West Africa’s national armies are on the front line against non-state armed groups: jihadist organisations, community militias and structured criminal gangs. The question of their ability to ‘hold out alone’ comes up regularly, especially in a context of partial withdrawal of foreign forces (Barkhane, MINUSMA) and the reshaping of security partnerships.
Rather than answering with a simple yes or no, it is more relevant to distinguish several levels: militarily holding key areas, durably controlling a territory, reducing the influence of armed groups and, in the longer term, restoring the legitimacy of the state. Each of these levels requires different resources and alliances.
What ‘holding out’ against armed groups really means
‘Holding out’ is not only about winning battles. In the Sahelian and Gulf of Guinea contexts, three dimensions combine:
- Military capability: defending positions, conducting offensive operations, limiting human and material losses.
- Effective territorial control: a regular presence of state forces, freedom of movement, and maintenance of basic services (administration, justice, schools, health).
- Competition for influence: the ability to dissuade populations from cooperating with armed groups and to offer credible alternatives in terms of security, justice and income.
An army can win tactical victories while losing the battle for local influence, which leaves armed groups free to regroup, relocate or blend into communities.
Strengths and room for manoeuvre of national armies
West African armies have several strengths that are often underestimated in public debate.
Knowledge of the terrain and social embeddedness
National forces know local dynamics better than any external actor: community divides, transhumance seasons, trade and smuggling routes. This knowledge varies between units, but it is a structural advantage over armed groups that rely precisely on these local realities.
In many countries, the army remains one of the few national institutions perceived as a symbol of unity, despite recurring criticism of abuses and politicisation. This symbolic dimension plays a role in mobilisation, recruitment and resilience.
Capacity to scale up
Recent years have seen increased defence budgets in several Sahelian and coastal states, a partial modernisation of equipment (armoured vehicles, drones, surveillance assets), and the creation of special forces and units dedicated to counter-terrorism.
Although these changes remain incomplete, they show that national armies are not static. In some contexts, they can contain the expansion of armed groups or retake strategic localities, especially when they receive logistical, intelligence or air support from foreign or regional partners.
Structural limits: why armies are not enough
Academic work and reports by specialist think tanks converge on one finding: a primarily military response, even a reinforced one, is not enough to durably stabilise the areas affected by armed groups.
A problem of coverage rather than ‘victory’
National armies are generally undersized relative to the size of the territories to be covered, particularly in Sahelian and border areas. Even when well trained, they cannot maintain a robust presence in every vulnerable locality, all the more so as some units remain concentrated around capitals and major urban centres.
This forced dispersion creates grey zones where armed groups can settle, levy taxes, control roads or impose their social order, while avoiding direct confrontation with state forces.
Internal challenges: governance, discipline and trust
Several limits frequently recur in specialist analyses:
- A politicised chain of command: political interference, internal rivalries, and difficulties coordinating forces (army, gendarmerie, police, allied militias).
- Poor living and working conditions: irregular pay, insufficient equipment and fragile logistics, which weigh on morale and operational performance.
- Abuses and violence against civilians: extrajudicial executions, disappearances and abuses during sweep operations. These abuses, documented by many organisations, fuel mistrust among populations and facilitate recruitment by armed groups.
In these conditions, even a technically capable army may find itself struggling to win the lasting support of local communities, which is nonetheless central to isolating armed groups and gaining access to human intelligence.
Dependence on external partnerships
A large share of West African armies relies on external support for training, intelligence, air support, equipment or funding. These partnerships have changed recently: the withdrawal of certain Western actors, the rise of new forms of bilateral cooperation, and the presence of private military companies in some countries.
This dependence does not mean that armies are incapable on their own, but that they do not operate in an international vacuum. Armed groups themselves are part of transnational networks (trafficking, movement of fighters, financial flows, ideological references), which makes a strictly national response difficult.
The question is therefore not only whether armies can ‘hold out alone’, but in what kind of partnership configuration they can best defend national interests while preserving their autonomy of decision.
The role of other state institutions
Armed groups rarely thrive in spaces where the state provides basic services, settles local conflicts credibly and offers minimal economic prospects. The army often intervenes where these functions have been weakened or abandoned.
Yet no army can durably replace the justice system, territorial administration, social services or customary and religious mediation mechanisms. Even when the armed forces retake a locality, the absence of a rapid return of other state services leaves a vacuum that armed groups can exploit again.
An army’s ability to ‘hold out’ therefore depends closely on the overall capacity of the state: public finances, local governance, land management, regulation of pastoralism, anti-corruption efforts, oversight of the security forces, etc.
Local communities, militias and risks of fragmentation
Faced with insufficient state presence, some states have encouraged or tolerated the rise of self-defence groups or community militias. In the short term, these actors may help defend certain areas, but they introduce significant risks:
- Worsening inter-communal tensions when these groups are associated with a specific ethnic group or clan.
- A proliferation of armed power centres that are difficult to disarm or later integrate into the regular forces.
- Blurred responsibilities for populations, who no longer clearly distinguish what falls to the state and what falls to private or community actors.
In this context, the question ‘can armies hold out alone?’ is linked to another: what kind of relationship should be established between the armed forces, internal security forces and local security actors, without encouraging the privatisation or ethnicisation of violence?
Conditions for lasting resilience
Rather than absolute self-sufficiency, the challenge is to achieve a lasting capacity for resilience of states and their armies in the face of armed groups. Several conditions recur regularly in specialist analyses.
Internal reforms of the armed forces
The most frequently cited reforms concern:
- Strengthening the chain of command and joint-force coordination.
- Improving soldiers’ living conditions and transparency in the management of defence budgets.
- Training in the protection of civilians, international humanitarian law and internal investigations into abuses.
These reforms are not merely technical: they touch on the relationship between the army, political power and society, and determine the trust of populations and international partners alike.
Linking the security response with local governance
Experience accumulated in the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea shows that military gains are only lasting if they are accompanied by:
- a gradual return of civilian administration to retaken areas,
- local dialogue mechanisms to address land, pastoral or communal conflicts,
- targeted economic initiatives for young people and groups at risk of recruitment.
Without these elements, armed groups can once again present themselves as providers of security, justice or income, even after military setbacks.
Regional cooperation and border control
Armed groups exploit the porous borders between Sahelian and coastal countries, moving according to military pressure, economic opportunities and local alliances. A national army’s ability to ‘hold out’ is therefore linked to the quality of regional cooperation: intelligence sharing, joint operations and harmonised approaches towards border communities.
An isolated army, even a reinforced one, struggles to contain actors whose networks and flows extend well beyond the national framework.
Towards a plural response rather than military self-sufficiency
The phrase ‘hold out alone’ suggests a clear separation between national armies and all other actors. In West African reality, however, security rests on a combination of elements:
- national armies and internal security forces,
- civilian institutions and the justice system,
- local actors (chieftaincies, religious authorities, community organisations),
- regional and international partners.
In some contexts, national armies can contain or push back armed groups, protect strategic routes and maintain security in large cities. However, the lasting stabilisation of territories and the reduction of armed groups’ appeal require a broader transformation of modes of governance, local economies and relations between the state and citizens.
The central question then becomes not whether armies can hold out alone, but how to integrate them into a broader strategy in which security is no longer solely a matter for the armed forces, but one of social contract, justice and economic prospects.