Interventionism, once an emergent reality after the 9/11 attacks, is now a standard policy of Western powers in the name of rooting out militants. The deployment of munitions, manpower and money to troubled countries in a bid to confront extremism and quarantine its contagion is initially praised and welcomed. However, the trouble with interventions is that the urgency of the crises that prompt them leaves little or no time to plan for the aftermath. Worse, shifting political calculations at home caused by mounting casualties overseas become a stumbling block to counter-terrorism objectives, and persistent woes abroad prompt local citizens to become extremist themselves, or demand the swift withdrawal of the once-lauded “saviors.” France is in the throes of this challenging situation in the Sahel. Paris is no stranger to overseas interventions, from leading the NATO offensive that deposed Muammar Qaddafi in 2011 to maintaining the largest, readiest Western military presence in Africa; about 4,500 troops, 500 armored vehicles, more than 20 helicopters, fighter jets and drones in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. The justification for this significant French presence is primarily to protect vast economic interests such as iron ore deposits in Guinea and Mauritania, Chad and Burkina Faso’s cotton, Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa and Niger’s uranium. Beyond resources, 14 countries in West and Central Africa must have half of their currency reserves kept in the French treasury, giving Paris much geopolitical and geoeconomic heft, now under threat by Chinese and Russian interest in the region. Nonetheless, when militants threaten to carve out territory in Mali, or Al-Qaeda seeks to spread its wings right in the middle of Francafrique, the only France seems to have is military deployment. The seeds of the diminishing returns with which France is now confronted were planted in 2011. The flawed Libyan intervention may have ousted Qaddafi but it also fueled both the rise of extremists and spreading anti-French feeling, and caused the proliferation of Qaddafi’s arsenal on black markets, and eventually into the hands of the extremists who have killed over 40 French soldiers since 2013. More recently, two attacks on Niger military bases by militants, one in December and another in early January, have claimed about 160 lives — fueling a surge in anti-French sentiments as a result of mounting death tolls reflecting apparent failures of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations in Mali and Burkina Faso. Anti-French sentiment is not limited to criticisms of a heavy French military presence. The francophone region’s currency, the CFA franc, has been a bone of contention since its inception in 1945, which has only worsened with today’s youth, given its colonial underpinnings. Last month’s announcement that the CFA franc will be renamed and its financial links to Paris severed was panned by critics for being a new iteration of neocolonialism. According to them, the new “eco” should not have been jointly announced to the world by French President Emmanuel Macron and Cote d’Ivoire President Alassane Outtara if Paris were truly distancing itself from its colonial past. Paris’s answer to these seemingly intractable woes came this month at a summit of Sahel’s G5 in Pau, a small town in the south of France. It was prompted by the accidental deaths of 13 French personnel after a mid-air collision during a hunt for militants in northern Mali. Macron acknowledged that a military solution was not sufficient, a rare admission given that most interventions have followed the same playbook of “deploy first then quietly retreat” when public opinion turns. No questions are asked about the long term, and no answers or potential solutions are proffered either. Yet the key to ensuring that insurgents or militant extremists are defeated lies in a combination of military strength and the improvement of social, political and economic dynamics at the grassroots level. It is no secret that poverty, unemployment, lack of opportunities, rampant corruption, cronyism, waste, nepotism and resource theft have significantly disenfranchised large swaths of people across the Sahel. They have robbed many of the social mobility that can guarantee stability, internal security and stronger public institutions that are a bulwark against creeping militant extremism. The Sahel G5, like most of Africa and the Middle East and North Africa, can no longer afford to stall the crucial transformations that can, at the very least, begin to lay the foundations of insurgency-resistant nation states. Few regions have the same access as Francafrique to a wealthy patron with a relatively advanced economy. It is disappointing that most countries in that region have demurred on the prospect of leveraging that proximity to bolster local institutions and the rule of law, and afford economic opportunities to the largest demographic, disaffected youth. Instead there is little to no political will to perform the painful yet absolutely necessary transformations, having been lulled into a false sense of security from a French military presence that has proved anything but effective. If the Sahel G5 want further proof that the French are out of touch, purposely limited and sensitive only to political and economic considerations in Paris rather than the region’s humanitarian plight or growing militant threat — Macron’s remarks at Pau focused on demanding that Sahel nations deal with anti-French sentiment, in exchange for maintaining or expanding the French military presence there. Paris’s focus is on the optics of interventions that periodically drive public opinion closer to home than forging solutions designed to shore up the Sahel’s strengths and ensure individual nations can effectively confront or counter any threats, including those not specifically targeting French interests. It is a shame that the Sahel G5 did not respond strongly to Macron’s chiding and colonial words, which basically solicited their silence in exchange for more troops. After all, Paris acknowledges that it is going to take more than just a military presence to confront insurgents in the region, not to mention its ugly colonial past. To that end, the rising tally of French failures, since 2013 and before, wear a familiar tinge of orchestrated incompetence and racist tendencies rather than a greater commitment to regional security, emphasizing the domestic reforms that are critical to ensuring long-term stability. Hafed Al-Ghwell is a non-resident senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Institute at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is also senior adviser at the international economic consultancy Maxwell Stamp and at the geopolitical risk advisory firm Oxford Analytica, a member of the Strategic Advisory Solutions International Group in Washington DC and a former adviser to the board of the World Bank Group. Twitter: @HafedAlGhwell