France battles al-Qaeda and ISIS in Sahel with Takuba Task Force

Magdy Abdel Rasoul

The African Sahel states have witnessed many terrorist operations, most by groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and ISIS, including Nigeria’s Boko Haram. The constant terrorist attacks have not only targeted the interests of the governments of the Sahel countries, but also France’s strategic interests.

Foreign intelligence services recently monitored the existence of suspicious terrorist movements inside Sahel states, which led France to lead a military coalition to oppose and pre-empt the terrorists.

Takuba

To fight terrorism in Africa, France launched an alliance consisting of several European countries, including England, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Norway, Estonia, Germany and Sweden, in addition to Mali.

The Takuba Task Force will fight terrorism in the African Sahel states, especially Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and Nigeria, where terrorist groups are especially active.

Colin Clarke, an American researcher specialized in combating international terrorism, explained the reasons for the spread of terrorism within the Sahel states, including multiple geographical factors such as the natural borders, which facilitate the passage and infiltration of terrorist elements, as is the case between the borders of Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Mali and Chad.

Clarke pointed out that the economic situation in those countries facilitates the recruitment of young people to join the terrorist groups, in addition to the high population growth and poor political conditions.

Tribal intolerance is also common throughout the populations, which provides many opportunities for fundamentalist violence to increase between tribes, while the presence of complex social relations, specifically in Niger, Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso, has weakened social homogeneity.

According to Clarke, ISIS uses its wealth to provide financial support to attract young elements, in addition to exploiting religion as a social language and misinterpreting the idea of ​​Islamic jihad to support its ideas and to establish its caliphate.

Julie Coleman, who specializes in fundamentalist movements in Africa, considers it necessary to continue analyzing the characteristics of Africa’s Sahel peoples in order to understand why the youth join these terrorist groups, which exploit the youth to carry out terrorist acts and build its caliphate.

Meanwhile, Dutch researcher Alexander von Rosenbach believes there have been transformations taking place on the ground within the countries of the Horn of Africa and the Sahel that have prevented the merger of al-Qaeda and ISIS, including the fact that both want to unite with absolute authority and have complete control of the land, desiring to rapidly expand and carry out terrorist operations.

The Takuba Task Force is carrying out preemptive strikes against the terrorist groups in the Sahel states, as they pose a danger to the interests of those countries, as well as to Egypt.