Wed 01 September 2021:
Defense ministers and army chiefs of staff from Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad, the five G5 Sahel countries, opened an extraordinary meeting Tuesday to redefine their method of fighting terrorism.
“Like those of the world” the Sahel armies “must review their methods and approaches” to face “a world in perpetual change, plagued by traditional and non-traditional threats,” Brahim Daoud Yaya, Chad’s Minister of National Defense, said at the opening of the meeting relayed by the Nigerian Press Agency (ANP).
He suggested cooperation between the various member countries of the organization as well as capacity building of their forces “and especially the pooling of resources” to effectively fight terrorism, according to the same source.
“In this new approach, an appreciable place must be given to bilateral and multilateral actions, highlighting our own capabilities,” Alkassoum Indatou, his counterpart from Niger, also noted.
Indatou also recalled the need for “an involvement of the populations in their own security, through a healthy and constructive collaboration between them and the defense and security forces.”
The representative of Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, the current president of Chad and the G5 Sahel, said the meeting aimed to discuss the new dimension of the fight against armed terrorist groups in the Sahel, more specifically in the different areas that make up the theaters of operations of the Sahel countries’ joint force.
It was about “defining a new approach to be adopted in order to minimize the consequences that this new security situation could generate,” said Indatou, but also “revising the strategic concept of the G5 Sahel Joint Force in order to adapt it to the current security context in coordination with the national security forces and the partner forces present.
Ibrahim mentioned the withdrawal of the force under Operation Barkhane, an operation led by France in Mali in the fight against terrorism since 2014 which was announced on June 10, 2021 by French President Emmanuel Macron.
This decision, which according to the Chadian authority “is immediately being implemented, requires useful and urgent measures to be taken to provide adequate responses to the G5 Sahel Joint Force to enable it to maintain momentum and continue to effectively carry out the missions assigned to it.”
On the side of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) engaged in the same struggle, “a support mechanism is being put in place,” El-Ghassim Wane, the special representative of the UN Secretary-General in Mali, said on Twitter.
The meeting held Tuesday by Sahelian representatives comes a few days after the withdrawal of 600 Chadian soldiers, half of its military strength deployed since February in the G5 Sahel.
The force took this decision by mutual agreement with the government of Chad, according to Chadian authorities, who spoke of “a beneficial redeployment for the mobility of forces.”
On Aug. 20, members of the UN Security Council also expressed concern about the alarming expansion of Daesh/ISIS in many regions, including Africa.
The group has spread “from Mali to Burkina Faso and Niger, with incursions from Nigeria into Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and incursions from Mozambique into Tanzania,” according to Vladimir Voronkov, the under-secretary-general of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
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