West Africa’s coastal states are bracing for a jihadist storm

A DRONE WHIRS overhead as Ivorian special forces creep out of the undergrowth towards a mock village. French trainers watch closely. Nearby, Ghanaian commandos roar down a dusty road before an explosion sends them retreating under the gaze of British soldiers. Operation Flintlock, an annual counter-terrorism training exercise, appears to be going just as it should: regional forces learning from grizzled Western commandos.

Yet Flintlock also encapsulates some of the weaknesses undermining the West’s efforts to train local armies to defeat the jihadists who have overrun large parts of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and are now attacking places to the south (see map). These include a lack of leadership by countries in the region, a troubling retreat from democracy and failed efforts to win the support of disgruntled populations.

Flintlock is meant to be African-led. It is anything but. It has been largely Western troops, rather than forces from the region, that have shaped strategies to fight the jihadists in the Sahel. Meanwhile troops from the two worst-hit countries—Burkina Faso and Mali—did not attend Flintlock. This is because in both countries colonels (who had attended previous Flintlock exercises) have booted out the elected governments in coups.