In recent years, jihadist movements have been mushrooming in the Sahel region with a blithe disregard for national boundaries, writes Gilles Yabi, the Director of the West African think tank Wathi, who is taking part in the Dakar International Forum on Peace and Security.
Three questions to Gilles Yabi, director of Wathi
Violent jihadism, long confined to Mali now extends beyond the borders of this vast country. How did it come to this?
Armed groups called jihadists or claiming to be such have nothing to do with national borders.
They settle where the opportunity arises. Whenever the political, economic and socio-cultural fabric is fragile, they take advantage. The absence or weakness of effective, organized states is a godsend for them.
They target any space where a large part of the citizenry is immersed in the daily ritual of work, without hope to improve their daily life, without any serious government offering educational, cultural, social or political opportunities that would justify dreaming of a brighter future and preserving the present status quo. In this context, any man with little intelligence, money and weapons can very quickly create his own militia to carry out localized violent actions.
The problems of the Sahel therefore go beyond the existence of these groups?
This is not the major problem. The real problem is the ease with which these groups emerge and settle in new areas, turn influential local actors against the state, drive out the last state agents, such as teachers, and stir up conflicts between communities around access to resources by providing weapons and making propaganda speeches.
Some experts fear the extension of the jihadist threat to countries so far spared, especially in the Gulf of Guinea near the Sahel. Can we prevent a possible contagion?
The only bulwark is the consolidation of the states and societies they are supposed to serve.
Africans in general, and Sahelians in particular, need shared values, future plans for young people and a steady increase in the human, material and immaterial resources of all institutions.
The truth is that in many countries, people do not seem to take the right approach.
In the Sahel, as in other countries, political tensions are worsening and the social fabric is weakening, making it difficult, for example, to negotiate national covenants that are very useful in dealing with the multifaceted challenges facing the region.
APA