Ana Aguilera, researcher at the International Observatory for Terrorism Studies (OIET) in Spain and Coordinator of the Young Researchers Programme
Terrorist activity in the Sahel region is undergoing a process of transformation and expansion that threatens to destabilize the countries in their immediate neighborhood. As a strategic area with access to the sea, the Gulf of Guinea has been a major victim of the Sahel violence since the increase in terrorist incursions in countries such as Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, and Benin in 2020. It has witnessed a significant increase in terrorist activity in recent years compared to previous levels of violent insurgence, and this has led to concerns about the safety and security of the region as a whole as well as the potential for economic and political disruption.
Dynamics of Terrorist Violence in the Gulf of Guinea
West Africa is considered the epicenter of global terrorist activity today. Burkina Faso, Mali, and Nigeria occupy the three highest positions in the top 5 Islamist-related attacks by country in 2021, behind Afghanistan and closely followed by Iraq.
The virulence with which regional franchises of Al Qaeda, most notably Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimeen (JNIM, the Support Group for Islam and the Muslims), and the Islamic State, particularly Islamic State in the Greater Sahel (ISGS), have managed to chronicle the armed conflict in the Sahelian countries is putting the regional security forces, which had so far managed to evade terrorist activity in their territory, in a bind.
In June 2020, an attack on a site of the Ivorian army ended four years of absence of terrorist attacks within its borders. In Togo, the border areas with Burkina Faso and Benin are an incessant source of both successful and thwarted attacks, and in the case of the latter, more than twenty terrorist attacks have been recorded in 2022 alone. The JNIM coalition is predominant in the Gulf of Guinea, as members of this group are behind multiple attacks recorded during the last year. In November alone, three attacks were recorded in Benin: the first, on the border with Niger; the second, near the border with Burkina Faso; and the third on the border with Nigeria. Meanwhile, Togo suffered from two attacks perpetrated in the town of Tiwoli (near Burkina Faso) by members of JNIM during the same period.
Projections had warned of a possible spread of the terrorist threat across wider spaces of West Africa, an assessment exercise also supported by experts and intelligence services on the ground. Recent incursions since the pandemic and the relentless history of violence against checkpoints, border points, and civilian targets highlight the Gulf of Guinea as the new target for terrorists. The three coastal countries are now facing the fighters of these armed groups and an ideology that is permeating a population witnessing the social decay and insecurity in their Sahelian neighbors. For its part, the only country in the Gulf of Guinea that has so far managed to elude the wave of terrorist attacks, the small nation of Ghana, is also perceiving a very high degree of threat. In its latest annual report in May 2022, the West Africa Center for Countering Extremism (WACCE) showed its fervent concern about the southward advance of terrorism in the Sahel, making ” border regions of Northern Ghana vulnerable and a possible target for extremist exploitation”.
The struggle for control and access to resources, and the illicit networks transiting a wide range of commodities over these vast areas and arriving from seaports further aggravate the reality faced by the local population. Despite not having found an empirical link between maritime piracy and terrorist groups operating in West Africa, further analyses are emerging that try to anticipate this potential challenge. The consequences of a symbiotic relationship or a prolonged link between smuggling and piracy networks on the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea and terrorism would bear negative effects, as it would cause great costs and losses at the economic and social levels and would foreseeably have a strong impact on the political stability of the countries under study.
The inability of the authorities to control these groups or the rapid reconversion of counter-terrorist alliances in countries hardest hit by terrorist virulence is substantially complicating armed groups’ continued gain of ground, power and influence across West Africa. The diplomatic turbulence between Mali and France, hitherto its preferred partner, has caused diplomatic relations and bilateral counter-terrorism efforts to be deeply undermined, ceding ground to other missions with the same objective such as the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA) or new strategic alliances with paramilitary forces such as the Wagner Group. Thus, and in view of the long volume of incursions on their borders, aggravated since 2021, the countries of the Gulf of Guinea have been forced to expand the allocations for defense budgets and adopt measures to ensure a joint counterterrorism fight. Various regional coalitions have emerged in response to the extremist surge, with several operations led by Côte d’Ivoire and other countries in the region seeking to mitigate the capacity and impact of violent acts committed both within and on the periphery of their boundaries.
Conclusion
Overall, the terrorist threat in the Gulf of Guinea is a serious concern that requires a comprehensive and coordinated response from the international community and countries in the region. Providing support to countries in the Gulf of Guinea can lead to an improvement in their capacity to combat terrorism and other related criminal activities such as piracy, while promoting stability and economic growth in the region.
As there is no optimistic forecast pointing to a decrease in terrorist violence in the southern coastal countries of West Africa, it is also a warning for the littoral countries in the Atlantic, which are already making preventive efforts to contain this potential threat within their territories in the near future. This spread necessitates a joint response in the context of deteriorating trust and collaboration between Mali and the other countries of the West African flank.
The threat assessment will need to be accompanied by the study of other related factors such as economy and politics, as upheavals on the political chessboard have led to coups in more than four West African countries between 2021 and 2022. Unless a coordinated solution is sought that efficiently executes tools and resources between intra-regional security forces, terrorism in West Africa risks becoming the next source of conflict with ramifications not only in this region but also in the north and center of the continent.
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