Sahelo-Saharan Force: 25 000 men, 2 % of the defence budget — and Algerian steel for armoured vehicles. Here is how we secure five million square kilometres

Nassim Bouzid — Alger, Algérie — 2026-09-19

Method note. This dossier is a proposal — not a report. The facts are sourced and dated; the figures for the proposed force are ours, and we say so. We explain our calculations, we name what is missing, and we also say what we do not know. A project that cannot be challenged is not a project: it is a slogan.

🌍 The picture: the south is our flank, and it is burning

Algeria is a northern country with a southern problem. That is not a turn of phrase: it is geography. Terrorism, arms and drug trafficking, migration routes, state crises — all of it rises from the Sahel towards the Maghreb, and strikes our borders before it strikes our cities.

Let us look at what has happened in recent weeks, without exaggerating anything:

• an armed operation targeted Niamey international airport;
• a fuel-supply blockade was imposed on Mali — that is, an act of economic destabilisation, not only military;
• and the unified force of the Alliance of Sahel States grew from 5 000 to 6 000 men, on the announcement of Niger's president Abdourahamane Tiani, against groups that, according to him, benefit from arms and high-technology intelligence support.

Remember that last point, because it is the heart of the problem: the groups fighting us now have advanced intelligence capabilities. They are better informed than some states. And we answer them with fixed posts and pickup convoys.

⛔ What has already failed — and why we must understand it

We are not starting from zero, and we will not start from a blank page. Others have tried. Here is what they did, and why it did not hold.

The G5 Sahel — Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad — was to raise a joint force of 10 000 men, with 50 million euros. On paper, it was serious. In practice, it never reached its numbers, and it ended up dissolving.

Why? Three reasons, and they are all instructive:

1. The money never followed. 50 million euros to secure a territory larger than Western Europe was derisory. A force that is badly paid is a force that goes home.

2. There was no single command. Five armies, five decision-making chains, and nobody to decide. A joint force without a single commander is not a force: it is a meeting.

3. It depended on the outside. European funding, French training, disparate equipment. The day the wind turned, everything stopped.

And the lesson fits in one sentence, which we set down as a principle: an alliance without its own money, without a single command and without an industry behind it does not survive its first crisis.

A second attempt, more recent and more solid: the AES. Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger left ECOWAS, formed a confederation, and in December launched a unified force. It now numbers 6 000 men. It exists, it fights, and it must be said plainly: it has done more in one year than the G5 Sahel did in ten.

But 6 000 men for three countries, over an area equivalent to twice the size of France, is not a force: it is a nucleus. And one obvious fact imposes itself, which nobody wants to say out loud: neither Mali, nor Burkina Faso, nor Niger has the industrial means to sustain a long war. They buy. They do not produce. And whoever buys depends on whoever sells.

🎯 The proposal: the Sahelo-Saharan Force — 25 000 men

Here is what we propose, and we stand by the figures.

A joint force of 25 000 men, organised in four components:

And here is why 25 000, and above all why not more.

Against a guerrilla, it is not numbers that decide: it is mobility. Twenty thousand men spread across fixed posts get bypassed, one by one, and end up suffering. Twenty-five thousand mobile men, equipped with intelligence and air transport, seize the initiative — and an insurgency that loses the initiative is an insurgency in retreat.

We are not inventing this: it is the lesson of every irregular war of the past thirty years. The forces that won were mobile, informed and paid. Those that lost were numerous, static and abandoned.

🔧 The build-up — in three phases, and this is crucial

We are not asking anyone to sign up for 25 000 men on day one. A credible project starts small and keeps its promises.

Phase 1 is the only one that matters politically. Five thousand men, a headquarters, an intelligence centre: it is affordable, it is verifiable, and it produces visible results in eighteen months. The rest is only arithmetic — provided the first step is held.

And here is the distribution we propose, country by country:

💰 The figure that changes everything: TWO PER CENT

Here now is the decisive argument, and it rests on a calculation anyone can redo.

What it costs to maintain a force of 25 000 men for a year: pay, fuel, ammunition, maintenance, transport, health. A force of that size, trained and deployable, costs between 400 and 600 million dollars a year. We take the upper bound, for honesty's sake: 600 million.

And here is what we compare it with: Algeria's national defence budget for the 2026 financial year stands at nearly 25 billion dollars.

### Two per cent of Algeria's defence budget funds a force of 25 000 men covering five million square kilometres.

Measure what that means. Algeria already spends that sum — and more — on its own army, without securing a single kilometre south of its borders. So this is not a matter of finding new money: it is a matter of deciding that the security of the southern flank is a national priority, on the same footing as the defence of the north.

And one more thing must be added, which is plain common sense: a force that holds the Sahel costs less than a force that waits for the Sahel at our borders. The difference is air assets, headquarters, logistics and permanence — that is, exactly what a joint force pools.

🏗️ STEEL — the lever nobody sees, and it is the most powerful

And now let us talk about what nobody talks about in this debate: the material.

The Tosyali Algérie group, at Bethioua, in the wilaya of Oran, launched production at its new cold-rolling complex in February 2026. The figures are public:

• 500 000 square metres of surface area;
• 1,8 million tonnes of annual capacity;
• and an output of flat steel — cold-rolled coils, pickled and oiled steel.

Why is that decisive for an armed force? Because FLAT steel is precisely what is used to make:

• armour plates — the protection of vehicles;
• hulls and chassis of armoured vehicles;
• turrets, shelters, firing positions;
• and the entire metal structure of a modern army.

In other words: Algeria no longer produces only steel — it produces the steel from which weapons are made. And it is the only country in the region able to do so at that scale. None of the Sahel states has a cold rolling mill. None. They buy their armoured vehicles abroad, at world market prices, with delivery times decided by the seller.

And there lies the industrial argument we want to put on the table: four or five armies ordering separately pay top price. Four or five armies ordering together keep a factory alive — and bring the unit cost down. The same 25 000 men cost less if they are equipped by a regional production chain than if they are outfitted by five different importers.

A joint force is therefore not only a security expense: it is an order book. And an order book creates jobs, trains engineers, and keeps skills here instead of exporting them.

🔑 The six levers, and how to pull them

1. The INSTITUTIONAL lever — and it already exists. The Nouakchott Process, created in 2013 under an African Union mandate, brings together precisely the countries concerned for security cooperation in the Sahel and the Sahara. It exists on paper and weighs nothing in practice. It is the one that must be woken up — and given a mandate from the African Union Peace and Security Council. African legitimacy is worth more than an isolated initiative: it protects against accusations of hegemony.

2. The MILITARY lever. A standing headquarters, an intelligence fusion centre, joint border patrols, and a single chain of command — that is the lesson of the G5 Sahel. Intelligence first: without it, the best brigade in the world chases shadows.

3. The INDUSTRIAL lever — steel, drones, ammunition, maintenance. What Algeria produces, we share. What the region orders, we order together.

4. The ECONOMIC lever. The Trans-Saharan gas pipeline, the Trans-Saharan road, the port of Djen Djen, the African Continental Free Trade Area. And what lies underground: Mali's gold, Niger's uranium. An alliance that shares only war does not last; an alliance that shares roads, energy and revenues, yes.

5. The FINANCIAL lever. A common fund, fed by hydrocarbon revenue — not by borrowing. A force that cannot be paid is not a force: it is a promise.

6. And the DIPLOMATIC lever — the one that belongs to Algeria alone. Algeria has NO foreign military base on its soil. None. Not French, not American, not Russian, not Turkish, not Emirati. That is unique in the entire region. And it is the decisive argument: we do not come with troops, we come with means. Nobody else in this neighbourhood can say that.

🚫 And the truth about the absentees — because it is what makes us credible

A serious proposal also says who will not come. And why. We would rather write it down than let people believe in an alliance of ten countries that will never exist.

Egypt will not come. It is Africa's leading army, and it is allied with the United States, from which it receives considerable annual military aid; it is normalised with Israel; and above all: Cairo and Algiers back opposite sides in Libya. Asking a rival to come under your command is not diplomacy: it is a failure of analysis.

Libya cannot come — not out of refusal, but because there is no single interlocutor. Two governments, two armies, two legitimacies. You do not sign a treaty with a country that has not yet decided who represents it.

Sudan cannot come — it is in civil war. No capacity, and no authority able to commit.

And two others are fragile: Tunisia, whose room for manoeuvre is constrained by a difficult economic situation; and Senegal, which has stayed in ECOWAS and does not align with the AES.

We are not saying this to weaken the proposal. We are saying it because an alliance announced at ten and delivered at seven is a humiliated alliance — and an alliance announced at seven and delivered at seven is an alliance that holds. Our actual list already comes to 25 500 men. That is enough.

⚖️ What we concede, because it is true

First: the 25 000 men, the 600 million and the three-phase timetable are OUR figures, not those of a general staff. We built them from precedents — the G5 Sahel at 10 000 men, the AES at 6 000, the Algerian budget at 25 billion. They are argued, they are not official. Whoever proposes better must say so — and we will publish their answer.

Second: a joint force does not solve everything. Terrorism in the Sahel is not only military: it is born of poverty, the absence of the state and local rivalries. An army can buy time; it does not build an economy. That is why the other four levers matter as much as the first.

Third: coordination between armies is very difficult in practice. Languages, doctrines, equipment, ranks, procedures: everything differs. Multinational forces often fail — and the G5 Sahel is the demonstration. We do not promise it will be easy. We say that mobility and shared intelligence are the only route that has ever worked.

Fourth: we do not have the exact troop numbers of the armies concerned, or their budgets. We therefore cite none. And we have not had access to an official Algerian document mentioning such a project: we do not claim that one exists.

🎯 The conclusion, in five sentences

Algeria's southern flank is burning, and it will burn more: the forces that exist — 6 000 men for the AES — are a nucleus, not an army.

The G5 Sahel died for three reasons that remain true today: no money of its own, no single command, no industry behind it.

Our proposal: 25 000 men in three phases, a standing headquarters, an intelligence centre, and six levers — institutional, military, industrial, economic, financial, diplomatic.

The cost: 2 % of Algeria's defence budget. The steel exists, at Bethioua: 1,8 million tonnes, flat steel — the kind from which armour is made.

And Algeria is the only country in the region with no foreign military base at all. That is why this project can come only from it — because it is the only country of which it will not be said that it comes for anything other than to secure.

🏛️ TO THE DECISION-MAKERS — what we demand

This section is addressed by name to the Algerian authorities. We do not write a message to the leaders of our own initiative: this one answers an express request.

Mr President of the Republic,

1. Make the southern flank a declared national priority. Not a concern, not a file that is monitored: a priority that is announced, with a quantified objective and a deadline. The security of the Sahel must be treated as the defence of the north — because it is the same defence, seen from the other side.

2. Wake up the Nouakchott Process rather than invent a new alliance. The framework exists, it is African, it is legitimate. It lacks an operational mandate, a headquarters and a budget. Asking the African Union Peace and Security Council to give it those three — that is the fastest route, and the least contestable.

3. Propose the step that commits, and that is affordable: PHASE 1. 5 000 men, a standing headquarters, an intelligence fusion centre, in eighteen months. Do not propose 25 000 men from the outset: propose what can be held, hold it, and let the rest come of itself. A successful first step is worth ten treaties.

4. Put industry on the table from the very first meeting. This is the argument that has never been used, and it is the strongest. Offer not only men, but a production chain: the flat steel of Bethioua, national assembly capacities, maintenance. A partner who receives weapons is a client; a partner who co-produces is an ally.

5. Create a common fund fed by hydrocarbon revenue. No borrowing, no outside funding — because outside funding stops when the wind turns, and the G5 Sahel died of it. An Algerian fund, topped up by the countries that can, and transparent for all.

6. Publish the figures. How many attempted infiltrations at our southern borders, per year? How many groups dismantled, how many weapons seized, how many networks cut? The country cannot sustain an effort whose results it cannot see — and an effort without published results ends up being contested.

7. And say it to Africa, not only to Algeria. This project makes sense only if it is carried as an African initiative, in the Sahel and in Addis Ababa. We do not ask our neighbours to come under our flag: we propose that they raise their own, together, with our means. That is the only formulation that can be accepted — and it is also the only one that is true.

🔗 The sources, in direct access — click and check for yourself

• Algeria's defence budget for 2026, and the Global Firepower ranking: the ANP 27th in the world, 2nd in Africa behind Egypt, ahead of Nigeria and South Africa — Le Jeune Indépendant, 27 January 2026: https://www.jeune-independant.net/selon-global-firepower-lanp-un-leader-regional/
• The AES unified force, its growth from 5 000 to 6 000 men, the attack on Niamey airport and the fuel blockade on Mali — Sahel Intelligence: https://sahel-intelligence.com/42023-sahel-laes-renforce-sa-force-militaire-face-a-la-montee-des-menaces-securitaires.html
• Tosyali Algérie's flat steel production at Bethioua: 500 000 m², 1,8 million tonnes a year, cold-rolled, pickled and oiled steel — Radio Algérienne, 8 February 2026: https://news.radioalgerie.dz/en/node/91632
• The G5 Sahel joint force: 10 000 men and 50 million euros — PressAfrik: https://www.pressafrik.com/Mali-10-000-hommes-et-50-millions-d-euros-pour-la-force-commune-du-G5-Sahel_a166405.html
• The three African military giants: Egypt, Algeria, Nigeria — Afrik.com: https://www.afrik.com/egypte-algerie-nigeria-les-trois-geants-militaires-africains
• The Nouakchott Process and security cooperation in the Sahel and the Sahara, under an African Union mandate — Mission of the African Union for Mali and the Sahel: https://www.au-misahel.org/

These links open the documents cited directly, with their dates. The first and the third are enough to verify the two pillars of this dossier: what Algeria spends, and what Algeria produces.

Final note. The troop numbers, the cost and the timetable of the Sahelo-Saharan Force are proposals quantified by us, built from documented precedents — we do not present them as an official project, and to our knowledge none exists. We do not have the exact troop numbers or the budgets of the armies concerned, and we therefore cite none. Where we do not know, we write that we do not know — and on a subject of this nature, that is the only tenable position.