The African Union on Thursday announced it will soon deploy a 3,000 strong force in West Africa’s Sahel region, where regional forces are struggling to tackle a nearly eight-year-old Islamist insurgency, reported Sahara Reporters.
Multiple militant groups like Boko Haram and Islamic State West Africa Province have created havoc in the region, killing dozens of people in recent years.
Smail Chergui, the Commissioner of the African Union Peace and Security Commission said the decision to deploy the force was taken at the African Union summit earlier this month. But an announcement was not made until a press conference Thursday.
“On the decision of the summit to work on deploying a force of 3,000 troops to help the Sahel countries degrade terrorist groups, I think this is a decision that we’ll be working on together with the G5 Sahel and ECOWAS,” Chergui said.
He explained that the decision was taken considering that the threat in the Sahel region was expanding and becoming more complex.
“I think this decision has been taken because as we see, as you can recognize yourself, the threat is expanding, it’s becoming more complex,” Chergui added.
A localized revolt that started in northern Mali in 2012, slowly spread to Burkina Faso and Niger. Over 4,000 people died in the three countries last year, a fivefold increase compared with 2016. There’s already a 13,000-strong UN peacekeeping force been deployed in Mali, and rattled coastal countries to the south of the Sahel.
Giving details of the proposed Sahel deployment, Edward Xolisa Makaya, South Africa’s ambassador to the A.U., said the 3,000 troops will be deployed for a period of six months to work with the countries of the Sahel in the fight against the militant groups.
Makaya said the Sahel deployment is likely to take place during the course of the year. Other details of the possible deployment are to be finalized.
