Published on 02/12/2023
The G5, created in 2014, has secured only meagre results, with Mali also quitting the original five-nation force last year 2022 in the wake of a military coup. The military leaders of Burkina Faso and Niger said Saturday they would quit the G5 anti-jihadist force in Africa’s Sahel region, the latest blow to the fight against insurgents in one of the world’s most troubled zones.
Leaders of the five countries agreed to deploy a joint anti-terror task force backed by France in 2017, but the military rulers of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali have all accused Paris of having an outsize role after years of French deployments on their territories.
Burkina and Niger “have decided in full sovereignty to quit all instances of the G5 Sahel, including the joint force” as of November 29, the two countries said in a statement.
“The organisation is failing to achieve its objectives. Worse, the legitimate ambitions of our countries, of making the G5 Sahel a zone of security and development, are hindered by institutional red tape from a previous era, which convinces us that our process of independence and dignity is not compatible with G5 participation in its current form,” they said.
This “support meeting” is being held at the initiative of Emmanuel Macron, who recently deemed it “urgent to reverse the trend” in the Sahel, where “terrorists” have “recorded military and symbolic victories” in recent months.
To this end, the French president invited his counterparts from the G5 Sahel to the Château de la Celle-Saint-Cloud, near Paris: Mali’s Ibrahim Boubakar Keïta, Niger’s Mahamadou Issoufou, Burkina Faso’s Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, Chad’s Idriss Déby and Mauritania’s Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz.
Alongside them are partners of the joint force: the UN, the African Union, the European Union, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the heads of the Italian government Paolo Gentiloni and the Belgian government Charles Michel. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States are also participating.
The objective is “to increase the mobilization for the benefit of the G5 Sahel on the military, political and financial levels,” explains the Elysée.
“It’s an initiative that is gaining momentum, but there is a problem of pace,” French Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly told RFI radio on Wednesday.
“We have to go faster (…) The objective is to be able to move more quickly on financing and to structure the military component,” she explained.
Launched earlier this year, the initiative aims to train a 5,000-strong force, made up of soldiers from the five countries involved, by mid-2018. It already has a headquarters in Sévaré, Mali, and recently carried out a first operation in the “three borders” area between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Its role is to reconquer and secure areas where extremist groups carry out “surprise actions” before vanishing into the vast Sahelian desert, a region as vast as Europe.
“It is one of the new generation of African forces that are increasingly asserting themselves in an international context marked by the erosion of the UN concept of peacekeeping, which is ill-suited to asymmetric conflicts of which terrorism is one of the main components,” Crisis Group said in a report published on Tuesday.
– ‘Not just repressive’ –
There are only a few hundred of these jihadists – between 500 and 800, according to estimates – but they retain the ability to weaken extremely fragile states, first and foremost Mali.
These fighters were largely driven out by the international military intervention launched in January 2013 at the initiative of France, which continues to maintain 4,000 troops as part of Operation Barkhane.
But this struggle is weakened by the “failures” of the peace process in Mali, which is struggling to reconcile the different parts of the south and north of the country.
The financial challenge must also be taken up at a time when the G5 Sahel countries are among the poorest in the world, and therefore unable to mobilise the 250 million euros needed for the force initially, then “400 million at full capacity” according to Paris.
But the call for international contributions has so far received a mixed reception. The European Union has pledged €50 million, France €8 million (mostly in equipment), each of the five founding countries €10 million, and Saudi Arabia is expected to confirm Wednesday a contribution of $100 million. The United States has pledged $60 million in bilateral aid to the five G5 Sahel member countries.
“The account is not there yet. We’re not quite far from that,” Parly said on Wednesday, referring to the first $250 million. “This meeting will be complemented by a summit in Brussels. It’s a first round of financing,” she said.
The summit, which will take place in February, could give a bigger role to other African countries, absent on Wednesday, such as Senegal or Algeria, which plays a key role in the region with its long borders with Libya and Mali.
