The Sahel Kicked Out the West. Now it's Falling Apart.

Ever since the rise of a trio of military regimes in Africa's Sahel region, in the countries of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, the entire Sahel has been coming apart at the seams.

Those military governments claimed a mandate to rule, in part because they wanted to throw off the shackles of the neo-colonial West, and because they claimed that they could do better for their people than European and North American military advisors, especially the French, ever could.

But since the Sahel regimes gave Paris the boot and extended their warm welcome to mercenaries sent by Moscow, their countries have gone completely off the rails. is being slowly disassembled by a combination of the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group Jinnim and an alliance of separatists from the Taureg ethnic group claiming more and more territory in the north.