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Arab News
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Arab News
Ambushes, mines, kidnappings: the Sahel's roads of fear
ABIDJAN: In the Sahel, a region plagued by jihadist violence, there are roads people steer clear of and others they travel on with their heart in their mouth. Such was the case for Moussa, when in March he had to take his mother's body to another village for burial, forcing him onto National route 15 in central Mali. While on it, he witnessed a terrifying scene — jihadists on motorcycles, armed with military-grade weapons, their heads wrapped in turbans, kidnapping passengers from a bus. 'They stopped us, but seeing my mother's body, they told us to continue,' he told AFP. Africa's turbulent Sahel region, sometimes referred to as the global epicenter of terrorism, has been plagued by violence from jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State for more than a decade. According to a recent OECD report, '70 percent of violent events and 65 percent of fatalities in North and West Africa occur within just one kilometer (0.6 mile) of a road.' In the central Sahel — as well as the Lake Chad basin and western Cameroon — some roads 'have become epicenters of violence,' the 145-page report said, disrupting financial trade and governance. 'Transport routes have become a prime target for attacks against government forces, particularly military convoys, and a means to pressure rural communities,' said Olivier Walther, a co-author of the study, adding that jihadists regularly set up roadblocks around towns. Road insecurity 'is directly linked to the spread of jihadist insurgencies' in the region, Walther, an associate professor at the University of Florida, said. With 433 recorded incidents since 2012, he said Mali's National route 16 connecting Mopti in central Mali to Gao in the north, is 'by far' the most dangerous transport axis. South of the Malian border, in Burkina Faso, 'all roads leading to Djibo' are dangerous 'due to blockades imposed on the town' by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), Walther said. National route 22 that connects Bourzanga, Djibo and the capital Ouagadougou has been nicknamed 'the death corridor' due to the frequency of deadly jihadist attacks. In September 2022, jihadists burned over 200 supply trucks on the Bourzanga-Djibo section, killing 11 soldiers and civilian volunteers supporting the army, with numerous civilians missing. A few months later, Abdoul Fhatave Tiemtore, editor-in-chief of the Burkinabe radio station Omega, wrote about his experience of traveling that section of road. He described feeling 'sadness, anxiety, fear and stress' after witnessing 'truly horrific things.' 'We saw bodies that were still fresh, decaying bodies, abandoned vehicles and craters from mines on the road,' Tiemtore wrote in an article. Niger has two high-risk highways, both in the southwest and both leading to Burkina Faso. Since 2022, it has been nearly impossible to travel from the capital Niamey to Burkina's Ouagadougou by road due to the threat posed by jihadists along the 600-kilometer (373-mile) border between the two countries. The National Association of Wood Operators in Niger told AFP in May that it had lost 24 of its drivers and apprentices since 2015 and that 52 of its trucks had been burnt on roads in the southwest of the country. 'We are tired of counting our dead,' another Nigerien truck drivers' union said, with several of its members, drivers and apprentices also killed in attacks. 'The terrorists have banned us from traveling to local fairs, they even held some drivers hostage in the bush for days,' said Zakaria Seyni, a Nigerien driver based in the tri-border region shared by Niger, Burkina and Mali — a hotspot for jihadist attacks. According to the OECD, security measures in the Sahel must be accompanied by the development of transportation infrastructure, cross-border cooperation and economic integration to promote stability. The scarcity of roads and their poor condition have forced armies in the region to travel in convoys, leaving rural areas to jihadists, Walther said. An alternative would be to rethink the way armies move around, using for instance 'vehicles as light and versatile as those of jihadists,' such as motorcycles, he said.
Al Jazeera
22-06-2025
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Lake Chad Basin: Violence and displacement
More than six million people in the Lake Chad Basin are caught in a cycle of violence, displacement, and ecological disaster. As Boko Haram exploits shrinking resources and fragile security, communities face impossible choices — return home under threat or stay in limbo. In this episode of Pinch Point, explore how conflict, climate change, and geopolitics are shaping this crisis.
BBC News
14-06-2025
- Politics
- BBC News
How Trump's Africa strategy may become a double-edged sword
With US President Donald Trump on a cost-cutting warpath since starting his second term, aid to Africa has been slashed and now defence spending is in his sights - but could these approaches cost more in the long run?The phrase his administration presses on Europe to assume more of the costs of its own defence is "burden sharing". This is the challenge that Washington is now throwing down to African armies too - and they are far less comfortably resourced to take it having paid dearly in lives and money, in the struggle to hold back the spreading reach of jihadist armed groups across the Sahel, the Lake Chad basin and Somalia over recent years, they could be forgiven for feeling that they already carry much of the burden - and for the sake not just of their own continent but the wider international community which has lost more than 80 soldiers in jihadist attacks since the start of the year, is just one example. "The epicentre of terrorism on the globe" is how the Sahel was described a few days ago by Gen Michael Langley, who as head of US Africa Command (Africom) oversees the American military presence south of the briefings and interviews over the past few weeks, he has graphically outlined the threat that jihadist groups will present if their push southward towards the Gulf of Guinea succeeds."One of the terrorists' new objectives is gaining access to West African coasts. If they secure access to the coastline, they can finance their operations through smuggling, human trafficking and arms trading. This not only puts African nations at risk but also raises the chance of threats reaching US shores."Gen Langley has admitted that the current upsurge in militant attacks is "deeply concerning".Yet he has also repeatedly hammered home a core message: the US is minded to rein back its own sub-Saharan military operations, leaving local armies to take on more of the defence 6,500 personnel are currently deployed in Africa by the US military and a 2019 list published by Africom mentioned 13 "enduring" American bases across the continent and a further 17 more temporary some of these installations, including the purpose-built drone base at Agadez in Niger, have already been shut down, in particular after military juntas seized power in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso since it now looks as if the once-ambitious American operational footprint will be pruned back quite a lot we will see more air power deployed from offshore to hit militant targets - Gen Langley says there have been 25 strikes in Somalia this year, double the 2024 total - but a much thinner permanent on-the-ground military presence."Some things that we used to do, we may not do anymore," he recently told a conference in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, that brought together chiefs of defence staff and other senior officers from 37 countries."Our aim is not to serve as a permanent crutch, but to achieve US security objectives that overlap with our partners. We should be able to help African nations build the self-reliance they need to independently confront terrorism and insurgencies."In the bluntness of his language Gen Langley reflects the stark change of outlook and policy that has come from January's change of power at the White House."We have set our priorities now - protecting the homeland."What matters to the no-longer-so-new Trump II administration, the general made clear in a Pentagon publication last week, is fighting terrorists - particularly those who might attack the priorities are countering the spread of Chinese military influence across Africa and protecting freedom of maritime navigation through key trade choke points such as the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. In some respects, the focus on training and capacity building that Gen Langley now expounds is not so very different from the approach of previous American administrations, Republican as well as lauds the National Guard State Partnership Program, through which individual US states have been helping to build the capacity of government security forces across Africa and other parts of the world - for the past three too is pursuing this approach, with the closure of bases in Chad and Senegal, while those in Ivory Coast and Gabon have been handed over to their governments, with only small French training teams left behind to work alongside African in other respects, the Trump administration's Africa strategy represents a drastic shrinkage in outlook and - critics might argue - a conscious retreat from addressing the factors that drive instability, conflict and terrorism, particularly in the Sahel, which is among the poorest regions on the under President Joe Biden the US looked far beyond the military realm alone in its efforts to counter the both the growing reach of jihadist groups and other sources of violence. And Gen Langley, as Africom chief, was an articulate exponent of this much broader last year, in an interview with the Associated Press news agency, he outlined what he described as a "whole of government" response to the proliferation of conflict, stressing the importance of good governance and action to tackle the fragilities of African states and the impacts of desertification, crop failure and environmental approach openly recognised that recruitment by armed groups and the spread of violence is fuelled not only by jihadist ideology, but also by a host of social and economic factors, including the stresses now afflicting farming and pastoralist Langley himself does not seem to have abandoned this analysis, recently noting how Ivory Coast had countered the jihadist threat to its northern border areas by complementing security force deployments with development could equally have pointed to the success of a similar approach pursued by the president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, before he was deposed in the July 2023 coup. But of course, these days Africom must operate within the context of a US foreign policy radically reshaped under are even rumours that it could be downgraded to become a subsidiary of the US command in Europe and Gen Langley suggests African governments should tell Washington what they thought of this the separate Africa unit at the radically slimmed down National Security Council at the White House is reportedly being wound up and integrated into the Middle East-North Africa director, Gen Jami Shawley, an Africa specialist appointed to the role only in March, has now been assigned to more general strategic Congress this week, Gen Langley warned about China's and Russia's African ambitions: Beijing's agility at capitalising on the US's absence and Moscow's ability to seize military opportunities created by chaos and these concerns, some might wonder if the general is discreetly signally his doubts about a slimmed down Africa under the "efficiency drive" led, until recently, by tech billionaire Elon Musk, the American government's main international development agencies, USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, have been effectively shut spine of the new US economic engagement with Africa is now private sector trade and business generally needs to operate in a stable and secure context - which Africa's most fragile and violence-prone regions cannot in winding up the American development agencies, the Trump administration has stepped aside from funding the rural projects and social programmes that sought to address land and water pressures and lack of economic opportunity, the key drivers of conflict - and the jihadist groups' recruitment of frustrated rural young the fragile regions that are the main sources of jihadist violence the US response is reduced to the purely military, and now it is seeking to shift even most of that on to the shoulders of African states that already struggle to respond adequately to a plethora of challenges and Melly is a consulting fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House in London. You may also be interested in: The region with more 'terror deaths' than rest of world combinedFreed captive tells BBC of life in West African jihadist baseWhy Trump is on the warpath in Somalia'My wife fears sex, I fear death' - impacts of the USAID freezeTrump's tariffs could be death knell for US-Africa trade pact Go to for more news from the African us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica
Russia Today
03-06-2025
- General
- Russia Today
African state denies involvement in ‘Western-backed terror plot'
Benin has rejected claims that it is cooperating with Western powers to harbor terrorists as part of efforts to destabilize neighboring Niger and the wider Sahel region, which has been grappling with a jihadist insurgency for more than a decade. French broadcaster RFI on Monday quoted Beninese Foreign Minister Olushegun Adjadi Bakari as dismissing the accusations made by Niger's interim president, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, as 'unfounded.' 'Benin is fighting terrorism on its soil and from neighboring countries, with determination and at the cost of heavy sacrifices. Attempting to associate our country with such practices is not only unacceptable, but also profoundly unfair to our defense and security forces and our entire people,' Bakari stated. On Saturday, Tchiani accused Benin and Nigeria of acting as logistical hubs for French-backed operatives allegedly plotting to destabilize Niger. He claimed that meetings involving Western powers and certain African partners had been held in Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin, where weapons were being funneled to terrorist groups operating in the Sahel. Tchiani also claimed that France had established covert 'cells' in the region to conduct subversive operations, working in coordination with African allies – including Benin – to undermine the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), comprising Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. He cited these alleged threats as justification for keeping Niger's border with Benin closed, a measure imposed after the military coup in Niamey in July 2023. Relations between the two countries deteriorated following the coup, after Benin enforced sanctions imposed by the West African regional bloc ECOWAS on Niger, including border closures. Although ECOWAS lifted the measures in February, Niamey and its allies – Bamako and Ouagadougou – have since withdrawn from the bloc, accusing it of imposing harsh penalties in response to regime changes in their respective countries. Speaking in an interview with local broadcaster Bip Radio on Sunday, Benin's foreign minister called Niger a 'brother country,' noting that 'it's sad' the relationship between the two neighbors has taken on an 'informal character.' Bakari said that although Benin regretted having to close its border with Niger – now reopened at the Benin side – it took the decision in order to uphold its principles and fulfill regional obligations in response to unconstitutional changes of government. 'We fully respect Niger's sovereignty and its right to freely choose its partners. But in the same way, Benin will never allow its choices of cooperation and partnership, which fall exclusively within its national sovereignty, to be dictated,' he said.
