Remote villages near Mauritania's border with Mali have long been neglected, making them easier prey for jihadists and other armed groups that have proliferated in Africa's Sahel region in recent years.
As global terrorism shifts away from battlefields in the Middle East, jihadists and other militants — including those affiliated with al Qaeda and the Islamic State — have begun seeking out unstable regions in sub-Saharan Africa as their next home . The Sahel, a vast space stretching from Mauritania's Atlantic coast to Eritrea, has been particularly vulnerable to this shift due to its perennial tumult and poverty. But now, there are signs that the region's militant spell has begun seeping into the West African countries to its south as well, which could have drastic consequences for some of the continent's most prosperous economies, such as Ivory Coast and Ghana, and their chief military partner, France. Hanging by a Thread Despite years of French military support across the region through Paris' Operation Barkhane strategy, an effective mechanism to improve the increasingly dire situation in the Sahel has yet to emerge .
