France, & War Against Jihadists in Sahel

By: Dr. Abdel Haq Azzouzi

On December 4, following the killing of 13 French soldiers in Mali in a collision between two helicopters during a combat mission, French President Macron called the heads of the five Sahel states for a summit in the city of Bo, southwestern France, to explore their countries’ vision regarding the French military existence on their lands.

The manner of the Elysée, however, angered many in Africa, who felt the French call was rather as a "summons" to heads of countries where anti-France sentiments were already mounting.

The French President recently said that his country cannot fight jihadists alone in the Sahel region, where 4,500 French soldiers are deployed within the Barkhane force, calling on the leaders of the five Sahel group countries (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania) for a "clear political commitment."

He added on another occasion: "I cannot ask our soldiers to take risks in order to fight terrorism and ensure the security of these countries, and that there be on the other hand a public opinion in these same countries convinced of lies."

The important thing about this is that France started to sense the anti-sentiments, and after six years of its continuous military existence there, where 41 among its men were killed, still there are Jihadist attacks in northern Mali, which reached the heart of its lands as well.

Those attacks have also reached neighboring Burkina Faso and Niger… the countries there are very weak, and their security establishments are unable to protect the borders, nor they are able to fight the movement of the extremists across countries and borders.

If the popular Sufi inclinations (Al-Qadri-Al-Tijani .) is present from ancient times in those societies due to historical factors, then the conservative and fanatic tendencies began to penetrate these countries in a very interesting way, until the terrorist groups and movements coming from Algeria, Somalia and Niger reached them,

These trends have never been recognized in those countries in the past, such as Niger, where Muslims represent 60 % of the population and they are Sunni-Malikis. In Burkina Faso, for instance, Muslims are Malikis and Sufis by tradition.

It is no secret to those interested in Sahel political systems, extending between Libya, Chad, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, that they are very weak regimes, in terms of democratic representation, economic potential, and effective security presence inside the cities and borders. This makes the big regional area a haven of terrorist organizations that began to view it as a suitable settlement area.

There is also an advantage for the extremist organizations there, which does not exist in Syria and Iraq. The terrorists in Sahel are making big profits through trading in drugs, weapons and human beings within inter-related connections with international criminal organizations and with tribes and ethnicities such as the Tuareg in Mali or those near the Great Lake in Chad.

This trade generates, according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, about four hundred million dollars a year, in profits for such organizations claiming that they are abiding by religion and dictated by its right path. This made the region a safe haven for such trade, passage for drugs (such as cocaine, for example) to Europe via West Africa, and to sell weapons that come by sea to Benin and Togo in all countries of the region.

This painful situation suffered, would continue in the future, by Sahel countries, would have never been strengthened without the absence of the state in Libya. There is a connection between insecurity, the emergence of ISIS in Libya, widespread chaos on one hand, and what is happening in the Sahel region and West Africa on the other.

The presence of the French forces, which has an ancient colonial presence in the region, did not prevent the development of terrorism, which will trigger, over time, a great rift in the entity and future of generations. The great problem for France is that this terrorism affects, not only the countries concerned, but also its existing military forces, and even its strategic interests.

This was almost pronounced by the French President who recently said: "France is not there to achieve imperial goals (...) I will not allow myself to be subjected to such an attack. I will not allow our soldiers to be attacked with this kind of argument."