6 ms·

Medieval-style fortifications are back in the Sahel

105 points by andsoitis 4mo ago

fsagx 4mo ago
https://archive.is/wuHji https://archive.is/wuHji
defrost 4mo ago
For anyone with an interest this article is cut down and pared slice of a portion of the work of Dr. Olivier Walther and Dr. Steven Radil, geographers at the University of Florida. A somewhat longer article of theirs is Why African Borderlands Keep Burning (April 15, 2026) - https://africanarguments.org/2026/04/why-african-borderlands-keep-burning/ https://africanarguments.org/2026/04/why-african-borderlands... and a recent paper Mapping the long-term trajectories of political violence in Africa (MARCH 2026) - https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06502 https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06502
- xphos 4mo ago
  Thank you for the extra links i was think this article seemed to be missing context or a conclusion
- lyu07282 4mo ago
  Thank's it adds a lot to explain why something like this pops up in the Economist of all places > The United States and its allies should align its efforts accordingly. That means accepting longer time horizons, investing in less visible cross-border mechanisms over high-profile bilateral wins, and recognising that the periphery is now the centre. oh boy > African governments understand this dynamic, which is why regional organisations like the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, and even the juntas of the Alliance of Sahel States increasingly emphasise multinational responses. Not to be too much of a panafrican commie here, but AES left the Ecowas months ago I hope(?) the authors were aware of this? Seems like worth mentioning, perhaps it means something who knows. I guess we learn more about what to think about the Shael states when the US or France invades them again in a few months from now.
- subscribed 4mo ago
  Thank you very much.
- aaron695 4mo ago
  [dead]
- blacksmith_tb 4mo ago
  That background is useful, though it seems more like "how" than "why" - my instinct is James C. Scott-style rebellious hinterlands[1] but I haven't gotten a sense if the bandits are the product of social dislocations, or just opportunists. My naive assumption would be all of the above, some conflicts along the edges of Sahel being ideological or about lack of resources or political participation, and others being just smash-and-grab (not that they're mutually exclusive). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_...
- alephnerd 4mo ago
  I'm not a fan of the geographic argument as it removes agency from state and non-state actors who are backing various groups partaking in the Sahel insurgency. The most obvious ones are the France/US-Russia, the UAE-Turkiye, and UAE-KSA rivalries, but even those is being exploited by Morocco and Algeria in the Sahel due to their existential rivalry. Morocco and Algeria view each other as existential threats, and the Sahel will never become peaceful until that rivalry is resolved. Instead, it is becoming worse - Morocco is now transferring military IP and technology from the US, Israel, India, and the UAE while Algeria from Turkiye, China, Pakistan, and Russia. The geographic argument also ignores the ethnic tensions that have always existed in the Sahel. Vast swathes of Maghrebis, Baggaras, Amazigh, and Tuaregs continue to down on Sub-Saharan Africans, and they tend to be the leadership in JNIM, AQIM, ISSP, ISWAP, and other Islamist groups in the Sahel. Their leaders remember how they and not Africans were the rulers of slave states in the Sahel before the French came. And those who don't subscribe to ethnic chauvanism subscribe to religious chauvanism, hence why leadership of formerly secular insurgent groups like the Polisario Front and MPLA became hardened Islamists who are trying to enforce Sharia in states where the religious demography is not uniform.
0xcafefood 4mo ago
I thought walled towns died not due to state authority becoming stronger, but because offensive weaponry simply became effective enough to overcome walls. Walls can protect you from men with swords, but not from heavy artillery or bombers. Today, wouldn't a fleet of cheap drones render a wall moot?
- cineticdaffodil 4mo ago
  Walls can not protect you from dhijadists either, the mortars take out the city- and besieging starves it out. In sudan- a "walled and ditched" city recently fell to the djandjhawid.. https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/commentary/fall-el-fasher-sudans-war-outpaces-truce-plan https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/commentary/fall-el-fa...
  - bluGill 4mo ago
    They give you time though. It's certainly not perfect, but no wall ever was. You could scale the old wall with a ladder if you wanted to, but it slowed you down and that gave the defenders time to do something about that.
  - yorwba 4mo ago
    Of course no fortification can withstand overwhelming force indefinitely, but el-Fasher held out 1.5 years while completely surrounded, which isn't too shabby. (Here's a map from a year prior: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/5/52/20241203103929%21War_in_Sudan_%282023%29.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/5/52/... It's the small pink blob of army-controlled territory labeled "Al-Fashir" within the gray mass of the RSF.) And the RSF are a formerly government-affiliated civil war faction with a lot more firepower than jihadist militias like JNIM or ISSP. If some trenches and an earth wall turn a short raid into a long siege, that at least gives the army some time to send reinforcements and attack the besiegers.
    - MaxPock 4mo ago
      Kuweires airbase in Syria never fell to isis and held for over two years.
cineticdaffodil 4mo ago
[flagged]
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
rjsw 4mo ago
The UK built [1] castles in Afghanistan recently too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion
- pigpop 4mo ago
  More of a Roman fort I'd say.
  - rjsw 4mo ago
    Or an early Norman one, for the same reasons. The people in the fort were different to those outside, city walls were built later in the medieval period once those differences had reduced.
ufocia 4mo ago
"Newly walled towns are a sign of shrivelling state authority" was my thought when I saw the walled off Capitol. It is sad when the government needs walls to protect itself from its own people, a sign of weakness. To add to the irony the Capitol used to be, quite literally, the "people's house."
- everybodyknows 4mo ago
  > shrivelling state authority Sure, but state authority alone is no substitute for cultural norms.
adrian_b 4mo ago
Coincidentally, this morning I happened to be in a hotel room where there was a TV-set showing some random TV channel, and there was a documentary showing that medieval-style fortifications have come back in the form of the new building of the US embassy in London, which is surrounded by a moat, presumably for fear of terrorists.
- stephbook 4mo ago
  The seat of the German parliament will be secured by a trench too (view the article for an image) https://www.morgenpost.de/bezirke/mitte/article228419835/Schutzgraben-vor-dem-Reichstag-wird-groesser-als-gedacht.html https://www.morgenpost.de/bezirke/mitte/article228419835/Sch...
stymaar 4mo ago
Fortifications never went anywhere. Just in this century, the US used fortified camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so did the French in Sahel. And the Ukrainians fortified Dombas and effectively prevented the Russians to take it quickly. Then the Russians fortified the Zaporizhzhia frontline (the Surovikin line) which stopped the Ukrainian counter offensive in 2023. And talking about Africa in particular, the border between Morocco and Algeria, and also Western Sahara, has been a fortified wall for the past 40 years now.
- MagicMoonlight 4mo ago
  [dead]
- bob1029 4mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_bollard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_bollard
- digitaltrees 4mo ago
  A government fortification protects against military attack. A city fortification protects against basic lawlessness in the absence of a government protective order. It’s a sign of personal level violence
- int_19h 4mo ago
  For a long time, basically since WW2, the assumption was that fortifications are at best a delaying measure, and worst case, the attacker can go around them (mobile warfare, blitzkrieg and all that). In the past decade, however, the changes in battlefield tech resulted in a situation where fortifications can be genuinely impregnable.
  - stymaar 4mo ago
    I don't think that's true. At all point of history, fortifications have never been more than a force multiplier for the garrison manning the fortifications. Send an overwhelming force at it and it will always fall (I don't know what kind of impregnable modern fortification you have in mind but I'd be curious to hear what you have in mind) but it requires the effort and ability to send such an overwhelming force. Even in the battle of France, famous for the failure of the Maginot line to stop the Germans (mostly because of a Franco-Belgian political dispute in the 30s, by the way), the Italians were completely unable to get through the fortifications in the Alps despite a massive numerical superiority because they were tactically inept.
michaelfm1211 4mo ago
Awesome
diego_moita 4mo ago
In many of Latin America big towns and most of border towns, most middle-class houses are tiny versions of fortresses. It is a sign of police incompetence, government collapse and the fact that those places are ruled by gangsters.
- everybodyknows 4mo ago
  The great revelation of Google Street View for me has been that such is more or less the world norm. Neighborhoods of entirely unbarred windows and unfenced lots are scarce on any continent. The tragedy is that so few, at least here in the US, see the liberating value in them.
  - paulryanrogers 4mo ago
    The liberating value of unfenced lawns and yards? If so I'd say it's great for playing as a kid. Kind of annoying for maintaining pets.
    - diego_moita 4mo ago
      It is more than that. It is about the state of mind. Feeling safe is precious, with cascading effects on personal health, community cohesion, civic participation, etc. Remember the Maslow Pyramid of needs, where safety is the most basic one? Well, this is part of it.
  - esseph 4mo ago
    > Neighborhoods of entirely unbarred windows and unfenced lots are scarce on any continent. I guess I've been on 4 continents. What are you talking about???
iammjm 4mo ago
It's not just Africa. Take a look at the Ukrainian battlefield and you will see a similar trend: kilometers of trenches with some concrete bunkers here and there; even longer anti-tank ditches; along them dragon's teeth-type anti-tank obstacles; along them several rows of concertina razor wire; plus anti-drone netting along logistical routes. then there's vehicles with layers of cages, spikes and metal plates all over them to protect against drones, to the point where they look like medieval rams. with all the high tech precision weapons and satellites and drones, people sometimes forget that wars are about dealing and withstanding kinetic force.
- int_19h 4mo ago
  But that is precisely because there are drones. Drones are what allows both sides to see so deep into the battlefield that it's basically impossible to make a surprise attack now. Your advance units start getting hammered as soon as they move into the "dead zone" (within range of drones from the contact line), and so is the logistics.
red_admiral 4mo ago
ACOUP, which is shared on HN regularly, has a series on fortifications too: https://acoup.blog/2021/12/31/collections-fortification-part-v-the-age-of-industrial-firepower/ https://acoup.blog/2021/12/31/collections-fortification-part...
anotheraccount9 4mo ago
Is there anyway to actually read the article without paying?

105 points by andsoitis 4mo ago

fsagx 4mo ago

https://archive.is/wuHji https://archive.is/wuHji

For anyone with an interest this article is cut down and pared slice of a portion of the work of Dr. Olivier Walther and Dr. Steven Radil, geographers at the University of Florida. A somewhat longer article of theirs is Why African Borderlands Keep Burning (April 15, 2026) - https://africanarguments.org/2026/04/why-african-borderlands-keep-burning/ https://africanarguments.org/2026/04/why-african-borderlands... and a recent paper Mapping the long-term trajectories of political violence in Africa (MARCH 2026) - https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06502 https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.06502

xphos 4mo ago
Thank you for the extra links i was think this article seemed to be missing context or a conclusion
lyu07282 4mo ago
Thank's it adds a lot to explain why something like this pops up in the Economist of all places > The United States and its allies should align its efforts accordingly. That means accepting longer time horizons, investing in less visible cross-border mechanisms over high-profile bilateral wins, and recognising that the periphery is now the centre. oh boy > African governments understand this dynamic, which is why regional organisations like the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States, and even the juntas of the Alliance of Sahel States increasingly emphasise multinational responses. Not to be too much of a panafrican commie here, but AES left the Ecowas months ago I hope(?) the authors were aware of this? Seems like worth mentioning, perhaps it means something who knows. I guess we learn more about what to think about the Shael states when the US or France invades them again in a few months from now.
subscribed 4mo ago
Thank you very much.
aaron695 4mo ago
[dead]
blacksmith_tb 4mo ago
That background is useful, though it seems more like "how" than "why" - my instinct is James C. Scott-style rebellious hinterlands[1] but I haven't gotten a sense if the bandits are the product of social dislocations, or just opportunists. My naive assumption would be all of the above, some conflicts along the edges of Sahel being ideological or about lack of resources or political participation, and others being just smash-and-grab (not that they're mutually exclusive). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_Being_Governed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Scott#The_Art_of_Not_...
alephnerd 4mo ago
I'm not a fan of the geographic argument as it removes agency from state and non-state actors who are backing various groups partaking in the Sahel insurgency. The most obvious ones are the France/US-Russia, the UAE-Turkiye, and UAE-KSA rivalries, but even those is being exploited by Morocco and Algeria in the Sahel due to their existential rivalry. Morocco and Algeria view each other as existential threats, and the Sahel will never become peaceful until that rivalry is resolved. Instead, it is becoming worse - Morocco is now transferring military IP and technology from the US, Israel, India, and the UAE while Algeria from Turkiye, China, Pakistan, and Russia. The geographic argument also ignores the ethnic tensions that have always existed in the Sahel. Vast swathes of Maghrebis, Baggaras, Amazigh, and Tuaregs continue to down on Sub-Saharan Africans, and they tend to be the leadership in JNIM, AQIM, ISSP, ISWAP, and other Islamist groups in the Sahel. Their leaders remember how they and not Africans were the rulers of slave states in the Sahel before the French came. And those who don't subscribe to ethnic chauvanism subscribe to religious chauvanism, hence why leadership of formerly secular insurgent groups like the Polisario Front and MPLA became hardened Islamists who are trying to enforce Sharia in states where the religious demography is not uniform.

0xcafefood 4mo ago

I thought walled towns died not due to state authority becoming stronger, but because offensive weaponry simply became effective enough to overcome walls. Walls can protect you from men with swords, but not from heavy artillery or bombers. Today, wouldn't a fleet of cheap drones render a wall moot?

cineticdaffodil 4mo ago
Walls can not protect you from dhijadists either, the mortars take out the city- and besieging starves it out. In sudan- a "walled and ditched" city recently fell to the djandjhawid.. https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/commentary/fall-el-fasher-sudans-war-outpaces-truce-plan https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/commentary/fall-el-fa...
- bluGill 4mo ago
  They give you time though. It's certainly not perfect, but no wall ever was. You could scale the old wall with a ladder if you wanted to, but it slowed you down and that gave the defenders time to do something about that.
- yorwba 4mo ago
  Of course no fortification can withstand overwhelming force indefinitely, but el-Fasher held out 1.5 years while completely surrounded, which isn't too shabby. (Here's a map from a year prior: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/5/52/20241203103929%21War_in_Sudan_%282023%29.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/archive/5/52/... It's the small pink blob of army-controlled territory labeled "Al-Fashir" within the gray mass of the RSF.) And the RSF are a formerly government-affiliated civil war faction with a lot more firepower than jihadist militias like JNIM or ISSP. If some trenches and an earth wall turn a short raid into a long siege, that at least gives the army some time to send reinforcements and attack the besiegers.
  - MaxPock 4mo ago
    Kuweires airbase in Syria never fell to isis and held for over two years.

cineticdaffodil 4mo ago

[flagged]

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

rjsw 4mo ago

The UK built [1] castles in Afghanistan recently too. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hesco_bastion

pigpop 4mo ago
More of a Roman fort I'd say.
- rjsw 4mo ago
  Or an early Norman one, for the same reasons. The people in the fort were different to those outside, city walls were built later in the medieval period once those differences had reduced.

ufocia 4mo ago

"Newly walled towns are a sign of shrivelling state authority" was my thought when I saw the walled off Capitol. It is sad when the government needs walls to protect itself from its own people, a sign of weakness. To add to the irony the Capitol used to be, quite literally, the "people's house."

everybodyknows 4mo ago
> shrivelling state authority Sure, but state authority alone is no substitute for cultural norms.

adrian_b 4mo ago

Coincidentally, this morning I happened to be in a hotel room where there was a TV-set showing some random TV channel, and there was a documentary showing that medieval-style fortifications have come back in the form of the new building of the US embassy in London, which is surrounded by a moat, presumably for fear of terrorists.

stephbook 4mo ago
The seat of the German parliament will be secured by a trench too (view the article for an image) https://www.morgenpost.de/bezirke/mitte/article228419835/Schutzgraben-vor-dem-Reichstag-wird-groesser-als-gedacht.html https://www.morgenpost.de/bezirke/mitte/article228419835/Sch...

stymaar 4mo ago

Fortifications never went anywhere. Just in this century, the US used fortified camps in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so did the French in Sahel. And the Ukrainians fortified Dombas and effectively prevented the Russians to take it quickly. Then the Russians fortified the Zaporizhzhia frontline (the Surovikin line) which stopped the Ukrainian counter offensive in 2023. And talking about Africa in particular, the border between Morocco and Algeria, and also Western Sahara, has been a fortified wall for the past 40 years now.

MagicMoonlight 4mo ago
[dead]
bob1029 4mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_bollard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_bollard
digitaltrees 4mo ago
A government fortification protects against military attack. A city fortification protects against basic lawlessness in the absence of a government protective order. It’s a sign of personal level violence
int_19h 4mo ago
For a long time, basically since WW2, the assumption was that fortifications are at best a delaying measure, and worst case, the attacker can go around them (mobile warfare, blitzkrieg and all that). In the past decade, however, the changes in battlefield tech resulted in a situation where fortifications can be genuinely impregnable.
- stymaar 4mo ago
  I don't think that's true. At all point of history, fortifications have never been more than a force multiplier for the garrison manning the fortifications. Send an overwhelming force at it and it will always fall (I don't know what kind of impregnable modern fortification you have in mind but I'd be curious to hear what you have in mind) but it requires the effort and ability to send such an overwhelming force. Even in the battle of France, famous for the failure of the Maginot line to stop the Germans (mostly because of a Franco-Belgian political dispute in the 30s, by the way), the Italians were completely unable to get through the fortifications in the Alps despite a massive numerical superiority because they were tactically inept.

michaelfm1211 4mo ago

Awesome

diego_moita 4mo ago

In many of Latin America big towns and most of border towns, most middle-class houses are tiny versions of fortresses. It is a sign of police incompetence, government collapse and the fact that those places are ruled by gangsters.

everybodyknows 4mo ago
The great revelation of Google Street View for me has been that such is more or less the world norm. Neighborhoods of entirely unbarred windows and unfenced lots are scarce on any continent. The tragedy is that so few, at least here in the US, see the liberating value in them.
- paulryanrogers 4mo ago
  The liberating value of unfenced lawns and yards? If so I'd say it's great for playing as a kid. Kind of annoying for maintaining pets.
  - diego_moita 4mo ago
    It is more than that. It is about the state of mind. Feeling safe is precious, with cascading effects on personal health, community cohesion, civic participation, etc. Remember the Maslow Pyramid of needs, where safety is the most basic one? Well, this is part of it.
- esseph 4mo ago
  > Neighborhoods of entirely unbarred windows and unfenced lots are scarce on any continent. I guess I've been on 4 continents. What are you talking about???

iammjm 4mo ago

It's not just Africa. Take a look at the Ukrainian battlefield and you will see a similar trend: kilometers of trenches with some concrete bunkers here and there; even longer anti-tank ditches; along them dragon's teeth-type anti-tank obstacles; along them several rows of concertina razor wire; plus anti-drone netting along logistical routes. then there's vehicles with layers of cages, spikes and metal plates all over them to protect against drones, to the point where they look like medieval rams. with all the high tech precision weapons and satellites and drones, people sometimes forget that wars are about dealing and withstanding kinetic force.

int_19h 4mo ago
But that is precisely because there are drones. Drones are what allows both sides to see so deep into the battlefield that it's basically impossible to make a surprise attack now. Your advance units start getting hammered as soon as they move into the "dead zone" (within range of drones from the contact line), and so is the logistics.

red_admiral 4mo ago

ACOUP, which is shared on HN regularly, has a series on fortifications too: https://acoup.blog/2021/12/31/collections-fortification-part-v-the-age-of-industrial-firepower/ https://acoup.blog/2021/12/31/collections-fortification-part...

anotheraccount9 4mo ago

Is there anyway to actually read the article without paying?