Militants Are Edging South Toward West Africa’s Most Stable and Prosperous States
By Michael M. Phillips, March 2, 2022, WSJ

The Islamist militants who have rampaged through the heart
of West Africa in recent years are now spreading toward the
Gulf of Guinea coast, including some of the continent’s most
stable and prosperous countries, according to African and
U.S. officials.

The past year has seen an uptick in violence instigated by
al Qaeda affiliates along the northern borders of Benin and
Togo, with militant cells infiltrating as far as Ghana and
Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producers.

The attacks on countries along the bend in Africa’s Atlantic
coast appear to confirm warnings that U.S. military commanders
have issued for several years: Unless stopped, militant
violence won’t remain contained in the landlocked nations of
the Sahel, the semiarid expanses directly south of the Sahara.

“It does look like the jihadists have the aim of getting to
the sea,” said Ghanaian army Brig. Gen. Felicia Twum-Barima.

The jihadists’ southward push marks a new chapter in a
decadelong security crisis that has claimed thousands of
lives since al Qaeda-linked fighters swept through northern
Mali in 2012, triggering the deployment of thousands of troops
by France to reinforce its former colony. The fighting ebbed,
then surged again across the Sahel, with jihadist factions
loyal to al Qaeda and Islamic State attacking local and allied
forces, as well as each other. Since 2020, the region has seen
a wave of coups by soldiers pledging to restore security.

France has 4,600 troops fighting in the Sahel, most of them
in Mali, but broke with the Malian military junta after it
welcomed Russian mercenaries and said it would begin formal
negotiations with al Qaeda linked jihadist leaders. In mid
February, Paris announced it would withdraw its forces from
Mali and redeploy them elsewhere in the region.

“We should be very concerned about the continued expansion of
al Qaeda and al Qaeda affiliates across the Sahel, and now
threatening to move down into the littoral states,” Rear Adm.
Jamie Sands, commander of U.S. special-operations troops in
Africa, said in an interview in Ivory Coast last week : “It
looks like they’re doing it in a very methodical way.”

Last year, there were 13 Islamist militant attacks in Ivory
Coast, five in Benin and one in Togo, according to Armed
Conflict Location & Event Data Project figures assembled by
the Pentagon-funded Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
By contrast, there were no militant attacks in those countries
in 2019, and three in 2020, all in Ivory Coast.

Ghanaian officials say they haven’t seen any incidents inside
their country. Attacks, however, have taken place just a few
miles away, across the border with Burkina Faso.

On Feb. 8, four park rangers, a French instructor and two
drivers were killed and 10 others wounded by a series of
booby-trap bombs laid inside the Benin portion of W National
Park, according to African Parks, the nonprofit conservation
group managing the park. Two days later, another roadside
bomb hit a Benin army commando team, killing one soldier.

France, the former colonial power in Benin and much of the
rest of West Africa, retaliated with an airstrike that the
French said killed 40 fighters from Ansarul Islam, a small
al Qaeda-affiliated outfit.

“I’m not surprised that they’re here—but the speed is alarming,” Gen. Twum-Barima said on the sidelines of the nine-day U.S.-led
West African commando exercises in Jacqueville, Ivory Coast that
ended Monday.

The annual special-operations training event is intended to
help elite West African military units combat militants and
counter their guerrilla tactics.

Some 370 troops from 4 African nations and 7 Western countries
attended the exercises, hosted for the first time in a country
on the Gulf of Guinea. Ghana is slated to host in 2023 and
the following year.

The coastal nations aren’t experiencing violence on the scale
seen in the hard-hit Sahelian countries. Mali, Niger and
Burkina Faso saw 2,005 attacks last year, up 70% from 1,180
in 2020, according to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
There were 4,839 deaths associated with attacks in the Sahel
last year.

But the experience of Burkina Faso is a reminder of how
quickly an Islamist insurgency can spread in areas where
borders are porous, local grievances festering and government
presence limited. The country was relatively quiet in 2017 and,
just two years later, found itself overwhelmed by Islamic State
and al Qaeda affiliates. Last year, Burkina Faso experienced
over 1,100 attacks.

U.S., Canadian and European efforts to help contain the spread
of militancy in the region have been complicated by recent
military coups in Mali and Burkina Faso.

In Mali, special-forces Col. Assimi Goïta, a past recipient
of U.S. military training, has led two coups since August 2020.
Since his second takeover, in May 2021, the military junta has
hired 800 to 1,000 mercenaries from a private Russian firm, the
Wagner Group, to provide internal security, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. decried both the coup and the deployment of Russian
mercenaries, and didn’t invite Mali to this year’s West African
commando exercises.

The U.S. counts on France—which had anchored a 5,400-strong
European force focused on Mali until its falling out with the
junta—to lead the fight against Islamist militants in the region,
with American assistance in intelligence, training, logistics and
drone support.

“Their departure will create a vacuum which will be filled by
the terrorist organizations,” Mohamed Bazoum, president of
Niger, said after the French announcement. He said that since
the coup, Malian soldiers had abandoned posts on Niger’s border.

The U.S. also canceled Burkina Faso’s invitation to the exercises
in Ivory Coast following a military coup last month. The Dutch
government withdrew its commando trainers.

President Bazoum said French and other European forces would be
welcome to set up new bases in Niger and predicted they would
also operate in Benin and other coastal countries. France already
has thousands of troops stationed across Africa, including 950 in
Ivory Coast, 350 in Senegal, 1,450 in Djibouti and 350 in Gabon,
an addition to the 4,600 which were spread across the Sahelian
battlegrounds of Mali, Niger and Chad. The U.S. is also discussing
ways to boost Ivory Coast’s defensive capabilities, according to
American officials.

Governments on the coast now find themselves pinched between
the militant threat approaching from the north, and a surge in
piracy aimed at commercial shipping in the Gulf of Guinea to
their south.

Militants see economic opportunity in the coastal countries,
according to U.S. and African officials. Ghana fears that
Islamist groups aim to gain control of the country’s gold mines.
U.S. intelligence agencies estimate al Qaeda affiliates already
extort about $20 million in cash or gold each year from artisanal
miners in the Sahel.

Supporters of Islamic State of the Greater Sahara also operate
warehouses in Benin, Ghana and Togo, according to a UN report.

Both Islamic State and JNIM, the al Qaeda umbrella group, take
advantage of pastoral and smuggling routes in the north of Ghana
and Benin, European security officials say.

Commanders and diplomats warn that military action alone is
unlikely to stem expansion of extremist violence. African
militant groups often take root in isolated areas where
governments are weakest, exploiting local grievances and
rivalries with the promise of strict enforcement of their
interpretation of Islamic law

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sahel-based-militants-edging-south-toward-west-africas-most-stable-and-prosperous-states-11646221800

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)