Washington makes military aid overtures to Sahel juntas

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Under President Donald Trump, the United States has reset relations with West Africa's military leaders on a mutual back-scratching basis, bartering help fighting jihadists for the Sahel region's mining riches, experts say.

While Joe Biden was in office, the US suspended most of the development and military aid it sent to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger in the wake of the rash of coups that brought juntas to power in the three restive countries between 2020 and 2023.

Trump's return to the White House has shifted the US away from that stance, as part of a wider pivot in Washington's African foreign policy and its attempts to counter Russia and China's influence on the continent.

"Trade, not aid... is now truly our policy for Africa," Troy Fitrell, the State Department's top official for African affairs, told an audience in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in May.

In recent weeks, several other senior American figures have paid visits to the capitals of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, which have all been struggling to root out jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State group for more than a decade.

In early July, Rudolph Atallah, a security and counterterrorism adviser to Trump, visited Mali to offer the "American solution" for the unrest.

"We have the necessary equipment, the intelligence and the forces to stand up to this menace. If Mali decides to work with us, we'll know what to do," Atallah was quoted as saying by the country's state newspaper.

Several days later, William B. Stevens, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for West Africa, likewise raised the possibility of private American investment in the anti-jihadist fight to an audience in the Malian capital Bamako, after stop-offs in Ouagadougou and Niamey.

"Washington offered to kill the leaders of jihadist groups, in exchange for access to lithium and gold for American businesses," said Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel programme at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, a think tank affiliated with Germany's conservative CDU party.

Trump has brought US access to key minerals front and centre of his negotiations with foreign countries, including in his attempts to end the Russia-Ukraine war and the long-running conflict between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Lithium, gold, uranium

Mali is among Africa's top producers of gold and lithium, a key component in the electric car batteries necessary for the transition to a low-carbon economy in the age of climate change.

Burkina Faso likewise possesses rich veins of gold, while Niger's uranium deposits make the desert nation among the world's top exporters of the radioactive metal.

Although all three Sahel juntas came to power while promising the people greater control and sovereignty over their country's mineral wealth, the officers in charge have welcomed Washington's change in tack.

"We have to look at investment, the potential of our countries," said Mali's Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop in July, hailing "today's convergence of viewpoints between the American administration and the government of Mali".

Laessing argued that "some officials in the State Department, worried about the end of USAID and the closure of embassies, pointed out Mali's rich resources to the Trump administration as a way to encourage it to remain engaged and keep the American embassy in Bamako open, at a point where Russia and China are expanding their influence in the region."

But for Liam Karr, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, any critical minerals deal would be "a much longer-term project".

"The terrorism threat is the biggest issue... stabilising the region is key to any investment hopes," Karr argued.

'American mercenaries'

Washington's courting of the Sahel states comes despite the juntas pivoting towards Russia, having cut ties with the West and former imperial ruler France in particular since the coups.

Moscow has sent mercenaries from the infamous Wagner paramilitary organisation, and its successor, the Africa Corps, to help the Sahel countries' armies push back the jihadists.

After Niger nationalised the local branch of French uranium giant Orano, the Kremlin, which commands the world's largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, said it wished to mine the radioactive metal in the West African country itself.

So far, Russia's foothold in the region has yet to provoke the White House's ire.

In his visit to Mali, security adviser Atallah said he saw no problem with Moscow's presence in the region, insisting that the country was "free to choose its partners".

"Since the French were kicked out... and Russia welcomed into the region, Trump sees no problem in accompanying and/or supporting Russian efforts in the region. The fact that the Russians eschew democratic values and human rights promotion also aligns with the Trump administration's transactional approach to relations between states," Bisa Williams, a former US ambassador to Niger, told AFP.

Williams, now a consultant and academic, said Trump could strike an agreement that "would guarantee majority or near-majority ownership and a high percentage of extracted minerals in exchange for support fighting terrorism".

That could involve the deployment of American mercenaries, along the lines of how Russia used Wagner, Williams said.

"That way, he wouldn't have to defend the policy before Congress or his MAGA base."