Shifts in the fight against terrorist groups in West Africa

The past three months have witnessed a clear rise in terrorist threats to West and Central Africa, challenging international efforts to combat violence on the continent. This has led to the need to search for new ways to stop the means of supporting extremism, with the announcement of government officials accepting negotiations with some groups.

Statistics

Official statistics indicate that the Somali Al-Shabaab terrorist movement carried out 28 terrorist attacks in January 2020 alone, which varied between armed attacks, suicide bombings and assassinations, resulting in 28 casualties. The Nigerian Boko Haram group, meanwhile, carried out about 22 operations in the vicinity of Lake Chad in the same month, resulting in 411 casualties.

According to local media in Niger, 174 soldiers were killed in three attacks in the Tillaberi region since December 2019, including the Inates attack in which 71 people were killed on December 10, 2019, and the Chinegodar attack that killed 89 people on January 8, 2020. The ISIS terrorist organization claimed responsibility for these attacks.

Al-Qaeda’s media wing, As-Sahab Media Foundation, published a statement on January 20 about targeting the US Simba naval base in Manda Bay in the Kenyan province of Lamu. Murithi Mutiga, Horn of Africa project director at the International Crisis Group, said that the attack represented “a serious security collapse, given the size of the target and the location of the base near the border with Somalia.”

Shifts in confrontation

International and local reactions have varied on ways to confront the growing threat of terrorist groups in the region. French Defense Minister Florence Parly announced during her visit to the Malian capital Bamako on January 21 that the border triangle between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger will soon witness new military operations against terrorist groups, after these groups increased their activities against the coalition forces.

Indeed, Paris began to confront the growth of these groups, and the French army announced on February 7 that its soldiers had killed more than 30 extremists in Mali during three operations.

American retreat

Despite the French defense minister's warnings about reducing US forces' counterterrorism operations on the continent, the Pentagon issued a report saying that the US military no longer hopes to eliminate extremist groups in West Africa, but only to contain them.

The report stated that US forces in West Africa clashed with elements of groups such as ISIS and Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, citing a series of recent attacks in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali.

Mauritania conference

As part of the search for new methods to counter terrorism, the Mauritanian capital Nouakchott hosted a three-day conference on January 21 of more than 500 Islamic religious scholars from all over the continent, in a partnership between the Mauritanian government and the UAE-based Forum for the Promotion of Peace in Muslim Societies.

The closing statement of the conference included appeals to African youth involved with extremist groups to stop, review themselves, and rely on legitimate means to safeguard their homelands and religions.

Negotiations

On February 12, French media published statements by Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in which he announced for the first time that opening a channel to communicate with militants, an option the government had repeatedly rejected previously.

"The death toll in the Sahel region is increasing steadily, and it is time to explore new channels," Keita said in an interview with France 24 and Radio France Internationale.

The Malian president added, "We are ready to build channels of communication with everyone... at some point we will have to sit around a table and talk."

These statements came after the announcement that three members of Mali’s gendarmerie were killed and another three wounded in an attack on a military base in the center of the country.