G5 Sahel Summit: governance and terrorism in times of COVID-19

The G5 Sahel Heads of State and the President of the French Republic met last January in Pau, France, to discuss the situation in the G5 Sahel region. Six months and a pandemic later, the G5 countries (Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso) and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sanchez, met again in Nouakchott on Tuesday 30 June to evaluate the commitments made in France half a year ago. Other European leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, will participate in the summit by video conference only.

France will ask Mali and Burkina Faso on Tuesday for assurances on its peace commitments so as not to jeopardise recent military developments on the ground. An official source at the Elysée Palace on Monday said that "all the progress made is fragile and could be jeopardised if the political momentum is not maintained". According to the French government, "the situation is particularly worrying in Mali, whose authorities are no longer discussing a peace plan, relegating the implementation of the Algiers peace agreement to second place". In this scenario, Burkina Faso is preparing for an unprecedented electoral campaign, marked by a health and social crisis and in which the outgoing Head of State, Marc Roch Kaboré, is expected to participate.

In January, the heads of State of this coalition reaffirmed their common determination to fight together against the terrorist groups operating in the Sahel-Saharan band and in the Lake Chad region.  The security situation remains precarious in the Sahel despite recent progress in the fight against terrorist groups in the region. In this scenario, Mali's opposition coalition, now renamed the Mouvement 5 juin, led by the aforementioned Imam Dicko, has put the country's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in check. 

The G5 countries and France fear that the political instability prevailing in this country will delay the implementation of the Algiers peace agreements. "The Malians are breathless in the face of the deteriorating security climate," the Baba Dakono researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) explained to the RFI website.  "Governance is an obstacle to ending the crisis in Mali and the Sahel," he said. At the moment, violence has repercussions in all areas of society and directly affects the level of peace and the freedom and development of the people who live in different societies.  This violence is caused by different factors such as the emergence and perpetuation of organized crime and corruption, lack of democracy or terrorism. All this means that people living in the various countries that make up the Sahel are not guaranteed the ability to participate in a community freely and safely. 

This fact is also linked to the absence of a fair democracy. As can be seen from the various democracy indices published each year, most Sahelian countries are governed by hybrid regimes where corruption tends to be widespread and the rule of law is characterised by weakness, or authoritarian regimes where political pluralism does not exist. The absence of democracy leads to the emergence of violence. This fact means that human security is not fully guaranteed in the Sahel, forcing the issue of governance to also concern the army. The democracy index usually assesses the democratic level of countries by analysing five main categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; functioning of government; political participation and culture.

The Pau summit in January had proposed increased coordination between the Barkhane mission itself and national armies. "The efforts of these national armies have been accompanied by a deterioration in their behaviour towards civilians," Alain Antil, director of the Sub-Saharan Africa Centre of the French Institute of International Relations (Ifri) told the daily RFI.  "From governance comes violence. We can send the number of soldiers we want on the ground that won't solve anything. It's up to the elites to impose a certain number of red lines in their practice," said the researcher. 

The Joint Force G5 Sahel was created to fight against the destabilization caused by armed terrorist groups in five countries. Its deployment was authorised by the African Union and the UN Security Council.  At present, this organisation has a presence in at least five countries to fight terrorism, organised crime, human and drug trafficking, to help re-establish the authority of the State, the return of displaced persons and to facilitate the entry of humanitarian aid and the implementation of development programmes. The coronavirus pandemic has not caused the disappearance of the region's main threat: terrorism, but has created the right breeding ground for these organizations to increase their presence. 

At a meeting in April to discuss the impact of the coronavirus, African leaders agreed on the urgent need to continue coordinated joint efforts to fight jihadist extremism and address the threat of terror that has plagued the area for the past several years.  Security has taken a back seat in countries such as Burkina Faso where "all provinces are affected", as Mahamadou Sawadogo, a specialist on violent extremism, has summarized.  

As the rotating president of the coalition, Mauritanian President Mohamed uld Ghazouani is in charge of welcoming his Sahelian counterparts to the Al Mourabitoune centre, as well as the President of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahamat, and Sanchez and Macron. The crisis of governance and terrorism mark the agenda of a summit that will also analyse the possibility of creating a new coalition for the Sahel, as discussed at the summit in Pau. In order to increase the effectiveness of this proposal, the summit in Mauritania will be followed by another one held by video conference in which the UN or the European Council will be present. 

However, as the security crisis worsens in the Sahel, an increasing number of observers agree that the military response will be insufficient. According to Raphaël Granvaud of the Survie organisation, "France has long been opposed to any form of political negotiation with armed groups, except those it has officially or unofficially described as reputable, while most Malians demand a political solution. Seven and a half years after the launch of Operation Serval, and six years after its extension to the entire Sahel with Barkhane, the result is indisputable: French interventionism aggravates the situation because the French military presence and the exactions of its allies allow the jihadists to recruit more quickly than the losses inflicted on them".

"Instead of trying to hide Barkhane's impasse, France should now consider how to withdraw to make way for strategies freely decided upon by African governments. The military effort should be redirected towards the protection of civilians, and aid to African armies should no longer be used as a pretext for reinforcing political interference," he added. 

The President of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, has resumed his international agenda by attending this summit. The Spanish president's plane is carrying the material that the country is going to donate and several health professionals are also travelling. They are three doctors from the Ramón y Cajal Hospital in Madrid, a nurse from the 12 de Octubre University Hospital, also in Madrid, and a nurse from the Emergency Management 061 in the Region of Murcia. Sánchez is accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya.