The Logistics Of The War In The Sahel

Abstract

There are both positive and negative aspects of waging a counter-insurgency war in the Sahel. The impediments are easy to see. The terrain of the Sahel does not lend itself to conventional warfare. There are broad expanses of sand and dunes, broken up by small villages and, occasionally, a town or city. There are no petrol stations, wells, repair shops, water stores, food stocks or fuel reserves in most of the region. Trucks and buses, as well as conventional armour, are difficult to transport in such a terrain. Air bases are usually suited only to small aircraft and lack the fuel and equipment which allow the free flow of cargo. African insurgents are bands and groups of often, irregular soldiers. On the positive side, the lack of ground cover and a tree canopy in the region enables a strategy of using the most modern weapons, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) which can seek out, observe and destroy small and mobile enemy forces. This has meant that the logistic demands of the war in the Sahel has generated a strategy of high-tech weaponry deployed by Western forces combined with African troops on the ground as garrison forces for towns and cities.