Fifth edition of the Sahel Sahara Dialogue regional conference, Friedrich EBERT Stiftung.
Dakar May 14 - 15, 2024
Ahmedou Ould Abdallah, President Center for Strategy for Security in the Sahel Sahara.
Mister President,
Ladies and gentlemen,
This Fifth Meeting organized by the Friedrich EBERT Stiftung - FES - is being held in a regional and international context that is very significant for the Sahel and its neighbors as well as its external partners. Therefor we can only congratulate and thank the FES for holding this conference and choosing the theme of the discussions. The conclusions of our debates can contribute to thoughts on the return of peace to the Sahel.
The current international environment, entirely dominated by two major conflicts - that of Ukraine and that between Israelis and Palestinians - leaves little room for the Sahel. It is therefore comforting to see this meeting dedicated to the Sahel.
Insecurity in the Sahel, now more than ten years old in its present form, is significant and entrenched. It has become daunting for its neighbors and, beyond that, to its external partners in particular, European and North American. Today, more than in the past, the Sahel is becoming inseparable from vast migratory movements, various trafficking, particularly in drug and money laundering. Trafficking which also fuels terrorism and confirms corruption.
Several causes are at the source of these serious trends. Corruption entrenchment is one of the main causes. Its perverse consequences, including states "retribalization" to the detriment of national unity, are most characteristic. The tribe, or even the native region of the national leader, becomes the priority of those in power but also, and at the same time, the target of radical opponents.
Faced with these developments that are taking roots and spreading across the region, an appropriate response is required. It should benefit from national political consensus and, for its credibility, count on the Sahel external partners support.
Despite an international context destabilized by the wars in Ukraine and between Israelis and Palestinians as well as those in Libya and Sudan, the expansion of violence in the Sahel does not serve peace anywhere. Worse, it entrenches the process of states deconstruction. External interventions, even if less effective than desired, remain essential demonstrations of solidarity and deterrence in the face of armed groups, often more financially than religiously motivated.
Expansion and entrenchment of terrorist violence.
The Sahel, a high-risk region, has been experiencing multidimensional crises for more than a decade. Civil wars, coups d'état, various types of trafficking, including that of migrants, have disrupted stability in Libya, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Sudan and in the states around Lake Chad. This continued deconstruction of states seems irreversible, Libya and Sudan being non-encouraging examples.
Living with, or rather under the constraints of entrenched and expanding terrorism, is devastating for populations and destructive of states. Beyond the human losses, its greatest victim is the credibility of public institutions. Weakened or even destroyed. Added to this is the collapse of cohabitation between national communities and the shrinking of their living economic base. Once established, terrorism ruins security and, worse, the credibility of institutions, particularly those responsible for development.
Beyond violence, common to all terrorists, one of the singularities of that of the Sahel is its presence, through tribal communities, in several neighboring countries. This geographical contiguity offers, due precisely to tribal solidarity, a fluidity of movement allowing easy borders crossing. This advantage helps it resist domestic or foreign security forces required to respect borders. Furthermore, supplies of weapons, vehicles, fuel, food, and indoctrination of young people as well as the neutralization of elites are facilitated. The same goes for tribal solidarity. By weakening the national sentiment, terrorism strengthens its own territorial roots by further weakening national solidarity within states. States which, faced with violent ordeals, risk collapsing in favor of centrifugal forces conducive to crime and anarchy.
Collectively or individually, with or without external partners, the Sahel states, for their own survival, must pull themselves together. Eradicating or at least marginalizing terrorism and its perverse effects is a priority.
Eradicating or living with terrorism.
In the 1970s, Europe and Latin America had managed to free themselves from the terrorists groups: "Bande à Baader, Red Brigades and other Tupamaros. Can we hope as much for the Sahel? Afghanistan and Somalia have lived for decades with and under terrorism that is said to be more tribal than religious. What will happen to the Sahel, made up of several independent states where tribalism and regionalism are exploding?
Whether developments follow that of Latin America or Somalia, we must, above all, fear the domestic implosions going on in Libya, Sudan and soon in other countries. The trend toward structural anarchy is reinforced by several factors. That of the criminal economy is not the least.
The Sahel, with its gold production which has become its other trademark for a decade, exerts a financial attraction for terrorists, their sponsors and local officials. It has entered an even more perilous phase where irregular financial transactions around the precious metal are exploding. They finance terrorism, curiously, a source of their income in gold!
The region is also endowed with raw materials and particularly strategic minerals coveted by large international firms. In the absence of a consensual strategy for their management, implosion, as in Sudan and Libya, or political paralysis, as in Somalia, looms on the horizon. The Sahel remains exposed to the numerous impacts of climate change and to a strong demographic growth and as well as a rapid and anarchic urbanization. All this affects the security conditions of the populations. Ignoring or minimizing them is not the solution.
Often poorly prepared and poorly equipped, national security forces remain marked by ethnicity and regionalism from recruitment. The quality and effectiveness of their combativeness are weakened and exhausted after more than ten years of fighting. For their part, terrorists remain complex, hybrid, transnational and continually expanding forces. Worse, they operate through civilian elements that create confusion and push legal forces to commit humanitarian abuses.
In this context, the Sahel governments should review their management of the wars their countries have gone through for more than a decade. Domestically, efforts to obtain more respectability to governments are a priority. With today ease in communication, the expansion of social networks and competition in the Sahel between external powers, state management should be less tribalistic and more transparent. In this connection, by discrediting governments, tribalism, based on arrogant corruption -as it goes unpunished, remains the terrorists' best ally. On the contrary, more transparency weakens the discourse of radicals groups and strengthens national security.
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At international level, presently very congested, cooperation between the Sahel states and their neighbors in the Maghreb should be more beneficial to all. That neighborhood and common interests unfortunately remain hostage to certain ideological clans. In this regard, the Maghreb, from where the first terrorists descended towards the Sahel, is also the main passage for Sahel emigrants to Europe.
In this context, the three groups - Europe, Maghreb and Sahel - should, in the absence of a capacity to contain migratory movements, manage them better at their own level of the three Regions. Their main difficulty lies in their repeated denials of facts. Indeed, Europe, despite political denials and the official rejection of immigration, remains in demand of a labor force while on the other side and beyond their silence, the Sahel and the Maghreb are involuntary suppliers of these workers.
In fine, with you, I thank and congratulate the FES and its staff for the theme of this conference its fifth in our Region. Thanks also to the German government for the sustained attention given to our Sahel.
Thank you for your attention.
