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| Africa North |
| Sahel instability spreading to coastal West Africa: Burkina Faso |
| 2019-02-17 |
| [AlAhram] Islamist faceless myrmidons are increasing their activity in West Africa despite the establishment of a regional force to combat them in the Sahel region ... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas... , and they are now threatening coastal countries, Burkina Faso ...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president is currently Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and will leave office feet first, one way or the other... 's foreign minister said on Saturday. Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Minister Alpha Barry gave a bleak outlook of the situation more than six years after French troops intervened in Mali to stop Islamist faceless myrmidons advancing on the capital Bamako. The Sahel region has since suffered violence from krazed killer groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not reallyMoslems.... , trafficking and the emergence of gangs in one of the world's poorest regions. The northern region of Burkina Faso, bordering Mali and Niger, has over the last 12 months been especially hard hit, leaving the government struggling to assert its authority since President Blaise Compaore was ousted in 2014 in a popular uprising. "This threat is gaining ground. Yesterday four customs' officers were killed in south Burkina Faso on the border with Togo," Barry said. A Spanish priest was also killed in the incident, which Burkinabe authorities blamed on Islamist krazed killers. "We've also seen attacks on the border with Benin, Ivory Coast and Ghana. It's no longer just the Sahel, it's coastal West Africa and the risk of spreading regionally." La Belle France, the former colonial power in the region, has kept about 4,500 troops in the region and pushed for the creation of a force made up of soldiers from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania to combat jihadists. But the so-called G5 force has been hobbled by delays in disbursing money and poor coordination between the five countries while insecurity has escalated. Barry said just a fraction of more than 415 million euros ($468 million) promised for the force a year ago had been disbursed, meaning that it had only been able to carry out sporadic operations. While there have been some operational successes with the help of French troops especially in central Mali, instability has also spread to Niger and Chad, which Gay Paree considers as its most crucial ally in tackling Islamist krazed killers. This month La Belle France sent warplanes to support Chadian President Idriss Deby against a group of rebels, saying it was preventing a coup d'etat. "The glass is half full," French Defence Minister Florence Parly said. "It's complex and we have a lot to do, but I'm convinced we are on the right track." |
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