“Chasse Gardée” or “Faubourg”? Politico-Military Interventions of France in the Sahel Region

On September 11, 2006, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's number two announced that France is as much their enemies as the United States and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat has become France’s number one enemy in the field of terrorism. In the Sahel region, France increased its presence after 2008 with counter-terrorist operations against jihadist organizations. The operations of special commandos were followed and accompanied by specific intervention operations. The Libyan intervention and the disintegration of Libya (2011) had a drastic domino effect. States are disintegrating, jihadist organizations (based on historical precedents from the nineteenth century) are multiplying and strengthening, and in many cases, they also perform state functions and are increasingly popular among the local population. With the weakening and elimination of state factors, the local legal bases for the fight against jihadist terrorist organizations have disappeared. The chapter focuses on French interventions in the Sahel region, especially on the relations with Chad, on the operations in the “peripheral regions” (in Mauritania, Djibouti and Somalia) and finally on today’s French anti-jihadist operations and their geopolitical context, with particular attention to the Task Force Sabre, Serval and Barkhane operations.