Scope: This dossier examines how illicit revenues, coercive protection and control over economic circulation shape conflict and political authority in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, assessing evidence available by 14 November 2026 and conditional trajectories through November 2031.

Executive Summary / BLUF

The principal danger is the consolidation of armed economic authority: groups can extract revenue, restrict movement and influence civilian choices without replacing national governments.

Kidnapping provides exceptional financial windfalls; taxation and extortion offer recurring income; transport disruption converts military reach into economic pressure.

The UN Monitoring Team connected a reported approximately US$50 million ransom received in 2025 to JNIM’s subsequent offensive in Mali, while assessing that some proceeds probably reached the wider Al-Qaida network. This remains an attributed intelligence assessment rather than a publicly audited transaction. digitallibrary.un.org

Gold-sector exposure must distinguish extraction, trading, transport and coercive taxation: influence over one does not establish ownership of the entire chain.

Restoring civilian access to markets and reducing compulsory payments are more useful measures of recovery than announced force strength alone.

The decisive uncertainty is whether security gains can survive beyond individual operations and produce accountable, economically viable local administration.

Russian Participation in the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline: European Energy Security – Algerian Strategic Autonomy and Sahel Influence

The Sahel’s War Economies Are Outlasting Its Claims to Sovereignty

The central Sahel’s military governments face a contradiction that political centralisation cannot resolve: keeping a mine operating, a capital supplied or an external partner engaged does not establish public authority over the economic relationships surrounding them. The institutional decisions examined in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger concentrate power, while the documented risks to mining, transport and commercial access expose the distance between control at the centre and protection beyond it. The governing question is whether security expenditure and extractive revenue reduce dependence on coercive intermediaries or merely make strategic assets more expensive to preserve. The Charter of Refoundation in Niger and the European Union’s assistance instruments should be judged against that distinction: fiscal survival can coexist with an economy in which civilians continue to pay for access, movement and protection.

Political concentration does not recover the economy

Mali’s decree dissolving political parties and political organisations prohibited their meetings and activities while allowing some previously nominated officeholders to remain in their institutional functions. Burkina Faso followed an executive dissolution decision with a parliamentary repeal vote. Niger’s Charter of Refoundation permits presidential legislation by ordinance and makes the transitional timetable adjustable according to security conditions and other stated considerations. These decisions establish how authority is organised at the centre; they do not establish whether a trader can complete a journey, a resident can obtain a remedy or a public office can remain functional. The economic consequence is a potential information deficit: if established channels of representation disappear, replacement institutions must demonstrate that they can identify and resolve grievances before those grievances become another reason to seek informal protection.

The Charter of Refoundation also exposes a tension between security as an objective and security as a condition affecting political duration. An adaptable timetable may preserve executive room for manoeuvre, but it leaves the completion of institutional reconstruction dependent on conditions that require separate assessment. External partners therefore need evidence of functioning administration rather than assurances that stronger central direction will eventually produce it. The relevant test is whether institutions become usable when exceptional support or the immediate military operation ends; otherwise political continuity can conceal continuing economic dependence on actors outside the state.

The figures measure activity, not recovered sovereignty

Barrick reported 254,000 ounces of attributable gold production from its 80% interest in Loulo-Gounkoto during the first nine months of 2026, including 88,000 ounces in the second quarter and 102,000 ounces in the third. That recovery measures industrial output, not government control of surrounding commerce or armed-group income. Endeavour’s account of ramp subsidence at Mana on 28 October 2026 supplies the counterexample: a production interruption can have a documented geotechnical cause rather than reflect an insurgent success. Counting every stoppage as economic warfare would exaggerate armed effectiveness; counting every additional ounce as stabilisation would conceal the unresolved exposure of workers, contractors and transport.

The financing and assistance figures require the same discipline. The US International Development Finance Corporation approved up to US$414.2 million for the Dasa uranium project in Niger; approval does not establish disbursement, completed construction or export access. Italy’s parliamentary dossier records a planned MISIN ceiling of 485 personnel for 2026 and cumulative training of 10,908 Nigerien personnel since September 2018; neither figure establishes current deployment or the availability of trained units. The European Union’s €20 million Mauritania assistance measure, adopted on 29 October 2026, is included in the €75 million cumulative bilateral European Peace Facility total. Adding the amounts together, or treating either as delivered capability, would inflate the result before implementation had been demonstrated.

The commercial relationship is the transmission mechanism

CTED’s assessment of mineral-related financing identifies extortion and taxation alongside weaknesses in risk analysis and investigation. The implication is that an armed actor need not own a mine to benefit from its economic ecosystem. Pressure can fall on purchasing, transport, processing or the conditions under which people continue working. Formalisation consequently has to offer more than registration: a lawful purchaser must provide credible valuation, workable settlement and accessible dispute resolution, while participants need protection against compulsory payments outside the purchasing transaction. A compliant export interface cannot compensate for coercion earlier in the chain, and a closure that removes civilian income can leave the population more dependent on the intermediary the policy intended to weaken.

The International Energy Agency’s Oil Market Report of 11 July 2024 illustrates the corresponding infrastructure constraint through its account of disruption to Niger’s export pipeline: upstream production depends on cross-border transit and a functioning maritime outlet. A protected producing site cannot monetise its output without those connections. For both petroleum and gold, the strategic issue is therefore the continuity of the complete commercial relationship, including delivery and settlement. If alternative routes restore aggregate flows at a higher cost, large operators may remain viable while smaller firms and households lose access. An intervention can then appear successful in shipment records while concentrating the cost of adaptation among those least able to absorb it.

Financial enforcement must preserve a lawful alternative

Security Council resolution 2462 supports financial investigations and cooperation while requiring consistency with international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law. That combination makes beneficiary identification central to effective enforcement. A company’s loss, an intermediary’s fee, a ransom demand and a completed payment are different financial events; adding them together does not produce an estimate of armed-group revenue. Investigators need to establish what value moved, who received it and which authority can act on the evidence. Otherwise restrictions can exclude legitimate participants while the responsible relationship survives through another intermediary.

Security Council resolutions 2664 and 2761 preserve specified humanitarian activity under defined conditions while retaining requirements to minimise prohibited benefit and diversion. The constraint is practical as well as legal: an enforcement measure that blocks essential civilian access can increase the dependence that sustains coercive arrangements. LBMA’s Responsible Sourcing Programme offers a parallel lesson for gold. Auditing and market access can encourage better evidence and remediation, but indiscriminate withdrawal can remove more transparent purchasing channels. The objective should be to make lawful participation more credible and usable while disrupting demonstrated beneficiaries, rather than treating a reduction in transactions as proof that harmful financing has fallen.

Europe’s different instruments need a common test

Italy’s Missione bilaterale di supporto in Niger, MISIN, provides a continuing bilateral instrument whose value depends on retained skills, maintained equipment and the institutions able to use them. The parliamentary training record is a starting point for that assessment, not its conclusion. Rome’s interest is damaged if cumulative activity becomes the substitute for examining whether support changes the conditions faced by people and businesses.

France’s industrial exposure requires a different distinction. Orano’s annual report describes restrictions on exports and disputes over its Nigerien operations, with the legal characterisation remaining the company’s position. Litigation, physical access to material and replacement procurement answer different questions. Progress in one cannot be presented as resolution of the others, and commercial uncertainty cannot responsibly be converted into an unsupported claim about the scale of a French supply emergency.

Germany’s GIZ coordination project can help distinguish programmes that remain functional from commitments whose delivery has stalled. The United Kingdom’s relevant leverage includes the relationships between formal financial markets, refiners and upstream counterparties, with LBMA providing a documented institutional mechanism for scrutiny. In both cases, the useful output is evidence that changes an implementation or enforcement decision. Meetings, reporting volume and geographic disengagement are weaker measures.

The EU Special Representative’s coordination role can connect these instruments without pretending they are interchangeable. The European Peace Facility can support a defined capability; development cooperation can sustain services and livelihoods; market institutions can improve scrutiny; diplomacy can make practical cooperation possible. The common test is whether their combined effect reduces coercive dependence while preserving ordinary access. A mandate, an allocation and a procurement decision remain inputs until that effect is demonstrated.

The next two years will decide who finances containment

Over the next 12–24 months, the choice is whether to expand commitments on the strength of announcements or require sustained evidence before scaling them. The recorded horizons of the GIZ coordination project, EUCAP Sahel Mali and the EU Special Representative create opportunities to examine continuity and redesign; they do not predetermine withdrawal or renewal. Reviews should ask whether ordinary movement persists, complaints obtain remedies, lawful purchasing remains viable and supported functions survive beyond exceptional arrangements. Where output rises but access narrows, expansion would entrench an unequal recovery rather than demonstrate consolidation.

Without that discipline, MISIN, the European Peace Facility and other external instruments risk helping to preserve strategic activity while leaving its surrounding costs unresolved. Governments would continue carrying exceptional security and implementation burdens; smaller firms would absorb less predictable delivery and financing costs; and households would bear the consequences through restricted services and reduced economic choice. The cost of inaction is therefore not confined to a possible future collapse. It is the continued financing of containment by populations whose ability to trade, work and obtain protection remains conditional, even when the state and its principal commercial assets endure.

Algeria’s Niger Move: Doctrine – Energy and Sahel Order

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Navigational Index

Pillar I — Fragmented Sovereignty and the Organisation of Coercion

• Chapter 1 — Political Centralisation, Territorial Fragmentation and the Limits of State Reach
  Institutional baseline, local authority, civilian protection and the distinction between nominal jurisdiction and effective administration.
• Chapter 2 — Armed Actors, Operational Networks and Economic Pressure
  JNIM, Islamic State Sahel, other armed formations, state forces and auxiliaries; logistics, communications and contested corridors.
• Chapter 3 — Legal Authority, Regional Cooperation and Enforcement Constraints
  Applicable counterterrorism and financial frameworks, host-state authority, sanctions, accountability and cross-border cooperation.

Pillar II — Revenue Systems, Livelihoods and Strategic Dependencies

• Chapter 4 — Gold, Ransoms and Protection: Different Routes from Commerce to Combat
  Artisanal and industrial mining exposure, hostage financing, extortion, intermediaries and financial transmission.
• Chapter 5 — Roads, Fuel, Arms and Mobile Populations
  Supply disruption, weapons diversion, trafficking markets, migrant smuggling, trafficking in persons and humanitarian access.
• Chapter 6 — External Partnerships and European Exposure
  Regional neighbours and external actors, with separate assessments of Italy, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, followed by the European Union collectively.

Pillar III — Trajectories, Warning Indicators and Policy Choices

• Chapter 7 — The 2026–2031 Outlook: Consolidation, Containment or Further Fragmentation
  Conditional pathways, observable milestones, alternative explanations and thresholds for revising the assessment.
• Chapter 8 — Courses of Action and Final Net Assessment
  Authorities, implementation burdens, time-to-effect, reversibility, civilian consequences and coordination requirements.

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The Central Sahel Crisis and Italy’s Strategic Exposure: Jihadist Fragmentation, Migration Pressure, Military Access and Geopolitical Competition

Master Abstract

Economic coercion can outlast contested territorial control

The central intelligence question is whether illicit economies principally finance an existing conflict or are becoming mechanisms through which armed actors organise durable political authority. The defensible answer is that both functions coexist, but their interaction creates the more serious strategic problem. A group that collects money from trade acquires resources; a group that determines whether trade can occur gains leverage over communities, businesses and public administration. Evidence of economic targeting is concrete: the Secretary-General’s June 2026 report records attacks on fuel tankers and industrial facilities in western Mali, alongside broader institutional changes concentrating executive authority within the Confederation of Sahel States. These developments demonstrate why centralised government and effective territorial governance must be assessed separately. Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel, S/2026/537, paragraphs 2–3 and 27 — United Nations — Jun 2026. dppa.un.org

The analytical consequence is that recovering a location does not necessarily recover the economic relationships surrounding it. Transporters may still face compulsory payments outside a secured town; producers may continue to depend on intermediaries operating across several jurisdictions; civilians may judge authority by predictable access to livelihoods rather than by formal administrative presence. These are mechanisms to test locally, not assumptions that every contested district follows the same pattern. The relevant measure of recovery is therefore sustained freedom of civilian circulation, accompanied by accessible dispute resolution and protection against predation.

Exceptional ransom receipts and recurring extraction require different responses

Kidnapping and coercive taxation should not be combined into an undifferentiated estimate of terrorist income. The February 2026 Monitoring Team report described escalating abductions of foreign nationals and reported an exceptional ransom approximating US$50 million. Its August report subsequently assessed that this payment helped finance JNIM’s offensive. The sequence supports a connection between a financial windfall and operational capacity; it does not establish the group’s annual budget, cash remaining, expenditure allocation or the profitability of every subsequent kidnapping. Thirty-seventh report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, S/2026/44, paragraph 107 — United Nations — Feb 2026; Thirty-eighth report, S/2026/651, paragraph 9 — United Nations — Aug 2026. digitallibrary.un.org

Recurring extraction poses a different problem. CTED identifies links between precious-metal markets, criminal networks and terrorist financing, including extortion of miners and taxation of transporters. Its assessment also highlights inadequate sector-specific risk analysis and investigative coordination. This supports examining who compels payment and who receives it, rather than treating all informal production as terrorist-controlled. Thematic summary assessment of gaps in implementing key countering the financing of terrorism provisions of Security Council resolutions: With a focus on Africa, section IV — Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate — Sep 2025. 2024-2025

Transport access links military pressure to civilian dependence

Roads are simultaneously commercial infrastructure, channels of public service delivery and opportunities for coercion. OECD’s regional assessment finds that violence is heavily concentrated near roads, while stressing substantial geographical variation. That relationship should not be read as proof that infrastructure causes violence: settlement patterns, economic activity and the distribution of targets also matter. Nevertheless, the concentration makes transport access a practical observation point for detecting changes in armed influence. Roads and Conflicts in North and West Africa — OECD/Sahel and West Africa Club — Feb 2025. oecd.org

The resulting policy dilemma is specific. Closing an exposed market or restricting transport may reduce an armed group’s immediate opportunities to collect revenue, but it can also remove civilian income and increase dependence on clandestine intermediaries. Conversely, keeping trade open without addressing coercive payments can sustain the very actors threatening it. Policy should therefore distinguish goods, commercial participants and coercive beneficiaries, then test whether an intervention reduces involuntary payments while preserving access to essentials. Success requires both outcomes; either considered alone can conceal deterioration.

Weapons supply adds another constraint. INTERPOL distinguishes trafficking, illicit manufacture and diversion, including theft from stocks and battlefield capture. Consequently, external border interdiction cannot substitute for accountable weapons management within state institutions. Firearms trafficking in Central and Western Africa, pp. 7–8 — INTERPOL — May 2024. interpol.int

The five-year question concerns the durability of civilian alternatives

The working forecast through November 2031 is continued contestation over economic access unless security gains are followed by administration that civilians and businesses can use without exposure to repeated coercion. This is a conditional analytical judgment, not a prediction of inevitable state collapse. Armed groups also face constraints: excessive extraction can damage the commerce they tax, competing formations can disrupt revenue collection, and local resistance can weaken cooperation. The balance therefore depends on whether governments can make lawful participation safer and more viable than accommodation with armed intermediaries.

Three observations would materially improve the outlook: commercial routes remaining usable beyond episodic military escorts; formal mineral purchasing attracting sustained voluntary participation; and investigations reaching organisers and financial beneficiaries rather than stopping with replaceable couriers. Deterioration would be indicated by persistent route closures, repeated business abductions and expanding compulsory payments despite declared security gains. No numerical scenario probabilities are assigned because a reproducible forecasting model and defensible base rates have not been established.

European exposure requires differentiated instruments

European governments share an interest in limiting conflict spillovers, but their documented relationships and available instruments differ. These differences should guide coordination rather than be flattened into a single European posture.

Actor	Documented baseline	Decision implication
Italy	The foreign ministry’s 2026 directive identifies Sahel stabilisation, attention to the Italian mission in Niger, and action against terrorism and cross-border trafficking as priorities. Direttiva generale per l’azione amministrativa e per la gestione dei Centri di Responsabilità — Anno 2026 — MAECI — 2026. esteri.it	Evaluate engagement through civilian protection, sustainable local capacity and measurable access to economic activity; a policy directive does not itself establish operational results.
France	Orano’s 2025 annual activity report states that it lost operational control of its Nigerien subsidiaries in December 2024 and describes subsequent disputes. These are company disclosures and legal positions. Annual Activity Report 2025, “Situation in Niger” — Orano — reporting year 2025. Page 26	Separate commercial rights, physical access and supply security. An extractive-sector dispute does not establish terrorist control of the disputed material.
Germany	The Federal Foreign Office describes civilian cooperation with Niger, including humanitarian and transitional development assistance, and records the former Niamey air transport base. Germany and Niger: Bilateral relations — Federal Foreign Office — Apr 2025. Federal Foreign Office	Assess civilian programmes by continuity, access and verifiable local benefit; historical military infrastructure should not be counted as current operational capacity.
United Kingdom	The government announced an Illicit Finance Summit for December 2026, including illicit gold, information sharing and asset recovery among its intended priorities. UK to host Illicit Finance Summit in December — FCDO — May 2026. GOV.UK	A forthcoming coordination opportunity exists, but announced commitments must be distinguished from implemented investigations or recovered assets.
European Union	The Council appointed Birgitte Nygaard Markussen as Special Representative for the Sahel from 1 September 2026 to 31 August 2027, supporting political dialogue and coordination under the renewed approach. Sahel: Council appoints a new EU Special Representative for the region — Council of the EU — Jul 2026. Consilium	Use common diplomacy to align national instruments, while retaining explicit distinctions between diplomatic mandates, programme funding and delivered security effects.

Key Evidence Table

Indicator	Value/status	Reference date	Definition/scope	Issuer	Exact source
Exceptional ransom payment	Reportedly approximately US$50 million	2025 episode; reported February 2026	Individual transaction estimate, not annual JNIM income; accompanying reports of other concessions were unconfirmed	UN Monitoring Team	Thirty-seventh report, S/2026/44, para. 107 — UN — Feb 2026. digitallibrary.un.org
Joint-force authorised strength	Increased from 5,000 to 15,000 troops	15 April 2026	Authorisation reported by the UN; does not establish deployment, readiness or sustained availability	UN Secretary-General	Activities of UNOWAS, S/2026/537, para. 3 — UN — Jun 2026. dppa.un.org
Violence near roads	Average 70% of incidents; 65% of victims within one kilometre	Historical analysis published February 2025	North and West African study universe; not a central-Sahel-only or November 2026 estimate	OECD/SWAC	Roads and Conflicts in North and West Africa, abstract — OECD/SWAC — Feb 2025. oecd.org
Burkina Faso internally displaced population displayed	2,062,534 people	31 March 2023	Government figure retained on the portal; unsuitable as a newly measured 2026 stock	Government, reproduced by UNHCR	Situation Sahel Crisis, IDP breakdown — UNHCR — data Mar 2023; accessed Nov 2026. data.unhcr.org
Mali internally displaced population displayed	414,524 people	30 September 2025	Government-reported stock; different reference date from neighbouring-country figures	Government, reproduced by UNHCR	Situation Sahel Crisis, IDP breakdown — UNHCR — data Sep 2025; accessed Nov 2026. data.unhcr.org
Niger internally displaced population displayed	548,386 people	31 October 2026	Government-reported stock; not a measure of migration towards Europe	Government, reproduced by UNHCR	Situation Sahel Crisis, IDP breakdown — UNHCR — data Oct 2026; accessed Nov 2026. data.unhcr.org

The displacement figures are retained separately. Their differing reference dates prevent a valid comparison of contemporaneous national conditions or calculation of a common-date regional total.

Competing Explanations or Pathways

These pathways describe alternative dominant trajectories through November 2031. They can overlap geographically and are neither mutually exclusive nor assigned numerical probabilities. “Leading” identifies the working assessment; “plausible” identifies a credible alternative requiring additional confirming evidence.

Hypothesis	Diagnostic support	Disconfirming evidence	Indicators	Current standing
Persistent fragmentation sustained by economic extraction	Documented attacks on economic infrastructure and CTED’s findings on mineral-related financing support the mechanism. dppa.un.org	Sustained recovery of routes and declining compulsory payments would contradict it; their durability has not been established here.	Recurrent informal levies; continued commercial accommodation with armed actors; service access depending on local bargains.	Leading working assessment, conditional on continued gaps in civilian administration.
Selective state consolidation around priority corridors and production zones	Expanded regional force authorisation demonstrates intent and a potential institutional vehicle. It does not establish implementation. dppa.un.org	Persistent civilian insecurity after operations would weaken the claim that military concentration restores usable authority.	Persistent patrol coverage; reliable deliveries; functioning courts and customs; reduced coercion reported independently.	Plausible locally, requiring evidence of sustained results.
Disruption of established revenue arrangements produces more fragmented violence	INTERPOL identifies multiple weapons-diversion mechanisms and connections between firearms and several criminal markets, supporting the feasibility of dispersed coercive capacity. interpol.int	More predictable security, fewer competing collectors and durable negotiated access would weaken this pathway.	Multiple levies on the same journey; unstable armed bargains; attacks continuing despite changes in territorial possession.	Material downside pathway, particularly where enforcement changes incentives without providing protection.

Principal Gaps and Watch Indicators

Consequential gap	Record or observation required	Decision threshold
Recurring armed-group revenue	Financial investigations, corroborated payment records and dated evidence separating demands, receipts and transfers	Revise financing assessments only when recurring receipts can be distinguished from exceptional windfalls.
Effective corridor recovery	Repeated delivery records, travel times, independently reported payment demands and civilian access observations	Count recovery when ordinary movement persists beyond individual escorted operations.
Gold ownership and coercive benefit	Mine licences, buying records, assays, export declarations, beneficial ownership and judicial findings	Escalate targeted action when evidence connects a beneficiary to coercion or prohibited financing; geographic origin alone is insufficient.
Weapons-diversion sources	Serial-number tracing, ammunition examination, stock reconciliations and custody records	Adjust assistance or stock-management measures when losses are attributable to identifiable weaknesses.
Regional force implementation	Verified deployments, logistics, command arrangements and sustained availability	Treat authorised personnel as operational capacity only when delivery and sustainment are evidenced.
Synthetic-drug composition and spread	Dated toxicology results, seizure testing, treatment surveillance and national early-warning reports	Revise public-health assessments on analytical confirmation rather than transferring findings between markets.
Displacement and return sustainability	Updated national stocks, collection methods and evidence of conditions in return areas	Change geographic priorities when comparable observations show durable changes in need and access.
International commitments becoming operational	Funded programmes, investigative agreements, case outputs and implementation reports	Credit announced cooperation when it produces identifiable capacity or enforcement outcomes.

The temporal limit is consequential: the August Monitoring Team report considered information received up to 9 June 2026. Its findings cannot establish the territorial or financial position on 14 November without subsequent corroboration. Thirty-eighth report, S/2026/651, transmittal letter — United Nations — Aug 2026. digitallibrary.un.org

Analytical Visualisation — How Economic Access Becomes Armed Leverage

The component separates revenue-generating mechanisms from their possible political effects. It represents an analytical relationship, without estimating market shares, financial volumes or a universal sequence.

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Pillar I — Fragmented Sovereignty and the Organisation of Coercion

Chapter 1 — Political Centralisation, Territorial Fragmentation and the Limits of State Reach

The central institutional risk is that the concentration of political authority can advance faster than the recovery of effective public administration. Dissolving political organisations, reorganising executive institutions and extending transitional arrangements can strengthen a government’s control over formal decision-making without establishing its ability to protect communities, administer justice or maintain reliable commercial access beyond major centres. These are distinct dimensions of authority, and conflating them produces a misleading picture of state consolidation. A decree can be implemented through ministries and public institutions even where the government cannot consistently secure the roads connecting them; conversely, a military force can enter a locality without restoring the judicial, administrative and economic functions that make state presence durable. The appropriate analytical distinction is therefore between control over the political system, operational access to territory and the practical availability of public authority to the population. The national instruments examined below establish important changes in the first dimension. They do not, by themselves, establish progress in the other two.

Political exclusion changes the channels through which governments receive information

Mali’s Decree No. 2025-0339/PT-RM of 13 May 2025, published in the official gazette on 16 May, dissolved political parties and organisations of a political character throughout the country. Article 2 extended the measure beyond organisational status by prohibiting meetings of dissolved organisations, assistance in arranging such meetings and political activities conducted by those organisations. Article 1 nevertheless allowed individuals already serving in political and administrative institutions following party nomination to continue their functions, while preventing them from claiming to represent their former organisations. This distinction matters: the instrument dismantled organised political representation without necessarily removing every person previously connected to it from public office. The analytical consequence is a change in how interests can be aggregated and transmitted to the centre. Where formal collective representation is restricted, grievances may become more dependent on administrative petitions, personal connections or informal intermediaries. Whether alternative channels compensate for this restriction is an empirical question requiring evidence of accessible complaint mechanisms and demonstrable government responses; the decree itself cannot answer it. Décret n°2025-0339/PT-RM du 13 mai 2025 portant dissolution des partis politiques et des organisations à caractère politique en République du Mali, Articles 1–4 — Journal officiel de la République du Mali — May 2025. sgg-mali.ml

Burkina Faso followed a separate documentary sequence. On 29 January 2026, the presidency reported the adoption of a decree dissolving political parties and formations, together with a draft law repealing the legislation governing their operation, financing and the opposition. The government presented these measures as instruments of national unity and institutional reconstruction; that justification is an official position, rather than evidence that the measures achieved those effects. On 9 February 2026, the Transitional Legislative Assembly reported adoption of the repeal bill by all 69 participating voters, covering the party charter, political financing and opposition-status legislation. The sequence distinguishes the executive dissolution decision from the subsequent legislative vote and avoids treating a proposed repeal as an already completed parliamentary act at the earlier date. For the conflict assessment, the important question is how the replacement arrangements handle disagreement over recruitment, property, local security and public expenditure. Administrative cohesion could improve if responsibilities become clearer and complaints remain actionable. It could deteriorate if officials lose reliable channels for identifying local abuses or if communities conclude that reporting misconduct carries greater risk than remaining silent. Conseil des ministres du 29 janvier 2026 — Présidence du Faso — Jan 2026; Dissolution des partis et formations politiques : l’ALT donne son feu vert au Gouvernement — Assemblée législative de transition — Feb 2026. Présidence du Faso

Niger’s institutional reconstruction is particularly important because its governing text links the political timetable to conditions that can change. The official gazette records Ordinance No. 2025-06 of 26 March 2025, dissolving political parties, alongside the decree promulgating the Charter of Refoundation. Article 61 provides for presidential legislation by ordinance; Article 65 identifies the National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland as the supreme body determining national policy orientation. Article 73 sets a 60-month refoundation period from promulgation but makes its duration adjustable according to the security situation, the refoundation programme and the agenda of the Confederation of Sahel States. Article 74 maintains the transitional organs until elected institutions are effectively installed. Consequently, an assessment cannot responsibly present the initial duration as an unconditional electoral deadline. The security situation is both a policy challenge and a stated variable in the institutional timetable. That creates a consequential question for external engagement: which observable achievements, decisions or procedures would establish that the transition is advancing towards its stated institutional endpoint, rather than simply continuing under an adaptable framework? Journal officiel de la République du Niger, édition spéciale n°06, Ordinance No. 2025-06 and Charter Articles 61, 65, 73–74 — République du Niger — Mar 2025. 31 mars 2025

Jurisdiction	Documented institutional change	Precise documentary boundary	Consequence for assessment
Mali	Political parties and political organisations dissolved; specified activities prohibited	Decree dated 13 May 2025, published 16 May 2025	Administrative continuity and organised political representation must be assessed separately. Official decree.
Burkina Faso	Executive dissolution decision followed by parliamentary adoption of repeal legislation	29 January 2026 executive announcement; 9 February 2026 parliamentary vote	Government rationale, legislative action and subsequent implementation are different evidentiary categories. Presidency; Assembly.
Niger	Party dissolution and a new refoundation framework	26 March 2025 instruments; 60-month adjustable period under Article 73	The initial duration should not be represented as an unconditional completion date. Official gazette.

Effective authority must be measured through functions rather than territorial labels

The practical unit of assessment should be the relationship between a locality, its surrounding production areas, its transport connections and the institutions through which residents obtain protection or resolve disputes. Describing an area as “government-controlled” can conceal several different situations: a permanent garrison with limited civilian administration; a functioning town whose connecting roads remain vulnerable; an administrative office operating intermittently; or an area where government institutions coexist with compulsory payments to armed actors. The same caution applies to descriptions of insurgent control, which may refer to freedom of movement, taxation, intimidation, adjudication or continuous physical occupation. These functions do not necessarily coincide. A defensible assessment should therefore state what an actor can actually do, for whom, where and over what period. The proposed framework below is an analytical audit structure, not a claim that every listed deficiency has been documented in each country. Its purpose is to make territorial assessments falsifiable: a claim of recovery should be weakened when essential functions remain unavailable, and strengthened when independently observable services continue after the immediate security operation has ended.

Function of authority	Observation that would support effective recovery	Evidence that would remain insufficient
Physical protection	Civilians can report threats and obtain a timely, accountable response	Presence of a flag, checkpoint or temporary patrol
Judicial access	Complaints are registered, decisions issued and remedies implemented	Appointment of judicial personnel without functioning access
Administrative continuity	Offices provide services regularly and records remain usable	An announced reopening without sustained operation
Commercial circulation	Ordinary journeys and deliveries remain possible over time	Passage of one escorted convoy
Revenue administration	Public payments are documented and distinguishable from coercive private demands	Increased collections without evidence of who paid, why and to whom
Civilian representation	Communities can raise grievances through accessible, usable channels	A consultation event without evidence of follow-up

Restricted civic space can also weaken the evidence available for policy

The relationship between civic restrictions and conflict is not limited to political legitimacy. It also concerns the quality of information reaching decision-makers. The Secretary-General’s June 2026 report records the suspension of 811 associations in Burkina Faso between mid-April and May for failure to renew their governing bodies, with 118 subsequently dissolved. These figures concern administrative measures, not findings that every affected organisation was engaged in unlawful financing or security activity. Their significance for this assessment lies in the possible interruption of local reporting, service provision and collective representation. If organisations disappear from an area’s information environment, fewer complaints or fewer recorded incidents cannot automatically be interpreted as improved security. The decline could reflect actual improvement, reduced reporting capacity, displacement or fear. A serious monitoring system must distinguish these explanations by examining access, reporting coverage and independent observations alongside incident totals. The countervailing consideration is equally important: administrative regulation can improve accountability where requirements are clear, proportionate and consistently applied. The public record therefore needs to establish both the measures taken and their practical effect on the availability of civilian services and reliable information. Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of the United Nations Office for West Africa and the Sahel, S/2026/537, paragraph 43 — United Nations — Jun 2026. dppa.un.org

Key judgments

The national records establish substantial changes to political organisation and executive authority, but they do not provide a substitute for evidence of functioning local government. The principal analytical error would be to interpret a more concentrated political system as proof of stronger territorial administration. Institutional recovery should instead be demonstrated through protection, judicial access, service continuity and the ability of residents to challenge predation without exposing themselves to additional danger.

What would change the assessment

The assessment would improve if independently observable administrative and judicial functions expanded beyond episodic security deployments, and if replacement mechanisms for civilian representation demonstrably resolved grievances. It would weaken if nominally reopened institutions remained inaccessible, if reporting coverage contracted or if compulsory payments continued despite official declarations of recovery.

Open official record

The consequential missing records are locality-level service continuity data, functioning complaint and judicial registers, implementation measures under the national institutional instruments, and comparable evidence showing whether administrative expansion persists beyond individual operations.

Chapter 2 — Armed Actors, Operational Networks and Economic Pressure

Operational coordination is more consequential than nominal strength when the objective is to impose pressure across dispersed locations. An armed formation does not need to defeat every government unit or administer every settlement to force costly changes in deployment, commercial behaviour and civilian movement. It needs sufficient coordination to make threats credible across several points, sufficient local access to identify opportunities and sufficient organisational discipline to sustain activity without exhausting its own networks. Conversely, a larger authorised state force does not automatically produce greater operational coverage: additional personnel must be recruited, trained, equipped, commanded, supplied and integrated into a system that can maintain protection between major operations. The central comparison is therefore between usable organisational capability and usable state response, rather than between headline personnel totals. This chapter examines that distinction without treating attacks, membership estimates, recruitment announcements and deployed capability as interchangeable measurements.

JNIM’s coalition structure requires an assessment of coordination rather than assumed uniformity

The UN sanctions narrative records that JNIM was created on 2 March 2017 as an alliance incorporating elements associated with Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Ansar Eddine, Al-Mourabitoun and other components; it was added to the UN sanctions list on 4 October 2018. This organisational origin matters because an alliance can combine strategic coordination with considerable variation among local formations. A national or regional label does not establish identical recruitment practices, revenue arrangements or relationships with communities in every operating area. The appropriate analytical approach is to distinguish the central organisation’s ability to coordinate action from the local arrangements through which particular units obtain personnel, supplies and information. An apparently coherent offensive can coexist with decentralised collection systems; a local bargain can coexist with continued hostility elsewhere. Neither observation establishes that the organisation has become a single administrative hierarchy governing all transactions under a uniform policy. The practical collection requirement is to identify which decisions are coordinated, which are delegated and which are negotiated locally, while avoiding the opposite error of assuming that local variation means the absence of strategic direction. Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), QDe.159: Narrative summary of reasons for listing — United Nations Security Council — Oct 2018. Security Council

The Monitoring Team’s August 2026 assessment estimated JNIM at 7,000–8,000 members, approximately half in Mali, and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara at around 2,000 members. These are attributed membership estimates, not verified counts of deployable combatants. More important operationally, the report describes JNIM’s coordination across its component units, the use of commercial satellite communications and cooperation with the FLA during the April offensive. It also distinguishes modified commercial drone use from more advanced capabilities for which it found no indication, including fibre-optic drones and swarm tactics. These findings support a bounded conclusion: commercial technology can improve coordination and extend the usefulness of dispersed units without demonstrating technological parity with a state military. The evidence does not justify translating access to a communications terminal into assured connectivity, a drone sighting into persistent aerial coverage or cooperation in one offensive into permanent organisational merger. Such distinctions are essential because exaggerating technological maturity can misdirect procurement and training, while dismissing inexpensive adaptations can leave governments poorly prepared for their actual operational effects. Thirty-eighth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, S/2026/651, paragraphs 12–17, 21 and 129 — United Nations — Aug 2026. digitallibrary.un.org

Operational question	Evidence category	Defensible interpretation	Interpretation to avoid
How large is JNIM?	UN estimate of 7,000–8,000 members	Approximate organisational scale during the reporting period	An exact count of ready combatants
How large is ISGS?	UN estimate of approximately 2,000 members	Approximate scale, with substantial operational uncertainty	Direct combat-power equivalence based on headcount
What does JNIM–FLA cooperation establish?	Reported operational collaboration	Ability to coordinate for particular objectives	Permanent merger or identical political objectives
What do commercial communications establish?	Reported use in coordination	A potentially important enabling capability	Guaranteed availability or complete network coverage
What do modified drones establish?	Reported operational employment	A real but bounded adaptation	Evidence of every advanced capability used in other wars

Source: Thirty-eighth report, S/2026/651 — United Nations — Aug 2026. digitallibrary.un.org

Recruitment announcements create obligations before they create capability

Burkina Faso’s announced expansion illustrates the distinction between political mobilisation and operational output. The Secretary-General’s June report records an April announcement to recruit 100,000 reservists and 12,000 military personnel by the end of 2026, giving priority to existing Volunteers for the Defence of the Homeland. These were recruitment plans at the time described, not evidence that the announced personnel had completed training or entered sustained service. The analytical issue is the conversion burden. A recruitment target generates requirements for identity verification, medical suitability, instruction, supervision, equipment allocation, communications, transport and recurrent expenditure. Where recruits already have local security roles, formal integration also requires clarity over command, discipline and responsibility for their conduct. Expansion can improve local knowledge and relieve pressure on existing units if these systems work. It can also disperse scarce trainers, equipment and supervisory capacity if numbers grow faster than institutional support. The appropriate measure is therefore not simply how many people enrol, but how many are available for defined tasks under accountable command and how that availability changes protection for surrounding communities. Report of the Secretary-General on the activities of UNOWAS, S/2026/537, paragraph 30 — United Nations — Jun 2026. dppa.un.org

Announced category	Target	Announced completion horizon	What the figure establishes	Additional records needed
Reservists	100,000	End of 2026	Scale of the announced recruitment ambition	Enrolment, training completion, activation arrangements and availability
Military personnel	12,000	End of 2026	Planned personnel expansion	Actual accessions, assignments, equipment and recurrent support
Existing volunteers prioritised	No separate verified number in this announcement	Recruitment process	Intended recruitment preference	Integration rules, command relationships and disciplinary procedures

Source: Activities of UNOWAS, paragraph 30 — United Nations — Jun 2026. These categories should not be converted into a verified increase in deployed strength. dppa.un.org

Weapons accountability connects force expansion to conflict persistence

A separate operational weakness arises when weapons enter illicit circulation through channels that additional recruitment does not address. INTERPOL’s regional assessment distinguishes trafficking from illicit manufacture and diversion, identifying mechanisms including leakage from official stocks, theft, unauthorised transfers and battlefield capture. Its investigative discussion also stresses the value of tracing recovered weapons before evidence is lost. The resulting implication is that force generation and weapons accountability should be treated as connected responsibilities. Equipment issued to expand coverage must remain traceable through allocation, custody, expenditure, loss and recovery; otherwise a programme intended to strengthen security may leave authorities unable to determine how weapons subsequently appear in criminal or insurgent incidents. This does not establish that any particular assistance package or national expansion has produced diversion. It identifies the records needed to test that proposition and the institutional weakness that would prevent a credible answer. Recovered weapons can provide leads on earlier losses and movements, but their country of manufacture alone does not identify the actor responsible for diversion. Effective analysis requires the chain between lawful acquisition and illicit recovery, rather than an attribution based on origin markings. Firearms trafficking in Central and Western Africa, discussion of diversion and tracing — INTERPOL — May 2024. www.interpol.int

Authority, capability and civilian access

Key judgments

The operational balance cannot be inferred from personnel totals or isolated equipment sightings. Membership estimates, commercial technology, cooperation between formations and national recruitment plans each describe different aspects of capability. The most important state-side question is whether additional personnel and equipment become sustainably available under accountable command, rather than whether announced numbers increase.

What would change the assessment

Evidence of completed training, sustained availability, effective supervision and reduced civilian exposure would support a stronger assessment of state capacity. Conversely, unexplained equipment losses, recurring gaps between announced and available personnel, or continued insecurity around nominally reinforced locations would indicate that expansion is not resolving the underlying organisational problem.

Open official record

Priority records are actual recruitment and training completions, deployment and sustainment data, command arrangements for integrated volunteers, weapons-loss investigations and independently corroborated assessments of operational availability.

Chapter 3 — Legal Authority, Regional Cooperation and Enforcement Constraints

The principal legal requirement is to match each intervention to its actual authority, evidentiary threshold and protective safeguards. Counterterrorism obligations, sanctions designations, domestic criminal proceedings, humanitarian exemptions and civilian assistance mandates perform different functions. They cannot be combined into a single general permission to act against any person, business or community associated with a contested area. A sanctions designation identifies the application of specified restrictive measures; it does not adjudicate every subsequent allegation concerning third parties. A criminal investigation must establish the elements required by the applicable law. A humanitarian exemption addresses particular restrictions under defined conditions. A capacity-building mandate authorises the activities within that mandate, rather than every operation that might contribute to security. Maintaining these distinctions is operationally useful: it helps institutions identify what evidence they need, which authority can act and which activities must remain possible while enforcement proceeds.

Financial disruption must distinguish the organiser, the intermediary and the coerced participant

Security Council resolution 1373 (2001) requires states to suppress terrorist financing, criminalise specified financing conduct, freeze relevant assets and assist one another in investigations and proceedings. Resolution 2462 (2019) develops the framework, including financing for the benefit of terrorist organisations or individual terrorists even without a link to a specific attack, while requiring consistency with international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law. These obligations make the legal character of a transaction dependent on more than the location where it occurred. Investigators need to examine the beneficiary, the nature of the assistance, intention or knowledge where required, and the applicable domestic offence or restrictive measure. A transporter moving goods through an insecure area, an intermediary knowingly arranging prohibited support and a person compelled to make a payment may occupy different legal positions. This does not resolve any individual case in advance; it explains why geographic association is an investigative lead rather than a complete finding of liability. The policy consequence is that enforcement should be organised around demonstrable conduct and relationships, with evidence preserved for the specific authority expected to act. Security Council resolution 1373 (2001), paragraphs 1–3 — United Nations — Sep 2001; Security Council resolution 2462 (2019), paragraphs 2–7 — United Nations — Mar 2019. mandates.un.org

The sanctions framework adds a targeted set of duties. Resolution 2734 (2024) reaffirms asset-freeze, travel-ban and arms-embargo measures concerning ISIL, Al-Qaida and associated listed persons and entities. Its discussion of ransom financing also reiterates the need to prevent terrorist benefit from ransom payments and political concessions while securing the safe release of hostages. For policy purposes, the important distinction is between identifying a designated beneficiary and determining the legal treatment of a particular transaction or intermediary. A name match, corporate relationship or alleged beneficial interest must be checked against the applicable listing and ownership or control rules; similar names and incomplete documentation are not substitutes for identification. Equally, an absence of designation does not establish that conduct is lawful under every criminal or financial provision. Institutions should therefore keep sanctions screening, criminal investigation and intelligence assessment connected but distinct, recording which conclusion each body of evidence supports. The objective is to prevent both under-enforcement against identifiable beneficiaries and indiscriminate exclusion of civilian economic activity. Security Council resolution 2734 (2024), paragraphs 1 and 31–33 — United Nations — Jun 2024. mandates.un.org

Instrument or process	Function	Evidence needed for implementation	Boundary
Resolution 1373 framework	Suppression of financing, asset measures and investigative cooperation	Identifiable conduct, assets, persons and jurisdiction	Does not replace domestic investigative and judicial procedures. Resolution 1373.
Resolution 2462 framework	Serious financing offences and stronger financial investigations	Evidence addressing the applicable offence, including the relevant mental element	Measures must remain consistent with specified international-law obligations. Resolution 2462.
ISIL/Al-Qaida sanctions	Specified restrictive measures against listed persons and entities	Accurate identification and relevant ownership, control or benefit analysis	Listing and criminal conviction are different legal processes. Resolution 2734.
Intelligence assessment	Supports warning, collection and prioritisation	Evaluated reporting with provenance and uncertainty	An assessment is not itself a judicial determination.
Criminal proceeding	Determines liability under applicable law	Admissible evidence satisfying the relevant legal requirements	Suspicion or geographic proximity alone cannot substitute for proof.

Civilian protection remains a binding part of the conflict framework

Where a non-international armed conflict exists, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions binds each party to minimum protections for persons taking no active part in hostilities, including those placed out of combat through detention or other causes. It prohibits, among other conduct, murder, cruel treatment, torture, hostage-taking and sentences or executions without the required judicial guarantees. Its application does not alter the legal status of the parties. This matters because contact with an armed actor, residence in an affected locality or dependence on an insecure commercial route cannot be treated as a general suspension of civilian protection. Nor does describing a formation as a terrorist organisation remove the protections owed to persons in its custody or the obligations applicable to other parties. The legal qualification of a particular incident still requires evidence of the relevant facts and conflict nexus; a regional security label is not a substitute for incident-level assessment. Strategically, this framework also identifies the difference between reducing an armed group’s freedom of action and imposing unbounded costs on the population among whom it operates. Geneva Conventions Act, Schedule I, Common Article 3, reproducing the 1949 Convention — Department of Justice Canada, official treaty text. laws-lois.justice.gc.ca

Humanitarian exemptions preserve necessary activity without eliminating risk management

Resolution 2664 (2022) provides that specified funds, resources, goods and services necessary for timely humanitarian assistance or activities supporting basic human needs, when provided by the actors and in the capacities it identifies, are permitted and do not violate the relevant UN asset freezes. Resolution 2761 (2024) continued that provision’s application to the ISIL and Al-Qaida sanctions regime. These texts are important because a compliance system that treats all dealings in a contested environment as prohibited can obstruct activities the Council expressly sought to preserve. Their scope is nevertheless defined: they do not establish a blanket exemption for all commercial transactions, every organisation or every form of support. Providers relying on the framework are requested to use reasonable efforts to minimise prohibited benefit and diversion. The operational task is consequently to establish eligibility, purpose, counterparties and safeguards, while ensuring that the administrative process does not itself make timely assistance impossible. That requires a different workflow from simply rejecting any transaction associated with an insecure district. Security Council resolution 2664 (2022), paragraphs 1 and 3 — United Nations — Dec 2022; Security Council resolution 2761 (2024), paragraphs 1 and 4 — United Nations — Dec 2024. mandates.un.org

Regional political separation does not establish that lawful circulation has ended

The ECOWAS Commission’s statement concerning the withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger is a useful example of the difference between political membership and practical treatment of people and commerce. The statement records withdrawal as effective on 29 January 2025, while requesting continued recognition of relevant identity documents, treatment of goods and services under the ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme and continued visa-free movement, residence and establishment until further notice. It also states that arrangements would remain pending determination of future engagement modalities. This establishes the Commission’s announced transitional position at that date; it does not demonstrate uniform implementation at every border or settle every subsequent legal question. The analytical implication is that regional fragmentation should be examined through the specific functions affected—information sharing, customs treatment, travel documentation, evidence requests and operational coordination—rather than represented as the automatic disappearance of all regional exchange. A closed or disrupted crossing can have several causes, and the legal status of a traveller or shipment must be distinguished from the security conditions along the route. Press Statement on the withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — ECOWAS Commission — Jan 2025. ecowas.int

Cooperation function	What an effective arrangement must establish	Observation needed	Consequence if absent
Identity verification	Recognised documents and competent verification channels	Consistent treatment and a route for resolving discrepancies	Misidentification or unnecessary interruption of lawful movement
Financial intelligence	Authorised recipients, protected information and actionable requests	Requests producing usable investigative leads	Information circulates without producing a case
Judicial assistance	Competent authorities and applicable procedural requirements	Evidence obtained in a form usable by the requesting jurisdiction	Intelligence cannot be converted into proceedings
Customs cooperation	Applicable treatment of goods and clear implementation instructions	Actual border practice and documented decisions	Uncertainty increases costs and opportunities for informal brokerage
Security coordination	Defined responsibilities and authorised information exchange	Sustained cooperation rather than declarations alone	Gaps remain between national response systems

Civilian assistance mandates should be evaluated through their actual powers

The official description of EUCAP Sahel Mali identifies it as a non-executive civilian mission, focused on capacity building and national ownership, with priorities including institutional capacity, border management and support for civil-society actors. The same record states that its mandate was extended until 31 January 2027. These characteristics matter more for evaluating its contribution than the mere existence of a European mission. A non-executive mandate should be judged by the institutional functions it can support and the access, cooperation and implementation available to it; it should not be represented as an independent policing or territorial-security capability. The broader decision principle is that external engagement must identify the institution expected to carry the function after assistance is delivered. Training, advice and equipment can contribute to capability, but the host institution must be able to use them under its own applicable responsibilities. Where access or cooperation is constrained, the assessment should describe the limitation rather than infer effectiveness from the continuing legal mandate. About EUCAP Sahel Mali — European External Action Service — official mission description, accessed Nov 2026. EEAS

Key judgments

The legal architecture supports targeted financial disruption, investigative cooperation and civilian protection simultaneously. The implementation problem is the connection between these functions: institutions need evidence that identifies responsible actors without treating every participant in an exposed economy as an equivalent beneficiary. Sanctions screening, criminal proceedings, humanitarian safeguards and capacity building should operate as coordinated processes with distinct authorities and outputs.

What would change the assessment

The assessment would improve with demonstrated cross-border cases, accurate beneficiary identification, preserved humanitarian access and assistance programmes producing sustained institutional functions. It would weaken where broad restrictions replace case-specific investigation, lawful activity becomes inaccessible through avoidable compliance uncertainty, or externally supported capabilities remain unusable by the institutions expected to operate them.

Open official record

The priority records are national implementing measures, current applicable sanctions entries, functioning judicial-assistance channels, decisions applying humanitarian exemptions, documented border implementation arrangements and mission reports demonstrating delivered institutional results rather than mandate continuity alone.

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Pillar II — Revenue Systems, Livelihoods and Strategic Dependencies

Chapter 4 — Gold, Ransoms and Protection: Different Routes from Commerce to Combat

The central economic distinction is between controlling production, capturing a share of commercial income and imposing costs that weaken an adversary’s revenue base. These mechanisms can reinforce one another, but they have different financial signatures and require different responses. Direct participation in production exposes an actor to operating costs and commercial risks; coercive taxation allows it to extract income while leaving those responsibilities with miners, traders or transporters; disruption can damage government receipts and investor confidence even when the perpetrator earns little from the immediate incident. Consequently, neither the value of gold produced in an affected region nor the turnover of a threatened company can be treated as an estimate of armed-group income. The relevant questions concern the payment actually imposed, its recipient, the frequency of collection and the extent to which the payer can refuse or substitute another commercial relationship. This distinction becomes particularly important when industrial production, artisanal livelihoods and coercive extraction coexist: rising output can support public revenues and employment while also enlarging the economic activity exposed to predation, whereas falling output can reflect technical failures, contractual disputes, insecurity or several causes operating together.

Artisanal gold creates a contest over purchasing relationships as well as mining sites

The most useful way to examine artisanal and small-scale gold mining is through the relationships connecting workers, equipment providers, financiers, buyers, transporters and exporters. Physical access to a deposit is only one part of that system. A producer may depend on advance financing, fuel, processing services or an established buyer who can make immediate payment; a formal purchaser may offer a legally documented transaction but remain commercially unattractive if settlement is slow, assay results are disputed or transport costs consume the price advantage. CTED’s assessment identifies mineral-related terrorist-financing risks, including extortion and taxation, while also finding weaknesses in sector-specific risk assessment and investigative coordination. Those findings support examining who benefits from a transaction rather than categorising an entire livelihood by its location. The analytical implication is that formalisation must compete with existing commercial services: registration alone does not provide liquidity, resolve disputes or make transport safe. Conversely, a competitive legal purchasing channel cannot address coercion if miners remain exposed to compulsory payments before their gold reaches the buyer. A credible response therefore needs both a viable commercial proposition and protection against extraction by actors able to punish refusal. Thematic summary assessment of gaps in implementing key countering the financing of terrorism provisions of Security Council resolutions: With a focus on Africa, section IV — CTED — Sep 2025. www.un.org

Economic relationship	What is exchanged	Potential source of coercive leverage	Evidence needed before attributing armed-group benefit
Production financing	Advance funding against future output	Dependency on a financier or exclusive purchaser	Financing terms, repayment records and identification of the ultimate beneficiary
Processing services	Crushing, recovery or other treatment	Restricted access to essential services	Service charges, ownership and evidence of imposed payments
Gold purchasing	Metal against cash or another settlement method	Buyer concentration, disputed valuation or compulsory sales	Weight, purity, settlement price and actual payment records
Transport	Movement of metal, workers or inputs	Threats to access and compulsory passage payments	Consignment records and corroborated evidence of the recipient
Export and refining	Entry into wider markets	Concealment of origin or beneficiary relationships	Export declarations, chain-of-custody records and refiner due diligence

Analytical framework: the table identifies relationships to investigate; it does not assert that each mechanism is present at every Sahelian mining site.

Industrial output can recover without resolving the surrounding security economy

Barrick’s November 2026 filing provides a bounded industrial counterexample to a narrative of uninterrupted production collapse. It reports 254,000 ounces attributable to its 80% interest in Loulo-Gounkoto during the first nine months of 2026, including 88,000 ounces in Q2 and 102,000 ounces in Q3. Subtracting those quarters from the reported nine-month total gives approximately 64,000 ounces for Q1, calculated from rounded inputs. These figures measure mine production attributable to the company; they do not measure Mali’s total output, government receipts or armed-group income. Quarterly Report on the Third Quarter of 2026, “Loulo-Gounkoto,” p. 20 — Barrick — Nov 2026. s25.q4cdn.com

Period	Attributable gold production	Evidentiary status
Q1 2026	Approximately 64,000 oz	Calculated: 254,000 − 88,000 − 102,000; rounded inputs
Q2 2026	88,000 oz	Company-reported
Q3 2026	102,000 oz	Company-reported

The strategic significance is the separation between operating resilience and the security of the wider commercial environment. A mine can improve production through its operating sequence, grades, equipment availability or the resolution of a dispute while contractors, transporters and surrounding settlements remain exposed to risks that are not captured by the production series. Equally, an interruption at a mine cannot automatically be attributed to insurgent action. Endeavour reported that ramp subsidence on 28 October 2026 restricted access to underground portals at Mana in Burkina Faso; its subsequent quarterly release described remediation work and expected processing to remain paused until Q2 2027. The company’s account identifies a geotechnical cause and a forward timetable, rather than an armed attack or a completed recovery. The appropriate assessment therefore separates the cause of interruption, its expected duration, the operator’s mitigation capacity and the fiscal consequences. Treating every stoppage as a security event would exaggerate armed-group effectiveness; treating strong production elsewhere as proof of regional stability would conceal the vulnerability of the supply relationships supporting it. Endeavour reports access ramp subsidence at the Mana mine — Endeavour Mining — Nov 2026; Endeavour Reports Strong Q3-2026 Results, company-issued release — Endeavour Mining — Nov 2026. Endeavour Mining plc (LSE: EDV/TSX: EDV)

Industrial production and the limits of interpretation

Ransom receipts, protection payments and commercial losses are different financial events

The financing question now moves beyond the exceptional ransom already examined in the opening assessment. A kidnapping can create several economically distinct effects: a payment to secure release, payments to intermediaries, additional security expenditure, interruption of work and the reassessment of future operations. These effects should not be added together as perpetrator revenue. The UN Monitoring Team’s reporting on kidnapping and business extortion supports investigating the connection between hostage-taking and commercial pressure, but the public assessment is not a transaction ledger identifying every payer, broker or ultimate recipient. The analytical task is therefore to reconstruct the financial event without assuming that every associated cost accrued to the armed actor. A company may lose production while the perpetrator receives no corresponding amount; an intermediary may receive a fee without retaining the principal sum; a reported demand may never become a payment. This distinction also changes the policy response. Measures directed at identifiable beneficiaries address financial transmission, whereas worker protection, contingency planning and commercial continuity address the wider economic effects. Success in one category should not be used to claim success in the others. Thirty-eighth report of the Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, S/2026/651, paragraphs 9 and 107 — United Nations — Aug 2026. digitallibrary.un.org

Financial event	Immediate economic effect	Can it be counted as armed-group revenue?	Consequential uncertainty
Ransom demand	Creates a contingent liability or negotiating position	No, without evidence of payment	Whether any sum was received
Completed ransom payment	Transfers value	Only to the extent that receipt and beneficiary are established	Intermediary shares and onward transfers
Compulsory protection payment	Extracts value from continued activity	Potentially, with corroborated recipient evidence	Frequency, amount and ability to refuse
Additional security expenditure	Raises the operator’s costs	Not automatically	Which service provider receives the expenditure
Production interruption	Reduces output or delays sales	No: commercial loss is not equivalent to perpetrator income	Cause, duration and mitigation
Withdrawal of investment	Changes future activity and fiscal expectations	No	Whether the withdrawal is temporary, partial or permanent

Formal market access depends on origin evidence, not metal quality alone

The international gold market introduces a further separation between the physical characteristics of a product and the legitimacy of the relationships through which it was obtained. LBMA states that Good Delivery List refiners must comply with its Responsible Sourcing Programme, including independent third-party auditing every twelve months. That framework creates an institutional point of leverage over refining and wholesale-market access, but it should not be interpreted as automatic proof that every upstream transaction is free of coercion or misrepresentation. The practical issue is whether documentation supports a credible account of origin, ownership and payments, and whether inconsistencies trigger investigation rather than being treated as clerical defects. For Sahelian producers, excessively blunt exclusion can remove access to buyers capable of supporting better documentation, while weak scrutiny can allow questionable material to enter formal channels. The appropriate policy aim is therefore responsible engagement with verifiable counterparties, supported by a route for improving deficiencies where remediation is possible. Market access should reward credible traceability and progressive improvement without treating an assay certificate, an export document or a refiner’s general status as a substitute for examining the particular supply relationship. Responsible Sourcing — LBMA — official programme description, accessed Nov 2026. LBMA

Key judgments

Gold-sector policy must distinguish legitimate production, informal commerce, coercive extraction and laundering. Industrial recovery can coexist with vulnerability in surrounding supply chains, while a technical stoppage can reduce output without indicating an armed-group success. Financial disruption should follow identifiable receipts and beneficiaries rather than equating commercial exposure with complicity.

What would change the assessment

The assessment would improve with sustained participation in documented purchasing channels, credible origin records and evidence that producers retain access to markets without compulsory payments. It would weaken if formal channels became commercially unusable, if coercion persisted upstream of apparently compliant exports or if investigators repeatedly identified intermediaries but could not establish ultimate beneficiaries.

Open official record

The principal gaps are comparable official artisanal-production estimates, actual formal purchasing volumes, documented settlement terms, corroborated protection-payment cases and financial investigations establishing how receipts are retained or transferred.

Chapter 5 — Roads, Fuel, Arms and Mobile Populations

Supply disruption has a wider strategic effect when it changes the cost and availability of essential services, rather than merely delaying an individual shipment. Fuel shortages can affect transport, local electricity generation and the movement of other goods; insecurity can require longer journeys, larger inventories and more expensive delivery arrangements; interrupted commerce can then reduce household purchasing power and weaken the public revenues available for a response. These are conditional transmission mechanisms, not a claim that every price increase has a conflict origin. The analytical task is to identify which part of the supply system has changed: availability at origin, border access, physical transit, storage, distribution or the ability of the customer to pay. Without that distinction, authorities may respond to an upstream commercial shock as though it were a local security failure, or treat a coercive restriction as a simple shortage. The same framework also identifies the limits of substitution: an alternative route may restore deliveries while remaining more expensive, less reliable or accessible only to larger firms, leaving smaller operators and remote communities exposed.

Fuel links livelihood resilience to the operating capacity of armed actors

UNODC’s fuel assessment identifies established trafficking relationships connecting the Sahel with neighbouring suppliers and describes the importance of price differentials, corruption and overlap with formal distribution. The report’s printed publication year is 2022, despite the date embedded in its filename; its description of subsidy conditions must therefore be treated as historical rather than as a verified account of November 2026 pricing. Its continuing analytical value lies in showing why fuel can be simultaneously a household necessity, a commercial input and an operational resource for armed formations. A restriction that removes one distribution channel may raise costs for all three categories, but the effects need not be equal: actors with stronger purchasing power or access to protected networks may adapt more easily than small traders and civilian services. Consequently, a fuel intervention should identify the intended beneficiary restriction and the civilian substitution available before assuming that reduced informal supply will weaken armed actors disproportionately. The alternative—leaving a coercive distribution arrangement untouched—also has costs, particularly where forced payments or corrupt protection become embedded in ordinary commerce. Fuel Trafficking in the Sahel, “Key takeaways” and “Policy implications” — UNODC — 2022. unodc.org

Supply-system disruption	First effect	Potential civilian transmission	Observation needed to distinguish recovery from adaptation
Reduced availability at origin	Fewer consignments offered	Higher acquisition costs before transit	Supplier availability and comparable purchase prices
Border interruption	Delayed or redirected trade	Longer journeys and inventory depletion	Actual crossings, processing times and destination deliveries
Insecure transit	Higher risk and irregular arrival	More expensive transport or reduced service frequency	Delivery reliability and costs over repeated journeys
Distribution concentration	Fewer accessible sellers	Unequal access between large and small customers	Retail availability, purchase conditions and geographic coverage
Loss of purchasing power	Goods remain physically available but unaffordable	Reduced consumption and business activity	Household affordability and commercial demand

Petroleum export infrastructure concentrates both fiscal opportunity and vulnerability

Niger’s petroleum export corridor demonstrates why physical infrastructure and political access must be assessed together. The IEA’s July 2024 report described the newly commissioned 1,950-kilometre pipeline linking the Agadem Rift Basin to Sèmè in Benin and recorded disruption involving political tensions and attacks. This is a historical operational episode, not evidence of the pipeline’s throughput at the present cut-off. Its relevance is structural: landlocked production requires functioning cross-border transit and access to a maritime export point, so a large upstream investment does not eliminate dependence on downstream relationships. Revenue expectations can therefore be affected by events outside the producing area, including interruption at a border, transport damage or restrictions at the export interface. An assessment of current fiscal exposure would require actual production, transport, shipment and payment records, together with any financing or offtake obligations affecting receipts. Without those records, nominal pipeline capacity cannot be converted into realised export revenue, and a reported shipment cannot establish uninterrupted operation. The policy consequence is that protection of infrastructure must be accompanied by workable transit arrangements and commercial continuity, because each addresses a different condition required for monetising production. Oil Market Report, “Supply,” p. 22 — International Energy Agency — Jul 2024. iea.blob.core.windows.net

Drug seizures establish intercepted quantities, not total market size

UNODC’s 2024 assessment reports average annual cocaine seizures of 13 kilograms in 2015–2020, followed by 41 kilograms in 2021 and 1,466 kilograms in 2022 across its five-country Sahel definition. These figures establish a significant change in recorded interceptions, not a reproducible estimate of total trafficking volumes or armed-group receipts. The same report distinguishes the documented involvement of several armed formations from the more limited evidence of direct trafficking by violent extremist groups, while assessing that indirect benefit can arise through taxation. This distinction matters because an actor protecting or taxing a consignment need not own it, finance its purchase or determine its destination. Seizure growth may reflect larger shipments, better detection, changing reporting or a combination of factors. The correct response is therefore to connect interception records with financial, ownership and route evidence rather than multiplying seized quantities by a retail price and presenting the result as regional criminal income. Drug Trafficking in the Sahel, “Key takeaways” and “Main actors involved” — UNODC — 2024. unodc.org

Recorded cocaine seizures	Quantity	Period	Geographic definition
Annual average	13 kg/year	2015–2020	Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger
Annual total	41 kg	2021	Same five-country definition
Annual total	1,466 kg	2022	Same five-country definition

Source: Drug Trafficking in the Sahel — UNODC — 2024. The series is historical and measures seizures, not 2026 flows.

The public-health dimension requires a different evidence stream from the investigation of trafficking networks. A drug sold under the same street name in two countries need not have the same chemical composition, and reports of availability do not establish prevalence or the number of people exposed. Policy should therefore connect seizure testing, toxicology, treatment observations and clinical reporting without treating them as interchangeable datasets. A rising number of treatment presentations can reflect increased harm, improved access to care or better recording; a highly potent substance detected in one market warrants targeted vigilance elsewhere but does not establish its presence there. The decision requirement is an early-warning system able to identify what has actually been detected, in which sample and on what date, while ensuring that health services can respond before a complete market estimate exists. This is particularly important where enforcement and treatment authorities operate with different geographic coverage: an apparent absence of cases may reflect weak observation rather than low exposure.

Mobility, smuggling and trafficking require separate economic and protective analysis

Niger’s government communiqué of 27 November 2023 announced repeal of Law No. 2015-36 on migrant smuggling. The communiqué establishes the government’s action and stated rationale; it does not demonstrate that every form of transport became lawful or that protections against exploitation disappeared. The distinction between migrant smuggling and trafficking in persons remains essential. UNODC explains that smuggling concerns the facilitation of irregular cross-border movement for benefit, whereas trafficking concerns specified conduct undertaken for exploitation, with additional elements applicable to adult cases and different requirements for children. A journey initially organised through a smuggler can subsequently involve trafficking, but neither a border crossing nor payment for transport is sufficient by itself to establish exploitation. For the Sahelian economy, this means transport operators, facilitators, displaced people, refugees and trafficking victims cannot be collapsed into a single criminal category. Their relationships, legal positions and protection needs differ. An enforcement measure directed at one activity can also change the bargaining power of intermediaries in another, making it important to observe costs, routes and risks after an intervention rather than assuming that fewer recorded departures mean fewer people exposed to harm. Communiqué du Secrétariat Général du gouvernement : Abrogation de la loi n°2015-36 du 26 mai 2015 — Government of Niger, published by ONEP — Nov 2023; A Short Introduction to Migrant Smuggling, section 2 — UNODC. Le Sahel

Population or activity	Central analytical question	Evidence that must remain distinct
Internally displaced people	Can people obtain protection and services within their country?	Displacement stocks, returns and conditions in return areas
Refugees and asylum-seekers	What protection obligations and needs apply?	Status, registration and individual protection considerations
Migrant smuggling	Who facilitates irregular cross-border movement for benefit?	Transport arrangements, payment and relevant border circumstances
Trafficking in persons	Is conduct undertaken for exploitation under the applicable definition?	Conduct, prohibited means where required, and exploitative purpose
Ordinary regional mobility	What movement is lawful under applicable arrangements?	Documentation, residence rights and actual border treatment

The humanitarian consequence extends beyond emergency delivery. If assistance cannot arrive reliably, households may sell productive assets, postpone health care or accept disadvantageous labour and credit arrangements, increasing future dependence even if immediate survival needs are eventually met. These are pathways to investigate, rather than outcomes to presume in every locality. UNHCR’s 2026–2027 Sahel Plus strategy, published in December 2025, explicitly frames its approach around protection, resilience and solutions across the central Sahel, Mauritania and affected coastal states. The regional scope matters because need can move across administrative and national boundaries while individual programmes remain tied to particular territories or categories. An effective response therefore requires continuity between emergency support, livelihood recovery and protection monitoring. Otherwise, a programme can report successful deliveries while the households it reaches continue to lose the assets and relationships required for an eventual recovery. Strengthening Protection and Resilience in the Sahel: UNHCR’s Strategic Approach 2026–2027 — UNHCR — Dec 2025. 2027

Key judgments

Fuel, export infrastructure, trafficking markets and population movement are connected through logistics but should not be treated as one market or one enforcement problem. The central vulnerability is dependence on a limited set of usable commercial and service relationships. Restricting a channel can reduce harmful activity, displace it or transfer costs to civilians; the outcome must be observed rather than inferred from the intervention itself.

What would change the assessment

The assessment would improve with sustained essential deliveries, lower involuntary payments, reliable export records and protection services that remain accessible as populations move. It would weaken if substitution restored aggregate volumes while excluding smaller customers, if seizures replaced financial investigations as the principal performance measure, or if mobility restrictions increased exploitation without reducing the responsible networks’ influence.

Open official record

Priority gaps concern current fuel-price differentials, actual petroleum throughput and receipts, comparable delivery costs, laboratory-confirmed emerging substances, cross-border case outcomes and protection conditions along changing movement routes.

Chapter 6 — External Partnerships and European Exposure

External influence should be assessed through the functions a partner can actually sustain: finance, market access, export logistics, technical services, security support and diplomatic coordination. These functions can be supplied by different actors and need not form a single geopolitical package. A government may seek security assistance from one partner while retaining commercial relationships with companies from another jurisdiction and considering finance from a third. Conversely, an announced investment can remain dependent on export arrangements or financing conditions that the investor cannot resolve alone. The principal analytical risk is to mistake visible diplomatic alignment for exclusive economic control. For European governments, the practical implication is that exposure must be disaggregated: Italy’s bilateral support relationship, France’s industrial and legal interests, Germany’s development-coordination instruments and the United Kingdom’s financial-market leverage are different assets with different limits. Coordination is useful where those instruments address complementary parts of a problem; uniformity is less useful where it conceals differences in access, authority or implementation capacity.

Commercial finance shows why partnership portfolios cannot be reduced to binary alignment

The US International Development Finance Corporation’s Board Resolution BDR(26)21 approves financing of up to US$414.2 million for Société Minière de DASA S.A. to develop and construct an underground uranium mine and first-stage ore converter in north-central Niger. The document also approves a warrant-related equity investment arrangement involving the sponsor, Global Atomic. This is a concrete financing authorisation, but it is not a record showing that the full amount has been disbursed, construction completed or exports established. Its strategic significance is narrower and more defensible: a major US public-finance institution has approved support for a project in a country whose external relationships cannot therefore be represented solely through one competing security alignment. The development outcome still depends on implementation. Financing, construction, operating permissions and export access each require their own evidence, and progress in one cannot settle the status of the others. The same discipline should govern assessments of other announced partnerships, including claims that a security relationship necessarily confers ownership of a particular mineral resource or access to an entire national sector. BDR(26)21 — Société Minière de DASA S.A. — US International Development Finance Corporation — FY2026. dfc.gov

Partnership function	What establishes a concrete relationship	What remains a separate question
Project finance	Financing approval and transaction documentation	Disbursement, conditions and completion
Mineral development	Licences, construction and operating records	Commercial output and exportability
Security support	Identifiable activities and agreements	Effectiveness, accountability and economic consideration
Export access	Usable transit and shipment arrangements	Continuity under political or security stress
Market access	Actual purchases and compliant counterparties	Traceability and ultimate beneficiaries

Italy — A continuing bilateral relationship creates a measurable implementation burden

Italy’s parliamentary documentation provides more specific evidence than a general declaration of interest in the Sahel. The 24 July 2026 dossier describes MISIN’s tasks, including training, advice, mentoring and logistical support, and records a planned maximum employment of 485 personnel, 23 land vehicles and two aircraft for 2026. It also reproduces a cumulative training total of 10,908 Nigerien personnel since September 2018, divided among the army, air force, gendarmerie and national guard, and special-operations units. These figures describe a planned ceiling and cumulative training activity; they do not establish the number currently deployed or the operational availability of trained units. Italy’s decision problem is consequently the conversion of a continuing bilateral relationship into durable institutional benefit. Access can support technical cooperation and an informed understanding of local requirements, but it also creates responsibility to determine whether assistance remains usable, appropriately supervised and connected to the needs it was intended to address. The most consequential measures concern retained skills, functioning equipment, continuity of cooperation and demonstrable protection outcomes rather than the cumulative number of course participants alone. Proroga delle missioni internazionali in corso e autorizzazione per ulteriori missioni e interventi di cooperazione per l’anno 2026, MISIN section — Camera dei deputati and Senato della Repubblica — Jul 2026. documenti.camera.it

MISIN indicator	Recorded value	Definition
Personnel	485	Planned maximum employment for 2026
Land vehicles	23	Planned assets
Aircraft	2	Planned assets
Army personnel trained	5,357	Cumulative figure reproduced in the parliamentary dossier
Air force personnel trained	80	Same cumulative reporting basis
Gendarmerie and National Guard trained	3,482	Same cumulative reporting basis
Special-operations personnel trained	1,989	Same cumulative reporting basis
Total trained	10,908	Sum of the four reported categories; not a current deployment count

Source: 2026 international missions dossier, MISIN section — Italian Parliament — Jul 2026.

France — Industrial exposure requires separation between rights, access and replacement supply

France’s exposure should be assessed through the industrial relationships affected by Niger’s decisions rather than through an unsupported assumption that a disputed asset translates directly into a national supply emergency. Orano’s 2025 annual activity report describes interference with exports, permit withdrawal and control of subsidiaries, and characterises the measures affecting SOMAÏR as expropriation without compensation; these legal characterisations remain the company’s position. The decision consequence is a distinction among enforceable rights, physical control over material, commercial delivery and the ability to obtain replacement supply elsewhere. An arbitration claim can preserve or vindicate a legal interest without immediately restoring shipment access, while alternative procurement can reduce operational exposure without resolving the underlying dispute. A rigorous assessment of French or European vulnerability would therefore require current inventories, purchase contracts, delivery schedules, substitution costs and processing requirements. Those records have not been established here, so no percentage of French electricity generation or European fuel supply is attributed to an immediate Nigerien shortfall. The more defensible conclusion is that the dispute increases legal, commercial and logistical uncertainty, whose practical severity depends on the wider procurement system. Annual Activity Report 2025, “Situation in Niger” — Orano — reporting year 2025. Page 26

Germany — Development coordination provides leverage only if it preserves visibility and access

Germany’s distinct instrument in the reviewed record is the organisation of development cooperation rather than a presumed current military footprint. GIZ’s “Stärkung der Zusammenarbeit im Sahel” project, commissioned by BMZ, lists a duration of 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2026 and a current project commission volume of €13,617,405. Its stated work includes supporting the German contribution to the Sahel Alliance, analysing regional developments and supporting the Alliance’s coordination structure. This amount is a project-level commission volume, not Germany’s total Sahel assistance, annual expenditure or a verified sum already spent. The strategic opportunity is to reduce duplication and maintain an informed view of implementation across programmes, particularly where access differs between countries and sectors. The principal limitation is that coordination can become an administrative output detached from local delivery: meetings and shared reporting do not by themselves demonstrate that services reach people or that livelihood programmes remain viable under coercive pressure. Germany’s contribution is therefore most useful when common analysis identifies where assistance is actually functioning, where it is being displaced and where institutional or security conditions require a different delivery arrangement. Stärkung der Zusammenarbeit im Sahel, project profile — GIZ — accessed Nov 2026. GIZ

United Kingdom — Market institutions offer leverage beyond physical presence

The United Kingdom’s relevant exposure includes the interaction between London’s precious-metals institutions, financial services and companies operating in West Africa. This should not be confused with direct government control over every commercial participant or with an assumption that London-market gold originated in a particular conflict area. LBMA’s responsible-sourcing framework provides a documented mechanism through which refiners face auditing and market-access requirements; Endeavour’s company disclosures illustrate a separate connection between London-listed commercial interests and Burkina Faso’s mining sector. For policymakers, the resulting opportunity is to improve the quality of information linking upstream suppliers to formal markets and to encourage actionable reporting when counterparties, origin claims or payment arrangements are inconsistent. The downside is indiscriminate disengagement: if institutions treat every higher-risk source as commercially unacceptable without distinguishing remediable weaknesses from prohibited relationships, legitimate producers may lose access to more transparent channels. The appropriate performance test is therefore whether scrutiny produces better evidence, credible remediation and identifiable enforcement outcomes, rather than simply a reduction in transactions associated with a difficult geography. Responsible Sourcing — LBMA — accessed Nov 2026; Endeavour reports access ramp subsidence at the Mana mine, company and listing information — Endeavour Mining — Nov 2026. LBMA

European Union — Regional support must distinguish commitment, delivery and effect

The Council’s 29 October 2026 decision on Mauritania provides a current example of the EU’s regional security instrument. The Council announced a fourth European Peace Facility assistance measure worth €20 million, bringing overall bilateral EPF support for Mauritania to €75 million. It specified additional non-lethal land-surveillance assets intended to improve situational awareness. The newly approved amount is included in the cumulative total and must not be added to it again; neither figure is a measure of delivered equipment or achieved security improvement. The strategic relevance is that EU action can support neighbouring states affected by Sahelian instability even where engagement with the central Sahel is politically or operationally constrained. That approach nevertheless requires a theory of effect: additional observation capacity is useful only if institutions can maintain it, interpret the information and respond appropriately. Regional containment also cannot substitute for attention to the economic relationships crossing the supported state’s borders. The EU’s comparative role is to connect diplomatic engagement, humanitarian support, development cooperation and targeted security assistance while making the evidence of delivery and civilian benefit visible across those instruments. European Peace Facility: Council adopts 4th bilateral assistance measure in support of Mauritania — Council of the European Union — Oct 2026. Consilium

Actor	Distinct instrument or exposure	Principal implementation question	Misleading success measure
Italy	Bilateral training, advice and support	Do skills and supported capabilities remain usable under accountable institutions?	Cumulative training totals treated as current operational strength
France	Industrial rights, contracts and supply relationships	Can legal interests, physical access and procurement continuity be managed separately?	Litigation progress treated as restored material access
Germany	Development coordination and institutional support	Does coordination improve programme continuity and local delivery?	Meetings or project allocations treated as beneficiary outcomes
United Kingdom	Precious-metals institutions and financial-market relationships	Does scrutiny produce traceable counterparties and actionable cases?	Geographic disengagement treated as proof of reduced illicit benefit
European Union	Combined diplomatic, development, humanitarian and security instruments	Are commitments converted into sustained capabilities and civilian benefit?	Approved assistance treated as delivered and effective

Where external leverage meets civilian consequences

Key judgments

External partnerships are best understood as a portfolio of functions rather than an exclusive geopolitical affiliation. Italy has a documented bilateral support instrument; France faces distinct industrial and legal questions; Germany contributes coordination capacity; the United Kingdom has relevant financial-market institutions; and the EU can combine regional instruments. Their value depends on conversion into sustained results, not on the visibility of announcements.

What would change the assessment

The assessment would improve with verified financing disbursements, reliable export access, retained institutional skills and documented market relationships that preserve legitimate civilian participation. It would weaken if commitments remained detached from implementation, if commercial disputes were misrepresented as evidence of complete geopolitical replacement or if enforcement displaced lawful activity without reaching coercive beneficiaries.

Open official record

The decisive gaps are financing drawdowns and conditions, current mineral shipment arrangements, actual mission deployments, post-training institutional performance, assistance deliveries, supply-substitution costs and financial cases connecting external markets to identifiable illicit beneficiaries.

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Pillar III — Trajectories, Warning Indicators and Policy Choices

Chapter 7 — The 2026–2031 Outlook: Consolidation, Containment or Further Fragmentation

The leading assessment is continued fragmentation of effective authority, with selective improvements around economically or politically important locations rather than a uniform regional recovery. This judgment does not imply inevitable state collapse, uninterrupted armed-group expansion or the permanent exclusion of negotiated arrangements. It reflects the difficulty of changing the relationships through which armed actors obtain resources, influence commercial decisions and make civilian access conditional on accommodation. Through November 2031, the decisive variable is whether governments and their partners can reduce dependence on coercive intermediaries while maintaining economically viable alternatives. A successful operation, an investment agreement or a restored shipment can improve one part of that equation without resolving the others. Conversely, a temporary deterioration need not invalidate a recovery pathway if institutions retain the capacity to investigate failure, restore access and prevent recurrence. The forecast should therefore be revised through observable changes in relationships and functions, rather than through declarations of territorial recovery or aggregate incident totals alone. Confidence is stronger in this assessment of the mechanisms sustaining fragmentation than in the timing, location or political outcome of any particular escalation.

Consolidation requires changes that persist after exceptional support is withdrawn

The favourable pathway is selective consolidation that gradually becomes self-sustaining: ordinary trade remains possible, public institutions resolve disputes, and communities can refuse coercive demands without losing their principal source of income or protection. The mechanism is cumulative rather than instantaneous. More reliable access reduces the need for emergency inventories and exceptional transport arrangements; improved commercial predictability supports employment and documented transactions; functioning remedies make it less necessary to rely on informal protection; and a more usable economic base gives public authorities a stronger platform for maintaining services. This sequence is an analytical pathway, not a claim that each link has already been demonstrated in the central Sahel. Its principal constraint is recurrent financing and institutional continuity: a service that operates only while a temporary project pays its exceptional costs has not yet become durable. EUCAP Sahel Mali’s published emphasis on transparent management, accountability, access to justice and institutional capacity provides a relevant benchmark for examining this transition, although the existence of that mandate is not evidence that the transition has occurred. The countervailing risk is concentration: governments may protect a small number of important locations while surrounding communities remain exposed, producing an economically functional enclave without wider consolidation. About EUCAP Sahel Mali, mandate and priority areas — European External Action Service — official mission description, accessed Nov 2026. EEAS

Containment can preserve governments while leaving coercive economic arrangements intact

The intermediate pathway is containment without broad institutional recovery. Governments retain capitals, priority infrastructure and selected commercial activities; external partners continue narrowly defined cooperation; and businesses adapt sufficiently to remain operational. Yet populations outside the protected core continue to face involuntary payments, uncertain movement and dependence on negotiated access. This outcome can appear stable from the perspective of national institutions or major operators while remaining insecure for smaller enterprises and rural communities. Its economic mechanism is the unequal distribution of adaptation capacity: actors able to absorb additional security, financing and transport costs continue operating, while those with thinner margins lose market access or accept more disadvantageous arrangements. Containment should therefore not be judged solely by whether a strategic facility remains open. The more revealing question is whether the surrounding economy can participate without exceptional protection or compulsory accommodation. A countervailing force is that maintained commercial activity can preserve employment, revenues and institutional footholds from which broader recovery becomes possible. The assessment should remain open to that possibility, but require evidence that the benefits extend beyond the protected asset. Otherwise, containment can become an enduring arrangement in which the state survives, armed intermediaries retain income and the population finances the difference through higher costs and restricted choices.

Further fragmentation becomes more dangerous when no actor can guarantee an arrangement

The adverse pathway is competitive fragmentation: commercial participants face several overlapping demands, agreements become less reliable and no single authority can provide predictable access across a complete journey or supply relationship. The mechanism differs from a stable protection economy. A predictable coercive payment is harmful, but repeated demands by competing actors can make even accommodation unreliable, discouraging activity and increasing the incentive to seize short-term gains before another actor does. Revenue collection then risks becoming more destructive because those imposing costs cannot confidently expect to benefit from the future survival of the activity being taxed. This is a conditional explanation rather than an assertion that every armed formation behaves in the same way. UNODC’s analysis of fuel and drug markets demonstrates the relevance of overlapping commercial, criminal and armed relationships; it does not establish a single regional hierarchy controlling those relationships. The principal countervailing forces are local bargaining, commercial pressure to restore predictable movement and the ability of public authorities to provide a more dependable alternative. Fragmentation should therefore be identified through the multiplication and instability of demands, not simply through the number of organisations named in reporting. Fuel Trafficking in the Sahel, main actors and policy implications — UNODC — 2022; Drug Trafficking in the Sahel, main actors and impact — UNODC — 2024. unodc.org

Pathway through November 2031	Necessary mechanism	Observable confirmation	Evidence against the pathway	Current analytical standing
Selective consolidation	Security improvements become sustained civilian administration and viable commerce	Ordinary access persists; complaints produce remedies; coercive payments decline	Services depend indefinitely on exceptional support; protection remains confined to isolated assets	Credible locally, but requires demonstrated persistence
Containment without recovery	Governments and major activities endure while surrounding economic coercion continues	Strategic operations remain functional, but smaller participants face persistent access costs	Benefits spread beyond protected locations and reduce dependence on coercive intermediaries	A plausible form of the leading fragmented outlook
Competitive fragmentation	Overlapping actors destabilise collection and access arrangements	Repeated demands, unreliable agreements and disruption across connected markets	Fewer competing collectors, more predictable access and durable remedies	Material adverse pathway requiring close monitoring

These pathways can coexist in different locations and are not mutually exclusive regional outcomes. No numerical probabilities are assigned: the verified record does not support a reproducible model capable of generating defensible percentages.

The observation system must separate improving conditions from disappearing evidence

The most consequential forecasting error would be to interpret a decline in recorded incidents as improvement without checking whether reporting, commercial activity or civilian presence has also declined. Fewer attacks on transport can mean safer movement, but it can also mean fewer journeys; fewer complaints can mean less coercion, but it can also mean that residents no longer trust the complaint channel or cannot reach it. Similarly, an increase in documented transactions can reflect formalisation, improved recording or displacement of activity from another location. The forecast therefore needs denominators and coverage information wherever feasible. Counts of incidents should be examined alongside the number of journeys or operating days exposed; service-delivery claims alongside the population and locations actually reachable; purchasing volumes alongside the size and continuity of participation. This is a proposed analytical design, not a claim that complete comparable series currently exist. Where denominators cannot be established, reporting should state the limitation and preserve multiple observations rather than replacing missing information with a composite score. CTED’s identification of weaknesses in risk understanding, information sharing and financial investigation reinforces the importance of collection that can distinguish a genuine change in behaviour from a change in what institutions are able to observe. Thematic summary assessment of gaps in implementing key countering the financing of terrorism provisions of Security Council resolutions: With a focus on Africa, sections I–IV — CTED — Sep 2025. www.un.org

Proposed monitoring series	Unit and denominator	What improvement would mean	Main distortion to test	Preferred observation
Ordinary commercial access	Completed journeys relative to attempted journeys on a defined corridor	More reliable access for ordinary users	Fewer attempts or exclusion of smaller operators	Repeated transporter records corroborated by destination receipts
Compulsory payments	Reported payment events and amounts per comparable journey or transaction	Reduced involuntary extraction	Fear, under-reporting or displacement to another point	Confidential, repeated reporting with coverage documented
Public-service continuity	Days actually available relative to scheduled operating days	Institutions remain usable	Nominal reopening without staff or supplies	Service registers and independently checked access
Formal gold participation	Documented volume and continuing participating sellers	A viable lawful channel attracts sustained use	Reclassification or diversion from another channel	Purchasing, assay and settlement records
Financing implementation	Amount disbursed and activity completed against the applicable agreement	Commitments become delivered investment	Approval or contract value counted as expenditure	Transaction and implementation records
Supported capability	Available service days or functioning equipment against defined requirements	Assistance remains usable	Inventory or training attendance treated as readiness	Maintenance, staffing and utilisation records
Humanitarian access	Successful deliveries and service coverage relative to identified needs	Essential support remains reachable	Smaller target population creating an apparent improvement	Delivery records combined with needs and access assessments

Proposed thresholds should trigger review without pretending to establish causality

A monitoring system needs rules for changing decisions, but those rules should not masquerade as statistically validated thresholds where no such validation exists. A practical arrangement would use monthly observation, quarterly integrated review and immediate escalation of serious protection incidents or credible evidence of diversion. For an improvement to justify expansion of a pilot intervention, this assessment proposes corroboration across two consecutive quarterly reviews, with explicit checks that access has not merely shifted to a narrower group or another location. These intervals are proposed management rules, not observed regional performance or empirically optimised forecasting parameters. They provide a transparent standard for persistence while allowing urgent action where waiting would compound harm. Crucially, failure to meet an expansion threshold need not imply programme termination: it can justify continued observation, redesign or a narrower geographic scope. Conversely, a credible finding that an intervention is exposing beneficiaries to retaliation or transferring resources to a prohibited beneficiary should trigger immediate examination of the affected activity rather than being averaged into an otherwise positive quarterly picture.

Decision	Proposed threshold	Required corroboration	Response
Expand a pilot	Improvement persists across two quarterly reviews	Access, participation and protection observations agree	Expand in stages with continued monitoring
Maintain a limited intervention	Results are mixed or observation remains incomplete	No unresolved serious harm finding	Continue narrowly while resolving the named gap
Redesign delivery	Aggregate output improves but access becomes more unequal	Evidence of exclusion, cost transfer or geographic displacement	Change access conditions, delivery partners or programme scope
Examine suspension of an affected channel	Credible diversion, retaliation or serious protection failure	Prompt investigation proportionate to urgency	Protect people, preserve evidence and identify a lawful alternative
Revise the regional forecast	Several connected locations show the same durable change	Commercial, administrative and protection evidence converge	Change the judgment with the supporting mechanism stated

Country trajectories should be revised through different decisive observations

For Mali, the forecast should give particular weight to whether commercial continuity translates into usable access for contractors, workers and surrounding settlements, rather than treating the resilience of a major operation as evidence of wider recovery. For Burkina Faso, the decisive question is whether expanding security effort produces sustained local protection and administrative availability across the areas expected to benefit, rather than only increasing the scale of mobilisation. For Niger, the conversion of prospective investment into production and export receipts depends on several distinct links—financing, permissions, construction, transit and commercial settlement—so progress must be tracked through each link rather than inferred from one approval. These are country-specific forecasting tests derived from the different exposures examined in Pillars I and II; they are not predictions that one country must consolidate while another must fragment. The most important comparative discipline is to preserve a common outcome—less coercive dependence and more usable civilian authority—while allowing the observations required to demonstrate it to differ. A regional forecast should change only when improvements become connected and persistent enough to alter the underlying relationships, not when isolated national announcements appear to point in the same direction.

Institutional dates create review opportunities, not predetermined turning points

Several already documented programme and mandate dates provide opportunities to examine continuity, results and the case for adjustment. The GIZ coordination project lists 31 December 2026 as its end date; the official EUCAP description records a mandate running to 31 January 2027; and the Council’s appointment of the EU Special Representative runs to 31 August 2027. These are the recorded dates at the dossier cut-off, not predictions that cooperation will cease on those days. Their decision relevance is to require explicit examination of what should continue, what should change and what evidence supports the choice. Renewal without an implementation assessment risks carrying forward an ineffective arrangement; non-renewal without a transition plan can remove useful capacity or information. The forecast should therefore treat each review as a possible change in institutional conditions, while reserving judgment on its consequences until the actual decision and implementation are known. Stärkung der Zusammenarbeit im Sahel — GIZ — project record, accessed Nov 2026; About EUCAP Sahel Mali — EEAS — accessed Nov 2026; Sahel: Council appoints a new EU Special Representative for the region — Council of the EU — Jul 2026. GIZ

Recorded date	Institutional review opportunity	Question that should be answered
31 December 2026	Listed end of the reviewed GIZ coordination project	Which coordination functions have produced usable results, and what continuity is required?
31 January 2027	Recorded EUCAP Sahel Mali mandate horizon	Which supported institutional functions are demonstrably usable and sustainable?
31 August 2027	Recorded EU Special Representative appointment horizon	Has political engagement improved concrete cooperation and implementation?

Key judgments

The regional outlook should remain anchored in fragmented authority until durable evidence demonstrates a broader change. Selective consolidation is credible where protection, administration and commercial participation reinforce one another; containment remains distinct because it can preserve strategic activity without reducing coercive dependence. Competitive fragmentation becomes the greater danger where agreements cease to provide even predictable access.

What would change the assessment

The judgment would improve if repeated observations across connected locations showed declining compulsory payments, broader ordinary access and institutions that remain usable without exceptional support. It would deteriorate if apparent stability depended increasingly on exclusion, opaque accommodation or the shrinking of observable civilian activity.

Open official record

The decisive gaps are comparable access denominators, repeated payment observations, service-continuity records, financing implementation data and independent evidence linking changes in security posture to changes in civilian conditions.

Chapter 8 — Courses of Action and Final Net Assessment

The most defensible response is a sequenced combination of targeted disruption and viable civilian alternatives, with expansion conditional on demonstrated results. Financial investigations alone cannot restore access to a market, and livelihood support alone cannot remove an actor’s ability to punish non-compliance. Security assistance can improve protection but remain ineffective if equipment cannot be maintained or public institutions cannot use the information it generates. Diplomacy can enable cooperation but cannot substitute for an operational process that identifies who must act, on what evidence and under which authority. The policy choice is therefore not between a purely coercive response and an exclusively developmental one. It is how to combine instruments so that reducing an armed beneficiary’s opportunities does not simultaneously increase civilian dependence on that beneficiary or on a replacement intermediary. The preferred approach begins with defined problems and manageable interventions, establishes protection and observation arrangements from the outset, and expands only when the record shows both reduced coercive benefit and maintained access to essential activity.

Targeted financial action should follow cases that institutions can complete

The first course of action is to develop a limited portfolio of financial cases capable of reaching identifiable organisers, beneficiaries and assets, rather than treating the production of large quantities of intelligence as the principal result. Security Council resolution 2462 provides a relevant framework for financial investigations, inter-agency information sharing and cooperation with the private sector, subject to applicable law. The implementation burden is the conversion of information into evidence usable by the institution expected to act: an intelligence lead may require corroboration, a foreign record may require an assistance request, and an asset measure may depend on accurate identification and the applicable ownership or control rules. The expected effect is selective disruption of a demonstrated financial relationship, not a guaranteed reduction in all regional financing. The principal risk is displacement towards substitute intermediaries or the exclusion of legitimate counterparties when institutions cannot distinguish them. Performance should therefore be judged through the quality and completion of cases, the durability of the disruption and the treatment of wrongly identified parties, rather than through alerts, meetings or frozen amounts considered without context. Security Council resolution 2462 (2019), paragraphs 7, 15–19 and 28–29 — United Nations — Mar 2019. mandates.un.org

Gold-sector engagement should make lawful participation economically usable

The second course of action is to support bounded gold-purchasing and traceability arrangements where credible counterparties, lawful authority and adequate protection can be established. The intervention should address the commercial reasons participants choose a channel: settlement speed, valuation transparency, dispute resolution, transport and the reliability of payment. Otherwise, a formal programme can record registrations while the economically important transactions continue elsewhere. Responsible-sourcing institutions offer a route for examining upstream relationships, but their value depends on specific evidence and remediation rather than the use of compliance language alone. The expected effect is a more usable lawful channel and better visibility over the relationships surrounding it; the burden includes independent checks, workable settlement systems and continuing engagement with producers. The principal risk is creating a privileged purchasing intermediary or exposing participants to coercion because their activity becomes more visible without becoming safer. Entry into the programme should therefore remain voluntary where applicable, complaints should be usable, and expansion should depend on sustained participation and evidence that the intervention is not transferring costs to the least powerful participants. Responsible Sourcing, programme, assurance and artisanal-mining engagement — LBMA — accessed Nov 2026. LBMA

Protection support should purchase sustained availability rather than nominal capacity

The third course of action is to connect security-related assistance to a defined civilian-access problem and a credible maintenance and accountability arrangement. The intervention might support an institution’s ability to observe, respond, investigate or maintain a service, but it should state the function that must remain available after delivery. Equipment procurement without staffing, recurrent support and procedures can create an inventory rather than a capability. Conversely, insisting on a complete transformation of the security sector before supporting any bounded function can leave feasible improvements unrealised. The appropriate balance is a limited, reviewable package whose expected effect can be observed and whose expansion can be withheld if the necessary conditions are absent. The EU’s documented non-lethal surveillance assistance to Mauritania illustrates the distinction between a specified input and the further implementation needed to produce better situational awareness and protection. That example does not establish that identical assistance would be suitable elsewhere; suitability depends on host-state arrangements, institutional use, maintenance and civilian consequences in the actual setting. European Peace Facility: Council adopts 4th bilateral assistance measure in support of Mauritania — Council of the EU — Oct 2026. Consilium

Cross-border cooperation should solve identifiable interruptions

The fourth course of action is to organise practical cooperation around specific interruptions to lawful trade, evidence exchange or service access. A useful arrangement identifies the competent officials, the information required, the route for resolving discrepancies and the institution responsible for a decision. It should not depend on resolving every wider political disagreement before routine functions can operate. The expected benefit is a reduction in avoidable uncertainty and the space available for informal brokerage around inconsistent procedures. The burden is sustained administrative participation, secure information handling and a means of resolving cases that fall between institutions. The principal downside is selective implementation: an arrangement may work for a small number of favoured operators while remaining inaccessible to ordinary users. Its performance should therefore be assessed through actual processing, completed requests and the distribution of access. The ECOWAS Commission’s transitional position on documents, movement and trade after the three states’ withdrawal provides a documentary starting point for identifying the functions to examine, but actual practice and subsequent applicable decisions must determine the assessment of implementation. Press Statement on the withdrawal of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — ECOWAS Commission — Jan 2025. www.ecowas.int

Humanitarian continuity and health observation should accompany disruption measures

The fifth course of action is to build essential civilian access into the design of enforcement and assistance, rather than treating it as a compensatory activity considered after a restriction has taken effect. The sanctions framework preserves specified humanitarian activities under defined conditions, while requiring reasonable efforts to minimise prohibited benefit and diversion. Operationally, this means that institutions need workable procedures for determining eligibility and maintaining necessary transactions, together with a route for addressing problems without exposing people or programmes to indefinite interruption. Protection and health observation should also identify effects that financial or security indicators miss, including loss of service access, exploitation during movement and emerging drug harms. The expected benefit is to prevent an intervention from improving a narrow enforcement metric while worsening the conditions that make coercive arrangements attractive or unavoidable. The burden includes sustained local partnerships, confidential reporting and coordination across organisations with different mandates. The principal risk is that assistance itself can be diverted or used as a point of control, making beneficiary access and protection central to the evaluation. Security Council resolution 2761 (2024), paragraphs 1 and 4 — United Nations — Dec 2024; Strengthening Protection and Resilience in the Sahel: UNHCR’s Strategic Approach 2026–2027 — UNHCR — Dec 2025. mandates.un.org

Course-of-action comparison

The following options are proposed policy designs. Their implementation requires confirmation of the applicable domestic powers, mandates, agreements and funding arrangements; the table does not assert that every authority or prerequisite is already available in every jurisdiction.

Option	Lead authority or responsible institution	Expected effect	Essential implementation condition
A — Targeted financial cases	Competent financial-intelligence, investigative, prosecutorial, judicial and sanctions authorities	Disrupt demonstrated beneficiary relationships and assets	Usable evidence, accurate identification and lawful information exchange
B — Viable lawful gold channels	Competent mining and trade authorities, participating buyers and refiners, with independent assurance	Improve lawful participation and visibility over purchasing relationships	Competitive settlement, credible traceability, protection and accessible complaints
C — Sustained protection capability	Host-state authorities and supporting institutions acting within applicable mandates	Improve a defined protection, response or service function	Maintenance, staffing, accountability and observable civilian benefit
D — Practical cross-border cooperation	Relevant customs, border, transport and judicial institutions	Reduce avoidable interruptions and make cooperation usable	Named counterparts, functioning procedures and case resolution
E — Civilian continuity and harm observation	Humanitarian, protection and health institutions under applicable arrangements	Preserve essential access and identify harmful side effects early	Safe delivery, confidential observation and workable compliance procedures

Burden, timing, reversibility and second-order consequences

The time windows below are planning assumptions, not forecasts of guaranteed success. Initial procedures or pilots may become operational sooner than durable outcomes can be demonstrated. Reversibility refers to the ability to adjust an intervention, not the ability to undo harm already suffered.

Option	Implementation burden	Indicative time-to-effect	Reversibility	Second-order consequence and principal risk
A	Specialist investigators, secure exchange and judicial capacity	Initial case development within 3–12 months; complex cross-border outcomes may take longer	Investigative priorities are adjustable; completed legal measures require applicable review procedures	Networks substitute intermediaries; inaccurate identification can exclude lawful activity
B	Purchasing systems, liquidity, assurance and producer engagement	Pilot operation within 6–12 months where prerequisites exist; durability requires longer observation	Pilot scope and commercial conditions are adjustable, subject to contracts	Concentration around a favoured buyer; visibility without protection can expose participants
C	Procurement, recurrent support, supervision and institutional ownership	Bounded improvements within 6–18 months; wider institutional effects take longer	Future support can be conditioned; delivered assets are less readily reversible	Dependency on external support or increased surveillance without effective remedies
D	Administrative commitment and compatible procedures	Specific procedural improvements within 3–12 months	Procedures can be revised by competent authorities	Benefits captured by favoured operators; sensitive information mishandled
E	Continuing partnerships, monitoring and service-delivery capacity	Access improvements may begin within weeks where channels exist; resilience requires sustained support	Delivery methods can change; abrupt withdrawal can create immediate harm	Diversion, retaliation or dependence on a restricted delivery channel

Sequencing should make expansion an earned decision

The initial 90 days should establish a bounded baseline, identify the responsible institutions and select interventions whose prerequisites can actually be met. This period should produce a documented problem definition and an observation arrangement, rather than a claim of regional transformation. During months 4–12, selected pilots should demonstrate that procedures work in practice: requests receive decisions, purchases settle, equipment remains available and essential services reach intended users. During months 13–24, expansion should depend on sustained results and an examination of displacement, exclusion and recurrent costs. Beyond that point, the central question is whether functions can be maintained under ordinary institutional arrangements and whether benefits extend across connected locations. These are proposed sequencing windows, not fixed implementation deadlines. A serious protection failure or credible diversion finding can require immediate change at any stage, while a programme facing a resolvable administrative delay may justify continued limited support. The discipline is to connect the next commitment to demonstrated conditions rather than to sunk costs, political visibility or the original announcement.

Planning window	Required output	Evidence supporting continuation	Reason to narrow or redesign
First 90 days	Baseline, named responsibilities and selected feasible pilots	Access to necessary records and a workable protection arrangement	No usable observation, unclear authority or unresolved beneficiary risk
Months 4–12	Functioning pilot procedures	Actual transactions, decisions, deliveries and complaints handling	Outputs exist mainly on paper or exclude intended participants
Months 13–24	Evidence of persistence and manageable recurrent costs	Results survive routine variation and two quarterly reviews	Displacement, dependency or unequal access undermines the benefit
Years 3–5	Sustained functions and wider connected benefit	Institutions maintain performance without exceptional arrangements	Continued reliance on temporary protection or external subsidy without a transition

European coordination should allocate responsibilities rather than duplicate them

The country distinctions established in Chapter 6 should now be translated into a division of work. Italy’s bilateral access is relevant to identifying whether supported functions are being used and retained; France’s industrial exposure requires separation of commercial rights, material access and wider supply continuity; Germany’s coordination instruments can help identify programme overlap, discontinuities and evidence gaps; and the United Kingdom’s market relationships can contribute to scrutiny of counterparties and origin claims. At EU level, political coordination should connect these observations without assuming that one national instrument can substitute for another. A commercially important dispute should not determine the assessment of all civilian assistance, and a successful local programme should not be used to imply that a national security relationship has become effective. The practical product should be a shared decision record specifying which institution owns each problem, which observation would change its decision and which other activities could be harmed by that change. The EU Special Representative’s documented coordination role provides a relevant institutional channel for this work; implementation still depends on the participation and authorities of the institutions concerned. Sahel: Council appoints a new EU Special Representative for the region — Council of the European Union — Jul 2026. Consilium

Final net assessment

The central Sahel’s conflict economies will remain difficult to weaken for as long as coercive actors can offer, withhold or condition the relationships on which civilian activity depends. The strongest response is therefore one that changes those relationships rather than merely interrupting individual transactions. Governments need usable institutions that can protect participation in lawful commerce; investigators need cases that reach identifiable beneficiaries; external partners need assistance arrangements that remain functional after delivery; and market institutions need evidence capable of distinguishing prohibited relationships from legitimate activity operating under difficult conditions. None of these requirements guarantees a favourable regional trajectory, and improvements may remain uneven through 2031. They do, however, identify a practical basis for choosing among interventions and recognising when an apparent success is transferring costs or concealing deterioration.

The decisive strategic measure is whether people and businesses acquire a credible ability to continue essential activity without financing coercion or depending on an armed intermediary to make that activity possible. A government can endure without achieving that outcome, a mine can produce without demonstrating it and an assistance programme can spend its allocation without moving conditions towards it. The net assessment should change when protection, ordinary access, lawful participation and effective remedies become more durable across connected locations. Until then, selective gains should be recognised precisely, sustained where useful and kept distinct from a broader recovery that the evidence has not yet established.

Key judgments

Continued fragmented authority remains the leading regional assessment, with consolidation possible where public functions and viable economic participation reinforce one another. Containment can preserve strategic activity without reducing coercive dependence, while competitive fragmentation increases the risk that no actor can guarantee predictable access. Policy should combine targeted disruption with civilian alternatives, using explicit conditions for expansion, redesign and urgent examination of harm.

What would change the assessment

A sustained convergence of declining compulsory payments, broader ordinary access, functioning remedies and completed financial cases would support a more favourable judgment. Persistent exclusion, repeated substitution of coercive intermediaries, unsupported claims of capability or assistance that cannot survive ordinary institutional conditions would weaken it.

Open official record

The final assessment remains most sensitive to five missing bodies of evidence: repeated civilian-access observations; documented financial beneficiaries and case outcomes; sustained institutional and equipment availability; actual investment and export implementation; and independently corroborated protection consequences. These records would determine whether the region is moving towards effective consolidation, an enduring system of coercive containment or deeper fragmentation.

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