Macron vows to boost new Sahel anti-terror force

FRENCH President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Mali yesterday to boost Western backing for a regional anti-jihadist force, with France urging greater support for the Sahel region amid mounting insecurity.

The so-called “G5 Sahel” countries south of the Sahara – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – have pledged to fight jihadists on their own soil with instability and Islamist attacks on the rise.

Macron is joining these nations’ heads of state in Bamako for a special summit where France’s backing for the force will be announced, with a likely focus on providing equipment.

Based in Sevare, central Mali, the 5 000strong G5 Sahel force aims to bolster 12 000 UN peacekeepers and France’s own 4 000-member Operation Barkhane, which is operating in the region.

Macron is also looking to extra backing from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and the US – which already has a drone base in Niger – beyond a pledge of million (R747.1-million) from the European Union.

A researcher at the Paris-based Iris Institute, Serge Michailof, described the EU contribution as “a joke” given the EU’s “very deep pockets” and the poverty of the Sahel countries.

“This force is going to cost to 350million (R3.9- to R5.2-billion) at the very least,” he said.

Chadian President Idriss Deby has said his country cannot afford to mobilise large numbers of troops simultaneously for the UN peacekeeping mission and also for the new force.

Deby and Macron are due to meet on the margins of the Bamako summit to discuss the financial issue. Chad’s military is widely viewed as the strongest of the five Sahel nations.

Macron visited Gao in northern Mali in May, his first foreign visit as president outside Europe, and promised French troops would remain “until the day there is no more Islamic terrorism in the region”.

France intervened to chase out jihadists linked to al-Qaeda who had overtaken key northern cities in Mali in 2013.

That mission evolved into the current Barkhane deployment launched in 2014 with an expanded mandate for counterterror operations across the Sahel.

The new Sahel force will support national armies trying to catch jihadists across porous frontiers, and will work closely with Barkhane.

Operations across Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali, all hit with frequent jihadist attacks, will be coordinated with French troops, a source in the French presidency said earlier this week, while help would be given to set up command centres.

However, the G5 Sahel force has supplementary challenges in the weak armed forces of Burkina Faso and Mali, while Chad and Niger are already engaged on multiple fronts.

The three-nation border of LiptakoGourma will become a “laboratory” for Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger where French forces will aim to work in tandem with these nations, before bringing Chad and Mauritania into the mix, predicted Rinaldo Depagne from the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organisation that works on conflict resolution.

The G5 Sahel force’s top commander, Malian general Didier Dacko, has said that, at first, each country’s contingent would operate on its own soil, gradually becoming more focused on their mutual borders. — AFP