Trump Seeks Security Ties With Military Juntas In The Sahel – OpEd
The Trump administration sent high-level delegations this year to the Sahel in an effort to initiate security cooperation with the military juntas that have recently seized power in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The last American military operations in the region ended in September 2024, when the US Africa Command (Africom) completed the withdrawal of US troops deployed at the Nigerien base in Agadez, where they had been conducting Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance drone operations at the facility constructed there by the United States at a cost of more than $100 million.
The Biden administration tried, but failed, to relocate the drone operations in the states of coastal west Africa—Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, and Ghana—during its final two years in office. So, when Donald Trump took office for the second time, he decided to establish security cooperation with the military juntas in the Sahel.
In his testimony at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on his nomination by Trump to become the next commander of Africom on 22 July 2025, General Dagvin Anderson described the construction of the base in Niger as “a significant investment” and “a key area for us to be able to monitor the threat.” So, “the loss of that is one that we’ll have to find creative ways to continue to get the indicators and warnings of what the terrorists are doing in that area.” He went on to say “that the relationships that we built in Niger with the military over several decades are still there. When the time is right, I believe there will be an opportunity, but that time will have to be determined and, if confirmed, I’ll look at what that is.”
Trump dispatched William B. Stevens, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for West Africa, to the region in late May 2025. In Burkina Faso, Stevens met with Karomoko Jean Marie Traore, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, on 27 May and “said he came to renew the United States’ desire to rebuild solid cooperation with Burkina Faso” and to explore “prospects for cooperation on the security front.” Stevens “promised to personally invest in unblocking this situation and to enable significant progress in the fight against terrorism and its financing in the sub-region.”
“I come today with a message from President Donald Trump,” Stevens said, “who is to work together to build a pragmatic relationship based on mutual respect and respect for each country’s sovereignty; we can collaborate with each other, work together to face challenges, and improve our relations.”
Stevens visited Niger on 28-30 May to hold meetings with members of the Nigerien military junta to discuss areas of “mutual interest, including security, democratic governance, education, and economic development.” Stevens made another round of visits to the region in late June and early July, traveling to Mali after stops in Burkina Faso and Niger.
Trump also sent Rudolph Atallah, the Deputy Director for Counter-terrorism in Africa in the National Security Council (NSC) to Mali in early July. Atallah, a retired military officer with years of experience in Africa and in defense intelligence work. He offered the military junta there, which was facing a severely deteriorating security situation as jihadists launched a sustained campaign of attacks on fuel supplies, the “American solution” to the conflict. “We have the necessary equipment, the intelligence, and the forces to stand up to this menace. If Mali decides to work with us, we’ll know what to do.”
An article published by the Washington Post on 15 September 2025 reported that the Trump administration has begun sharing intelligence information with the military junta in Mali, according to three current and former US officials. They have used this intelligence to guide military operations and was described the article as “part of a broader push by the Trump administration to engage with the isolated junta, which has been largely shunned by Washington since seizing power in 2021.” One official told the Washington Post that “the administration is making it clear: We don’t believe it is for us to judge how you came to power. The message is we are hear if you are.”
And in November 2025, Christopher Landau, Deputy Secretary of State, also made a trip to Mali, where he met with Abdoulaye Diop, the country’s Foreign Minister. In a statement on social media, he declared that “the US commends the armed forces of Mali in their fight against Islamic extremist militants (JNIM). Today I had an excellent conversation with Mali’s Foreign Minister to discuss our shared security interests in the region. Look forward to greater cooperation.”
These talks are unlikely to yield quick results for the Trump administration, particularly since Russian mercenaries from the new “Africa Corps” have been deployed by the Putin regime in all three Sahelian states and Russian companies have gained control of gold mines, and uranium and lithium deposits as well. And China has made lucrative arms sales to the Sahelian states, as well as the states of coastal west Africa, and has gained control of an important lithium mine in Mali which went into production in December 2024.
it is difficult to envisage how the Trump administration’s strategy can succeed in the face of this continuing competition from Russia and China and given how dependent the military juntas in all three Sahelian states are on their rhetorical commitments to defending national sovereignty and resisting Western domination. But the level of attention that the Trump administration is already paying to these efforts shows that they will continue.
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