The Counterterrorism-as-Influence Competition in Africa

Editor’s Note: Counterterrorism cooperation is about more than fighting terrorism; it is also a way for the United States to build relationships with nontraditional allies. Jason Warner of the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office argues, however, that in Africa it is Russia, not the United States, that has emerged as the counterterrorism partner of choice for many countries. He counsels strategic patience, arguing that the United States will have better opportunities in the future to reengage with countries currently choosing Russia as their ally.

Daniel Byman

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Africa is now the epicenter of global jihadist terrorism due to overwhelming violence from al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants on the continent. The United States uses counterterrorism assistance both to reduce this threat and to build stronger relations with African countries. But it is not alone. China and Russia are also trying to gain allies and influence through support for African countries’ counterterrorism missions.

In this counterterrorism-as-influence landscape, Russia is currently winning—at the expense of the United States. And yet, while U.S. influence via counterterrorism has reached a nadir because of the lamentable but rational calculations of military juntas of the Sahel, in addition to the United States’s own past failures in counterterrorism, Washington need not compromise its morals nor necessarily despair about its long-term status on the continent, at least not yet. It still has various counterterrorism partners and can let Russia own the disasters that will come from its unsavory counterterrorism partnerships founded on meting out indiscriminate violence in support of repressive regimes.

Counterterrorism as Influence in Africa

There are currently three major powers attempting to gain influence in Africa through counterterrorism policy: China, Russia, and the United States. China is a relatively quiet, though present, player. Its efforts to gain influence via counterterrorism have been minimal, at least compared to the United States and Russia. While it has provided training to more than 2,000 African law enforcement personnel, deployed UN peacekeepers in terrorism-afflicted areas, and exported Smart City technology, African states generally see China as primarily an economic partner, and only rarely as a partner in security and counterterrorism. However, this may be changing. In 2022, Beijing released its Global Security Initiative, which contains significant counterterrorism language globally and promises various security measures for African states specifically. This, combined with China’s hosting recent trilateral counterterrorism drills with Tanzania and Mozambique, suggests that Beijing is set to make a serious play to offer counterterrorism assistance to African countries in the near future.

Russia, though, has already firmly established itself as a counterterrorism partner in Africa, using this support to curry favor with several countries. The Kremlin has mainly accomplished this through Africa Corps, the private military company formerly known as the Wagner Group, which now operates under close state supervision. The Africa Corps now has a near-monopoly on counterterrorism “assistance” to some of the most terrorism-afflicted states in the world—Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, in particular. Russia has also deployed Africa Corps members to Libya, the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Mozambique.

This Russian genre of counterterrorism assistance is deeply fraught. It has been marked by indiscriminate violence, mass killings, torture, and sexual violence. Scholars have pointed out that Africa Corps also has had deleterious impacts on Sahelian civil-military relations, depleted African states’ natural resources, exacerbated violence toward civilians, and led to a greater threat of violence to civilians than jihadist groups themselves, all while giving credence to jihadist rhetoric.

As Russia’s influence has increased, U.S. influence has declined. Washington has engaged in counterterrorism in the Sahel for more than two decades, beginning with the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which was developed after 9/11. Today, the United States places combating violent extremist groups as a top priority in the Sahel,  but over the past six months, U.S. forces have been ousted from Niger and are at risk of being expelled from Chad as well.

The current antipathy toward the United States from its erstwhile partners is the result of the past decade of broadly failed U.S. counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel. As Tricia Bacon and I have written, Africa did not experience much terrorist violence in the early 2000s, but since starting to receive U.S. and French counterterrorism assistance, terrorism deaths have skyrocketed nearly 2,000 percent in the past 15 years. From the perspective of many citizens and governments in the Sahel, the more the United States combated terrorist violence, the more it grew. The worsening problem has coincided with a shift in the global balance of power. African states are now situated in a multipolar world and enjoy unprecedented choice in potential counterterrorism patrons. Compared to Russia and China, some states see the United States’s approach to counterterrorism cooperation as overly burdensome and demanding.

Seeing the World Like a Desperate African Leader

The African leaders who have decided to reject or move away from counterterrorism cooperation with the United States are making the best decisions available to advance their specific goals. The more restrained (and still very imperfect) counterterrorism assistance that the United States can offer them is not what they want; what Russia and Africa Corps provide, is.

Consider the dilemma facing a desperate African leader. He came to power through a coup or other unconstitutional means, his country is wracked by terrorist insecurity, his military is impotent, and so he must look outward for assistance.

His goals and priorities are products of his situation. First, he needs rapid, turn-on-a-dime counterterrorism assistance. From experience, he knows that approval for U.S. counterterrorism assistance is a slow, bureaucratic process. It is also far from assured. As threats from groups affiliated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda were growing over the past three years, the United States and France ignored his concerns and offered overly constrained options, all while telling him not to look elsewhere. Russia has come in, signed quick deals, and deployed. Partner of preference? Russia.

Second, he needs overwhelming force in his counterterrorism assistance to put down spiraling jihadist brutality quickly. Russian deployment of violence has historically been unrestrained, even downright brutal, which has often led to at least temporary successes in regaining territory lost to insurgents, as in Kidal, Mali. Overwhelming insurgents, not protecting human rights, is the order of the day. Partner of preference? Russia.

Third, he needs a counterterrorism partner who understands his perilous domestic conditions. He needs a partner who agrees that national stability often requires a strong, sometimes draconian hand and that citizens’ human rights and political voices need not get in the way of that stability. More personally, he needs a partner who understands that he’s not just fighting a terrorist group; he’s fighting for his political, and potentially actual, life. Partner of preference? Russia.

Is It Really a Loss?

As the United States deals with the loss of counterterrorism-based influence with these countries, what should it do in response? Nothing. The United States would be wise to deploy strategic patience: Let these antagonistic Sahelian countries, plus Russia, own the current intractable terrorist quagmire. In the long term, it will not go well. Indeed, if the failure of the United States and France to quell jihadist violence over the past decade was due to an overly militarized approach to violence that ignored social and economic conditions, Russia has distilled the worst parts of that approach down into a highly concentrated strategy. If Russia, from past experience, laughed on the sidelines as the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, so too might the United States now reasonably be bemused at Moscow’s eagerness to attempt to solve the problems of terrorism in the Sahel. Nevertheless, in waiting for the implosion, the United States should ensure to the extent possible that assistance is provided to civilians caught in the conflict.

As it waits, the United States should remember that, although it is the current “loser” in the counterterrorism-as-influence battle in Africa, opportunities remain. First, this status is likely temporary. Second, it stems from just a few high-profile states desperate for quick results with few conditions; many other less desperate states are still eager to work with Washington. Third, counterterrorism is often one of the most fraught tools in alliance politics; it has proved inefficient at producing stable, long-term influence, and other tools are preferable. Fourth, and perhaps most important, Washington would be wise to think about the landscape of choice for counterterrorism partners from African leaders’ perspectives. These leaders have lofty goals and strategies to achieve them that, while not noble, are still rational. If what the United States can offer is not for them, Washington should not compromise to appease antagonistic juntas.