Sahel: Combating terrorism, specificity and complementarities

By on August 10, 2010
Intelligence officials from six African countries – Mali, Niger, Chad, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Nigeria – have completed Saturday, in the Malian capital Bamako, a two-day meeting on the issue of security of the Sahelo-Saharan region. The goal is to further more coordination efforts against Al Qaeda, and against terrorism in the area.

Now, approaches and perceptions of the actors involved in the fight against terrorism in the Maghreb, or the fight against terrorism in Africa, raise black findings and specificities of each region or sub region. And without willing to put on the side the efforts and assistance brought by others to the issue, the six countries, at the south of the Sahara, now want to speak with one voice: “Information and intelligence must be at the heart of the fight against terrorism”, the Nigerian representative said when he addressed the other five colleagues. Each country will make the data available to its partners, stamped as “Islamist terrorists wanted”.

The Bamako meeting stressed on measures to be taken against the armed Islamist groups willing to enlarge their nest across the sub-region. According to security sources, the AQIM brass is trying to link up with the Boko Haram group also called the “Nigerian Taliban”.

In the light of this meeting, apparently led by the most populous African country, massively toppled by ethnic and religious fighting, Nigeria wants to cut the bridges between those groups at the North of the Sahara and those at the South. In the ranks of AQIM, there are Nigerians and they seem to grow more and more towards this partnership by making full rounds, between the vast Sahara and their country of origin.

These back and forth shifts might be originated more by drugs’ traffic and smugglings than by religious inspiration…

 

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