by Hichem Karoui
Introducing The Book
The Sahel is often described as a frontier, but it is more accurately understood as a hinge. Across this vast band between the Sahara and sub-Saharan Africa, struggles over resources, regimes, trade routes, and strategic influence increasingly shape the futures of North Africa, the Middle East, and Europe alike.
The Sahel as a Strategic Zone
A space between regions that has become a centre of power competition
For many years, the Sahel appeared in international commentary as a peripheral crisis belt, associated with drought, insurgency and institutional fragility. That view is no longer tenable. The region now stands at the intersection of several of the most consequential geopolitical dynamics of the twenty first century: the race for mineral resources, the reorganisation of security partnerships, the decline of established Western influence, and the rise of ambitious middle powers that seek leverage through instability as much as through formal alliance. To understand events in Sudan, Libya, Mali, Niger or Burkina Faso merely as local disorders is to miss the wider architecture in which they are embedded. The Sahel matters because it has become a decisive corridor through which power is projected, wealth is extracted and political orders are remade.
Geographically, the Sahel links the Mediterranean world to West and Central Africa. Historically, it has served as a space of exchange connecting caravan routes, trade centres, religious networks and imperial formations. In the present period, that connective character has acquired new significance. Whoever influences the Sahel gains access not only to territory but to circulation: circulation of gold, fuel, migrants, weapons, intelligence, goods and political influence. This is why actors far beyond Africa have become deeply invested in its internal crises. The Sahel is not important despite its apparent remoteness. It is important precisely because it connects zones that many states regard as strategically indispensable.
The region’s value is further magnified by the weakness or fragmentation of many of its states. Where institutions are brittle, external actors can secure influence at comparatively low cost. In such environments, a modest stream of military aid, political patronage, financial access or logistical support can transform domestic balances of power. That is why the Sahel has become fertile ground for what this book identifies as sub-imperial intervention: not full territorial domination, but a system of indirect control exercised through armed partners, commercial intermediaries, security dependencies and extraction networks. The contest is no longer simply about counterterrorism or state building. It is about who will define the rules of access to land, minerals, corridors and governments.
Why North Africa cannot insulate itself
A central claim of this book is that the instability of the Sahel cannot be contained south of the Sahara. The political systems of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia are directly affected by shifts in the Sahelian balance. Armed groups move across desert frontiers with ease. Smuggling economies cross borders more efficiently than customs administrations. Refugees and migrants displaced by war and economic destruction travel northwards along routes shaped by militia governance and illicit trade. Energy projects, transport links and diplomatic alignments are increasingly organised to include or exclude particular North African states. The idea that the Maghreb can treat Sahelian turmoil as an external matter has become strategically obsolete.
For Algeria in particular, the Sahel is not a distant neighbourhood but an immediate security environment. The country’s southern approaches open onto Mali and Niger, while developments in Libya and Sudan alter the broader strategic geometry around its eastern and south eastern flank. Tunisia feels these pressures differently, above all through migration routes and the knock on effects of Libyan disorder. Libya itself has become a principal bridge through which Gulf influence, African conflicts and Mediterranean migration connect. The borderlands of North Africa are therefore being transformed by processes that originate far beyond any single national capital. This book argues that to analyse North African stability without sustained attention to the Sahel is to study consequences while ignoring causes.
The Emergence of the United Arab Emirates as a Middle Power
From commercial hub to geopolitical actor
The United Arab Emirates has often been portrayed as a successful trading state whose influence rests on finance, logistics and diplomacy. There is truth in this description, but it is incomplete. Over the past decade, and with greater intensity under Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the Emirates have evolved into a more assertive geopolitical actor that combines commercial reach with military activism, intelligence partnerships and proxy relationships. This transformation did not abolish the country’s economic model; it weaponised elements of it. Ports, airlines, free zones, commodity markets and sovereign wealth did not remain separate from strategy. They became instruments through which Abu Dhabi could shape events well beyond the Gulf.
The Emirates exemplify the ambitions and contradictions of the modern middle power. They do not possess the demographic weight, industrial depth or formal alliance structures of a great power. Yet they have accumulated disproportionate influence by identifying weakly governed theatres in which concentrated intervention can yield strategic returns. In Yemen, Libya, the Horn of Africa and now the Sahel, Emirati policy has repeatedly favoured local armed actors, securitised commercial access and worked to reshape political orders in line with anti Islamist and authoritarian preferences. Such interventions are often justified in the language of stability. In practice, they frequently deepen conflict while creating dependencies that tie local elites to Abu Dhabi.
This pattern is especially visible in Africa. The Horn of Africa first offered a laboratory for Emirati projection through port deals, military facilities and relations with non state or semi autonomous actors. The move westwards into Sudan, Libya and the Sahel is not an accidental extension. It reflects a broader strategic imagination in which the Emirates seek to influence an arc running from the Red Sea to the Atlantic approaches of North and West Africa. This arc encompasses sea lanes, mineral zones, transit corridors and political systems vulnerable to external sponsorship. Seen from Abu Dhabi, the Sahel is not an isolated file. It is one segment of a continuous geopolitical theatre.
The strategic logic behind Emirati activism
Several structural drivers help explain why the Emirates have invested so heavily in fragile regions. One is economic. Dubai’s role as a global gold hub creates powerful incentives to secure access to African production, including production that is informal, under regulated or smuggled. Another is ideological. Emirati leadership has consistently preferred military strongmen and authoritarian managers over pluralistic politics that might empower Islamist currents or independent social movements. A third driver is geopolitical status. By operating in crisis zones abandoned, neglected or inconsistently managed by Western powers, Abu Dhabi presents itself as a reliable broker, security provider and sponsor of new political settlements. In other words, intervention is a way of manufacturing relevance.
The Abraham Accords intensified these dynamics by widening opportunities for strategic cooperation with Israel in intelligence, surveillance and security technologies. The significance of this lies not only in formal bilateral relations but in the extension of a shared repertoire: drone warfare, data gathering, border monitoring and influence operations. In African theatres where governance is weak and accountability thinner still, such capabilities can decisively alter the balance between rulers and populations. The result is a style of power projection that is not conventionally imperial, yet possesses a distinctly imperial effect. It reorganises local hierarchies, channels resources outward and links domestic coercion to transnational networks of finance and security.
Why This Book Speaks of a Sub-Imperial Power
Defining the concept
The term sub-imperial power can be controversial, and it requires careful definition. It does not imply that the Emirates replicate the classical empires of the nineteenth century, nor does it suggest formal colonial sovereignty. Rather, the concept describes a state that lacks the scale of a global hegemon but nonetheless projects power outward in ways that serve wider systems of domination while also pursuing its own regional sphere of influence. A sub-imperial actor operates through local intermediaries, asymmetrical partnerships, commercial penetration, military sponsorship and political engineering. It rarely seeks direct administration. It seeks durable leverage.
This framework is useful because it captures the distinctive mixture of dependence and autonomy in Emirati behaviour. Abu Dhabi is deeply integrated into Western financial systems, relies on security relationships with larger powers and benefits from the permissive structures of global capitalism. Yet it is not merely an executor of external instructions. It develops its own agendas, supports its own clients and often acts ahead of, alongside or in tension with the preferences of its formal partners. The category of middle power alone does not explain this assertive and extractive external posture. The category of empire overstates its capacity. Sub-imperialism names the space between the two.
What sub-imperialism looks like in the Sahel
In the Sahelian context, sub-imperial power takes a concrete institutional form. It appears in the purchase and laundering of illicitly mined gold through Dubai. It appears in the financing or arming of militias that guard mining sites, escort smuggling routes or pressure central governments. It appears in the cultivation of military juntas that require diplomatic recognition, liquidity and security cooperation after coups. It appears in the use of logistics hubs in Libya or Sudan that connect Gulf capital to African battlefields. It appears, too, in projects of strategic encirclement directed at rival states such as Algeria. None of these practices alone constitutes an imperial system. Together, they begin to resemble one.
The advantage of this concept is that it highlights connection. Gold extraction cannot be analysed separately from armed patronage. Military juntas cannot be understood apart from external sponsors seeking concessions and influence. Migration pressures are not just humanitarian outcomes; they are downstream effects of the destruction of livelihoods and governance. The Sahel, in this reading, is not a collection of disconnected crises but a field in which economic capture, coercive politics and regional strategy reinforce one another. This book therefore asks readers to see beyond event based reporting and towards the architecture that links mines, airstrips, militias, ministers, banks and borders.
Resources, Routes and Regimes
Gold as the hidden foundation
If oil defined an earlier era of Gulf influence, gold is central to the story told in this book. The Sahel’s artisanal and industrial gold sectors are not merely sources of revenue; they are mechanisms through which violence can finance itself and external actors can monetise disorder. In countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso and Sudan, gold is mined in zones where state authority is partial or absent. Armed factions tax miners, control transport, extort traders or seize production directly. Once the gold enters regional smuggling circuits, it can be exported, mixed, reclassified and refined through commercial systems that obscure origin. Dubai’s role in this chain has been documented repeatedly by investigative reports, expert panels and civil society research.
The strategic significance of this trade lies in its flexibility. Gold is portable, high value and relatively easy to conceal within informal economies. It can be used to evade sanctions, reward loyal commanders, buy weapons and move wealth across borders without leaving the traces associated with formal banking channels. For armed movements and their sponsors, this makes gold an ideal conflict commodity. For a commercial hub able to absorb and recirculate vast quantities with limited scrutiny, it is a source of profit and geopolitical leverage. The result is a self reinforcing circuit in which extraction funds coercion, coercion secures extraction, and international markets launder the outcome.
The politics of proxy warfare
The Sahel has become a favourable environment for proxy warfare because it combines weak institutions, abundant armed actors and strategic commodities. External powers can support local partners at relatively low direct risk while still shaping conflict outcomes. In this setting, assistance need not take the form of large troop deployments. It may consist of drones, ammunition, cash transfers, diplomatic cover, transport aircraft, intelligence sharing or access to markets for looted resources. Such support can be decisive even when it remains deniable. What matters is not public acknowledgement but the cumulative alteration of local power relations.
This book approaches proxy warfare not as a temporary aberration but as a governing technique. Armed clients are useful because they can secure mines, suppress rivals, pressure governments and control territory without imposing the political costs of direct occupation. Yet they are also dangerous. Proxies have their own agendas, rivalries and social roots. They generate civilian suffering on a vast scale. They fragment sovereignty and turn political transitions into armed marketplaces. In Sudan and Libya, and increasingly across the Sahel, the use of proxies has produced enduring systems of disorder rather than stable political settlements. That disorder is not incidental to external influence. It can be one of its enabling conditions.
Juntas, legitimacy and authoritarian clientelism
Coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are often analysed in terms of domestic military frustration, failed counterinsurgency and anti Western sentiment. Those factors matter, but they do not exhaust the story. Once military regimes seize power, they face urgent needs: recognition, finance, equipment, training and external partnerships that can compensate for diplomatic isolation. This creates openings for outside actors willing to support them with fewer political conditions than European states or multilateral organisations would normally demand. The Emirates have been well placed to exploit this space, presenting themselves as pragmatic partners focused on security and investment rather than constitutional norms.
The relationship that follows can be described as authoritarian clientelism. Military rulers gain money, diplomatic access and strategic backing. Abu Dhabi gains influence over policy, commercial opportunities and a foothold in a region from which older powers are retreating. This is not a neat alliance system; it is a web of transactions. Its durability depends less on institutional trust than on converging interests among elites whose legitimacy is precarious and whose survival often depends on coercive capacity. The political effect is to normalise regimes that have weak social mandates but strong external patrons. In this way, the architecture of instability becomes tied to the architecture of rule.
The North African Dimension
From Sahelian disorder to Maghrebi pressure
One of the book’s central propositions is that the effects of Emirati activism in the Sahel radiate northwards in identifiable ways. Conflict in Sudan drives displacement into Chad, Egypt and Libya, but it also feeds onward movement towards the central Mediterranean. Militia rule and smuggling in southern Libya shape the migration economy affecting both Tunisia and Europe. Armed turbulence in Mali and Niger alters Algeria’s security calculations and reshapes its southern frontier. Economic destruction in rural zones pushes populations into mobile survival strategies that become entangled with trafficking, deportation cycles and border militarisation. The Maghreb therefore experiences Sahelian crises not abstractly but through daily pressures on governance, public order and sovereignty.
This dynamic matters because policy discussions often detach migration from the political economy of war. People on the move are treated as if they emerged from generalized poverty or timeless instability. Such explanations are inadequate. Migration flows are patterned by specific conflicts, by who controls roads and towns, by who profits from smuggling and by which external powers sustain the conditions of insecurity. If resource extraction finances militias, and militias destroy local livelihoods, then migration is part of the same system rather than a separate humanitarian aftershock. To grasp the pressure on Tunisia, Libya and Algeria, one must therefore examine the strategic production of disorder farther south.
Encirclement, rivalry and the Algerian question
The North African dimension is not limited to migration. It also includes overt geopolitical rivalry, most notably around Algeria. Algiers has long regarded the Sahel as a vital sphere for security diplomacy and regional influence. A network of Emirati relationships with Libya, Sahelian juntas and Morocco therefore carries significance beyond bilateral ties. It can alter the regional balance around Algeria, bypass its preferred diplomatic formats and create alternative corridors for energy, trade and military cooperation. When projects and alliances are built in ways that marginalise Algeria, they do not simply diversify regional options. They participate in a strategic contest over who sets the terms of North African order.
This book does not assume a master plan explaining every development in the region. Geopolitics is messier than that. But patterns matter. When support for armed actors in Libya intersects with outreach to Sahelian juntas, when energy projects are financed along routes that deliberately circumvent Algeria, and when contacts emerge with hostile or secessionist currents, a larger design becomes difficult to dismiss. The issue is not whether every move is centrally coordinated with perfect discipline. It is whether taken together they produce a cumulative effect of pressure, isolation and strategic encirclement. The evidence examined in later chapters suggests that they do.
Evidence, Sources and Method
Building an evidence based account of opaque networks
Any serious study of covert influence, illicit trade and proxy warfare faces immediate methodological difficulties. The most important activities are often designed to be hidden. Weapons move through indirect routes. Commercial transactions pass through shell companies or informal brokers. Governments deny involvement, armed groups issue propaganda and local testimonies can be fragmentary or shaped by fear. For these reasons, this book does not rely on a single category of evidence. Its argument is assembled through triangulation: the comparison of different source types in order to establish patterns that are stronger than any one document in isolation.
The evidentiary base includes reports by United Nations Panels of Experts, investigations by organisations such as Amnesty International, analyses by research institutes including Chatham House and the International Crisis Group, customs and trade data, satellite imagery, specialist journalism and regionally grounded policy research. Where possible, these materials are read against one another rather than taken at face value. A satellite image of an airstrip, for example, may gain significance only when paired with reporting on cargo flights, embargo violations or militia activity nearby. Similarly, trade statistics become more revealing when compared with estimates of informal production and smuggling. Methodologically, the aim is not sensationalism but cumulative demonstration.
Limits, cautions and the need for analytical discipline
Because the subject matter is politically charged, caution is essential. Correlation is not always causation. Local actors are not mere puppets. States often pursue contradictory policies through different agencies or over different periods. The book therefore avoids conspiratorial explanations that reduce complex crises to a single foreign hand. Instead, it focuses on recurring mechanisms: access to resource chains, the sponsorship of coercive intermediaries, the search for compliant rulers, and the geopolitical use of instability. These mechanisms can be documented even when absolute proof of every transaction remains unavailable. In the study of contemporary conflict economies, analytical discipline means recognising uncertainty without surrendering to agnosticism.
A further methodological choice concerns scale. Much commentary on the Sahel remains either intensely local or excessively abstract. This book moves between levels. It examines mines, airstrips, border posts and militia networks, but also diplomatic alignments, financial centres and strategic doctrine. Such movement is necessary because the phenomena under review are themselves multi scalar. A sack of artisanal gold in northern Mali may be linked, through a chain of actors, to a refining and trading system in Dubai and then to broader patterns of regional influence. To stop at the local level would obscure the architecture. To remain only at the level of grand strategy would obscure the lived mechanisms of extraction and coercion.
What Follows in This Book
From doctrine to consequences
The chapters that follow trace the Emirati strategy across four interconnected dimensions. First, the book reconstructs the making of this strategy: the rise of Mohammed bin Zayed’s regional vision, the ideological hostility to Islamist politics, and the extension of Gulf power into African theatres. Second, it examines the material base of influence, above all the gold economy that ties extraction, laundering and armed financing into a single system. Third, it analyses the theatres of proxy warfare, especially Sudan and Libya, before turning to the juntas of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and the attempt to replace declining Western power with a new client security order. Finally, it explores how these dynamics reverberate across North Africa through encirclement strategies, migration pressures and the erosion of sovereignty.
Throughout, the argument remains consistent. The Emirates are not engaged in neutral development assistance in the Sahel, nor are they merely pursuing ordinary commercial opportunities in unstable environments. They are helping to assemble a transnational system in which resource capture, authoritarian sponsorship and strategic disruption reinforce one another. The beneficiaries are narrow elite networks, armed clients and commercial intermediaries. The costs are borne by civilians in war zones, by societies exposed to displacement and by neighbouring states forced to manage the consequences of conflicts they did not choose. Understanding this system is the necessary first step towards any credible response.
The Sahel matters because it reveals how contemporary power often works: indirectly, commercially, deniably and across borders. To follow the trails of gold, weapons, juntas and migration is to see that the future of North Africa is being shaped far to its south, and that the struggle over the Sahel is also a struggle over the political order of a much wider region.
The chapters that follow therefore proceed from a simple proposition: the Sahel cannot be read through the narrow lenses of terrorism, humanitarian emergency or democratic transition alone. It must be examined as a theatre in which state power, private capital, clandestine logistics and ideological warfare are fused into a single operational system. The Emirates are not the only actor in this arena, but they are among the most agile, least transparent and most consequential. Their role forces a reconsideration of how influence is exercised in an age when formal empire has disappeared but extraction, coercion and hierarchy remain.
That is why this book treats the Sahel not as a peripheral zone of chronic disorder, but as a frontier of strategic experimentation. In this frontier, gold finances war, war restructures political authority, and political authority is traded for diplomatic recognition, military access and commercial privilege. What appears fragmented on the ground often reveals, when viewed across borders, a remarkable coherence. The task ahead is to map that coherence carefully, to identify its beneficiaries, and to show why the destabilisation of the Sahel has become inseparable from the remaking of North Africa’s security landscape.
If the argument of this opening chapter is correct, then the central issue is not simply whether the Emirates have influence in the Sahel, but what kind of order that influence is producing. The answer, as the evidence assembled in the following pages suggests, is an order designed less to stabilise than to manage instability for profit and leverage. That reality gives the region’s conflicts a broader significance. They are not isolated crises. They are components of an emerging sub imperial architecture whose consequences extend from desert mining pits to Mediterranean shores.
