religious retraining programs,” said Ulf Laessing, regional program head of the Sahel regional initiative at German thinktank Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

“Mauritania also invested in building villages and water supply, unlike neighboring Mali where state authority is restricted to the capital,” he said. “This gains local support and ensures cooperation, making it simpler to manage threatening actors.”

Funding were made in border security, backed by a multi-million euro agreement with the EU, which was keen to stem the migrant influx.

At custom duty posts, officers use satellite internet to share real-time intelligence with the military, which launched a camel corps that monitors arid zones. Satellite phones are banned for public use and officials have also enlisted the help of villagers in intelligence-gathering.

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

“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 notify about people who are outsiders.”

Beyond the positive outcomes, the country also stands accused of using the identical security measures for authoritarian control.

In late summer, a Human Rights Watch report accused security officials of physically abusing refugees and other migrants over the last several years, allegedly subjecting them to sexual violence and torture. Officials in Nouakchott denied the allegations, saying they have enhanced standards for detaining migrants.

The Homecoming

Far from there, in Ghana, there are rumors about an informal arrangement: militant factions avoid targeting the nation and Ghana's government turns a blind eye while injured militants, food and fuel are transported to and from neighbouring Burkina Faso.

In Algeria and Mauritania, conjecture has been widespread for years about a comparable agreement, which some see as an additional factor why the conflict has not spread from nearby Mali, which both have extensive frontiers with.

“There are reports of an informal pact [that] if fighters visit Mauritania to see their families, they refrain from bearing arms and don’t carry out attacks until they return to Mali,” said the analyst.

In 2011, the US authorities claimed to have found papers in the Pakistani compound where former al-Qaeda head Osama bin Laden was killed referencing an attempted rapprochement between the group and Nouakchott. The Mauritanian government continues to reject the idea of any such deal.

At Mbera, only a short distance from the most recent recorded militant strike in Mauritania, refugees prefer not to discuss the violent past or the current situation of the violence.

Their focus is on a future that remains unpredictable, much like the destiny of disappeared males including Amina’s husband.

“We simply wish to return,” she said.