SAHEL REGION OF AFRICA has become a region that can no longer be ignored. Disregarding the potential vulnerability of the region over the years has opened the vast area to a variety of assaults – from environmental to social and economic. Now, the region is in serious crisis, one that has many dimensions and requires urgent and multidimensional remedial measures. For its relevance, crisis in the Sahel region of Africa has already undermined West Africa and will very likely jeopardise the whole of Africa if not addressed urgently and comprehensively. An attempt is being made here to situate the Sahel crisis from West to East Africa geospatially and temporally. In the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), West Africa is the closest region to Europe logistically, by land, sea or air travel. It is also a region which gives EU serious concerns about insecurity in Africa. Although the trouble spots are many, their misfortunes diverse and well known, the solutions remain surprisingly far-fetched. This is evident in the seeming imperious influence of the destabilising forces operating in the region as many African countries no longer trust the capacity of their own regional and continental organisations to guarantee their security.
Countries in the Sahel region which extends further northwards share similar experiences even as some countries outside Africa are more worried than the African countries in the immediate proximity. For example, France and Germany seem to find the Sahel politically and economically strategic and are worried about the potential threat that the region poses to their own security, particularly as a source of migration and terrorism. Mali is particularly considered a gateway to West Africa’s insecurity. Meanwhile, Libya – a war-torn North African country – shares borders with two of the G5 countries, one of which shares border with Mali. The Group of five Sahel countries, otherwise referred to as G5, was an initiative that evolved recently in response to the rising spate of insecurity in the Sahel. It was specifically aimed at enhancing the safety and security of their populations and to guarantee a positive environment for the socio-economic development in the member countries of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger Republic. The G5 Sahel Joint Force, an experiment that was launched in February 17, was in response to the breakdown of security and spread of more than twenty active armed and violent extremist groups commonly experienced in the region.
The G5 Sahel Joint Force, clocking five years this month, needs to establish its relevance and complement the UN’s Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), especially as France draws down its troops and may wind down its operations in the region based on recent events. This is to avoid leaving any vacuum in case France’s Operation Barkhane comes to an abrupt end. Another unsettling issue in the Sahel region’s worrying instability is the increasingly complex, crowded and sometimes-competing military and diplomatic ingenuities which could encourage or be encouraged by power struggles as diplomatic ground in the Sahel iss undergoing tectonic shift. Could it be true that the recent coup d’état in Mali and the subsequent other two in Guinea Conakry and Burkina Faso had an imprimatur of a country that is not threatened by Sahel’s insecurity but is rather looking for strategic opportunities in Mali and in the Sahel region? Perhaps the response of the coup leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso could provide an insight as war is increasingly becoming a private business. In this context, the Malian military junta headed by Assimi Goita is reportedly nearing a deal with Wagner – a private military contractor with close ties to the Russian President Vladimir Putin – to send mercenaries to train Malian troops and provide security for high-ranking officials.
Although the deal with Wagner could understandably irk France, a hasty French exit without plan could further compromise the security architecture of Mali, giving the armed insurgents and terrorists opportunities to expand their operational base and territories captured, enabling them to expand their operations further afield, making Burkina Faso, Niger and the southern countries of Togo, Benin, Ghana and Nigeria more unsafe. The entire West Africa could thus be engulfed in an upsurge of insurgency and terrorist attacks that will further stall the economies of the affected countries. Considering the more worrisome state of insecurity in the Sahel in general, for how long can foreign troops continue to protect Mali and other countries in the sub-region, bearing in mind that someone somewhere picks the bill? At what cost will be their continued stay and who bears the cost? Except there is something to gain, will those countries forever remain committed to peace keeping missions in the Sahel? These are the reasons why regional groupings need to step up and urgently step forward instead of continued reliance on foreign military support.
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a Regional Economic bloc (or REC) and the African Union find a big role here. Proper interpretations need to be given to the growing presence of a country like Russia in the sub-region since the return of the coup era in 2019 as hawkish diplomacy is about to interfere with the Sahelian regional politics and economies. ECOWAS may need to discreetly weigh its interventions against countries that recently came under military rule to avoid serious unintended and undesirable consequences. The closure of borders of Mali and possibly those of Burkina Faso by ECOWAS could be more harmful to the entire region than helpful in the end. Given the vast area of land, the borders are difficult to police and the closure might prevent normal cross-border socio-economic activities by civilian population while the terrorists will devise other routes and more ingenious means of criss-crossing. This is particularly more dangerous as Mali’s government is barely in control of security in the cities, with scant presence in the hinterlands as it lacks the capacity to handle the multidimensional security challenges it faces. The same challenges are faced by Burkina Faso. The Russian equation may tilt the balance in favour of the military junta and not necessarily effectively in favour of the populace.
This exposes the fact that pecuniary attractions remain a strong magnetic force, beyond concerns for security. Mali has rich deposits of minerals. According to the estimates from the Ministry of Mines, Mali has 800 tons of gold deposits, two million tons of iron ore, 5,000 tons of uranium, 20 million tons of manganese, four million tons of lithium, and 10 million tons of limestone in addition to bauxite, phosphates, diamonds and copper. The mining industry of Mali is dominated by gold extraction which has given it the ranking as the fourth largest in Africa after Ghana, South Africa, a commodity making up over 80 per cent of Mali’s total exports in 2020. But the country is plagued by new security threats such as drug trafficking and the infiltration of terrorist groups, particularly al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The uneasy calm in Egypt, Tunisia or Mali’s neighbouring Algeria could be mistaken for relative regional security in the North Africa bordering on the Sahel. Not entirely reassuring as the US has branded the northern parts of Mali and Niger ‘terrorist zones’, with adverse effects on the local economies dependent on tourism and many informal economic activities.
Libya, an oil-rich country with population estimated at 6.98 million, has been in crisis since the NATO-inspired 2011 unrest against Muammar Gaddafi, his eventual assassination and the fragmentation between warring factions in east and west in 2014. What would have been regarded as an end of such a protracted crisis has undergone another stress test last Thursday, with the failed assassination attempt of the incumbent premier, Abdulhamid Dbeibah. It was part of a strong sectarian squabbling over the control of the U.N.-backed Government of National Unity (GNU), an interim government meant to – as part of a peace process – unify the country’s divided institutions and administer the country till the election scheduled for December. In what may lead to having two parallel prime ministers ruling from different cities and further inflaming the tense polity, Dbeibah has refused to step down or recognise a replacement that was named by the parliament after amending the country’s provisional constitution to also postpone the election beyond this year. The spill-over effect of Libya’s long-drawn war continues to be felt in the Sahel as illicit arms trade from the lawless Libya across the borders with Chad and Niger Republic is exacerbating terrorism and insecurity in the Sahel G5 and other countries of West Africa, spreading as far as into Nigeria.
African leaders provide the leeway for foreign exploitation, sometimes beating the path to the doors of the foreign countries and giving subtle invitation. No fewer than 43 African heads of state gathered in Sochi for a Russia-Africa Summit on October 23, 2019, a platform for President Putin to renew Russia’s presence on the African continent. Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, then-President of Mali, invited Putin to come and join in “the fight against terrorism,” telling Putin that “we need this expertise now.” Not surprising too that Russia, desperate to have allies and operational base, may choose Africa for strategic political – and not necessarily only economic – interests, as it could invest in Africa to provide a political instrument in the circumstance of the Cold War with the West. Observing the on-going face-off with Ukraine, leading to the US, EU and NATO’s support for Ukraine, Putin’s Russia may now consider its presence in Mali more desirable. The next might be China, which started its own international diplomacy on the Belt and Road Initiative. It is a matter of time that its military arm will begin to make overtures to or receive requests from Mali or any other country in the sub-region. It did not just begin now. Bamako requested help from Paris in 2013, in which a mission the French military originally intended to operate a few weeks persisted until about a year ago when France began to draw down its troops.
Whether Mali is better with French troops since 2013 is anybody’s guess as the true independence of Mali from France is being questioned. The material gains as motive for intervention is being surmised as the sale of Mali’s mineral resources in the international markets cannot be divorced from the overall motivation for French intervention. It is therefore important to begin to critically examine the new initiatives of countries falling heads over heels on the Sahel in their home diplomacy periodic summits on Africa, particularly in China and Russia. African regional groupings need to rise up to this challenge and not consider such shrewd diplomacy as altruistic, but rather more in their own strategic interests than ours. The long-term implications of foreign interests in the Sahel and all over Africa should henceforth be subjected to test of relevance and sustainability for the future benefits of the region and its sub-regions.
The souls of our ancestors will now rest in peace!