Sahel Governments Need More Security Assistance

Posted: September 13th, 2017

By Michael Shurkin

Michael Shurkin is a senior political scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. He previously worked in the Intelligence Community, where he served as a political analyst with a focus on West Africa and Afghanistan.

Developments in the Sahel are cause for real alarm. Insecurity in northern and central Mali, the epicenter of much of the region’s al Qaeda-related violence, continues to grow, while Islamist violence has spread from there and from northern Nigeria to Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger.

Just last month, gunmen killed 18 in a restaurant in Burkina Faso’s capital, and last week the U.S. announced it was pulling Peace Corps volunteers out of the country. The upswing in terrorist attacks suggests that the region’s main al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups, four of which unified in March under the name Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM), are thriving. Similarly, a surge of attacks in and around northern Nigeria leave no doubt that the Nigerian government’s claims late last year of its victory over Boko Haram were optimistic at best.

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