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The Intercept has<\/span> been chronicling<\/a> the U.S. military\u2019s futile counterterrorism<\/a> efforts<\/a> on the African continent<\/a> for the last decade<\/a>. We have reported on increases in the number<\/a> and reach<\/a> of terror groups, rising militant attacks<\/a>, spikes in fatalities<\/a>, destabilizing<\/a> blowback<\/a> from U.S. operations<\/a>, humanitarian<\/a> disasters<\/a>, failed<\/a> secret wars<\/a>, coups<\/a> by U.S. trainees<\/a>, human rights abuses<\/a> by allies<\/a>, massacres<\/a> and executions<\/a> by partner forces<\/a>, civilians killed<\/a> in drone strikes<\/a>, and a litany of other fiascos<\/a> and failures<\/a>.<\/p>\n A new Pentagon report<\/a> offers the grimmest assessment yet of the results of the last 10 years of U.S. military efforts on the continent. It corroborates years of reporting on catastrophes<\/a> that U.S. Africa Command<\/a> has long attempted to ignore<\/a> or cover up<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fatalities from militant Islamist violence spiked over the years of America\u2019s most vigorous counterterrorism efforts on the continent, with the areas of greatest U.S. involvement \u2014 Somalia and the West African Sahel \u2014 suffering the worst outcomes. <\/p>\n \u201cAfrica has experienced roughly 155,000 militant Islamist group-linked deaths over the past decade,\u201d reads a new report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution. \u201cSomalia and the Sahel have now experienced more militant Islamist-related fatalities over the past decade (each over 49,000) than any other region.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat many people don\u2019t know is that the United States\u2019 post-9\/11 counterterrorism operations actually contributed to and intensified the present-day crisis and surge of violent deaths in the Sahel and Somalia,\u201d Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War Project at Brown University, told The Intercept, referencing the frequent targeting of minority ethnic groups by U.S. partners during counterterrorism operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n The U.S. provided tens of millions of dollars in weapons and training to the governments of countries like Burkina Faso and Niger, which are experiencing the worst spikes in violent deaths today, she said. \u201cIn those critical early years, those governments used the infusion of U.S. military funding, weapons, and training to target marginalized groups within their own borders, intensifying the cycle of violence we now see wreaking such a devastating human toll.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. Africa Command acknowledged The Intercept\u2019s questions about the report and its findings but did not answer them.<\/p>\n Terrorist groups are also gaining ground at an exponential rate. \u201cThe past year has also seen militant Islamists [sic] groups in the Sahel and Somalia expand their hold on territory,\u201d according to the Africa Center. \u201cAcross Africa, an estimated 950,000 square kilometers (367,000 square miles) of populated territories are outside government control due to militant Islamist insurgencies. This is equivalent to the size of Tanzania.\u201d\u00a0And as militant groups have expanded their reach, Africans have paid a grave price: a 60 percent increase in fatalities since 2023, compared with deaths from 2020 to 2022, according to the report.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Even these grim statistics don\u2019t capture the true size and scope of U.S. counterterrorism failures. In 2002 and 2003, the U.S. was just beginning its decadeslong effort to provide\u00a0billions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0in security assistance, train many thousands of African military personnel, set up<\/a> dozens of outposts<\/a>,\u00a0dispatch its own commandos<\/a>\u00a0on a wide range of missions,\u00a0create proxy forces<\/a>, launch\u00a0drone strikes<\/a>, and even engage in\u00a0ground combat<\/a>\u00a0with militants in Africa. In those years, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks, resulting in a combined 23 casualties across the entire continent. Last year, there were 22,307 fatalities from militant Islamist violence in Africa. This represents an almost 97,000 percent increase.\u00a0Somalia and the Sahel saw the most acute violence.<\/p>\n U.S. Special Operations forces were first dispatched to Somalia in 2002, followed by military aid, advisers, private contractors, bases, helicopters, and drones. The Pentagon was well aware of fundamental flaws with U.S. military operations in the Horn of Africa as early as 2007, according to a study conducted for the military that was obtained exclusively<\/a> by The Intercept. Almost two decades later, U.S. troops are still conducting counterterrorism operations there against the Islamist militant groups al-Shabaab and the Islamic State.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the U.S. carried out an attack in Somalia that one top U.S. commander called the \u201clargest airstrike in the history of the world<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0The Trump administration has already conducted 54 attacks<\/a> in Somalia in 2025, exceeding the total number of strikes by the Biden administration last year.\u00a0This mirrors the spike in attacks during President Donald Trump\u2019s first term<\/a>. Despite, or perhaps because of these relentless attacks, al-Shabaab\u2019s \u201ccapabilities have expanded in the past year,\u201d according to the Africa Center, and its annual revenues \u2014 up to $200 million \u2014 are \u201con par with Somalia\u2019s federal member states<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSomalia faces Africa\u2019s most enduring militant Islamist group with al-Shabaab sustaining extremist violence since it was established in 2006,\u201d according to the Africa Center analysis. \u201cSomalia has seen a spike in violence linked to al Shabaab since 2023. \u2026 The 6,224 fatalities linked to al Shabaab over the past year are double that of 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n The findings are even more damning for West Africa, where an increasing number of nations are plagued by terrorist groups that have grown, splintered, reconstituted, and spread across the region. Under the black banners of Islamist militancy, men on motorcycles and armed with AK-47s thunder into villages to impose their harsh brand of Sharia law and terrorize, assault, and kill civilians. Attacks by these militants and government atrocities against civilians in response have destabilized Burkina Faso<\/a>, Mali<\/a>, and Niger<\/a> and, increasingly, threaten bordering countries such as\u00a0C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire, Guinea, Senegal, Mauritania<\/a>, and Togo<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Sahel has experienced a sustained high level of lethality tied to militant Islamist groups in recent years,\u201d reads the new Africa Center report. \u201cThe nearly 10,500 average annual deaths over the past 3 years are more than double the 4,900 annual fatalities experienced between 2020 and 2023. This represents a sevenfold increase in annual fatalities since 2019.\u201d<\/p>\n As violence spiraled in the region over the past decades, at least\u00a015 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance<\/a>\u00a0were key leaders in a dozen coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel including Burkina Faso (in\u00a02014, 2015, and twice in\u202f2022<\/a>) and Mali (in\u00a02012<\/a>,\u202f2020, and 2021<\/a>).<\/p>\n The U.S. has poured\u00a0billions of dollars<\/a>\u00a0in military assistance into Burkina Faso, Mali, and\u00a0its neighbors<\/a>\u00a0over roughly two decades, enabling\u00a0human rights abuses<\/a>\u00a0by providing weapons and training to militaries that have terrorized civilians, according to the\u00a0United Nations<\/a>,\u00a0human rights advocacy groups<\/a>, and the\u00a0U.S. State Department<\/a>. The Africa Center found that Malian and allied security forces were responsible for 82 percent of all civilian fatalities over the past year. In Burkina Faso, the figure was 41 percent.<\/p>\n In 2023, The Intercept reported from neighboring Niger<\/a> on the failure of 20 years of counterterrorism efforts, the spread of Islamist militancy, and abuses of minority ethnic groups by U.S. partner forces. AFRICOM pretended the problems did not exist and said the U.S. was \u201cfurther[ing] our mutual security goals.\u201d But Niger has been \u201cexperiencing a rapid deterioration in its security since the military coup against the democratic government of President Mahmoud Bazoum in 2023,\u201d according to the Africa Center. Left unsaid was that at least\u00a0five leaders\u00a0<\/a>of that coup d\u2019\u00e9tat received American assistance. Since then, fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence have quadrupled, including a 49 percent increase in civilian deaths in Niger over the past year.<\/p>\n The Africa Center\u2019s new analysis echoed a grim assessment<\/a> of security on the African continent offered by AFRICOM chief Gen. Michael Langley during a June press conference with various media outlets, including The Intercept. The West African Sahel, he said, was now the \u201cepicenter of terrorism,\u201d and the gravest terrorist threats to the U.S. homeland were \u201cunfortunately right here on the African continent.\u201d<\/p>\n Katherine Ebright, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice and one of the foremost experts on the legal authorities behind secret military efforts in Africa, noted that the U.S. continued to double down on expenditures of blood and treasure without measuring the effectiveness of its counterterrorism initiatives. \u201cClearly, there\u2019s been too little congressional and public oversight of these military efforts to determine whether they are strategic and effective,\u201d she told The Intercept, noting that the Department of Defense long delayed compliance with a law<\/a> that requires it to monitor and evaluate its work with partner forces.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ebright pointed out that during the Biden administration the Pentagon finally published a first-of-its-kind analysis<\/a> of its long-running counterterrorism efforts in the Sahel. The findings spotlighted shortcomings that have contributed to mass displacement, humanitarian crises, coups, atrocities, and the deaths of around 155,000 Africans.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n