French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has urged African nations to coordinate attempts to tackle the jihadist threat, from southern Libya to Nigeria, warning that mutual distrust is hampering efforts.
"Cooperation must become the rule and no longer the exception," Le Drian said at the two-day International Forum on Peace and Security in Africa, in Senegal's capital Dakar.
"The threat feeds off the absence of borders and their porous nature. Southern Libya is today the most dramatic example," he said, pointing to the presence of Islamic extremist movements driven out of northern Mali by a French military intervention in 2013.
France’s defence minister said the situation in southern Libya was “a source of destabilisation for the whole of the Sahel", referring to the belt of nations on the southern edges of the Sahara.
He said Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency, which is spilling into neighbouring countries, was further proof of the need for a regional response to the continent’s crises.
“African troops now make up the majority of peacekeeping forces on the continent,” Le Drian noted, though adding that more coordination was required by countries. “African states have to realise that guaranteeing their own security requires cooperation. Nothing can be done without cooperation,” he told FRANCE 24 at the summit.
Boko Haram ‘a regional problem’
France has made no secret of its frustration at the slow pace of cooperation between African states, whether in tackling jihadist militia in southern Libya or Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency.
"We're at a forum in Dakar talking about the need for Africans to collectively take charge of their security and yet it's not happening where there is urgency," Le Drian told reporters.
Five years after the start of its insurgency, Nigeria’s Boko Haram has stepped up attacks across much of the country's north, spilling over its borders into neighbouring Niger and Cameroon.
“The Boko Haram problem is no longer limited to Nigeria,” the United Nations special envoy to the Sahel Region, Hiroute Gebre Selassie, told FRANCE 24. “It is having an impact across the region.”
The leaders of Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad agreed in Paris in May to flesh out a plan to share intelligence, coordinate action and monitor borders, but there has been little progress since.
French mediation
Regional analysts say Nigeria's neighbours suspect its army is infiltrated by the jihadist movement and cannot be trusted if it crosses borders in hot pursuit of militants, which Abuja wants to do. For its part, Nigeria has accused Chad and Cameroon of not doing enough to stop the rebels.
Le Drian said France would step in to help coordinate a regional taskforce against the Islamist group. While ruling out direct military intervention in Nigeria, France has said it can play a role in easing tensions between its three former colonies and English-speaking Nigeria.
Paris fears Boko Haram could spread northward into the Sahel and beyond Cameroon into the Central African Republic, areas where more than 5,000 French troops are deployed in peacekeeping and counter-terrorism missions.
Le Drian said Paris would provide about a dozen military advisers to join regional counterparts at a command centre in the Chadian capital N'Djamena, 60 km from the Nigerian border.
The defence minister offered French help in launching a regional force of 2,800 soldiers to tackle Boko Haram that was pledged in July but has yet to see the light of day. "They need organisational, structural, command and inter-operational help,” he said. “France is offering to do that.”
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)
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