Credit: Wikiwand.com /  A Burkinabé soldier with an AKM during an exercise.

By Gary Raynaldo       DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

The Jihadist insurgency in the Sahel region of Africa shows no signs of abating as four soldiers were killed in an extremist attack in Burkina Faso Monday, security sources told AFP.  Jihadists ambushed the troops a few kilometres from the Niger border in Yagha province, according to AFP.   

West Africa Shaken By “Unprecedented” Extremist and Ethnic Violence:  UN Envoy

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).

Violent Islamist attacks across the West African Sahel region have doubled every year since 2015, according to a  published security brief by the African Center for Strategic Studies.  In 2019, there were  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.  Last February, 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 in December 2019  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 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.

African Ambassadors Call For More Action To End Terror Attacks in SAHEL

Credit:  By Gary Raynaldo  /  Ambassador of Niger to the United States Abdallah Wafy (left),  Ambassador  of Mauritania  to the U.S.  Ba  Samba  Mamadou,  and  Second Adviser of the Embassy of Mali in the U.S. Ibrahima  Biridogo , participate in the  Africa Center for Strategic Studies  roundtable, “Strategies for Peace and Security in the Sahel” at National Defense University in Washington D.C. Sept. 9, 2019.

 Frustration is mounting among African leaders as there seems to be no end to deadly terror and ethnic attacks across the Sahel. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies  held a roundtable, “Strategies for Peace and Security in the Sahel” at National Defense University in Washington D.C. last September to address the security issue in the African region . Ambassadors and representatives  from Niger, Mauritania, Mali, Chad, and Burkina Faso participated in the forum.

Since the forum, the jihadist insurgency in the Sahel continues its deadly path. 

Three UN peacekeepers from Chad were killed in northern Mali on Sunday when their convoy hit a roadside bomb near Aguelhok, in the restive Kidal region,  according to the  UN Stabilization Mission in Mali(MINUSMA).  The  MINUSMA Mission In West Africa nation Mali is the most dangerous in the world for UN Peacekeepers.  There have been nearly 200 UN ‘blue helmet’ peacekeepers killed since MINUSMA  was established in 2013.  On Jan. 20, 2019, ten peacekeepers from Chad were killed in a suspected Islamist attack in northern Mali.