Eurasia Review
By Magharebia
By Bakari Gueye
The Sahel-Saharan region is in the eye of the storm, Maghreb and European experts agreed Thursday (November 7th) at the end of a 2-day security summit in Nouakchott.
The Mali crisis still echoes across the Sahel region, while the Arab Spring “resulted in a chaotic situation in Libya and Tunisia”, political analyst Didi Ould Sadek told attendees at the Maghreb Centre for Strategic Studies.
“The Maghreb has been very much affected by the Arab Spring, which has resulted in a chaotic situation in Libya and Tunisia,” he added in his opening statement. “The security situation in the Sahel is of paramount importance to us,” said Helmut Refain from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which organised the event with the Mauritanian centre.
“Terrorism does not only affect this region and we are aware that what is happening in the Sahel is dangerous for the rest of the world,” he added.
In a presentation titled “The security crisis in the Sahel region: causes and repercussions”, police chief Mohamed Abdallahi Ould Taleb Abeidi offered a comprehensive picture of the presence and actions of AQIM in northern Mali.
In Abeidi’s view, “the insecurity in the Sahel is due to several factors including the difficulties that the states face to maintain their security, the problem of borders and the precarious situation in which the populations are living.”
He added, “AQIM has adopted a strategy of blending in with the population. Operation Serval led to its defeat in the cities, but it has retreated to the Agharghar Mountains. Terrorists are now moving over a vast expanse of territory.”
“Since 2012, terrorist attacks have increased by 40 per cent,” he said.
“The title of this conference ought to be ‘The impact of the security situation in the Maghreb on the Sahel’, because the problem began in the Maghreb,” said Biladi editor-in-chief, Moussa Ould Hamed.
Professor M’hamed Al Maliki from Qadi Iyad University in Marrakech urged North African nations to “co-operate to create and implement the Maghreb integration project or at least co-ordinate their efforts on the security front properly”.
Al Maliki lamented that Maghreb countries were acting independently of each other instead of working together against terrorism.
“AQIM arrived in northern Mali in 2003. It settled in very peacefully thanks to good relations with the local and even national authorities. It is still there after Operation Serval, whose military objective was not achieved,” said Hamma Agh Mahmoud, a Malian ex-minister and former advisor to the president’s office.
“At the moment, the central authorities have lost control of the Azawad, except for the cities where the French army and MINUSMA troops are present,” he noted.
Mahmoud added, “In light of what has just happened in northern Mali, it is clear that terrorists are operating with much greater funds than those gained from hostage-taking.”
In a presentation on securing Sahel borders and Mauritania’s experience, Colonel El Boukhari Mouemel noted it was “vital for all countries in the region to make their borders secure in order to tackle the challenge” of terrorism.
That view was shared by Colonel Sidi Mohamed Hamadi, who said: “Since the fall of Kadhafi, Libya has become an inexhaustible source of arms for traffickers and terrorists. Between 800,000 and 1 million weapons are in circulation.”
