Sahel: entrenched and still underrated conflict.
The announced visit on 20 December of president Macron to Bamako to meet Colonel Assimi Goita, Mali president, was an enormous surprise. Whatever the official reasons for its cancellation, it will no doubt mark a new cycle in the bilateral relations between Paris and the West Africa capitals. Issues that irritate Paris including the Wagner’s troupes are many and worse obsessive. There is no doubt that from the muddle surrounding Macron aborted visit, colonel Goita gets out as the winner. Undeniably, for the moment, he is reconfirmed even though the Sahel crisis, to the great frustration of its civilian population, is however far from being resolved.
Over the last ten years, the Sahel crisis has steadily taken root in and spread beyond the region. Having become structural, it is far from having reached its peak, especially in Mali, its epicenter. Its human, material and political damage are aggravated by the continuous disintegration of societies, economies and administrations while social networks, « conspirators » or not, make it a boon for young people dreaming of great adventures.
A surprise or a signal of our times? Beyond the enormous dissimilarities – geographical, historical and military – separating the two regions, American withdrawal from Afghanistan in the face of the Taliban success, is as closely followed in the Sahel as in countries more directly concerned. The various armed groups, linked or not to AQIM, or Al Qaeda in the Maghreb, cannot contain their exaltations there. Their morale is at the zenith and the certainty that, that of their enemies is at the bottom, invigorates them even more.
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the most exposed countries of the G5 Sahel to terrorism, have been facing repeated attacks since this year beginning. It is in this worrying context that the French president announced on 10 June, the “end of Operation Barkhane”, and a strategic partner in the fight against terrorism in the Sahel. The silence surrounding that statement indicates that, on both sides, time has come to seek new avenues to overcome the jihadist scourge.