Africa

On March 21, nine Algerian migrants died when the boat taking them to Italy capsized in the Mediterranean Sea. The tragic story, along with countless others like it, highlights the cost of migration, which is not limited to the loss of lives. In fact, the highly publicized reports of migrant deaths have increasingly shaped a vision of irregular migration as a symptom of a broader social tragedy, one that drives thousands of skilled young people from Africa to set off down unknown, dangerous paths in search of a better future for themselves.

A lack of state and industry accountability has turned the ocean into the world’s biggest transnational crime scene.

The ocean is central to global illicit trade. Criminal networks plunder marine resources, scour shipping lanes for vessels to hijack, and traverse coastal state waters and the high seas to move commodities to distant destinations.

North African states have seen an uptick in the number of migrants arriving and risking the perilous Mediterranean crossing to Southern Europe since a military coup in Niger severed cooperation between the West African nation and the EU.

President’s Take: Hot Spots Near and Far

The year 2023 has seen peace and security challenges both far from the EU’s borders and closer to home. The latter, especially, have heightened in recent weeks and months, which have seen fighting in the South Caucasus and Kosovo, even as a second year of war in Ukraine stretches on. While the three crises are very different in nature, all suggest a worrying inclination on the part of some governments to seek solutions to disputes through force of arms. Insofar as this jarring trend involves a proliferation of new wars, large and small, it flies in the face of the decades of energy that the EU has invested in turning the page on past conflagrations in Europe and its neighbourhood. Crisis Group is working on a report about how these conflicts are shaping the emerging European security architecture and how best to minimise the risk of future clashes. In the meantime, however, these three crises demand immediate attention. We have explored all of them in earlier work, but I want to share a few thoughts about recent developments.

Mali’s northern Tuareg rebels said on Wednesday that they had seized another military base from the Malian army, bringing to five the number of conquered and pillaged camps in recent weeks.

Le Sahel est confronté depuis plusieurs années à une série de menaces dont les plus emblématiques sont le terrorisme islamiste, les trafics illicites et la criminalité organisée. Ces menaces ont contribué à déstabiliser cette région et dans certains pays accentué la fragilité de l’Etat. Souvent, la faiblesse des institutions démocratiques et le rôle partiellement dysfonctionnel des forces de sécurité, le manque de stratégies sécuritaires au niveau national, l’insuffisance des ressources financières, ainsi que les intérêts contradictoires des divers acteurs empêchent la mise en place de structures de sécurité modernisées. Cette situation aggrave le climat d’insécurité et accentue davantage les risques d’instabilité non propice
au développement socio-économique des pays de l’espace sahélien. C’est dans ce contexte que prospèrent également les réseaux de narco trafiquants, qui essaiment dans cette partie du continent à travers plusieurs axes transfrontaliers contribuant à déstabiliser la région du Sahel et à fragiliser la paix et la sécurité dans cette zone.

The Islamic State in the Great Sahara has sought to prioritize extending its scope, rather than sustainable entrenchment in its areas of action. This partly explains its rapid rise along the borders of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

Composed of a mosaic of operational entities, the coalition of militant Islamist groups Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen seeks to hide behind an apparently united front the operations of its various constituents in the Sahel, so as to prevent any more robust response to its actions.