The Sahel Conundrum

By Olivier Guitta

Seven African nations are among the 10 riskiest global locations terrorism-wise. Two of them, the neighbors Burkina Faso and Mali are located in the Sahel, that 5,000 km belt of land below the Sahara Desert stretching from the Atlantic Coast to the Red Sea. In just the past 15 months, more than 6,600 civilians have been killed by jihadist groups in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Local governments are now actively looking to negotiate with these terror groups while the West with France leading the way is very reticent to do so. What will happen there?

Everything really started eight years ago when al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) jihadists were just 50 kms from Mali’s capital Bamako and were bound to take over the whole country. A French military intervention saved the day and pushed back AQIM but couldn’t decimate the jihadist group. Since then, 50 French soldiers, over 3,000 Malian soldiers and 140 United Nations Blue Helmets have been killed by the jihadists.

For a few years, the Sahelian countries refused to envisage to open a dialogue with the terrorists, but at the end of 2019, Mali’s president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said, “The number of deaths in the Sahel is becoming exponential and it’s time that certain paths be explored”. He then reached out to the main jihadist group, the al-Qaeda-linked Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) of legendary Tuareg jihadist Iyad ag Ghaly. Interestingly, the Malian military junta that took over from...