In light of Macron's decision to transform Barkhane into something else, I'm re-upping this piece I wrote way back in 2015 on why most military interventions aimed at stabilization usually fail. Whatever Barkhane turns into, it's unlikely to do better. 1/ opendemocracy.net/en/why-militar…
The 1st reason is that--as in previous interventions and like other intervenors--French policymakers misunderstand or ignore a lot of the state-society dynamics at work in driving jihadist insurgencies. They view conflict through the "grand narrative" of a war on terrorism. 2/
The 2nd reason is that no outside intervenor can (re)build local state legitimacy, which can only be an internal process, especially if their role buttresses social and political orders which generate insurgency and violence as the French have done throughout the Sahel 3/
The 3rd reason is that interventions aiming to support local political orders can introduce destabilizing dynamics into those very systems--eg the way Barkhane and foreign intervenors have helped militarize regional politics 4/
The 4th reason is that foreign intervenors can't substantially "improve" local security forces whose effectiveness or ineffectiveness has inherently political causes linked to the nature of their states. 5/
And finally, even decisive military success can, in these conditions, only be accomplished at the expense of protecting the existing political order which generated the crisis to begin with. Intervenors may live with this, but the affected populations may not.
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