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ABIDJAN: For well over a decade, terrorist violence has plagued the Sahel, a semi-arid belt stretching along the Sahara desert’s southern rim from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in violence that began in Mali in 2012, spread to Burkina Faso and Niger, and now threatens coastal west African states.

Two militant organizations dominate the central Sahelian region that includes Mali, Niger and Burkina: the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims and the Islamic State — Sahel Province or ISSP.

Affiliated to Al-Qaeda, the JNIM was founded in 2017 after militant groups merged under the leadership of Iyad Ag Ghali, a Tuareg chief from the northern Malian town of Kidal.

The rival ISSP is linked to the Daesh group and was created two years earlier by Moroccan terrorist Adnan Abou Walid Al-Sahraoui, who was killed in Mali in 2021 by a French military force.

Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon and Chad — in the Lake Chad Basin — are battling two other jihadist groups: Boko Haram and its offshoot, the Islamic State in West Africa or ISWAP.

The groups mainly roam rural areas. “Controlling the towns is very difficult for them,” International Crisis Group researcher Ibrahim Yahaya said.

From their camps in the bush, they use intimidation tactics such as abduction and killings to menace villagers and organize attacks on towns, Yahaya said.

The JNIM has a wide presence in Mali, Niger and Burkina and is increasingly extending its influence toward the northern parts of the Gulf of Guinea countries.

“The group plans to make new areas of instability on the borders of Burkina Faso with Benin and Togo,” Seidik Abba, head of the International Center of Reflection and Studies on the Sahel, said.

The ISSP is concentrated in the border area encompassing Mali, Burkina and Niger. The group “struggles to expand” because of the JNIM which is “militarily stronger” and has more local support, Liam Karr, analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, said.

Their ambitions differ. The ISSP follows the hard line of the Daesh group, using indiscriminate violence against civilians and soldiers with the aim of establishing an Islamic caliphate in the Sahel under Shariah law.

The JNIM also carries out deadly attacks but seeks local footholds by presenting itself as the defender of marginalized communities.

“In the JNIM narrative, there is the reference to the Islamic ideology, but linked to forms of local demands,” said Bakary Sambe, director of the Timbuktu Institute in Dakar. “While Daesh has remained in a form of global jihad that is failing to take root in local communities,” he added.

Daesh frequently broadcasts videos showing violence committed by security forces and their allies in order to legitimize its discourse, a UN Security Council report said this month.

There is often violent rivalry between the groups.

The militant groups exploit social and ethnic tensions to enlist fighters.

The JNIM, initially composed of Fulani, a community of mainly semi-nomadic herders, and of ethnic Tuaregs, has widened its base to include other communities, in particular ethnic Bambaras.

Exact figures are difficult to estimate, but according to a UN report in July last year, the JNIM has 5,000-6,000 fighters and the ISSP 2,000-3,000.

Their weaponry comes largely from the armies of the region and was pillaged during attacks, or from arms trafficking from Libya.

Financing ranges from kidnappings, especially of Westerners, to the theft and resale of cattle and forcing locals to pay the “zakat,” an annual tax in charity.

The militant groups use ambush, abduction, long-range shelling, improvised explosive devices and recently started using drones to drop explosives.

Civilians suspected of collaboration with the army are kidnapped or killed.

Militants also impose embargoes, burn harvests and abduct community leaders to force villagers into submission.

The response of the region’s armies has proven limited as the groups are constantly on the move and feed on local grievances.

Mali, Burkina and Niger have formed the Alliance of Sahel States confederation and said they will soon set up a 5,000-strong anti-militant force.

“At a time when the Sahelian armies are killing 3,000 militants, 12,000 others are being recruited,” Abba, head of the International Center of Reflection and Studies on the Sahel, said.

“So, if we do not solve the problem of youth unemployment in these countries, they will remain at the mercy of militant groups,” he added.

BERLIN: Left-wing parties in the German parliament reacted with consternation on Wednesday after the conservatives, fresh from their election win, demanded more scrutiny of a list of government-funded projects.
The CDU/CSU alliance of Friedrich Merz, which won Sunday’s election with 28.5 percent of the vote, submitted a set of written questions to the outgoing government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday.
The hundreds of questions demanded more clarity on the funding of campaign groups such as Omas Gegen Rechts (“Grannies Against the Right“), Greenpeace and other environmental organizations, and a wide range of other NGOs.
The questions were grouped under the heading “political neutrality of state-funded organizations.”
The party said it had tabled them in response to recent “protests against the CDU in Germany, some of which were organized or supported by non-profit or state-funded organizations.”
Thousands of people took part in demonstrations after the CDU in January controversially accepted the support of the far-right AfD to push through a parliamentary vote on migration.
Lars Klingbeil of Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) on Wednesday accused the CDU/CSU of targeting “precisely those organizations that protect our democracy, which it is denigrating and calling into question.”
Following the election on Sunday, Merz has reached out to the center-left SPD with hopes of forming a coalition.
But Klingbeil, newly elected as head of the SPD parliamentary group, accused the conservatives of “foul play” and urged them to “quickly reflect” on whether they wanted to pursue the questions.
Other parties have also reacted angrily to the move, with the far-left Die Linke calling it “an unprecedented attack on democratic civil society.”
“This is reminiscent of authoritarian states and, given that the CDU/CSU will in all likelihood lead the next federal government, is extremely worrying,” Die Linke’s Clara Buenger said.
Sergey Lagodinsky, a member of the European Parliament for the Greens, said it was a “very bad omen for the next four years” and “almost Trump-like.”
US President Donald Trump has enlisted tech billionaire Elon Musk to lead federal cost-cutting efforts under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Musk has spearheaded program and personnel cuts across a wide range of federal agencies and departments, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Matthias Middelberg, a spokesman for the CDU, said public funding “must not be used for party political purposes.”
No organization should be “eligible for support if it is used to influence political decision-making and public opinion in line with the organization’s own views,” he said.