I'm John Batchel with my colleague Bill Rajah, a senior fellow Foundation for Defense of Democracy, keeps the Long War Journal.

And one of his editors and writers is Caleb Wise joining us from Africa, where he follows the jihadists across this vast territory that is the state.

At the same time, there are states in

West Africa that were nominally under the protection of the U.S. I'm thinking of Nizier-Briquina Faso,

and Mali was nominally under the protection of France, a colonial state once upon a time. However, in these last months,

Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali have broken free of all of those attachments. They've obliged

the U.S. to leave its drone base that was in Niger, and they've invited in the last

report Russian mercenaries to augment their security and perhaps also to mine some of the gold that may or may not be available.

However, Caleb, I'm checking on the status of these three states because they've turned their back on U.S., on Europe, and they also have a jihadist problem, or they did.

How are they faring these days?

Still very bad.

There are two main jihadist conglomerates in the Sahel.

You have the group for support of Islam and Muslims or Jainam.

That's al-Qaeda, and then you have the Islamic States to Hell province, which is obviously

the Islamic State.

Starting with Jainim, they're attacking further south of Mali.

They are encroaching upon Bamako, the capital of Mali.

They control and sort of quasi-governed territory in the center of Mali and some parts of the northern part of the country.

They're making alliances with separatist Tuareg groups to kind of have a joint force against the Malian and Russian forces.

They're rampaging in Burkina Faso, where they possibly control around 40% of the country.

They're pushing further south in the Gulf of Guinea states, so that's Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast.

Ghana doesn't admit it, but Ghana also has J&M bases in its northern parts.

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