After a bit more than two years, Russia’s disinformation campaigns in Africa’s Sahel region look like the quickest propaganda success ever staged. The three countries in the Sahel where military powers recently seized power—Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—withdrew from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and set up a rival defense pact, the Alliance of Sahel States. They formalized this on July 6, 2024, just one day before an ECOWAS summit in Abuja, Nigeria, was set to discuss ways to reintegrate them into the regional bloc. “Come and get us,” the military regimes seem to say. “You can nag us to return to the barracks, but this time we will ignore you. No preaching, please.” The so-called G5 Sahel, an earlier defense pact in the Sahel to combat terrorism, is no longer.

Western entities have been expelled from the area, including Radio France International and France 24 and among others a US military drone base in Agadez, Niger, as well as US troops in the capital of Niger and in Chad. In November of 2022, Operation Barkhane, a French military presence in Mali, was officially shuttered. Germany and Sweden threw up their hands and withdrew their military presence to leave local populations at the mercy of fundamentalist thugs.

The timetable has been swift and relentless. Not only the juntas but many of the people in the streets are hostile to the West, especially to former colonial power France. These sentiments were always latent and are deeper than anything Russia could have cooked up so quickly.

Western policy makers go a bit overboard in attributing this just to wily Russian maneuverings and its mighty disinformation industry. Yes, Yevgeny Prigozhin led the effort with his Wagner Group and Internet Research Agency until his death in a plane crash on August 23, 2023. And it remains robust, with new monikers like the “Africa Corps.” Policy papers heat up the internet, with strategies to confront Russia in this debacle.

But Russia alone couldn’t have done all this. There is little doubt that their motives are cynical, and seek to destabilize a vulnerable region, then capture any natural resources that may be rattling around, such as uranium and gold. Pretty good deal for Russia: Africa Corps in, $2.5 billion worth of gold out. The French had their turn with these extractions, as well as the Americans, Britons, and Belgians elsewhere on the Continent. Now Russia has moved in to fill a void. That said, the West’s Russia fixation is distracting and overlooks a wider context.

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