U.S. forces conducted an airstrike against al-Shabab in Somalia on Thursday, killing “several militants,” according to the U.S. military and like reported by voanews.com.

The drone strike hit targets in the Bay Region of Somalia, about 160 kilometers west of the capital, Mogadishu, Pentagon spokeswoman Audricia Harris told VOA.

No civilians were killed in the strike, Harris said.

According to a statement from U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the strike occurred about 3 p.m. local time in Somalia in coordination with the Somali government.

“U.S. forces will continue to use all authorized and appropriate measures to protect Americans and to disable terrorist threats,” AFRICOM said.

The strike came less than a week after U.S. airstrikes targeted Islamic State fighters in the country’s north.

Jama Mohamed Qurshe, the chairman of the town of Qandala, told VOA Somali that the U.S. strikes last Friday hit a base for IS militants at Buqa village, about 60 kilometers south of his town, in the semiautonomous region of Puntland.

An AFRICOM official told VOA those two strikes killed “fewer than five” IS fighters. They were the first U.S. airstrikes against IS militants in Somalia.

The deaths of US servicemen in Niger and the UN Security Council’s consideration of the regional G5 force have given prominence to the Sahel states—Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. Solutions to their deep structural and governance problems are elusive and the general prospects for the region are grim. The strategic implications of the Sahel situation for Europe are momentous, like reported by aspistrategist.org.au.

At the Security Council on 30 October, the EU special representative for the Sahel warned that ‘the security of the Sahel was critical for the entire globe’. The French foreign minister agreed that ‘terrorist groups in the Sahel represented a global threat, which was financed by drug trafficking and human trafficking’. The Italian representative noted that ‘the security threats of terrorism and illegal trafficking had a devastating impact on an already fragile political situation and were a threat to the entire world’.

The US seems to see the Sahel as a European problem. While supportive of the G5 initiative, the US opposed European efforts to bring it under the auspices of the UN and no UN funds were committed. The Security Council resolution just urged the G5 to work cooperatively with the MINUSMA peacekeeping force in Mali and the French forces on Operation Barkhane.

Current funding pledges for the 5,000-strong force fall well short of the estimated US$400 million required in the first year of operations alone. The bulk of the funds so far committed have come from the EU. The US will also provide US$60 million directly to support the new force.

Sahel is derived from the Arabic for coastal, a figurative reference to the ‘shore’ of the Sahara Desert that runs through these states. The Sahel states cover 5 million square kilometres. The northern portions comprise vast tracts of desert that are largely ungoverned and sparsely populated. Since the early 2000s, extremists, drug smugglers and people traffickers have increasingly taken advantage of this situation to move around freely.

These states are among the poorest and least developed globally. Of the 188 countries on the UNDP Human Development Index, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso were placed at 187, 186 and 185, respectively, with Mali finishing at 175 and Mauritania at 155. Transparency International’s 2016 report highlights corrupt governance in all the Sahel states, but especially in Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Chad.

The Sahel states’ prospects for economic development and social reform will be adversely affected by population growth. Their combined population is projected to grow from the current 78.5 million to 117 million in 2030 and 198 million by 2050. It is anticipated that climate change will have a highly variable and unpredictable impact on the region, creating yet another obstacle to development.

Apart from sharing contiguity with the Sahara, a French colonial past and some common security challenges, the Sahel states are dissimilar and confront different domestic and external challenges.

Religious diversity is highest in Chad (52% Muslim and 44% Christian) and Burkina Faso(62% Muslim and 30% Christian). Muslims predominate in Mauritania (100%), Mali (95%) and Niger (80%). French and Arabic are commonly spoken across the region, although significant ethnic minorities speak dialects or native African languages. Each state borders with a different collection of more or less unstable neighbours that bring their own distinctive security and law enforcement issues.

These five states sit in the middle of a volatile region. All African countries north of an imaginary line drawn from the Gulf of Guinea to the Gulf of Aden are at ‘high warning’, ‘alert’ or ‘high alert’ on the 2017 Fragile States Index. By 2030, just 12 years away, the population of states above that line will grow from 680 million to 938 million. In that period, the total population of the current EU countries is expected to increase by just 4.3 million.

The disparity between the European and US views of the strategic significance of the Sahel derives from their contrasting short-term national interests. The mounting numbers of sub-Saharan African immigrants arriving through western and central Mediterranean routes to Europe primarily transition through the Sahel states. This accounts for the European agitation and consternation over the Sahel and Europe’s strong support for the G5.

The US remains overwhelmingly focused on violent extremist organisations (VEOs). Africa Command (AFRICOM) provides relatively limited material and planning support to the Sahel states. AFRICOM concentrates on the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya), West Africa/Lake Chad and Somalia and on opposing al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram, ISIS–West Africa, and al-Shabaab.

The US’s African priorities are clear. AFRICOM regards the ‘instability in Libya and North Africa’ as ‘the most significant, near-term threat to US and allies’ interests on the continent’. The 2017 Posture Statement states that ‘VEOs not only constitute the most direct security threat to the US emanating from Africa but are also the most dangerous threat to stability in East, North, and West Africa’.

However, population pressures, poor governance, poverty and food insecurity are not short-term problems. The G5 initiative, and French and US military operations, might temporarily curtail illegal immigrant flows to Europe, interrupt drug smugglers and human traffickers, and supress extremist activity. But those are tactical not strategic responses. Competition for resources might well see regional conflicts intensify, and the root causes of sectarian extremism and violence will persist. It’s hard to imagine mass illegal immigration from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe doing anything other than growing.

The EU has to assume that Sahel-related problems will get worse. The EU must prepare for this eventuality given the fissiparous effect the migration issue already has among member states. How ‘fragile’ the EU might prove to be in the future with a doubling, tripling or quadrupling of the African migration numbers can only be guessed.

That is a global problem.

The Ugandan military on Thursday said it is ready to deploy 5,000 troops in Somalia outside the African Union (AU) and United Nations (UN) mandate for an all-out offensive operations against the Al-Shabaab militants, like reported by xinhuanet.com.

Brig. Richard Karemire, the military and defense spokesperson, told Xinhua that Uganda as a Pan-Africanist country is ready to send the troops as long as the international community commits resources for the operation.

“We are always ready to deploy such a number and even more as a country and Pan-Africanists. We need some support somewhere,” said Karemire.

Karemire said there are many rules to operate under the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) which sometimes may hinder the elimination of the militants.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is reported to have told Donald Yamamoto, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs in September that Uganda is ready to deploy additional 5,000 troops to strengthen the military operations of the AMISOM.

Museveni told Yamamoto that the east African country would only send more troops to Somalia if the international community commits to regular funding, donates military equipment, force enablers and multipliers such as attack helicopters for the operations against the insurgents.

The comments by the Ugandan military come shortly after the Special Representative of the African Union Chairperson for Somalia, Francisco Madeira announced on Tuesday that some 1,000 soldiers from the 22,000 strong force will be withdrawn from Somalia by Dec. 31.

AMISOM is comprised of troops drawn from Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. Uganda provides the bulk of the force.

A militant faction loyal to Islamic State (IS) has increased its following in northern Somalia from a few dozen last year to up to 200 this year, a U.N. report said, days after the group came under U.S. air attack for the first time, like reported by reuters.com.

The increase in strength of the IS spin-off group has attracted attention because some security officials fear it could offer a safe haven for Islamic State militants fleeing military defeat in Syria or Iraq.

“The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) faction loyal to Sheikh Abdulqader Mumin – estimated…in 2016 to number not more than a few dozen…, has growing significantly in strength, and (now) consists of as many as 200 fighters,” said the report by a panel of U.N. experts obtained by Reuters.

“Even a few hundred armed fighters could destabilize the whole region,” said a regional diplomatic security source. “It(air strikes) is a recognition from the U.S. that the situation in terms of the (Islamic State) faction in Puntland is becoming increasingly critical.”

Somalia has been riven by civil war and Islamist militancy, though more in the south than in the north where the Puntland region is located, since 1991 when clan warlords overthrew a dictator before turning on each other.

Friday’s air strikes failed to kill Mumin, the security source said. But Abdirizak Ise Hussein, director of semi-autonomous Puntland’s spy service, said the strikes killed about 20 militants, including a Sudanese fighter and two Arabs.

Almost all Mumin’s fighters are Somali, the U.N. report said, though the group is believed to include a Sudanese man sanctioned by the United States. The group also has contacts in Yemen. It was unclear if the Sudanese man under U.S. sanctions was the same one reported killed in the air strike.

“The number of IS fighters in Puntland has increased. Mostly they come from southern Somalia and a few, including foreigners, come from Yemen,” Colonel Abdirahman Saiid, a military officer in Puntland, told Reuters.

The U.N. report said defectors from Mumin’s faction reported the group had received money and orders from Iraq and Syria, and one member said he had seen Mumin and another leader using TrueCrypt software to communicate with them. The United Nations could not independently verify those claims.

Mumin’s group has been slowing increasing its activity over the past year. In late 2016, it occupied the port of Qandala in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region, for a month.

Earlier this year, it carried out its first attacks. Its fighters killed four guards at a hotel in Bosasso, the economic capital of Puntland, in February. The same month, the group beheaded three men it had kidnapped.

Somalia’s main Islamist insurgent group, al Shabaab, is aligned with al Qaeda and is most active in the Horn of Africa country’s south. It has repeatedly clashed with the Islamic State-aligned faction in the north.

Troops of 119 Task Force Battalion, 8 Division Nigerian Army, deployed at Kangarwa, Kukawa Local Government Area of Northern Borno State, have yesterday neutralized 13 Boko Haram terrorists in a counter-attack carried out by the troops, like reported by politicsngr.com.

The offensive which began at about 4.00pm and lasted for roughly four hours, necessitated the troops calling for air support to which the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) promptly responded by dispatching an Intelligence Surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft and a Ground Attack Fighter Aircraft in support of the ground offensive.

The fierce counter also saw some insurgents fleeing with gunshot wounds and abandoning logistics and weapons.

The troops also neutralized 2 Hilux vehicles belonging to the insurgents and recovered the following; a Hilux vehicle, 1 Browning Machine Gun (BMG), 1 Anti Aircraft Gun (AAG), 2 General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMG), 1 Light Machine Gun (LMG), 2 Rocket Propelled Guns Seven (RPG 7) tubes and bombs, 5 AK-47 Rifles and 550 Rounds of Anti-Aircraft Gun ammunition.

An Al-Qaeda affiliate in Mali claimed responsibility for four attacks on Malian and United Nations troops that it said killed six soldiers.

The Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (NIM) said in statements that it had attacked a police post in Segou on Sunday, capturing weapons and a motorcycle, like reported by dailymail.co.uk.

On Monday, “fighters ambushed Malian and MINUSMA (UN mission in Mali) forces near the city of Konna in Mopti, killing six soldiers,” according to a report carried by the US monitoring group SITE.

“Other fighters bombed a Malian convoy tasked with securing an area near Niafunke in Timbuktu in preparation for a visit by a local leader,” it said.

Prime Minister Abdoulaye Idrissa Maiga cancelled a planned visit on Monday to the central town after a vehicle sent to protect his team hit a landmine.

Also on Monday, police and administrative officials said 10 people, including nine civilians, had died in attacks in northern and central Mali.

They included five civilian passengers aboard a bus blown up by a mine near Ansongo — an incident that was not claimed in the NIM statements.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the head of MINUSMA, lashed the jihadist assailants as “drugged fanatics” and “outlaws”.

He called on Malians to become “collectively aware” of “cowards (who) mix with the peaceful population, discretely melt into the background before carrying out their plans.”

“The people have to denounce their torturers and to flush them out into the open with the help and support of the national and international forces.”

Islamist extremists linked to Al-Qaeda took control of the desert north of Mali in early 2012 at the expense of Tuareg rebels.

They were chased out of Sahara towns by an ongoing French-led military operation launched in January 2013.

In mid-2015, a peace accord was signed with Tuareg leaders aimed at isolating the jihadists.

But much of the region remains lawless, despite efforts by Mali’s army, French soldiers and MINUSMA.

In a region in which political stability and poverty act as catalysts for Islamist militancy, European leaders are touting the G5 Sahel Force – a multinational military initiative made up of troops from Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso and Mauritania –as the first line of defence against the creeping influence of al-Qaeda and Islamic State across northern and western Africa. Even as long-term arrangements for the force continue to take shape, G5 troops have now begun their first regional operations, dubbed “Hawbi”, in the front regions between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, like reported by eureporter.co.

While the US, France and the United Nations continue to wrangle over where the funding for the G5 Sahel Force should come from, none of the stakeholders – and certainly not the African countries themselves – are questioning the military-first basis of the initiative. All claim the G5 will be pivotal in helping to improve security and development

After much prodding from his counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump has finally promised up to $60 million to support the G5 group. What the US will not do, however, is assent to the operation being conducted under the auspices of the UN. American officials argue the troops in these countries already have the necessary authority to conduct missions and that while “the US is committed to supporting the African-led and owned G5 Joint Force through bilateral security assistance… we do not support UN funding, logistics, or authorization for the force.”

Washington’s reticence on the issue has very little to do with the makeup of the G5 Sahel Force or facts on the ground in the region itself. Instead, they have everything to do with Donald Trump’s reflexive aversion to funding the UN or its projects with American tax dollars.

This puts Trump and his advisors in direct opposition to France’s view on the issue. Emmanuel Macron believes UN funding and support should be joined to that being provided by Paris and Brussels to equip the force for its operations in the region; the EU has already contributed €50 million, and France has pledged €8 million in equipment. In terms of diplomatic backing and lobbying, however, French contributions to the initiative have been pivotal.

Not all European stakeholders have been quite so forthcoming. The UK, despite being vocally supportive of the force, has been slow to help fund it.

None of these parties have stepped back from concerns over the plan’s budgetary issues to pursue a more careful analysis of the assumptions that underpin it. In this, they are ignoring advice proffered by Tony Blair and others over the past several months: namely that neither military might nor traditional, top-down aid programmes will ever be able to tackle the region’s deep-seated issues of governance, poverty, insecurity, or lack of economic opportunities alone.

Tackling the Sahel’s Islamist insurgents and disrupting the trafficking routes which illicitly carry both goods and people across the Sahara is undoubtedly necessary. To achieve their objectives in the region, however, the EU and France (and their partners) must give equal attention to the systemic issues that allow these groups to thrive in the region. The G5 force may consist of local troops, but the relationship between people and government in these countries does not take the same form it does in Europe.

All too often, the many communities in the Sahel that have long been neglected by their respective governments have sought empowerment by other means. As Wolf-Christian Paes, an expert on the region at the Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) puts it, the international community is dealing with a zone that is “stateless to a large extent” and where “the state is not seen as a positive actor, as someone who provides you with services, safety, education, health care and so on. But rather as just another bandit.”

All of these factors contribute to the political instability that drives clandestine migration across the Mediterranean and allows jihadist groups to find safe haven. Basic services are not delivered, government agents are seen as corrupt or predatory, even mild dissent is repressed, and government authority is weak. In Mali, for example, the lack of central government authority over the restive north is matched by economic hardship which has left 165,000 children under-nourished.

For the disenfranchised peoples living in the Sahel region, the worst possible impact of this outside funding would be for authoritarian or corrupt governments to see it as a reward for their behaviour or license to pursue their own best interests at the expense of the general public. The result would be greater disenchantment with the status quo, playing straight into the hands of the hands of the Sahel’s most nefarious elements.

There is cause to believe this is already happening. In Mauritania, for example, onetime coup leader and current president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz – who already faces hardly any pushback from his Western security partners on his many failings of governance, due above all to his strategic usefulness  –  has begun to tinker with the constitutional order. In a highly controversial referendum held this past August, Mauritians voted to alter their national flag but also critically to abolish their country’s Senate.

Abdel Aziz’s government claims the move is meant to further decentralisation of political power, but opposition groups point out that it has removed one of the most important checks on his power. They see the referendum as part of a process that will see Abdel Aziz change his country’s constitution by scrapping term limits to remain in office. Local civil society groups already face state repression and media crackdowns in their work against Mauritania’s enduring institutions of slavery. In all likelihood, Abdel Aziz will take this new external funding as tacit support for his crackdown and political gamesmanship.

If Europe is really interested in changing the future of the region, it needs to change the conversation. In December, a planning conference will be held in Brussels to try and make up the shortfalls in G5 funding. Human rights groups and development advocates will almost certainly take the opportunity to push for a more holistic approach to the Sahel. And if European leaders are serious about stemming migration and insecurity in the region, they should listen.

No fewer than 42 members of the Boko Haram insurgents were feared killed following a fierce battle between them and a combined Nigerian Military supported by hunters and vigilantes in Gulak, headquarters of Madagali local government of Adamawa state, like reported by
vanguardngr.com.

The fierce battles lasted for more than three hours before the Nigerian troops supported by hunters and vigilantes pushed the insurgents back to their enclave.

Members of the dreaded Boko Haram sect had in the wee hours of Monday launched a night attack, with heavy gun shots in an attempt to override Nigerian troops. In a telephone chat, Tuesday’s morning the state governor, Sen. Muhammadu Jibrilla confirmed that,’’ Nigerian Army supported by local hunters rolled back the invading terrorists in Gulak.

Though the areas are under Chibok Brigade, but I did call for minute by minute report on what is happening over there. God is giving victory to our security and hunters. ‘’And as at about 4:00 am, Monday normalcy has been restored,’’ the governor has said. Local residents also confirmed the development, ‘’ Our gallant local vigilantes and hunters supporting Nigerian troops have repelled the attack. ‘We slept on mountains and other hideouts but as I am talking to you this morning, already fleeing residents have begun to return to our houses. ‘I can’t give details of casualty, but I know one woman was killed by strayed bullet,’’ said a local resident who simple identified himself as David.

When contacted, the council chairman Mr Yusuf Muhammad could not also give casualty details ,but dismissed that soldiers were killed during the fierce battle. ‘’ Well,it was a fierce battle and Nigerian troops,local hunters succeeded in repelling the attack. ‘’For now I don’t know the exact casualty figures and no soldier or hunters reported to have been killed,except one woman that was hit by strayed bullet.’’

It could be recalled that on Sunday,at least two civilians, a woman and her daughter were killed in a suicide bomb attack, when two male suicide bombers blew themselves in the same Gulak town. Madagali was the last local government area that was recaptured from Boko Haram insurgents in 2015 and it shares border with Borno state and a stone throw to the Sambisa forest.

vanguardngr.com

Five civilians were killed and three injured in two separate attacks in Mali, the government said according to aa.com.tr.

Four died when a minibus hit a land mine near Lellehoye, a village in the eastern Gao region on Monday, the Defense Ministry said in a Facebook post.

Also Monday, a civilian army employee was killed in an ambush on Malian soldiers escorting equipment for German troops deployed as part of the UN mission.

The attack 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Konna in the central region of Mopti left three soldiers wounded when motorbike riders attacked the convoy, the ministry said.

No group claimed immediate responsibility for the attacks but security officials blamed extremist groups operating in west Africa’s Sahel region.

Terror attacks are commonplace in northern and central Mali, where al-Qaeda-linked groups have operated for several years.

In 2012, militants seized northern Mali, leading to France’s military intervention a year later. Around 4,000 French troops are posted the Sahel as part of a cross-border counter-terrorism operation.

On Monday, local media reported that a French attack on militants in the Abeibara region led to the accidental deaths of 11 Malian soldiers on Oct. 23.