G5 Sahel Summiteers Call for More International Support to Counter Terror Threat

Leaders of the G5 Sahel summit, convened Sunday in Niamey, called for enhanced cooperation among member countries of the G5 Sahel group and urged the international community to support this regional bloc in its war against jihadist networks.

The summit, which gathered the leaders of Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Mauritania, was held after the death last week of 71 Niger soldiers in a terrorist attack. ISIS claimed responsibility for the assault, in which hundreds of jihadists attacked a camp near the border with Mali with shells and mortars.

Addressing the summit, Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou said the terrorist threat against the Sahel countries is getting worse, while president of Burkina Faso Roch Marc Christian Kabore affirmed that the increasing attacks carried out by terrorist groups in the region show not only the gravity of the situation, but also the urgency for the G5 Sahel countries to work more closely together.

 

After last week’s attack, French President Emmanuel Macron postponed until next year a meeting with the five presidents of the G5 Sahel member countries. The meeting had been scheduled this week in the southwestern French town of Pau to discuss security in the region.

 

The security crisis in the region started in 2012 when armed Islamists took over the northern part of Mali, triggering a French military intervention in the region to push them back. A peace deal was signed in 2015, but was not completely implemented, plunging the region in unprecedented levels of violence, with militant groups seeking to extend their influence across central Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Between November 2018 and March 2019, the rise in civilian victims varied from 300% up to 7,000% in some Sahel countries compared to the same period in the previous year, according to figures by Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita released at the 10th Ministerial Meeting of the Global Counter-Terrorism Forum held in New York on Sept. 25.

 

The statistics show that in the first six months of this year, more than 200 terrorist attacks occurred on the continent, resulting in over 5,000 security and civilian victims.

Also, across the vast Sahel region, militant groups and terrorist networks are making all sorts of illicit trades such as weapons, drug, motorcycle, and fuel trafficking, cattle rustling, artisanal gold mining and poaching