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Among the thousands of displaced persons who have fled the Malian conflict since a extremist insurgency began more than a decade ago, one group is bound together by a grim commonality: their husbands are missing or held captive.

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

Her husband was a gendarme who wound up fighting extremist fighters. In Mbera, a Mauritanian camp across the border housing over 120 thousand refugees, she has had to start life afresh with no idea if her spouse is dead or alive.

“We came here because of conflict, leaving everything behind,” she stated softly while meeting with her fellow members of Femme Resource, a group of women who do door-to-door campaigns in the camp to help expectant mothers and fight against violence against women.

“Many lost their husbands in the war,” she added, her voice breaking while children played together without shoes in the sand. “We arrived with nothing.”

Women preparing food at the Mbera refugee camp in south-eastern Mauritania.

Countless individuals have been disrupted in the last twenty years across the Sahel area – which stretches across a group of nations from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea coast – due to the actions of terror groups and other armed militias that have multiplied in countries with often weak state authorities.

The violence has been fuelled by a range of reasons, including the instability and availability of ammunition and mercenaries that resulted from the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya.

In the past few years, concern has been mounting inside and beyond government circles about armed groups extending their reach towards West Africa's coastline.

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

Members of Ansar Dine at the Kidal airport in northern Mali in 2012.

One diplomat in the city of Douala, the nation of Cameroon, informed media outlets anonymously that there was intelligence about Islamic State West Africa Province cells moving freely across Cameroon’s borders with neighboring Nigeria and expanding their influence.

“They [jihadists] have developed attack capacities to strike so many army positions,” the official said.

Nigerian officials have sounded warnings about new cells emerging in the country’s Middle Belt, while central African analysts caution about a developing partnership between various armed groups in the so-called “triangle of death”: the area from specific regions in Chad to Cameroon’s North Region and Lim-Pendé in CAR.

Recently, the United Nations said about 4 million people were now displaced across the Sahel area, with violence and insecurity forcing growing populations from their homes.

While three-quarters of those uprooted remain within their own countries, transnational migration are increasing, straining receiving areas with “limited aid” available, a UNHCR regional director, UNHCR’s regional director for West and Central Africa, told reporters in the Swiss city.

A Winning Approach?

The present anti-extremist strategy is divided: three Sahel nations – which has publicly engaged Russia’s Wagner mercenaries – have formed the Association of Sahel States, creating shared documents and coordinating defense plans.

The trio were previously part of the G5 Sahel, which was dissolved in last year after the AES members’ exit, and the ECOWAS bloc, which “deployed” a 5,000-troop standby force in spring.

“The more these jihadist threats shift southward, the more defensive actions will need to adopt a more effective and truly regional approach to addressing the issue,” said Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, an Abuja-based analyst and predoctoral researcher at the an international research center.

Students escaping extremist violence in the Sahel study in the town of Dori, Burkina Faso in several years ago.

The nation of Mauritania, another past participant of the G5 Sahel, experienced regular raids and kidnappings in the 2000s. As a conservative Islamic country with significant disparities and vast desert space, it was an archetypal fertile ground for extremists.

“Compared to its inhabitants, no other country in the Sahel and Sahara region generates more jihadist ideologues and senior militant leaders as Mauritania does,” wrote Anouar Boukhars, professor of countering violent extremism and counter-terrorism at the an African research center, National Defense University, several years ago.

But the country, which has had no extremist assault on its soil since 2011, has been applauded for its anti-militant actions.

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

“Mauritania also invested in building villages and water infrastructure, unlike Mali where government presence is restricted to the capital,” he said. “This wins over locals and guarantees collaboration, making it simpler to manage dangerous elements.”

Investments were made in frontier protection, backed by a multi-million euro agreement with the European Union, which was eager to stop the inflow of migrants.

At border checkpoints, officers use satellite internet to share real-time intelligence with the military, 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 information collection.

French soldiers join a regional anti-insurgent patrol with a Malian soldier (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 promptly contact security agencies to notify about people who are outsiders.”

Aside from successes, the country also stands faced with allegations of using the identical security measures for repression.

In late summer, a human rights investigation accused law enforcement of violently mistreating displaced persons and migrants over the last five years, allegedly subjecting them to rape and electric shocks. Officials in Nouakchott denied the allegations, saying they have improved conditions for holding migrants.

The Homecoming

Several thousand miles away, in Ghana, there are rumors about an unofficial understanding: militant factions leave the country alone and Accra turns a blind eye while wounded fighters, supplies and resources are moved to and from neighbouring Burkina Faso.

In neighboring Algeria and Mauritania, speculation has been widespread for years about a similar accord, which some see as another reason why the violence has not spilled over from nearby Mali, which both share long land borders with.

“Accounts suggest of an informal pact [that] if militants visit the country 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-Qaida leader Bin Laden was killed mentioning an attempted rapprochement between the group and Mauritania's government. The Mauritanian government continues to reject the idea of any such arrangement.

At Mbera, only a few miles from the last documented insurgent attack in Mauritania, displaced persons prefer not to discuss the violent past or the conflict’s present dynamics.

Their attention is on a tomorrow that remains uncertain, much like the destiny of missing men including the spouse of Amina.

“We simply wish to return,” she said.