G5 Sahel headed for dissolution as last members Chad, Mauritania admit alliance is spent force

The two remaining members of West Africa’s G5 Sahel alliance — Chad and Mauritania — have indicated they were paving the way to dissolving the anti-jihadist grouping after the other three founding countries left, citing the failure “to achieve its objectives.”
In a joint statement released on Wednesday (6 December), Chad and Mauritania said they “take note and respect the sovereign decision” of Burkina Faso and Niger to leave the alliance, following in the footsteps of Mali, which quit in 2022. The G5 Sahel alliance, which included Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, was launched in 2014, with a France-backed counterinsurgency force added in 2017, but it has secured only modest results, even as insecurity remains a major issue across the Sahel.
They “will implement all necessary measures in accordance with the G5 founding convention, notably Article 20,” the statement added. The article says the alliance can be dissolved at the request of at least three member states. Military rulers in Burkina Faso and Niger announced recently that they had decided “to quit all instances of the G5 Sahel, including the joint force,” having accused Paris of exercising an outsize role after years of French deployments on their territories. “The organization is failing to achieve its objectives,” they said. Since the creation of the joint anti-terror force, violence has continued to spread, leaving thousands of civilians and fighters dead and displacing millions, in turn contributing to political instability in the region.