By danielkosh @Adobe Stock
David Lewis, Jessica Donati, and Kaylee Kang of Reuters report that West Africa is now the world’s terrorism hotspot. They write:
Having slipped undetected into Mali’s capital weeks ago, the jihadis struck just before dawn prayers. They killed dozens of students at an elite police training academy, stormed Bamako’s airport and set the presidential jet on fire.
The Sept. 17 attack was the most brazen since 2016 in a capital city in the Sahel, a vast arid region stretching across sub-Saharan Africa south of the Sahara Desert.
It showed that jihadist groups with links to al Qaeda or Islamic State, whose largely rural insurgency has killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, can also strike at the heart of power. […]
Jihadi violence, especially the heavy toll it has taken on government troops, was a major factor in a wave of military coups since 2020 against Western-backed governments in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, the countries at the heart of the Sahel.The military juntas that replaced them have since swapped French and U.S. military assistance for Russians, mainly from Wagner’s mercenary outfit, but have continued to lose ground.Global Terrorism Hotspot
Western powers that previously invested in trying to beat back the jihadists have very little capacity left on the ground, especially since the junta in Niger last year ordered the U.S. to leave a sprawling desert drone base in Agadez.
U.S. troops and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) used drones to track jihadists and shared intelligence with allies such as the French, who launched air strikes against the militants, and West African armies.
But the Americans were booted out after they angered Niger’s coup leaders by refusing to share intelligence and warning them against working with the Russians. The U.S. is still looking for a place to reposition its assets.
“Nobody else filled the gap of providing effective air surveillance or air support, so the jihadis are roaming freely in those three countries,” said Wassim Nasr, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center, a think-tank in New York. […]
Will Linder, a retired CIA officer who runs a risk consultancy, said the attacks in Bamako and Barsalogho showed that efforts by the juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso to shore up security were failing.
“The leadership of both countries really need new strategies for countering their jihadist insurgencies,” he said.
Read more here.
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