Intelligence Chiefs of the Sahel
Since 2021, every intel chief in the region has been replaced for one reason or another.
The intelligence services of the Sahelian countries, as in other countries, have significant power.
Who heads these agencies? And what trends do we see among the heads?
The first trend is that these men are all active-duty, high-ranking military officers. That hasn’t always been the case in the Sahel, but it is now - a trend in keeping with the dominance of the military in politics in all five countries.
The second trend is that the intelligence chiefs are also deeply political positions in all the countries of the region that have recently had coups, meaning all of them except Mauritania. From integral members of the junta (Mali) to close associates of the president (Niger) to potential rivals of the head of state (Burkina Faso), these are particularly delicate positions in military-ruled nations.
The third trend is that 2023-2024 saw shakeups at the top of the intelligence agencies in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad. All of those transitions and restructurings were driven by primarily domestic considerations, from what I can tell, but the end result is that the longest-serving intelligence chief in the region is now Mali’s Modibo Koné, who has been in his position less than four years.
Here are some brief biographical notes with, where relevant, discussion of recent shakeups. Pinning down reporting on this topic was a bit challenging, but I’ve tried to make the below write-up as accurate as I can.
Mauritania: General Saidou Samba Dia
Dia took over the General Directorate of External Security and Documentation (Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure et de la documentation, DGSED) in December 2024. Dia is a general who has held a number of senior posts, most recently Secretary General of the Ministry of Defense, working for about a year under the powerful Minister Hanena Ould Sidi, who was himself head of the intelligence services from 2005-2009. Dia replaced, as best I can tell, Hanana Ould Hanoune, a top security official in President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani’s entourage. Dia is apparently expected to carry out various capacity-building reforms within the agency.
Mali: General Modibo Koné
Koné is one of the five then-colonels who carried out a coup in August 2020. A classmate of Mali’s current President Assimi Goïta and Defense Minister Sadio Camara, Koné was - according to this profile of him in Jeune Afrique - the “brain of the putsch.” After the junta took deeper control over the state in a follow-on coup in May 2021, Koné took charge of the General Directorate of State Security, which was renamed later that year to be the National Agency for State Security (Agence Nationale de la Sécurité d’État, ANSE). He was promoted to the rank of general in October 2024 along with Goïta, the rest of the junta, and their close ally Abdoulaye Maïga, who is currently the prime minister of Mali. Having direct control over the intelligence service is key to the junta’s power.
Burkina Faso: Major Oumarou Yabré
Major Oumarou Yabré became head of the National Intelligence Agency (Agence national de renseignements, ANR) in October 2022, in other words shortly after the coup that brought Captain Ibrahim Traoré to power. There is a brief biography of him here. An intelligence officer, Yabré served briefly with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Mali. According to RFI, he is a childhood friend of Traoré, but various outlets have said that there is a rivalry between the two men. In December 2024, Yabré was appointed director of Burkina Faso’s National Council for State Security, in a move that could be described as a promotion or an attempt at domestication, depending on your perspective. The reporting on this is a bit confused, but from what I can deduce, the new security council replaces the ANR but also potentially reduces its power.
Niger: Lieutenant Colonel Souleymane Balla Arabé
Just five days after the July 2023 coup, new military head of state General Abdourahamane Tiani named Balla Arabé to head the General Directorate for Documentation and External Security (Direction générale de la documentation et de la sécurité extérieure, DGDSE). The son of former Nigerien Chief of Defense Staff Chaweye Balla Arabé (d. 1991), he holds a Ph.D. in Information and Communication Engineering from China’s Xidian University.
Chad: General Ismaël Souleymane Lony
In February 2024, Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby switched two men’s jobs: Ahmed Kogri, the longtime director of the National Agency for State Security (Agence nationale de sécurité de l'Etat, ANSE), became Deby’s personal secretary; Lony, who had been Deby’s secretary since 2022, took over the ANSE. Lony, who hails from the same Zaghawa ethnic group as Deby, has a remarkable backstory - he was imprisoned and demoted in the 2010s after a physical altercation with the late President Idriss Deby’s aide-de-camp. But Lony was given his rank back when the younger Deby took power in 2021. During his time so far at the ANSE, he has been accused of ramping up arrests and de facto kidnappings of dissidents.