The young Lehendakari Emmanuel Macron met on 19 January at a solemn ceremony the heads of the French Army together with 1,200 military personnel elected on the warship Dixmude, based at the Toulon Pier. He promised changes full of ambition: reinstating compulsory military service, strengthening army budgets more than ever, maintaining nuclear capacity -- and ending Islamist terrorism.

In addition to Syria and the Middle East, Macron explicitly mentioned the efforts being made by France on the shores of the Sahara desert: “With globalisation, France’s interests are not limited to our borders. (...) We know that in order to defend our territory we sometimes have to fight away from here those who organise attacks. (...) From the Middle East to the Sahel, we are absolutely committed to fighting new threats.” It's easier to say.

On February 2, the newspaper Le Figaro devotes two pages to the military adventure in the Sahara: “Five years after Operation Serval, Al Qaeda gangrena to Mali.” Thierry Oberle writes from the legendary Tonbuktu that liberated the French for the joy of the whole world in January 2013: "Five years after the end of the jihadist occupation, the corners of this country are dark. The majority blacks distrust the ‘white skins’, the Arabs.” Bubakar Sadek, deputy mayor of Tonbukua, says: “The symbiosis between different people that existed before has ended. There is nothing more than a headache here. State authorities say there are remnants of violence, crazy people, but how do you want to believe in peace when people are killed on the street and we have a bad government?”

Eusebio Val has written at La Vanguardia that, over time, Paris has begun to live in the Sahel in a situation similar to that which the United States has already lived before. United States in Afghanistan and then in Iraq, “the enemies have reappeared, here the ambush and there the attack, because they have in their favor the weakness of the state, the knowledge of the environment and the clashes between communities”.

In the chronicle “Sahel, escalade guerrière”, Afrique-Asie, which, despite recently closing the well-known monthly newspaper on paper, continues in the digital edition. The joint FC-G5 force composed of military personnel from Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad and France is an example of the military escalation.

By March, FC-G5 will feature over 5,000 African military personnel organized in 7 battalions in collaboration with 4,000 sent by France since 2013. They will be joined by the 12,000 blue helmets of the MINUSMA mission of the United Nations. Not to mention, very close to it, the 800 soldiers that the United States has in Niger, in the broad command of Africa.

“The militarization of the Sahels and all of West Africa, mainly from France and the United States, is proceeding pitifully,” writes Gilles Olakounte Yabi International Crisis Groupen, director for Africa. His analysis has given him a significant title: “French and American armed drones in the skies of West Africa, make you feel safe?”

Although the spread of war has increased the sense of dependence among the inhabitants of the Sahel, the local elites are delighted, “because for these wars it is an opportunity to mutize freedoms, destroy the sovereignty of the country and plunder its resources with peace of mind,” said Afrique-Asie.

The enemy can also help us in something.

Abdelkader Abderrahman “Construction chaos is spreading through the Sahel,” Abdelkader Abderrahman has published in the La middle. Brehon Advisary works in the consulting company. “In Mali the situation is difficult,” says Abderrahman, and Sahel has become a dangerous powder keg, the environment is very busy. Every day there is some kind of aggression, car theft or weapons or kidnapping. Even the local press often makes no reference to these events, let alone the international press. As in the domino game, concern has spread to the countries around it.”

At the Berlin Conference in 1885, Europeans shared Africa with each other. The French Empire reserved West Africa. Oil and other natural resources have attracted the United States since the 1960s. Since 1997, Africa has become particularly important to the Americans, since the Pentagon established energy supply as the main strategic need for the United States. More important than the Persian Gulf itself in the future could be Algeria, the Gulf of Guinea… and the Sahara itself, with oil deposits not yet found.

China also appeared, which immediately became the main trading partner of Africans. If the Europeans and the Americans were fully involved in the decisions of the Africans, China leaves them quiet and offers loans in exchange for business in the best possible conditions.

What is France looking for with the new offensive? Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, former UN senior official: “By introducing the hand in Libya and Mali, France wants to maintain its power, maintain the right to be on the UN Security Council, demonstrate the guarantee of the stability of the world.” Mali has always been in the midst of the colonialist games in Africa, as historian Doulaye Konate said: “Who controls Mali controls West Africa, if not all Africa.”

There is a very specific reason. The French have announced huge victories against the Islamists, but there is no image of them, no independent account. Eyewitnesses told journalists that the French allowed them to escape when they were completely surrounded by them. Let the desert escape north?

The key may be in the large uranium mines of AREVA in Arlite, in Niger, near the border with Mali. Because it is believed that there are still far more uranium pits in that region that have not been exploited, and it is in France’s interest that there should be no other end. Northern Mali has also negotiated the autonomy of the south... thanks to the French.

130 years after the Berlin agreement, the new division of Africa is at stake. EE.UU China, France -- the great powers of the world are competing to ensure their supply in oil, precious metals, farmland -- and also in the sweet waters that the desert has hidden in the sand.

France has entered the Sahel war, but over the years the Islamists are still in the woods and Mali has not become a normal state.