(Dakar) Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire… the jihadist violence that has ravaged the Sahel region for years is spilling out more and more into the coastal countries of the Gulf of Guinea, a phenomenon which will continue and which poses an urgent challenge to governments.
Various experts and officials interviewed by AFP at the Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa warn of the tendency to spread from the focus of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
“It has only just begun, it will continue, it will accelerate,” said a senior African official on condition of anonymity.
“The metastasis has started and probably more than we know, and more than the authorities of these countries will be ready to admit, at least publicly,” said a European diplomat, also on condition of anonymity.
“The risk that we see more and more is that of seeing what is happening in the Sahel transfer to coastal countries,” Chadian Annadif Mahamat Saleh, special representative in charge of the United Nations Office for Africa, told the Forum. West and Sahel (UN-UNOWAS).
For several years, at regular intervals, attacks attributed to jihadists have struck countries located outside the heart of the fight waged in the Sahel.
This surge “has been reflected for several months now by armed clashes in the north of Côte d’Ivoire and for a few days by the first clashes with the Beninese armed forces”, explains General Michel Delpit at the head of the French elements in Senegal. (EFS).
“We are seeing concrete signs of this progress, such as the recent attack in Benin, even if the group that is the author has not yet been identified. Also a few weeks ago, an attack in northern Togo, coupled with rumors about the presence of elements of the EIGS (the Islamic State in the Great Sahara, Editor’s note) in this area, highlighted the risk of ‘expansion of the jihadist threat in the country,’ explains Pierre-Élie de Rohan Chabot, researcher on the Sahel at the International Crisis Group.
“At the start of the Sahelian crisis around 2014, the coastal countries considered themselves outside the zone where jihadism could spread,” recalls Bakary Sambe, regional director of the Timbuktu Institute. “Unfortunately, they are in a culture of denial” in particular to continue to attract foreign investment and tourist windfall, he adds.
Advanced stage
The problem is that the jihadist push, while not translating into massive attacks, is already at an advanced stage.
“Violence is the final phase of the implantation cycle,” explains Alain Antil, director of the Sub-Saharan Africa center at IFRI. “When you see it erupt, in reality, they’ve been there for at least a year, they’ve tried to find allies. They studied the area, given its weaknesses, the resentments between certain communities or towards the central State ”.
“For example, to pastoralists who do not feel protected by the authorities, they will offer protection against the use of their land by other communities, who benefit from state protections.”
Faced with the growing threat, coastal states are organizing themselves, in particular with the Accra initiative launched in 2017 by Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Togo, to strengthen their security cooperation.
“Togo adopted its first military programming law recently, Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso have carried out several joint military operations in recent months, and Côte d’Ivoire has just purchased two planes to strengthen its capacity,” recalls Mr. de Rohan Chabot.
But for Bakary Sambe, these countries “have missed the boat of prevention”. “In the Sahel, we have focused on the fight against terrorism by military means to eliminate targets while forgetting that they can regenerate, while preventing is attacking structural causes” by providing answers economic, social, judicial to the problems of certain parts of the population.
In this propagation, “there is of course great geopolitics, Wahhabi currents, etc., but also microconflicts which are contaminated, we are at the level of the land, these are jihadized insurgencies, and in some cases, if the ‘State intervened in time, that would be settled,’ says Mr. Antil.
For these groups, one of the interests of spreading to the coast in this way is to have maritime access. “The extension to the Gulf countries also responds to the need to have logistical corridors, to stock up on goods, to refuel,” explains Mr. Antil. “An opportunity to better connect to other forms of criminal economy”, for Mr. Sambe.
Faced with this panorama, the European diplomat judges that “2022 is the time to discuss and succeed in creating a sort of“ social barrier ”” against these movements.