The anarchy that is developing in Mal, after the crisis that stroke with the military coup against President Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT) undermines the stability across Sahel Sahara. It also reopens the debate on the weight of Islamist groups and the impact of the fall of Colonel Gaddafi’s regime for the region.
Th
e Sahel-Saharan region is a large, arid area in the deserted Northern part of Africa. It runs from East to West in between Senegal and the confines of Sudan. The population is sparse and very difficult to reach in this strip of land. Today, the region has become a no man’s land out of any State control.
Growing insecurity engendered by international terrorism and trafficking of all kinds in the Sahel Sahara area should not obscure an even more pernicious reality: that of a vast band of land nearly decimated by climate degradation. There is nowhere on this planet a place as bleak, or as damaged. The fauna, flora and the men are trapped in a climate tragedy.
“Established a few months ago in Nouakchott (Mauritania), the Center 4s has set itself a goal: to make sure that the Sahel Sahara will remain the actor of its own destiny, and not a concern or an additional source of instability for the international community.”
Interview of Ahmedou Ould Abdallah to Africa Drugs Blog on RFI :Former Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for West Africa, Somalia and Burundi, Ahmedou Ould Abdallah now heads the Center 4 S (Center for Security Strategies in Sahel and Sahara) based in Nouakchott. For this good expert on West Africa and its mysteries, the fight against terrorism tends to obscure the importance of the drug trafficking. Even if he remains vague as for naming countries and culprits, the former diplomat denounced links between some heads of state in place and the networks of drugs.
