The Sahel and the Hierarchy of Western Attention

November 25, 2025

The Sahel’s crisis is no longer a regional headline. It is a structural unraveling—terror networks expanding across fragile states, displacement stretching from Burkina Faso to Niger, institutions cracking under the weight of attrition. The dread sits in the quiet arithmetic of collapse: authority thinning, appeals unfunded, and the world’s attention calibrated elsewhere.

Western Hierarchy of Response

Ukraine commands billions in military aid and sanctions coordination, framed as existential for NATO and the liberal order. Gaza commands headlines and humanitarian convoys, diplomacy at the podium every day. The Sahel, despite becoming the epicenter of terrorism deaths and mass displacement, receives fragmented training missions, scattered deployments, and humanitarian appeals that remain chronically unmet.

Cycles of Neglect

Humanitarian appeals for the Sahel remain chronically underfunded — less than 25% of the $4.9B requested in 2025. This mirrors past failures in Somalia and Afghanistan, where Western triage treated African collapse as peripheral. The silence is not neutral; it accelerates the fracture of authority and deepens cycles of dread.

Fractured Authority

ECOWAS experiments with standby forces, but cohesion falters. Russia’s contractors fill vacuums, contrasting sharply with NATO’s unity in Ukraine. The Sahel becomes a proving ground for non‑Western influence, while Western capitals calibrate their attention elsewhere.

Implications

The hierarchy of Western attention reveals not only geopolitical priorities but also the fragility of global solidarity. When Africa’s epicenter of collapse is treated as secondary, the dread is systemic: a world order that triages crises by proximity and visibility, leaving vast regions to fracture beyond the spotlight.