By Arezki Daoud: A surge in jihadist violence has rocked the Sahel region through late September and early October 2025, disrupting lives from the deserts of northern Burkina Faso to the scrublands of northeastern Nigeria. Militants have overrun military bases, disrupted food and fuel supply lines, and forced entire communities to barter with armed groups for survival.

Heavy fighting erupted in Burkina Faso’s north, where militants launched coordinated attacks on towns like Gomboro and Sgunga in mid-September. On September 28, fighters with the al-Qaeda-linked JNIM killed 26 soldiers while capturing the Gomboro military base, tightening their grip on key border corridors. Neighboring Arbinda in Soum province faced fresh attacks days later, part of a deliberate push to seize supply routes and erode government authority.

Mali has suffered from a parallel escalation. On October 1, an ambush between Yelimane and Kayes highlighted the nation’s vulnerability: main highways are now regularly targeted by militants, including drone strikes and attacks on fuel convoys. Hundreds of civilians are caught in blockades, reporting that reaching food and medicine now sometimes requires negotiating directly with armed groups.

In Niger, the violence has concentrated on the Torodi-Makalondi highway and across the volatile Tillabéri region. Soldiers died in a roadside IED attack on September 19, and the following day, an ambulance crew was abducted on a nearby road—a pattern that’s diverted basic humanitarian services to a crawl.

Northern Nigeria also witnessed fresh trauma. The weekend of September 20–21 saw ISWAP, the West African ISIS affiliate, seize two army camps near Banki. Outgunned military units retreated into Cameroon as militants torched vehicles and filmed themselves with stockpiled arms.

Civilians, meanwhile, pay the steepest price. “People in rural villages are joining these groups just to eat,” said a local official in Solhan, Burkina Faso, speaking on condition of anonymity. Aid agency workers confirm hunger and daily insecurity drive families to barter survival—some trading labor or silence for food and minor stability from their new overlords.

Residents say the violence is anything but random. In Burkina Faso’s north, the town of Djibo has become synonymous with siege, with militants launching near-constant raids that have left the region disconnected from the rest of the country. Nearby, Arbinda and Gomboro have suffered repeated attacks that have driven entire communities from their homes and forced the government to repeatedly redeploy troops in attempts to retake lost ground.

Further east, Mali’s highways have become deadly gauntlets. Travelers on the Kayes to Bamako corridor report passing burnt-out trucks and the crumpled shells of military vehicles—a testament to the ambushes these supply lines now endure almost weekly. Mauled infrastructure and empty fuel stations mark the lasting impact on trade and daily life; in Bougouni and as far north as Kidal, witnesses describe drone attacks and sudden firefights that send residents fleeing for cover.

Across the border in Niger, convoys braving the Tillabéri region’s roads, especially the Torodi-Makalondi axis, do so in fear: September saw a spike in roadside bombs and kidnappings targeting not just soldiers, but ambulances and market traders. One local aid worker described the journey as “rolling the dice with your life.”

Meanwhile, in Nigeria’s Borno state, the dusty border town of Banki has become the scene of pitched battles, including a recent nighttime assault that ended with Nigerian troops withdrawing into Cameroon. It’s a vivid sign of just how thin the government’s line of defense has become on the frontiers of the Sahel.

These incidents rocking the Sahel region reveal a patchwork of conflict zones where state control is weakest and armed groups thrive. Rather than a wave that washes over whole countries, the violence carves through specific corridors and crossroads, dominating the spaces where people and goods move, and where entire rural communities must now negotiate their survival each day.

Government responses have largely failed to match the scale of the threat. Security forces are stretched thin, often outmaneuvered or outgunned by mobile insurgents using drones and IEDs. Publicized counteroffensives, such as those by Burkina Faso and Mali’s transitional military rulers, have at times retaken lost towns, but many successes are short-lived and followed quickly by new attacks.

Regional cooperation, once embodied by the G5 Sahel and multinational task forces, has begun to falter. Niger’s withdrawal from the MNJTF and a broader reliance on bilateral security agreements (including with Russia’s Africa Corps) speak to political fragmentation and lack of an effective, unified strategy.

Authorities across the Sahel face a constant dilemma: How to balance pressure to escalate military action with the pragmatic need to negotiate—sometimes discreetly—with armed groups, simply to enable humanitarian delivery or basic services. The region risks further collapse if new strategies aren’t swiftly adopted. As humanitarian agencies pull back and militants fill the vacuum with promises of food and safety, millions remain at risk of displacement, violence, and hunger.