“The absence of Senegal from the G5 Sahel does not mean a disengagement on the issue of the fight against terrorism and criminal networks in the Sahel”, said the coordinator of the Observatory of Radicalism and Religious Conflict in Africa, Dr. Bakary Sambe, also Director of Timbuktu Institute.
According to Bakary Sambe, “Senegal, whose troops are already fairly present in the center of Mali, will soon strengthen its contingent which could reach 1300 to 1400 men; this is already proof of an active solidarity towards Mali, a sister country, and a commitment to the fight against terrorism in the Sahel”.
However, the specialist of transnational networks and violent extremism thinks that “Senegal, already engaged in the Nouakchott process, launched by the African Union Commission in March 2013 and which brings together 11 countries, is so concerned by the challenges facing the G5 Sahel countries that there was ample room for closer cooperation with a pooling of forces and experiences”. For “the Ouagadougou attacks signed the end of the exceptions in West Africa as well as the Grand Bassam attack inaugurates the era of the absurdity of forecasting”, says the researcher according to whom “all our countries share the same vulnerabilities as the porosity of the Malian borders is no longer only a problem for Mali but for all its neighbors. Gone are the days when we built national resilience in an unstable regional environment”.
Questioned on the strong involvement of France at the last Bamako summit with the presence of President Macron on July 2, the director of Timbuktu Institute insists on “the need to take more and more account of the perceptions of the local populations so that the new force of the G5 Sahel is not assimilated to a regional extension of foreign military presence”.
For him, “it will be damaging as well for the valuable cooperation as for the common cause of the fight against terrorism in which the countries of the sub- region need the support of France whose intervention had, nevertheless, protected from a jihadist regional expansion in January 2013”.
Boubacar Sangaré