Africa

It’ll of course take some time to reap the fruits of this vision, but throughout the interim, these countries can rely on varying degrees of Russian assistance.

Burkina Faso revealed in February that it planned to create a confederation with neighboring Mali, which President Traore elaborated on in an exclusive interview with Sputnik in late July. Those two and their mutual Nigerien neighbor then formed the Sahelian Alliance in mid-September nearly three months after that last-mentioned country’s coup. This platform created the basis upon which to include Niger in the planned Burkinabe-Malian Confederation according to their Foreign Ministers’ latest joint statement.

La guerre civile en Libye est devenue une lutte de plus en plus géostratégique. Un accord négocié sous l’égide des Nations Unies et soutenu par les États non alignés est le meilleur moyen de parvenir à une désescalade durable qui permettra à la Libye de retrouver sa souveraineté.

Composée d’une mosaïque d’entités opérationnelles, la coalition de groupes islamistes militants Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen cherche à dissimuler derrière un front apparemment uni les opérations de ses différents constituants au Sahel, de manière à empêcher toute réponse plus robuste aux actions qu’elle mène.

Points Saillants

• Bien qu’elle soit souvent considérée comme une entité opérationnelle à part entière, Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM) regroupe en réalité plusieurs groupes islamistes militants dont les structures organisationnelles, les chefs et les objectifs diffèrent.
• On estime que 75 % des actes violents attribués au JNIM sont le fait du Front de libération du Macina (FLM), actif dans le centre du Mali et dans le nord du Burkina Faso.
• Les groupes qui font partie du JNIM ne jouissent pas d’un grand soutien populaire. En effet, ils ont exploité toujours plus les réseaux criminels locaux et, concernant plus particulièrement le FLM, ont perpétré des attaques contre la population civile.

L’adaptation des structures des forces sahéliennes à des unités plus légères, plus mobiles et plus intégrées permettra de mieux soutenir les pratiques de contre-insurrection centrées sur la population, nécessaires pour inverser la trajectoire croissante des attaques extrémistes violentes.

Coastal West African countries can strengthen resiliency to the threat of violent extremism by enhancing a multilayered response addressing local, national, and regional priorities.

Highlights

• Extremist violence in the Sahel is spilling over into coastal West African countries.
• Governments in coastal West African countries play the leading role in responding to this threat by proactively strengthening ties with local communities in vulnerable regions.
• Regional security cooperation can bolster national defenses through intelligence sharing, coordinating border patrols, and training focused on community protection.
• Forging a multitiered strategy—linking support to communities with regional and international bodies—would help contextualize local responses while sustaining regional cooperation to address the complex threat posed by violent extremist groups.

Fatalities linked to militant Islamist violence in Africa have surged by nearly 60 percent since 2021, though this is marked by widely varying regional threat trajectories, actors, and objectives.

Highlights

The threat from militant Islamist groups in Africa over the past decade has steadily grown—with almost three times the number of annual violent events (roughly 6,700) as in 2014. The reported 21,780 annual fatalities represent a 56 percent increase just from 2021.

Mali has announced that it has cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine, accusing Kyiv of involvement in attacks on Malian soldiers in the West African country in late July.

The Ukrainian government said no evidence was provided to support the allegation.

But the announcement came late Sunday after Andriy Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, the GUR, commented on fierce battles in northern Mali between Tuareg rebels and Malian and Russian paramilitary troops on Ukrainian government-backed TV.