Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, president of centre4s
For the past 10 to 15 years, in the Sahel, security has yet to improve. On the contrary, it has become entrenched and has worsened. Fueled by infrastructures destructions and populations distress, anarchic migrations to cities and, beyond, to overseas countries, insecurity continues. Worse, it is spreading west, east and viciously to the south, towards the Gulfs of Benin and Guinea.
Limam Nadawa consultant, centre4s.org
Terrorists attacks in Tinzwaten Mali, Niger oil pipeline, Barsalogho Burkina Faso and Barkaram island… It should be remembered that the advent of terrorism and the war in Libya have exacerbated various forms of trafficking in the Sahel: mainly firearms, drugs, fuel, medicines, cigarettes, migrants and human beings. The worse the insecurity becomes, the more these scourges grow, increasing profits but also the number of their ghostly actors. In complicity with a number of official authorities, these war profiteers strive to perpetuate the conflicts that are ravaging the Sahel.
Limam Nadawa, consultant centre4s.
Wagner – renamed Africa Corps – heavy losses in Mali, July 2024, were widely publicized. But not those of new mercenaries of Syrian origin deployed in the Sahel by Turkey in Niger. Estimated at least to one thousand, they belong to Sadat, a firm owned by Adnan Tanriverdi, former advisor to Turkish president. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, SOHR, which tracks the Syrian conflict, stated in May 2024, that Sadat had deployed in Niger, in September 2023, one thousand one hundred Syrian mercenaries, trained in Turkey. According to the same source, that company trained members of a security force protecting Colonel Assimi Goïta, Mali Transition President.
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‘ Security Council is of interest to All including the Sahel »
United Nations Summit for the future opened on 23 September in a tense international context far away from the enthusiastic 1992’ one that adopted the Peace Agenda. Will this Pact for the Future restart the lost enthusiasm?
The world over, terrorism devastating multiple effects and many consequences are well documented. However, the Sahel long lasting insecurity is an example of its terrorism specificities: more tribal and business rooted and focused than ideological based. That is its mark. Crossing through many independent states, the Sahel band is, east – west, 3.300 km long and, north – south, 1.600 km large. For centuries, it has been and still is largely a “free land” or a region largely off governments ‘control.
That open geographical environment is much appreciated by the independent groups as well as the individuals roaming it: freedom of movements to and for all!