ISIS Is Expanding In The African Sahel Region

Globeecho – ISIS has expanded in the African Sahel region over the past year, through a series of unprecedented massacres of civilians.Since 2021, the strategic landscape has changed in favor of ISIS. The French and their allies are no longer at the forefront of the fighting in Mali on the side of the national army. The ruling military in Bamako expelled them and summoned the Russians. The French are preparing to leave their last base in Mali and “reorganize” their forces.

In a recent report, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that it was “likely” that the French withdrawal would lead to “a vacuum in some areas that could be exploited by armed terrorist groups.” And he warned in a letter addressed to the presidency of the Security Council that the withdrawal and the deterioration of the security situation on the three borders “will have repercussions on the protection of civilians.”

A United Nations official, who asked not to be identified, notes that “there has never been a series of successive massacres in the Sahel region in this way.” In a report published Thursday, a coalition of West African NGOs said that the number of civilians killed in attacks attributed to extremist groups has nearly doubled since 2020 in the central Sahel region.

A massacre took place recently in Saitinga (Burkina Faso), knowing that other massacres took place before it and no party claimed responsibility for it, as happened in Tamalet (Mali, about a hundred dead in March 2022) and in Watagona (Mali, about fifty dead in August). 2021) and in Tilia (Niger, 141 killed in March 2021).A local council member in Mali said, as quoted by Agence France-Presse, in an investigation, “From Gourma Mali on the border between Mali and Niger to Oudalan (northern Burkina Faso) they are here and they are expanding.”