By The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime  

 Although more than 9,300 people died in violent incidents in the Sahel countries in 2022, the single greatest source of violent incidents is not related to clashes between armed groups and pro-governmental forces. Several mutually reinforcing factors have contributed to the growth of both insurgency and banditry, including intercommunal tensions, violence between farmers and herders, violent religious extremism and competition over scarce resources such as water and arable land. Environmental factors such as climate change may also be having an impact on conflicts in the Sahel. All the groups involved require firearms and ammunition, and as their numbers multiply so too do business opportunities for arms traffickers in the Sahel countries. While there is evidence of long-range firearms trafficking to the Sahel, including by air from France and from Turkey via Nigeria, it appears that the vast majority of firearms trafficked in the region are procured within Africa. Since 2019, Libya has become a source of supply for newly manufactured weapons. Apparently, newly produced AK-pattern assault rifles, sourced from Libya, are available on the black market in Gao, Timbuktu and Ménaka regions of northern Mali.  Evidence shows that the diversion of weapons from national armed forces – whether through capture on the battlefield, theft from armouries, or purchase from corrupt elements in the military – is a primary source of firearms in the Sahel countries today. The AK-type models that make up a large share of the assault rifles in the Sahel are durable and often still effective in combat decades after their manufacture. Rebels who participated in the 1990 Tuareg rebellions in Mali and the Niger, as well as previous uprisings, retained many of their arms, which were either held in caches or in the possession of individuals. As well as remaining in the region, weapons trafficked in the Sahel also make their way to the coastal countries of West Africa and have been used in terrorist attacks in the Gulf of Guinea. To enable communities to defend themselves against extremist groups, some States in the region have armed militias or other non-state actors, whose weapons are even more likely to be diverted than those entrusted to official national security structures.  

Vienna: UNODC, 2022. 24p.