In the Sahel, the joint operations of the countries of the region are showing their effectiveness. The Burkinabè and Nigerien armed forces claim to have “neutralized a hundred terrorists” and “apprehended about twenty suspects” during a joint intervention carried out from November 25 to December 9 in eastern Burkina Faso, on the border with Niger.
Four Burkinabè soldiers were killed and thirteen soldiers from the two countries wounded during this operation, explain the two staffs in a statement. For this coordinated action, whose command and coordination post was in Tillabéri, west of Niger, “the national armed forces of Burkina Faso and Niger have each deployed several ground units”, the statement continued. “Surveillance and combat aircraft were also mobilized on both sides to support the units engaged.”
The operation made it possible to dismantle “two terrorist bases” in the area of Yeritagui (eastern Burkina Faso) and Kokoloukou (western Niger), according to the two armies which announced that they had seized weapons, ammunition and improvised explosive devices.
Burkina needed this military success, because the growing insecurity arouses the exasperation of the population which pushed President Roch Marc Christian Kaboré to dismiss his government on December 8. A government that has not resisted the rise of anger in the country for several weeks, the population denouncing “incapacity” power to counter jihadist violence.
The Burkinabè’s fed up was exacerbated by the particularly deadly attack in Inata (north) on November 14, 2021, where at least 57 people, including 53 gendarmes, were killed by armed jihadists.
After considering national strategies, the countries of the region realized that they had to join forces and coordinate to fight terrorism. Burkina Faso thus participated from November 21 to 27 in another joint operation, this time with Côte d’Ivoire, Togo and Ghana, with which it also shares its southern border. This made it possible to arrest 304 suspicious individuals and seize weapons and explosives.
Accelerating security cooperation, confirms an expert: “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.”, said Mr. de Rohan Chabot during the International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa which has just been held in Dakar.
These joint and coordinated actions seem to be more effective, especially as the jihadists are playing with borders and all of West Africa is now concerned. “At the start of the Sahelian crisis, around 2014, the coastal countries considered themselves outside the zone where jihadism could spread”, said at the Dakar forum on peace and security Bakary Sambe, regional director of the Timbuktu Institute. For these groups, one of the interests of spreading to the coast in this way is to have maritime access.
This extension “also responds to the need to have logistical corridors, to stock up on goods, to refuel”, explains Alain Antil, researcher at IFRI. And is, for Mr. Sambe, “an opportunity to better connect to other forms of criminal economy”.
Each of the countries in the region now knows that it will not do it alone in the face of jihadist forces that have been underestimated for too long. Only genuine military coordination seems able to contain the violence of these groups in the region. However, Bakary Sambe believes that military action will not be enough and that 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, whereas prevention is to attack the structural causes” by providing economic, social and legal responses to the problems of certain parts of the population.