... North Africa's answer to the Pak tribal areas....
Or Chicago.
This menace is now spilling over into West Africa’s coastal countries, suggesting that the world might be waking up too late to the unfolding crisis.
The statements by Leonardo Simao, the UN special representative for the Sahel and West Africa, highlighted a surge in illegal trafficking in drugs, weapons, mineral resources, human beings, and even food.
The first half of 2024 alone has seen hundreds of people killed in terrorist attacks, reflecting a dramatic escalation in violence.
These developments underscore the complex and multifaceted nature of the challenge. The intertwining of terrorism with organized crime networks has created a volatile environment where insecurity is the norm.
"This instability is significant also for the international community. As krazed killer groups tighten their grip, the humanitarian, economic and political fallout threatens to reverberate far beyond Africa’s borders," Moustapha Saleh, a Chadian security expert, told Arab News.
The situation is further exacerbated by recent political upheavals. G5 Sahel, a French-backed alliance intended to coordinate security and development issues in West Africa, collapsed last year after the exit of the military-junta-run nations of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso
...The country in west Africa that they put where Upper Volta used to be. Its capital is Oogadooga, or something like that. Its president used to be Blaise Compaoré, who took office in 1987 and was chased out in 2014. Now it's the usual army officer type guy, Captain Ibrahim Traore, running things, who's just doing a bang-up job unless he's already been deposed...This prompted the US and other Western countries to assist Ghana and neighboring coastal West African nations in bolstering their defenses. Although Ghana has not yet faced direct holy warrior violence, Togo, Benin
...Benin, a French-speaking West African nation, that they put where Dahomey used to be. It is a birthplace of voodoo and zombies. In Abomey, Dahomey's former capital, the Historical Museum occupies two royal palaces with bas-reliefs recounting the kingdom’s past and a throne mounted on human skulls. To the north, Pendjari National Park offers safaris with elephants, hippos and lions and tigers and bears, oh my!...
, and Ivory Coast have suffered attacks near their borders in recent years, illustrating the growing threat of regional instability.
Still, aid for West Africa has been lacking compared with assistance offered to Ukraine, Ghana’s President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo said in a recent interview.
US aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion has climbed to $113 billion. In contrast, the combined assistance from the EU, the UK and the US to the Economic Community of West African States, the bloc known as ECOWAS, has amounted to a relatively tiny $29.6 million over the same period.
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