Jihadists affiliated with the rival Al-Qaeda and Islamic State groups continue to clash in the Sahel region to an unprecedented scale; each faction seeks influence over the same territories and control over the same smuggling routes and populations, leading to repeated clashes dating back to 2019.
The clashes are “the most intense direct confrontation globally” between an Al-Qaeda branch and an IS-linked group, a report by UN experts submitted to the Security Council in early August said.
The continuous insecurities have driven many to flee; combined with extreme weather events, displacement is growing, mostly concentrating on Mali, where humanitarian pressure is mounting as hundreds of thousands seek safety inside its borders.
Rivalry Leads to Continuous Conflicts
The Sahel Region has slowly but steadily become the most significant arena for jihadist groups, leading to the United Nations (UN) warning that the expanding terrorist groups warrant international attention. Leonardo Santos Simão, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa and the Sahel, said that drug trafficking is increasingly intertwined with terrorism, while humanitarian access is severely restricted.
“On the security situation, the threat posed by terrorist and other non-state armed groups remains acute, especially in the central Sahel and northern Nigeria, rapidly targeting coastal states in the Gulf of Guinea. These groups are adapting their tactics, increasingly using advanced technology, such as drones, means of communication and cryptocurrencies,” he said during a UN Security Council briefing.
The violent campaigns of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP) jihadist groups ran parallel to each other against state forces and began clashing against one another in 2019 in Benin and Nigeria. By 2020, this expanded to central Mali and the Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger borderlands, known as the Liptako-Gourma region. Between 2023 and 2024, JNIM and ISSP have escalated their operations to border regions between Benin, Niger, and Nigeria.
According to Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) by early September 2026, around 320 armed confrontations occurred between the two groups, killing more than 2,200 fighters.
Sahel specialist Hasret Kargin says both groups carry out abuses against civilians, but while JNUM focuses on building alliances and concentrates attacks on state forces and foreign troops, the IS group is more hardline and does not shy away from targeting civilians. JNIM remains the leading terrorist threat in the region, with 7-8,000 fighters, compared to IS’s 2,000 members.
ACLED’s West Africa Regional Expert Héni Nsaibia warns that currently, the fragile security along the Mali-Guinea border and JNIM’s sustained expansion in southern Mali is bringing a military spillover to Guinea, where many industrial gold mining sites are located.
Mali As a Refuge
Despite its proximity to the fighting, Mali is a major destination for those fleeing the sporadic violence in the region.
As of September 30, 2026, Mali is hosting 322,584 refugees and asylum seekers, alongside 414,524 internally displaced people. Additionally, nearly 91,000 people returned to the country with 343,000 Malian refugees remaining abroad, according to Africa News, Euronews’ pan-African multilingual news network.
Latest figures presented to the UNHCR Executive Committee in Geneva show that since August, the number of refugees and asylum seekers rose by over 5,300 people.
The latest UNHCR press release estimated nearly 4 million people to have been uprooted across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, roughly twice as many as in October 2020, when it recorded 1.7 million internally displaced people in the region. In Mali specifically, over 14,000 children and 6,000 women were identified as being at risk, with the refugee population approaching the size of the host community.
Mali already struggled with water resources, overstretched health services, and limited work opportunities. Climate change adds secondary pressure; recurrent droughts and flooding disrupt agricultural production, reduce water access, and damage infrastructure.
Urgent Investment Needed
The UNHCR warns that while displacement is rampant in the region, there is spillover to West Africa’s coastal countries, including Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo, but many take dangerous routes to North Africa and Europe.
However, without the necessary funding, registration, documentation, shelter, and access to basic services all fail to meet the requirements that existed prior to the surge, and especially now with the rising demand.
Though the UNHCR has been cooperating with governments and partners to establish essential assistance, as of September 2026, the Sahel response was only 27 percent funded.
