While the French soldiers left their bases in northern Mali, Paris now wants to counter the terrorist threat to the south of the Sahel.
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The challenge is now clearly displayed by the army staff: it is south of the Sahel that the fight against terrorism must focus. Mali is no longer the main territory of intervention and it is the threat of expansion of jihadism towards the Gulf of Guinea that must be countered in the first place. While the 425 French soldiers of the operation “Barkhane”, who were still deployed in northern Mali, finished, Tuesday, December 14, by officially leaving Timbuktu – last of their three bases in the region – which was A fact of fact since long months becomes a priority assumed.
“The agenda of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims [local version of Al-Qaida] is clear and announced: to go to the Gulf of Guinea, has thus justified Tuesday to The staff of the armies. Yesterday, it was an attempt at territorialization in the area of the three borders, today it is a dissemination to the south and west. “A threat already concrete in Niger, at Burkina Faso, in northern Côte d’Ivoire – improvised explosive devices have exploded recently – and also materializes in Benin. On December 2, the army experienced its first terrorist attack: two soldiers were killed.
This alert on the risk of expansion of jihadism towards the Gulf of Guinea is not new. “The terrorists already finance men who disseminate in Côte d’Ivoire and Benin,” said the boss of the French external intelligence of the French external intelligence on February, during a rare public speaking. But it was only in July, a month after announceting the “end of” Barkhane “” in his initial format, that the head of state, Emmanuel Macron, had formally assumed this rocking: “the error would have been we dwell in a diagram that no longer corresponds to geography or the mode of dissemination of the threat, “he said at a summit of the G5 Sahel bringing together the main countries until then concerned by the action of France: Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
An operational tank
Concretely, in the new configuration of “Barkhane” – historically organized around three poles (N’Djamena to Chad, Gao in Mali and Niamey in Niger) – the role of the basis of the Nigerian capital, where are already Implanted the United States, will be strengthened. Niamey, where are parked a large part of the French airways, will be the main point of junction between the aerial support actions of “Barkhane” – that the staff of the armies says he wants to continue to reassure the armies of the Sahel – and New anti-terrorism efforts facing south.
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