Jihadists in the Sahel The 'ghost enemy' on the march

The scene is wearily familiar. It is dusk at a ramshackle military outpost, surrounded by miles of scrubby desert or on the outskirts of a large town.

- Jason Burke

Suddenly, there is the sound of automatic rifle fire, and hundreds of men arriving on motorbikes, then explosions, screams, fire, smoke. The defenders flee or are killed. The attackers shout "God is Greatest".

A few days later comes an edited video clip of the successful attack and a claim of responsibility from the Jama'at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin, or JNIM, an Islamist extremist group which now controls a swath of the Sahel, which stretches across Africa from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and marks the borderlands between the Sahara and less arid zones.

The series of bombings, hijackings, attacks on military bases and raids into towns in Mali and Burkina Faso carried out by JNIM in recent weeks have gone largely unnoticed in a world preoccupied by conflicts elsewhere, but marks one of the most significant military efforts by any Islamic militant organisation since the Taliban stormed back to power in Afghanistan in 2021.

But the recent success of the JNIM may be less a result of its own strength than the weakness of its opponents.