Sahel: France’s forever war
| Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York Times |
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| France has spent seven years, and billions of dollars, battling armed Islamist groups in the Sahel, a sweep of land south of the Sahara. President Emmanuel Macron recently promised to deploy an additional 600 soldiers to join the 4,500 already there. |
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| But the counterterrorism fight has left more than 10,000 West Africans dead, displaced a million others and left France’s military stuck in the region — just as American forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan. |
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Above, French troops in northeastern Mali near the border with Niger.
