The Sahel cuts through Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Sudan.
The late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi might have been a cruel and eccentric megalomaniac, but he was also a committed anti-Islamist. Through the 1980s, Gaddafi grew increasingly anxious about the rise of fundamentalist Islam, acutely aware of the threat a new generation of radical Islamists and jihadists would pose to the Arab world’s largely secularised, mostly US-allied, non-Islamist dictators.
After the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington, Gaddafi renounced Libya’s weapons of mass destruction, and opened all Libya’s facilities to international inspectors who dismantled all Libya’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs, as well as its longest-range ballistic missiles. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/LibyaChronology Normalization followed, and Gaddafi allied with the West in the “War on Terror”. Gaddafi kept Algeria-based al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) hemmed in and hamstrung for years.
In August 2011, jihadists advanced on Tripoli under NATO aircover and seized control of the Libyan capital. After extracting Gaddafi from a drainpipe, the jihadists tortured and lynched the former dictator to jubilant shouts of “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is greater). Libya subsequently descended into anarchy.
The chaos of Libya quickly bled into the Sahel. Mercenaries, ethnic separatists and jihadist raided Libya’s desert armouries, before heading south to launch campaigns of Islamic terrorism and ethnic separatism. First to be hit was northern Mali, then the north and east of Burkina Faso, and more recently south-west Niger.
NOTE: Islam routinely rides to power on the back of grievance and other causes; chief among them, ethnic separatism.
The remote and largely ungoverned tri-border region where Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger meet, has become a base for numerous Islamic militias; some aligned with AQIM, some aligned with Islamic State, and some only there to plunder gold, diamonds and other valuable resources.
Despite these states being majority Muslim, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger retain secular democratic governance, respect for religious freedom, a high degree of Christian security, and good inter-religious relations.
Today, however, the presence of Islamic terrorist organisations has caused insecurity to escalate markedly. And while the insecurity impacts everyone, it impacts the Christian minority most severely, for the new generation of jihadists regard Christians as blasphemers, infidels, polytheists (for believing in a Trinitarian God) and anti-Islam agents of the West.
Islamic militants have attacked, looted and burned Christian churches and charities, and executed Christians in central Mali’s Mopti region and in neighbouring northern Burkina Faso. Along with looting, burning, killing and terrorising, these groups earn considerable income by kidnapping foreigners for ransom.
On January 2016, militants aligned with the Mali-based al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) abducted Australian missionary doctor Ken Elliot (known affectionately as “the doctor to the poor”) and his wife Jocelyn, from their home in Baraboule, near Djibo, northern Burkina Faso. Though Jocelyn was subsequently released, Dr Elliot (85) remains a captive to this day. http://rlprayerbulletin.blogspot.com/2017/07/rlpb-413-mali-philippines-captives-in.html The couple built the hospital in Djibo and had been serving the community there since 1972.
See: Dr. Ken Elliot - Friends of Burkina Faso Medical Clinic (YouTube), 18 January 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UslBlilQSg
Recommended:
The Complex and Growing Threat of Militant Islamist Groups in the Sahel
by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, 15 February 2019
https://africacenter.org/spotlight/the-complex-and-growing-threat-of-militant-islamist-groups-in-the-sahel/
