Sahel Zone

[Quintus Fabius]

We did not find anything!

https://www.gj-magazine.com/gj/wp-conten...8x381.jpeg

https://i1.wp.com/defishumanitaires.com/...=729&ssl=1

https://unherd.com/2020/07/frances-african-forever-war/

There is a terrible innocence to Barkhane. The French commander of Barkhane, General Pascal Facon has declared he can “easily” defeat the Islamists. “We shouldn’t underestimate them,” he said, but “we shouldn’t give them too much importance either.”

This is agonisingly naïve. Seven hundred jihadists may have been taken out of play, but that still leaves about 6,000 terrorists in the Sahel, and they know the lie of the bad lands. The combat patrols of the French rarely do. They drive hundreds of miles from their “temporary advance bases” deep in the desert, bouncing up and down in steel armoured cars and personnel carriers, in temperatures topping 40 degrees, seeing nothing but sand and acacia trees through their wrap-around sunglasses.

For hour after hour. There is looking for a needle in a haystack; then there is looking for jihadists in thousands of square miles of the Sub-Saharan Sahel. The red dust kicked up by the convoys can be seen for miles. The jihadists get prior warning, and melt away with their AK-47s. Just recently, a French combat engineer was interviewed on television following a search for a jihadist weapons cache, ending with the inevitable reply “the search didn’t find anything today”. It has become the mantra of French officers interviewed about Barkhane — “We didn’t find anything”. They smile for the camera, but you can sense the frustration.

Neither should it be supposed that the militants lack popular support. The national governments of the “Group of Five for the Sahel” — Chad, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — are blighted by corruption and incompetence.

Barkhane, and its lack of effectiveness in bringing resolution, is starting to take its toll. Anti-French demonstrations in Bamako, the Malian capital, were regular fixtures before Covid, with Macron depicted as Hitler on placards.

https://defishumanitaires.com/en/2019/11...phic-bomb/

The G5 Sahel countries (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Chad) will increase from 83.7 million inhabitants in 2019, including about 50% under 15 years of age, to 196 million in 2050.

Bei gleichzeitig rasant degradierenden Ressourcen (fruchtbare Böden, Trinkwasser etc) nimmt die Bevölkerung in der Sahel-Zone also innerhalb der nächsten drei Dekaden von 84 Mio auf um die 200 Mio zu.

Keine Militäroperation der Welt kann bei einer solchen Entwicklung Stabilität herstellen - mit nur einer Brigade auf um die 4 Millionen Quadratkilometer.