The Sahel Juntas and the Crisis of Legitimacy

When soldiers seized power across the Sahel between 2020 and 2023, they offered strikingly similar justifications. Civilian governments, they argued, had failed to protect their citizens from the advancing threat of Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), despite years of support from France, the United Nations, the European Union and the United States. Military rule, the argument went, would succeed where democratic politics had not: it would restore state authority, defeat the insurgents and, only then, return power to civilians. Years later, the region's security landscape raises an uncomfortable question. Has military rule delivered on that promise, and what happens to a government's legitimacy when it has not?

The pattern of coups was remarkably consistent. In Mali, Assimi Goïta removed President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in August 2020, citing the army's inability to control large parts of the north and centre. In Burkina Faso, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba overthrew President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré in January 2022 on similar grounds, only to be removed himself eight months later by Ibrahim Traoré, who argued that Damiba's own counterterrorism record was too slow. In Niger, Abdourahamane Tiani deposed President Mohamed Bazoum in July 2023, insisting that a new approach to security was needed despite Bazoum having achieved relative gains against jihadist groups. In each case, the message was the same: only military leadership could act with the speed and decisiveness that civilian rule could not.

The record since then complicates that claim. In June 2026, JNIM fighters breached Diori Hamani International Airport in Niamey. This is one of Niger's most heavily fortified installations, housing the air force, military drones, the headquarters of the Alliance of Sahel States' joint force, and Russian personnel. In April, coordinated attacks across Mali, including in Kati, revealed an insurgency that has grown more sophisticated rather than less, even as military governments have intensified their campaigns. Large swathes of northern and central Mali, eastern Burkina Faso and western Niger remain outside effective state control. Millions of people are displaced, schools and clinics have shut down across rural areas, and food insecurity continues to rise. Perhaps most tellingly, JNIM has moved beyond pure military operations in parts of the territory it contests, reportedly collecting taxes, mediating local disputes and enforcing its own rules, functions that amount to governance. For juntas that justified their rule by promising to restore the state's authority, this is a difficult reality to reconcile.

None of this has produced elections. Goïta has repeatedly extended Mali's transition, arguing that voting while the country remains insecure would undermine its credibility. Traoré has pushed Burkina Faso's elections back to 2029. Tiani has likewise announced a prolonged transition in Niger, citing the need for stability before any return to civilian rule. In each case, insecurity, the very problem the juntas promised to solve, has become the justification for indefinitely postponing the democratic process that was meant to follow.

This is where the deepening alignment with Moscow matters. Russian foreign policy in the region, delivered first through the Wagner Group and now the Africa Corps, has emphasised sovereignty, executive authority and non-interference rather than electoral timetables. Unlike France and other Western partners, who after the 2020 and 2021 coups pushed for sanctions and rapid transitions back to constitutional rule through ECOWAS, Russia has attached no such conditions to its military assistance. That gives the juntas diplomatic cover and security backing without the external pressure that once accompanied Western partnerships, making prolonged military rule more sustainable in the short term.

But sustainability is not the same as legitimacy. Governments that seize power through force cannot draw on the ballot box or constitutional continuity to justify their authority. Instead, they rely on a narrower and more fragile bargain: deliver security, and the question of legitimacy can wait. That bargain depends entirely on results. It is not clear that the juntas are delivering them.

This is the vulnerability now facing Goïta, Traoré and Tiani. The argument that brought each of them to power, that civilian rule had failed to stop the violence and military leadership would not, is the same argument that can be turned against them if the violence continues to escalate under their watch. A partnership with Russia may insulate these governments from external pressure to hold elections. Still, it cannot insulate them from the judgement of their own citizens, who continue to live with displacement, closed schools and expanding insurgent control. If security remains the sole justification for indefinitely concentrating political power, then the failure to secure it becomes the sole justification for questioning that power. The Sahel's juntas are not simply fighting insurgents. They are running out of time to prove that their original argument for seizing power still holds.

Joseph McCarthy is an analyst and researcher specialising in governance, security and political transitions in the Sahel. He writes on geopolitics, development and African diplomacy. joecarthy30@gmail.com

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