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.
