Talks in Niamey to combat terrorism and control of border between Niger and Libya

Ahmed Adel

On Friday (November 29th), Niger President Mohamed Youssoufi met in the capital, Niamey, with Ahmed al-Sharif, a member of the Libyan parliament, to discuss the protection of the common border.

During the meeting, the two sides discussed ways of joint cooperation in the fight against terrorism, securing borders, and stressed the need to protect them, and put forward new ways to combat terrorism.

Located in the vicinity of Lake Chad, Niger suffers from the terrorist expansion of the Boko Haram terrorist group and is in a state of geographic attachment to the Republic of Mali, which suffers from the presence of terrorist organizations such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Nusrat Al-Islam.

Security threats

In August 2019, the President of Niger, Mohamed Issoufou, said in a speech during the anniversary of the Independence Day and declared that all conflicts in the Sahel countries are due to the intimidation of terrorist organizations in the region and their alliance with armed groups, which was manifested during the Libyan crisis, which poses a serious threat to the region.

In September 2019, during an interview with Isovo with the French magazine John Afrique, he stressed that his country is more than ever confronting the activities of terrorist groups, pointing out that this is linked to several things: the first is the security threats in West Africa since the nineties; because of the growing influence of terrorist groups in Algeria, in what was then known as the “Black Decade” era, and the emergence of the Boko Haram group in Nigeria about 10 years ago.

The second relates to the growing power of terrorist groups after the collapse of the Libyan state in the events of February 2011, after the overthrow of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, which the President of Niger described as “a serious mistake involving Western powers”, and thirdly the spread of terrorism in the Lake Chad region, especially the terrorism of the Boko group. Fourth is the western border with Mali and the activity of terrorist organizations and organized crime groups.

According to Nasser Maamoun Issa, a researcher on African affairs, the armed group in Libya cooperates with drug and human trafficking gangs. These gangs cooperate with armed organizations located in the Sahel-Saharan region, exploiting border liquidity and the absence of security services in that region, which has become troubling countries.

Issa said in a statement to the Reference that the conflict in southern Libya, is transferred to Chad and Niger, the impact of the exploitation of the situation of tribal conflict between pastoralists and farmers in both countries; which leads to increased terrorism in the African Sahel.