Claims in the French press and from political insiders that President François Hollande authorised a 20 million euro (US$27.4 mn.) ransom to free four French hostages from their jihadist captors reinforce doubts about Sahel policy. The French public may hail their leader for saving their own – and Areva, a company of strategic importance to the French economy, is probably also delighted. Yet this short term pay-off will come at a cost to the bigger fight against terrorism and criminality in the region.

Ransoms have been central to the ability of Islamist militias to recruit fighters, bribe officials and buy arms, much as they have nourished everyone from Colombian Marxist guerrillas to Neapolitan gangsters. French citizens all over Africa are today more nervous than they were yesterday. Jihadist guerrillas also subsist on extorting smugglers, on smuggling itself and on foreign donations but a windfall of this magnitude will bring the group in question enormous change. Its prestige among jihadists will rise significantly and the militias will recoup much of the dignity they lost in the retreat from French bullets during Opération Serval.

Countries that have made the hard choice not to pay ransoms will be angered and the news will certainly chill Franco-United States relations and revive American contempt. For the traumatised captives and their families, nothing but joy can can be expressed at their safe release. The lack of a longer-term political strategy to undermine and replace the criminal networks in northern Mali and the wider Sahel opens the region to a rerun of events of the past decade. That's when jihadists and less ideological gangsters took over the regional economy and eventually, what was left of state power in northern Mali. France's military success against them last year doesn't preclude a rapid loss of those gains unless they are backed up by a clear and seriously funded political and development strategy.