Lawfare Daily: Dispatches from the Sahel, with Rachel Chason and John Lechner

[Intro]

Rachel Chason: He feels very strongly that Burkina Faso is in like the fight of its life against the jihadists, and so that was why he focused so much on raising that militia. And he's been successful at raising the militia, at boosting their numbers, at getting them more supplies.

Tyler McBrien: It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Tyler McBrien, managing editor of Lawfare, with the Washington Post's West Africa Bureau Chief, Rachel Chason and author and freelance journalist John Lechner.

John Lechner: I mean, it's, it's, it's ultimately folks in the Sahel who will solve these issues between each other. I don't think that the, the American, American soldiers or French soldiers or Russian Wagner or any Russian soldiers have the answers.

Tyler McBrien: Today we're talking about the current state of the Sahel, as well as Rachel's new series of profiles from the region called “Crossroads of Conflict” in the Washington Post, and John's new book, “Death is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare.”

[Main podcast]

So Rachel, I want to start with your reporting and your series of profiles that came out very recently in the Washington Post that tell different stories of different dynamics converging in the Sahel.

So I just want to start with one of those profiles, the Islamist militant. Can you tell us a bit about who you profiled there? And also, what it, what you're trying to convey through, through this story about the region.

Rachel Chason: Yeah, for sure. So, so basically how this all started was in 2023 after the coup in Niger, I was in Niamey and we're reporting in the capital there on like what it's like after the coup and kind of trying to think with my boss about what the big forces sort of, what the big forces were that were at play. And one of the big ones obviously was like the rising violence in the region. And we figured that one way to sort of get at that story was. through the individuals who are joining the al Qaeda affiliates and Islamic State affiliates.

And so that was how, during that first trip in Niger, I ended up getting connected with this demobilization program, which was basically a program that had run under the previous regime where people who had been in the groups and decided to put down their weapons had come to the capital, had joined, and that was how I ultimately met Ibrahim, who ended up being the subject of our profile.

Tyler McBrien: Is it true that you started with Ibrahim essentially with these profiles and then how did you decide to, to build this out into a series of profiles? And why tell the story of the region through several individuals, especially one as complex and interwoven and dynamic as the Sahel?

Rachel Chason: Yeah, I mean, that was sort of the conceit was that, like, there are so many big forces at work in the Sahel when we're thinking about, like, rising violence, declines in democracy, the decline of the West, and the rise of Russia. But admittedly, it's this region that's, like, pretty hard for, I think, a lot of Americans to get their heads around and to understand, and so that was one of the reasons why we decided to do it through the stories of individuals.

So from the beginning, we knew that we wanted to have five or six profiles that we would do and then Ibrahim's was the first of those profiles that we tackled.

Tyler McBrien: Now, before we get into more of the profiles because they're really rich portraits, John, I want to bring you in here to pick up on something. Rachel said that it's a maybe a poorly understood region, especially among Americans, other Westerners, other Europeans, perhaps.

You've reported from the region. What do you think are some of the biggest misconceptions about the Sahel and especially how it may have changed in the past few years?

John Lechner: Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I mean, so much is changing just demographically, you know, the, the economic issues and, and so much, you know, many of the countries involved in very complex conflicts that now involve multiple, multiple actors.

I think, in general, what I've always tried to, to show through my reporting is that, you know, Africans are very much in charge. And that we need to really center African agency when we are trying to, to parse through all of these kind of very complex issues. Especially now, as there are more and more outside actors outside powers who, who are intervening in, in these conflicts.

And so, the rise of Russia in particular has drawn certainly more U.S. interest to the Sahel than, than in the past, but the military regimes are still very much in charge of what's going on and are, have a very large say in how they interact with and balance these outside forces.

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, Rachel, now I want to kind of get introduced to the rest of the cast. As John said, it is a region where Africans have agency. I mean, they, they are in charge.

And so there are, we have the coup leader, we have the defiant broadcaster, we have the militia commander, in addition to the Islamist militant who you introduced us to at the beginning. But then of course there are, there are two other foreigners, you could say, the Russian mercenary, the American soldier.

So, could you walk us through the rest of the cast? And then I'm also curious who, who's missing, or if there's anyone sort of left on the cutting room floor that, you know, you did want to profile, but maybe it didn't quite fit in this series?

Rachel Chason: Oh my gosh, well, I guess to start with the last question first, I think that the thing is, there are like probably a hundred different versions of these profiles that you could have done. And there's so many things happening in this region that like, absolutely, we talked about others. But what we were trying to sort of show with this series was like the various forces that are really defining the struggle for this region.

And so I think that that helped us narrow the people that we ended up going with, as we were thinking about like the big themes that were sort of relevant for our audience. But I think that there's, yeah, you could, I mean, you could spend a lifetime reporting on this region and sort of covering all of the different angles that that might exist when you're thinking about that broader, broader struggle.

But I can start—which profile would you like to start? And I can, I can introduce the cast of characters.

Tyler McBrien: Let's keep going as I think how you have it in the piece. So maybe the militia commander next.

Rachel Chason: Yeah. So our idea with the militia commander, what we knew we wanted to sort of capture was that across this region—and what we really focused on was the central Sahel, so it was. Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger—and across the central Sahel, what you're seeing as violence from Islamist extremists rises, is that a lot of the Sahelian militaries are pretty overwhelmed. And they have called up these militias, which have existed in various forms for many, many years, but which are sort of increasingly prominent in this moment.

In Burkina Faso, there have been 50,000 men who, who weren't soldiers before, who don't have military experience who were called up, given arms, and sent to the front lines, which are often just their communities. Like their communities have become the front lines to fight against, against the extremists. And so I focused on one, was a farmer turned fighter named Tidjie.

Tyler McBrien: I mean, all of these characters are, are connected in some way, but I wonder if we can go to the coup leader next. This is a person who many listeners would have heard of, and I also want to get at the interconnectedness of the region politically.

So maybe a year ago, a couple years ago, it was not unusual to talk about a coup contagion sweeping across the region. Whether or not that was accurate or not, it was something you often heard in Western conversations about the Sahel. So introduce us to the coup leader, and what has he been up to since taking power?

Rachel Chason: Yeah. So actually on one of my, like, I think it was my first assignment in this job, I was coming home from a reporting trip in Guinea and it was announced that there'd been a second coup in Burkina Faso and that this young captain named Ibrahim Traoré had taken power. So I covered that on the way home from Guinea. didn't really realize how much of a factor he would become in my reporting.

So Ibrahim is this young man. He was 25 when I met him and he grew up in this Nigerian village near the border with Mali. And he ultimately joined the Al Qaeda affiliate because he felt like he didn't have other options. He said that bandits had looted the village where he lived and that he decided to go to Mali's gold mines to seek work. And then when he got there, he realized that the way to make money in those gold mines was to join JNIM because they were the ones controlling the portion where he was working and he knew those guys.

And then what was so interesting about him was that he really stayed in the group because of this sort of sense of camaraderie at first, and he said, like race motorcycles in the desert with the other guys. And then it became more about religion. And he started reading, reading the Quran more and started believing in the version of Sharia law that they, that they promoted. But at first it was about money and it was about camaraderie.

But he, I mean, he's like immensely, immensely influential. He has people who are like his diehard fans. He has this very Pan-African vision. He sort of emulates Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso's ex-president, who's immensely popular.

But at the same time, he also has this really repressive side that has gotten increasingly repressive the longer he's stayed in power. And he has, you know, sent his critics to the front lines to fight. He feels very strongly that Burkina Faso is like the fight of its life against the jihadists. And so that was why he focused so much on raising that militia.

And he's been successful at raising the militia, at boosting their numbers, at getting them more supplies. And so, you know, his legacy is very much still being written but that will be an important part of it. So he, he was a fascinating one to profile. And he is the only one of the six where in the end we tried so hard to get an interview and he, is incredibly closed to, to Western media specifically, so we got to people close to him, but not him directly.

Tyler McBrien: And just to stay with him for one more beat other than this amazing military beret and fashion that clearly emulates Thomas Sankara, in what other ways is he looking back at that earlier independence leader?

Rachel Chason: Yeah, so he, I mean, his big thing is, is sovereignty and making sure that Burkina Faso is sort of like untethered from its colonial, neocolonial past that it, it asserts itself on the world stage and sort of makes partnerships that he feels are win-win.

So that, that manifests itself in terms of its dealings with the West, but it also, it comes through in things like food sovereignty. Like he wants more food to be made in Burkina Faso rather than imported. So strangely, where this whole series ended was actually at a tomato processing plant because he was opening the processing plant, because a lot of tomatoes are grown in Burkina, but had historically been processed elsewhere.

But anyway, that's, that's sort of one tiny example of the type of projects that he's actually quite big on, separate from the military world.

Tyler McBrien: Right. No, I mean the self-sufficiency and weaning the nation off of foreign aid and that kind of thing—that, that makes sense that he looks to Sankara for, for inspiration there.

I want to turn to the, the Russian mercenary and I want to bring John back into the conversation. First, John, can you just give us the, the state of Russian mercenaries in the Sahel after Prigozhin's death? With the Wagner Group, it's, it's been a group that is, I think it's safe to say, gone through changes over the past couple of years.

How do you see the current state of the Wagner Group under another name, perhaps right now in the Sahel and, and just the, the, the status of, of the Russian influence in the cell?

John Lechner: You know, I think after Prigozhin’s death, the Wagner's interventions in Africa more generally were, were very different and dependent on the, the local context and the local environment and also what services were in demand.

In a place like the Central African Republic, where the Russian state's footprint was very light, Prigozhin was able to kind of expand into all sorts of opportunities as he saw fit. Wagner ran a counterinsurgency; they were involved in mining, building breweries, vodka distilleries—anything that Prigozhin's associates saw as an opportunity.

Mali turned out to be a very different place and, and one where I think they kind of initially thought they could bring their experience from the Central African Republic to bear. But the, the intervention in Mali kind of, as I lay out in the book was also kind of initially started by Russian military officers who, who were stationed in Mali at that time. And then they brought in Prigozhin and Wagner Group sort of as the men to be on the ground for the counterinsurgency.

This kind of slowly kind of hobbled along. Wagner never had enough guys at all to prosecute an effective counterinsurgency. But after Prigozhin's death, the Russian state was looking for different structures to replace Prigozhin. In the Central African Republic, which wasn't particularly important to the Kremlin and where the war was kind of very low grade, the decision was made to, you know, if it's not broke, don't fix it.

But in Mali, which, you know, was more important, which already had a Ministry of Defense presence—there was sort of a half handover from Wagner Group to Africa Corps that resulted in kind of a lot of disorganization, no, no real strategy.

But Prigozhin’s death, to Rachel's point, actually opened up opportunities for Russian intervention in other Sahelian states where, for example, in Burkina Faso you have that Sankara legacy and where there was a lot of distrust of Prigozhin and particularly the economic penetration that they saw in the Central African Republic.

So this allowed for kind of a light Russian presence to arrive that is very focused just on military instruction and, and kind of soft power initiatives. But, you know, as Rachel would tell you, Traoré is not interested in, in putting Russian mercenaries out front fighting the jihadists like they do in Mali.

In Niger as well, sort of Russia was pulled into Niger again with military instruction and sort of capacity building. And so—but, but still Mali is presenting the Russian Ministry of Defense with a big problem right now. They don't know whether to pull their Wagner out of direct military confrontation with the jihadists and with Tuareg separatists and just focus on training. Or to try and invest further in a conflict that has so many compounding crises that the Russian state doesn't have the capacity or desire to necessarily address.

Tyler McBrien: Rachel, let's zoom in to your Russian mercenary who you profiled. Who is he? Which Sahelian state is he operating in? And finally, how the heck did you get him to talk to you?

Rachel Chason: I'm gonna let John lead us through the mercenary discussion because this was, John has been a fabulous source since I started this, so immediately when we set out to look for a Russian mercenary, I think I asked John. Like, John, what was it, I think a year and a half ago?

Tyler McBrien: Yeah, take us back.

Rachel Chason: Yeah, it was sort of like, oh, I'm not sure maybe something could work out. And then by the time it came to be, he had exactly our guy, so.

Tyler McBrien: Well, John, I don't want you to have to divulge your trade secrets, but I am curious. Yeah, when Rachel came to you with this question of find me a Russian mercenary, what happened from there?

John Lechner: Well, I mean, I, I have spent a lot of time in the Central African Republic and had met with and had been meeting with Wagner guys and, and especially for this book that I have coming out called “Death Is Our Business.” And so I had made a lot of contacts and interviewed just, I think for the book, about 40 guys within Wagner.

And so, Nazar, who, who, who has profiled for Washington Post. He, he spoke to me for, for my book actually, and not just about Mali, but about his experience fighting in in Syria and Sudan and Libya. And, and so when Rachel, who's a good friend of mine, came to me saying, we're trying to get. You know, a profile of a Wagner fighter in Mali, I, I thought I could be of service.

Rachel Chason: And what was so cool about that profile is like, he really offered, I mean, just kind of fascinating insights into how it all works. Like, I think that Wagner has such a reputation as being such—I don't know, it's such a terrifying thing and sort of so impenetrable. And in Mali, they're working in regions that are really hard to access for journalists, so there's just so much we don't know. And what was really interesting, I thought, about those interviews with Nazar, was that he, he sort of walked us through what it was like for him, what he, what he knew, what he didn't know.

And then what's been interesting is that even in the last, last month I was on the border with Mali reporting on the, the sort of flip side, like the refugees coming over, a lot of whom say they're fleeing Mali's army and Wagner. And a lot of what they said, obviously, was different. You know, Nazar wasn't telling us about abuses that he was committing, and he said that they didn't do that. The refugees, of course, said they did.

But there were some really striking similarities. And like, one big overlap was that he was saying that every time Wagner and FAMa would get to a village, The men had often left, and it would just be the women that were coming back, and they had this feeling like they were liberating the village. But they also had this feeling like maybe the extremists were just going to come right back, and maybe they weren't making such a difference after all, and that was very much something that came up in these interviews along the border with Mali as well.

Tyler McBrien: I mean, even just the, the motivation that is underlying that Western perceptions of the Wagner Group are probably that they're purely materially motivated or they're, you know, there's their swords for hire, so they're motivated by money.

You are, of course, an objective journalist, you probably went into these interviews with very few priors, but I'm curious what other paradigm shifts you may have had, over the course of speaking to especially Nazar from the Wagner Group, if your perceptions of the group or, or of the Russian mercenaries changed much in, in reporting.

John Lechner: Yeah. I mean, I've been meeting with these guys for a while for, for the story. And, and I think, you know, I think and perhaps, you know, Rachel, maybe this was what was, ind of surprising, or maybe what I kind of end up having to explain to people is, you know, they're, they’re—people are very complex.

And I think we often look for these sort of binaries about what motivates people to do what and what they think about it. I mean, there are very few what I guess you could call like pure mercenaries in this world, right? People who are just guns for hire and they will fight for whichever side pays them the most money. And our capacity to rationalize our actions is pretty much limitless as humans.

And so, you know, for a guy like Nazar and for a lot of people like him, who, you know, for the most, for the most part, these guys are coming out of the Russian military. They, you know, are, are kind of bored with daily life as a mall cop back home, have a, you know, inclination towards, you know, military training, military kind of affairs, MMA, you know, these genuine, you know, kind of genuinely like sort of these types of pursuits, and, you know, through their friends and the networks they fall into a PMC or, or Wagner Group.

The money is also very good, but I don't think they—they also very much view what they're doing as kind of furthering the, the Russian state and, and sort of as a, as a patriotic initiative as well. And, and, and that's not too different from, I think a lot of Westerners who, who work for Western PMCs as well, and come out of that kind of military environment.

They very much view what they do in Mali, what they do in the Central African Republic as bringing stability. You know, like we're in this very kind of geopolitically polarized world where each side accuses the other of sowing chaos across the world. And for the guys in Wagner, they tend to confuse in the same way that we often do, a kind of results and intentions, right?

And so we tend to judge our interventions abroad by our intentions, and the Russians by the results of their interventions and it's vice versa. And so for the guys in Wagner they very much feel that the West has destabilized, made these countries deliberately dependent on aid. And they are there to essentially stabilize and fix the issue.

Obviously, you know that that is one worldview. And what Rachel does such a great job of is you juxtapose those views with the views of others who are on the other end of those interventions as well.

Rachel Chason: I mean, I think the two things that I was most struck by in those interviews with Nazar was what John was getting at, this idea that like, it really was in some ways about an adventure for him, he said that he'd been training people in the Russian equivalents of the Boy Scouts and wanted to see if he had what it took. And that was I don't know, it was sort of a fascinating framing of this wild adventure that he was going to go on, if you could call it an adventure.

And all of these places that he ended up going—and he grew up in like rural Russia and had never left the country, and then he went, I think it was CAR, Libya, Sudan, Mali, and one more that I'm missing. But anyway, he just traveled so widely and then I think that what was also striking was just how little he knew about each of those places, and even his mission in those places. Like he said that when they got to the base in Bamako, there was no one that sat him down and was like okay, here's exactly what we're doing. Instead, it was sort of word of mouth.

And when you think about how complicated the crisis in Mali is, the fact that these guys were getting their mission just sort of you know, word of mouth, I think probably gets at one of the many reasons why they haven't been particularly effective.

Tyler McBrien: It's really interesting. And not to get too pop-sociologist, what you said about how he wanted to test himself and he's this sort of outdoorsman or maybe a survivalist type kind of rings similar to a certain strains of American culture. You could almost imagine if this was an American group, there might be a TV show of you know, the Wagner Group training or, or something like that, of, you know, those types of survivalist shows.

But before we get to the, the defiant broadcaster and the American soldier, I want to just stay with this question of outsiders bringing either stability or chaos, because one of the countries or nationalities that was largely missing from the series of profiles are the French. A few years ago, you may have expected to see, perhaps in this profile series, a portrait of a French soldier or, or a UN peacekeeping soldier.

So Rachel, in the course of your reporting, I'm curious, where are the French? What do people think of the French, and whether or not you considered incorporating them in the story somehow.

Rachel Chason: We did. We did. So that was actually one of our initial thoughts was like, that it was going to be an American soldier or a French soldier. And I think I could still argue that, like, it pretty well either way, in terms of, like, would've been great to have both, but we didn't want to have too many Western forces in there.

But I think the influence of the French and especially the French security apparatus in this region over the last couple of decades can't be overstated. I do think that by the time we started this project, they were virtually gone from the central Sahel. They maybe were entirely gone. And I think that they're is and was just so much anger still toward the French and that manifests itself in all sorts of ways.

But one tiny example that I do think was pretty telling was after the coup in Niger, there weren't tons of Westerners left. And I would be walking around the streets and people would see anyone I think who was white and assume they were French and sort of like call out at you, being like, are you French? Are you French? And once you say no, at that time, once I would say, no, I'm American they would say, okay, fine.

And then like, I would have these conversations where people would say like, good, if you were French, we'd eat the French, just kidding. Not really, but then like, not really. And so there was just like so much sort of, latent hostility toward, yeah, toward France.

And a lot of it, it changes all the time, but for big periods of time people with French nationalities have basically not been able to get into some of these countries or had a really hard time getting in at all.

Tyler McBrien: John, your recent book and a lot of your reporting obviously focuses on, on Russian mercenaries, but same question. How have you seen French influence and presence wax and wane over the past couple of years?

John Lechner: Yeah, I mean, it does wax and wane, but I mean, I would say that we ignore French colonialism, the history of French colonialism and neocolonialism kind of to our peril. And there's been sort of this dangerous trend of kind of viewing the most recent sort of anti-French sentiment or, or pro sovereignty sentiments as the product of, say, Russian disinformation or something along those lines.

I mean, France has played, historically, a very negative role on the continent. It's very difficult to see, to point to, you know, areas where the French have really helped the continent develop. I mean, if we just look in, you know, where I spend the most time, the Central African Republic, I think the first high school was built in 1955.

The French would just raid villages for, for porters and, and for, for forced labor up through the, to the 40s and 50s. Up to 60,000 people were taken from CAR and brought down to build and die in a, in the jungle building a, a railroad that was supposed to, that was kind of pitched as a humanitarian intervention.

And so, you know, this is, this is in historical terms, this is recent memory, right? I mean, my father, if I lived in the Central African Republic would have been born without access to school, healthcare, or, or, what have you. My grandfather would have been one of the guys who, who was taken from the village and, and brought to die building a railroad in the jungle. And so that's your baseline, right?

And obviously you know, the French have been a presence, have continued to be a presence and certainly one which the African elite have, have leveraged in these countries to kind of further their own power, which breeds further resentment. The Russians have sort of if anything, they have chanced upon this and recognized the use of the narrative, but they, they aren't the, they aren't the source of it.

And, and we're in another wave right now where the backing of France or, or ties to the French has, has become a useful wedge issue for political and security entrepreneurs to use against their opponents, which is why I think you've seen these recent military juntas who are very young, very much looking for legitimacy, leveraging kind of anti-French sentiment to, to further legitimize their own regimes right now.

Tyler McBrien: And this actually gives us a perfect segue to talk about the next profile I want to get to and I want to leave the American soldier for last, and you'll see why. But in speaking of the defiant broadcaster, Rachel, you write that, as four years of coups have transformed the Sahel, military juntas have repeatedly targeted journalists and advocates for democracy.

When the coup makers in Mali suspended that country's biggest French run broadcasters in 2022, many here celebrated welcoming the decision as a blow against their former colonial power, except for a few people, one of whom you profile. So can you introduce us to Mohamed and maybe also just a bit about the current state of free press or free speech across the Sahel?

Rachel Chason: Yeah, totally. So I think Mohamed's story really gets at how complicated all of this is. John did such a good job, I think of summarizing like the sort of historic roots of this anti-French sentiment. And I think what we've seen more recently is the way it's really been instrumentalized by the governments in a way that's not always accurate to the history. Like the history is sort of bad enough, but the governments have, have sometimes taken it and just really run with it.

So what Mohamed knew when those French broadcasters were initially suspended was basically that this wasn't an attack, really, but it wasn't an attack on bad press. It wasn't an attack on bad media or distorted media. It was an attack on like free media. And so he knew that they were going to come for the French first because that was popular.

But he knew that the bigger issue was that those French stations at the time were reporting a narrative that the government didn't like. And it was a narrative that was the truth. It was about the security situation on the ground, and I think, you know, maybe the governments would pick out examples where French media has been inaccurate. But I think it's hard to say categorically, but in these examples, those stations were doing nothing wrong, what they were reporting was accurate and they were shut down.

And Mohamed was right because afterwards that was sort of the beginning of the wave. and what happened next was just this immense wave of repression of free media in Mali, then in Burkina Faso, in Niger, across the whole Sahel. I have talked to so many intellectuals, journalists, opposition politicians. Anyone who dares challenge these regimes is incredibly scared. And they have so much reason to be, because the people who have done so publicly have been arrested, disappeared. In Burkina, they've been sent to the front lines, and so there's just very, very little room for dissent.

And, yeah, Mohamed's story really gets at that, because he, he, he loves journalism. Like, he loves his job, and all he wants to do is to do a good job at it, and he runs, or he ran a segment called Edito, which is basically like the editorial. And so he would opine with guests, sometimes by himself, on different things that were happening. That was shut down.

He said, okay, I'm going to come back and I'm going to do straight news—no more editorials, those are too complicated. And now that's been shut down again. And now he says that he's really, he's worried about the future. He's not sure what he's going to do. He loves his country, but he thinks it might be time to leave because he doesn't think he can do the kind of journalism he wants there.

Tyler McBrien: How did you think about your role in, in profiling him and drawing more attention to him? In looking at the other profiles, he does seem to be in the most vulnerable position. The others you profiled have at least some monopoly on violence. Maybe they're, they're in military roles, but he's a he's essentially a dissident or an activist.

So how did you think through the ethics and the, the, your responsibility in profiling him in particular?

Rachel Chason: Yeah. I mean, I, I could do that for each of the profiles, honestly. But I think that for, for that profile slot specifically, we just had so many conversations with him and with others who decided not to go forward with it, on the front end about what it would mean about the number of days we wanted to spend, about the kind of reach we hoped the story would have, about the fact that it, for that one, couldn't be anonymous. We wanted to have someone's face. We wanted to just sort of show the fullness of their story.

And there were people that I talked to in various countries in the Sahel. who said, I love the idea. I think it's so important and I'm too scared. There was someone who told me I have a family and I'm sorry I have to think about my kids, and I said, of course, like that is, that is so, so acceptable.

And what Mohamed told me, what I think he's, he's always been really brave about is like, this is, this is my career. This is what I, I refuse to back down on. And he knows that that might come with risks. Like when I was talking to him. almost a year ago now, he was already thinking about limiting his movements because he was worried that he was going to get arrested or stopped by Junta supporters. He had already told his wife here's what to do if I get arrested.

And what he told me is that he wants his story out. And that he's, since he's already out on this limb, since he's already in the public eye, the more people who sort of know the story and understand what's happening, the better. But I asked him about that, you know, repeatedly when I was in Bamako, because it was definitely something I worried about thought about so on.

Tyler McBrien: I want to turn lastly now to the American soldier. As you've mentioned, you've been working on these profiles and you both have reported from the region for years. Rachel, these profiles at least have been at least a year, I think maybe two years in the making.

So I want to ask why you included the American soldier. You mentioned that you were going back and forth between perhaps a French soldier and an American soldier and whether or not Trump's election gave you pause. Because I think the past few weeks have been an indication that there may be even less U.S. engagement on the continent in general than the Biden administration, which made promises, but in the end, didn't, didn't really, in my view, deliver on those promises of engaging African countries.

So not to throw too much at you, but Rachel, I'm curious why you included the American soldier and whether the, the Trump election and inauguration complicated that decision.

Rachel Chason: Okay. So to take it in two parts, I think that overall thought on including Major Li—who's great and like very, very generous with her time with us, and we went all the way to South Carolina to meet her.

But the idea with that profile was basically what we've seen is almost a complete withdrawal from the Sahel of France and of the U.S., and that felt really, really important to capture regardless of what happens in the future. Because I think that this whole series, it's about, you know, it's forward looking, I hope, but I also think it's about capturing this moment in time and sort of where the Sahel is and the forces that have shaped it over the past decade. And one of those forces is the withdrawal of the U.S. So that was the thinking there.

On whether Trump impacted the decision to sort of keep the story in, I would refer back to what John said at the beginning about the sort of importance of the agency of these countries. And I think why it was so interesting to me to include that profile into, and why it's sort of fascinating regardless of what, what's happening in Washington right now, is because of this idea that like, the government in Niger was the one in the end that said, you're done here.

We appreciate your service over the past years. You know, they, the government there told me they appreciated that; they knew that the U.S. had lost soldiers serving in Niger. But that ultimately, like, they did not feel they were being served by the United States anymore, and they felt like the U.S. was on its, on Nigerian soil without sort of being able to say clearly to the government why it was there.

And I think that getting into that debate and getting into sort of those conversations is instructive for the future when the U.S. is thinking about any sorts of engagements in foreign countries or in the Sahel or how it deals with Sahelian leaders in the future. So I think that could still be relevant under Trump. I don't, I don't know.

Tyler McBrien: I want to start to end here with, with more forward-looking questions. John and Rachel, both of you cover heavy topics, Rachel in particular, your series has a couple of names: “A Crossroads of Conflict,” “Africa's Belt of Turmoil.” I know journalists don't always choose their headlines, so I won't put you on the spot of, you know, why those, those terms, but these are not so, optimistic descriptors.

So John, I want to turn to you first of your outlook on the region and prospects for more stability, not just in your own estimation, having reported there, but in the words of and through the eyes of the people who live in the Sahel with whom you've spoken to.

John Lechner: Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I mean, I do think that there are opportunities in the Sahel and that we shouldn't just be kind of doomsayers.

I mean, this, you know, I think people sometimes are very kind of negative and call young people like this demographic bulge or something and that it's going to be a problem. But, I mean, as Rachel will tell you, you, when, when you travel through these places, you're constantly meeting energetic entrepreneurial people who are looking to, you know, raise their country and, and, and further develop it.

I, I think that no interventions—whether it was the French, whether it was the Americans and now the Russians—have, have had success in, in helping combat the issues that the Sahel is currently facing. If anything, the West has, you know, further securitized those issues that are now being even further securitized by, by the Russians who are there.

And so my hope actually is that these efforts towards self-sufficiency can actually, can actually produce some positive results. I mean, it's, it's, it's ultimately folks in the Sahel who will solve these issues between each other. I don't think that the, the American, American soldiers or French soldiers or Russian Wagner or, or any Russian soldiers have the answers.

And, and so I, I think in the longterm, I, I do hope that over time there will be kind of local mediation, local ways of, of, of bringing jihadists back into the fold. You know, that might require some decisions being made that are not too, you know, particularly palatable to, to the West, but it might have to be that way for it to work in the local context.

Tyler McBrien: And Rachel, same question to you. Your view of the outlook of the Sahel, as well as people you've spoken to, and especially bringing in this, this question of U.S. disengagement. Of course, as John said so well, this is a region of immense local agency and ultimately the Sahel's future belongs to the Sahel.

But the U.S. has disengaged not only militarily, but now we're seeing of course humanitarian wise with USAID funding freezes and things like that. So also through that lens, how you see the next year, few years playing out in the region.

Rachel Chason: Yeah, totally. So I think it's, I’ll tackle it in a couple of parts.

I think one thing I would just say right off the bat is like this, this project, its goal is to focus on, you know, the crossroads of conflict, like the conflicts that are being waged in this region. That is not to say that this region is only about conflict.

I’ve been to the central Sahel, I think it's more than a dozen times over 18 months and nearly a dozen over last 2024. And we wrote about like artificial intelligence in Mali and concerts in Burkina Faso. And I think on my very first trip in Burkina, I was driving around with somebody who works for the government.

And he was like, you need to tell people that it's not just war here in Burkina, that like people are living. And he was sort of taking me from like concert to dance hall to concert. And it is so true. Like it's not, that that part is not a cliche, it is very much like an amazingly vibrant place with an amazingly, you know, resilient people. So I think that there's, there's immense potential.

And I think that, that why it's so important to sort of keep reporting on this region and keep really looking at it with an incredibly nuanced view is that it can't be understated how big of a moment of change, how much of a region on the brink it sort of is. Because when these junta leaders came in, they had massive support from the populations. You know, like the populations felt like they had been failed by the West failed by democracy. They wanted to see these military leaders change stuff.

And I think that they're still popular. But I think that when you've spent a lot of time there, you start to see that their popularity is waning. People are getting nervous. People are seeing that there haven't been results and they're sort of wondering what, what is next.

And so like these big questions of sort of how, how you bring security in a region that's grown increasingly insecure every year over the past decade, like what it takes to do that and how it gets done—that's really important to interrogate.

And I don't think you know, I'm not sure that militias are the answer. I'm not sure that Russian mercenaries or French or American soldiers are either. But I think that there needs to be a lot more, I don't know, like discussion of it, reporting on it.

I think that one thing that's frankly scary is how repressive all these regimes are getting and how little reporting there is on it. So even in terms of like understanding from a policy perspective, what needs to be done, it gets hard when massive amounts of foreign media have been kicked out, massive amounts of local media are too scared to do their jobs. So I think in that way, no matter how you slice it, it's hard to be too, too optimistic, unless these countries do start opening back up a little bit more to dissent, to open, open information sharing, stuff like that.

And then the second half of your question was about USAID. I think that basically what we're, what we're seeing there is going to take a bit more time to to be perfectly clear. But what I've heard from everyone in the region is, is like, look, the West, the U.S. was struggling before for influence. All of the security cooperation had been cut because it had to be legally. And so in this region, particularly, the development aid was immensely important in terms of A) you know, supporting people and their lives, but B) the U.S. soft power.

And I don't know—I haven't been to the region since since Trump came into office—I don't know exactly what the feeling on the ground is, but I don't imagine that's gonna make the U.S.A. a lot more popular.

Tyler McBrien: I'm gonna open it up to either of you if there's anything you wish I had asked or anything you want to add before we close.

John Lechner: The only other thing I would say again is, you know, we were talking about the these military regimes and their popularity and, you know, in many respects, the waning popularity, because, you know, at the, at the end of the day, these governments are, are judged based on on their results and the population judges them based on the results and not necessarily the narratives that they're able to employ.

And as we're talking about U.S. disengagement, you know, I think we have to remember as well that those larger narratives that have always existed, whether it was during the Cold War, the, the effort to contain communism, during the War on Terror, the, the effort to contain or, or fight jihadi groups. And now, as we kind of enter this world of great power competition between the U.S, China and Russia, that these local governments and local regimes have always been experts at balancing these outside forces and their own interests, leveraging these narratives to attract further kind of funding and resources that enhance their own domestic political power.

And, and so as these regimes become more unpopular, continued U.S. engagement, continued French engagement, and continued Russian engagement through kind of these larger narratives of great power competition are really to their advantage and the disadvantage of the populations living under their rule.

Tyler McBrien: Well, we'll have to leave it there. Rachel Chason's reporting on her series, “The Crossroads of Conflict,” is out now in the Washington Post. And John Lechner's book “Death is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare” is out on Mar. 4. Thank you both so much for your reporting and for joining me today to talk about it.

John Lechner: Thank you.

Rachel Chason: Thank you so much.

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