The terrorists launched their attack right before dawn prayers after sneaking into Mali’s capital some weeks earlier. They invaded the airport in Bamako, set fire to the presidential jet, and murdered dozens of cadets at an exclusive police training academy.
The Sahel, a large dry region that stretches across sub-Saharan Africa south of the Sahara Desert, has many capital cities. The attack on September 17, 2016, was the most heinous since 2016.
It demonstrated the ability of jihadist organizations with ties to the Islamic State, or al Qaeda, whose mostly rural struggle has resulted in the deaths of thousands of people and the displacement of millions in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, to attack the center of power.
The Syrian conflict is often overshadowed by the ongoing wars in Sudan, the Middle East, and Ukraine. Nevertheless, it is a factor in the significant increase in migration from the region to Europe, which coincides with the rise of far-right anti-immigrant parties and border tightening measures in some EU states.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM) of the United Nations reports that this year, the Canary Islands of Spain are the entry point into Europe, with the sharpest increase in numbers coming from coastal West African countries.
The number of migrants from Sahel nations (Burkina, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, and Senegal) entering Europe increased by 62% to 17,300 in the first half of 2024 from 10,700 in the same period the previous year. According to IOM data, they put the blame on conflict and climate change.
Jihadi violence in the Sahel region, particularly in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, has led to a wave of military coups since 2020 against Western-backed governments. The regimes that replaced them have swapped French and U.S. military assistance for Russians, but have continued to lose ground. The number of violent events involving jihadi groups in these countries has almost doubled since 2021, with 224 attacks a month on average since the start of this year.
Western powers that previously invested in trying to beat back jihadists have very little capacity left on the ground, especially since the junta in Niger last year ordered the U.S. to leave a desert drone base in Agadez. A U.S. panel of experts estimates that JNIM, the al Qaeda-aligned faction most active in the Sahel, had 5,000-6,000 fighters while 2,000-3,000 militants were linked to Islamic State.
Jihadists use a mixture of coercion and the offer of basic services, including local courts, to install their systems of governance over rural communities that have long complained of neglect by weak, corrupt, central governments. European governments are divided on how to respond to the conflict, with Southern European nations who receive most migrants favoring keeping communication with the juntas open, while others object because of human rights and democracy concerns.
The other major worry for Western powers is the potential for the Sahel to become a base for global jihad, like Afghanistan or Libya in the past. All these violent extremist organizations do have aspirations of attacking the United States, but other officials and experts say the groups have not declared any interest in carrying out attacks in Europe or the United States as yet.
(Reuters)
