Blinken brings U.S. help to Sahel for combat towards Islamist insurgencies

Blinken brings U.S. help to Sahel for combat towards Islamist insurgencies

NIAMEY – U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken introduced $150 million in new humanitarian help for Africa’s Sahel quarter for the period of a go to on Thursday to Niger, a kingdom Washington views as an principal ally within the combat towards Islamist insurgencies.

Blinken’s go to to Niger is the primary by a U.S. Secretary of State and a powerful exhibit of help for an impoverished nation that has had relative success in containing insurgent communities and managed a democratic transition in a coup-prone quarter.

“It will help provide life-saving support to refugees, asylum seekers, and others impacted by conflict and food insecurity in the region,” Blinken reported in a assertion concerning the new help, which is able to go to Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Mauritania as effectively as Sahelian refugees in Libya.

Blinken’s journey is the most up-to-date in a sequence of visits to Africa by U.S. authorities figures as Washington seeks to raise ties with a continent the place China’s affect is robust and frequent nations preserve cordial relations with Russia.

Landlocked Niger and its neighbors Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Chad are all struggling to estrange Islamist insurgents who’ve killed countless numbers of individuals, displaced tens of millions extra, and in some circumstances seized manage of huge swathes of territory.

Groups linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State have carried out dozens of assaults in southwestern Niger, along with some wherein dozens of Nigerien troopers have been killed, however the violence has not unfold throughout the entire kingdom because it has executed elsewhere.

Shortly after touchdown within the capital Niamey, Blinken met with individuals concerned in a program, partly funded by the U.S., to disarm and rehabilitate defectors from extremist communities.

‘RIGHT CHOICES’

While violence in Mali and Burkina Faso led to army coups and a shift in alliances away from Western nations and toward Russia, Niger managed a democratic switch of strength in 2021 and has retained clean relations with the West.

“They’re making the right choices, we think, to help deal with the kind of threats that are common across the Sahel. So, we’re trying to highlight a positive example,” a senior State Department official advised reporters.

The official praised Niger’s President Mohamed Bazoum for talking out towards Russia’s confidential Wagner group of mercenaries, which has been employed by Mali’s junta to support combat insurgents there. Mali describes the Wagner personnel on its territory as “trainers”.

Blinken reported using Russian mercenaries had not confirmed an useful response to insecurity.

“It’s not just we know this is going to end badly, we’ve already seen it end badly in a number of places,” Blinken reported.

A French-led worldwide power has been on the bottom in Mali for a decade however has fallen out of favor with Mali’s management. Anti-French sentiment has been on the stand in Mali and several other different former French colonies in West Africa.

Ghana has asserted that Burkina Faso has additionally employed Wagner mercenaries. Burkina Faso’s junta has neither confirmed nor denied that.

When countless numbers of French troopers have been kicked out of Mali for the period of a dispute with the junta there final yr, they moved their base into Niger.

Blinken traveled to Niger from Ethiopia, the place he met on Wednesday with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and different authorities figures in an effort to restore the diplomatic harm brought about by the two-year struggle in Tigray that led to November.