Credit: unowas /  Mohamed Ibn Chambas.  Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS)

By Gary Raynaldo /  DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

UNITED NATIONS  –  NEW YORK –  Violent Islamist attacks across the West African Sahel region have doubled every year since 2015, according to a recently published security brief by the African Center for Strategic Studies.  In 2019, there have been more than 700 such violent episodes, the ACSS brief reports.  Fatalities linked to these events have increased from 225 to 2,000 during the same period. This surge in violence has uprooted more than 900,000 people, including 500,000 in Burkina Faso in 2019 alone,  the brief notes. Attacks are largely concentrated in central Mali, northern and eastern Burkina Faso, and western Niger.  Just last week, islamist militants killed at least 71 soldiers in an attack on a remote military camp in Niger near the border with Mali. The UN Security Council on Monday December 16 held a briefing on the inter-communal violence and terrorism in West Africa.  Mohamed Ibn Chambas, the UN envoy for West Africa and the vast Sahel region, told the Security Council that in recent months, the region has been “shaken by unprecedented violence”.   An “horrific attack against the Inates military camp, in Niger, still haunts the region”, he asserted, adding that “relentless attacks on civilian and military targets have shaken public confidence”.  While acknowledging the nexus between terrorism, organized crime and intercommunal violence, Chambas argued the importance of distinguishing each as a driver of violence.

Factors driving local conflicts:

Governance deficit, particularly poor management of natural resources

Inequalities and marginalization

Corruption

Governments’ failure of to deliver on security and justice

Concerning violent extremism, the UN envoy  noted that the strategy and objectives of armed groups in the region are “in the public domain”, and cited Al Qaeda militants as using local dynamics to spread extremism.  Against the backdrop that close to 70 per cent of West Africans are dependent upon agriculture and livestock-rearing, Chambas stressed that finding ways to ensure peaceful coexistence between herders and farmers is “imperative”.

UN Security Council Urged To Identify Root Causes of Ethnic Violence and Terrorism in Sahel

Credit:  Gary Raynaldo  /  ©Diplomatic Times /   Kelly Knight Craft, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. 

 The deteriorating security situation in the  Sahel amid extremist attacks is compounded by rising intercommunal violence in the region. In Mali and Burkina Faso, extremists groups have exploited socio-economic and political grievances to recruit from the ethnic Fulani population. The UN Security Council President for the month of December Kelly Knight Craft organized the West Africa Sahel meeting with Côte d’Ivoire.  A concept note prepared by the Security Council presidency states that the purpose of the meeting is to highlight underlying factors that contribute to intercommunal conflict and violent extremism throughout West Africa, and identify ways the Council can address the  root causes.

“Recipes against violent extremism are being put in place in many West African countries, with the common denominators of political will, courageous local actors and the involvement of women and young people”,   Chambas said.

Since 2013, when UN  MINUSMA deployed,   more than 200 peacekeepers have died in Mali, including close to  120 killed during hostilities.   The deadly violence has spiraled out of control this year, in particular, despite the presence of thousands of UN and international peacekeeping troops in Mali,  and across the Sahel region.