Sahel Juntas' Feud With ECOWAS Is Leaving Borders Open to Jihadists

Somewhere on the border between northern Benin and Burkina Faso, a farmer is deciding whether to plant this season or flee. He is not asking whether ECOWAS and the Confederation of Sahel States have a political agreement. He is asking whether the armed men who have already burned his neighbours' homes will come back. Nobody in a presidential palace in Accra, Ouagadougou, Bamako, Niamey or Abuja has given him a straight answer.

We need to say this plainly. The fragmentation of West Africa's regional security architecture is not an abstraction. It is a open door, and the people walking through it are jihadists.

When Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger withdrew from ECOWAS in January 2025, they took their soldiers, their intelligence and their border responsibilities out of a shared framework and into a political standoff with the rest of the region. The coups that brought their military juntas to power had already broken the democratic rules that ECOWAS was built to defend. Those governments then turned their backs on the one regional body that could have held them to account. Politics became the excuse, and the rest of us are paying the price.

Now comes the quiet part. According to ISS Today analysis by Djiby Sow published on 22 October 2026, states are not sitting idle. They are rebuilding security cooperation one bilateral agreement at a time. Senegal and Mali launched joint patrols in the Kayes region in 2025, building on a cooperation framework set up in 2021. Mali and Guinea's shared military commission met in April 2025 and June 2026 and produced a memorandum of understanding on intelligence sharing. In August 2026, Ghana and Burkina Faso signed a defence pact after relaunching their Permanent Joint Commission for Cooperation and signing seven cross-border agreements. Mali and Côte d'Ivoire agreed to delimit their shared border.

Good. Each of those steps deserves credit. But look closely at what the analysis itself concedes. The effectiveness of these agreements has yet to be demonstrated. Paper is not patrol. A memorandum of understanding does not stop a motorbike full of gunmen from crossing a river at night. The lesson is not that bilateral deals are useless. The lesson is that they are a patch on a wound that was self-inflicted.

Consider the two border zones that the analysis flags as priorities. The first is northern Benin, around the W-Arly-Pendjari complex where Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger meet. Violence there remains intense. Further east, in the Benin-Niger-Nigeria triangle, weak coordination is allowing armed groups to expand. Discussions between Nigeria and Benin remain incomplete without Niger at the table. Benin's President Romuald Wadagni made a rapprochement visit to Niamey in June, and that outreach has not yet reopened the border. Families on both sides of that line are trading in a market that the borders have strangled.

The second is the Sikasso-Korhogo-Bobo-Dioulasso (SKBo) area, where Mali, Côte d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso meet. Political distrust between Abidjan and Ouagadougou continues to block effective cooperation on the ground. Progress between Côte d'Ivoire and Mali has not yet produced joint security operations matching the scale of the risk.

Ask yourself what the jihadists are doing while our governments argue over protocol. They are not writing memoranda. They are recruiting, moving and exploiting every seam that a feud has opened. Every month that a border commission fails to meet is a month that a village near that border lives in fear.

This is the context we must not lose sight of. West Africa's security crisis did not begin with ECOWAS's internal disputes, and it will not end with them. But when leaders put their own political pride ahead of the lives of the people they govern, they hand the terrorists a gift. The juntas that seized power by force now claim sovereignty as their shield, yet the sovereignty they defend is hollow when their own citizens are displaced and their own borders are unguarded. Real sovereignty means the capacity to protect your people. It does not mean the capacity to isolate yourself while they die.

So what should happen? Revvmark's answer starts with three principles that any serious center-right, pro-democracy African should recognise. Institutions must outlive the men who build them. Rule of law must apply to soldiers as much as to civilians. And accountability must be measurable, not promised.

First, the bilateral momentum should be treated as a bridge, not a destination. The Ghana-Burkina Faso joint commission and the Senegal-Mali patrols are useful templates. Their agreements should carry published timelines, joint audit mechanisms and independent reporting on results. If a patrol route does not reduce attacks, the states involved must say so and change course.

Second, the African Union should use the tools it already has. The Nouakchott Process, launched in 2013 to strengthen security cooperation across the Sahelo-Saharan region, is largely dormant. Its mechanisms for intelligence sharing, cross-border coordination and regular exchanges between security officials are exactly what states are trying to rebuild. The AU Mission for Mali and the Sahel (MISAHEL), whose mandate will extend to Benin and Togo from 2027, can revive those tools in the Benin-Niger-Nigeria zone without being trapped inside the ECOWAS-AES political fight. Dust off the Nouakchott Process. Fund it. Staff it. Measure it.

Third, the Conseil de l'Entente should quietly convene the dialogue it already has on security and border management, focusing on the W-Arly-Pendjari complex and the SKBo area. Quiet diplomacy has a place. But quiet must not mean invisible. Civil society groups, border communities and business associations should be at the table, because traders and farmers understand the cost of a closed border better than any ministry does.

Finally, Ghana's proposed "coalition of the willing" deserves a fair test. Variable geometry can work, provided it remains open to every state in the region and leaves a clear path back to a unified framework. A club that excludes is not a solution. A club that invites is.

And to our own citizens, the demand is simple. Ask your leaders what the border looks like today compared with last year. Ask how many patrols were conducted, how many attacks were prevented and how many displaced families have returned home. Ask why a regional security pact is more urgent than a flag-waving summit. If the answers are vague, that vagueness is itself the story.

We are not asking for perfection. We are asking for basic competence in the one job every government in this region swore to do: keep its people alive. Senegal has shown that a democracy can transfer power peacefully and still govern seriously. Ghana has shown that regional diplomacy can protect neighbours. Botswana and Mauritius have shown that institutions, not strongmen, are what turn stability into prosperity. The question is whether the rest of West Africa will choose the same path or keep feeding its borders to the men with guns.

Our governments are rearranging the furniture while the house is on fire. Demand that they put out the fire. Demand that the border reopen on fair terms, that joint patrols report their results publicly, and that the democratic rules ECOWAS was built to protect be restored as the foundation for any future deal. Our children should not have to learn the names of jihadist commanders before they learn the names of their own neighbouring capitals.

Based on reporting by ISS