The Sahel
JNIM, the Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP), the FLA, the juntas and the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Africa Corps, and the resource sites the fighting turns on.
WATCH FILE — SAHEL
Every armed group leaves a trace.
I map it.
An independent OSINT conflict-monitoring desk covering armed groups, private military companies — Wagner / Africa Corps and others — and state forces in the Sahel and the DRC. The current work is the Sahel. Published, open-source, unpaid.
§ 01 — Coverage
What I monitor.
Two theatres, one method. The Sahel is the active desk; the DRC file is being built out alongside it. Private military companies are tracked across both.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
M23 / AFC, the FARDC and allied militias, and the foreign private military contractors operating in the east.
Private Military Companies
Wagner / Africa Corps and other PMCs across both theatres: where they deploy, who they work for, and what they are tied to on the ground.
Source Grading
Every claim carries an Admiralty grade — source reliability A–F plus a percentage confidence — so readers can weigh it for themselves.
§ 02 — Published work
Open the file.
The research is published as a linked knowledge base: free to read, sourced throughout, and corrected in the open.
KB-SAH LIVE · as of 21 Oct 2026
Sahel Armed Groups & PMCs: an OSINT knowledge base
- About 150 linked notes: armed groups, PMCs, states and Key Events
- 65 resource sites, with maps
- Graded sources: NATO Admiralty A–F plus %
- Updated from monitored channels
DRC knowledge base
M23 / AFC, the FARDC and allied militias, and foreign PMCs. In development: the Sahel comes first.
§ 03 — Tradecraft
Quiet, methodical, defensible.
Good intelligence isn't about access you shouldn't have. It's about reading what's already in the open more carefully than anyone else bothers to.
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01
Collection
Structured sweeps of monitored public channels, press and official statements, the indexed and archived web, and imagery.
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02
Verification
Nothing is published on a single source. Each finding is tested against a verification triangle: independent corroboration, a contextual match, and third-party evidence.
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03
Grading
Every source and claim is graded on the NATO Admiralty scale, A–F plus a percentage confidence, and the grade is shown next to the claim.
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04
Claims as claims
What a junta, armed group or PMC says about itself or its enemies is recorded as that party's claim, attributed, never restated as fact.
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05
Publish & correct
Findings are published openly with their sources. When something is wrong, the correction is published too.
SCOPE & ETHICS
Strictly open-source and lawful. No hacking, no unauthorized access, no pretexting into
protected accounts, no tracking of private individuals. The subject is armed groups, PMCs,
states and events, not people's private lives.
Current status: Darkwater Research is independent, unpaid research, published openly. It takes no paid work. I welcome corrections, tips and collaboration with researchers and non-profits, and I'm open to employment in the field.
§ 04 — Credentials
Verified, not just claimed.
GIAC Open Source Intelligence (GOSI)
Formal certification in structured OSINT collection, analysis, and reporting tradecraft. The verifiable digital badge is shown here — live credential verification available on request.
- Methodical, documented collection
- Source evaluation & confidence grading
- Analyst-grade reporting standards
§ 05 — Contact
Corrections, tips and collaboration.
Spotted an error, know a public source I should be watching, or want to compare notes? Write in. Open-source material only, please — no sensitive or personal details in first contact.
DIRECT gnorwood@darkwater-research.com