World losing ground against violence in Sahel, U.N. says
John Irish
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - West African and international powers are failing to tackle the spiraling threat of Islamist militancy in the Sahel region, which is spreading towards the Gulf of Guinea, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday.
Groups with links to al Qaeda and Islamic State have strengthened their foothold across the arid Sahel region this year, making large swathes of territory ungovernable and stoking ethnic violence, especially in Mali and Burkina Faso.
France, the former colonial power in the region, intervened in Mali in 2013 to drive out Islamist militants who had occupied the north, but rather than stabilizing the region, the situation has progressively worsened.
Read more at: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sahel-security-idUSKBN1WB03S
I once watched an expert on C-Span saying something like, the more you fight it, the more it grows. As much as we hate "strongmen", "strongwomen", I suppose they may be a necessity. Now, that is not to give repressive regimes carte blanche either, okay, that's their internal affairs but in turn, some of these places then, create a bunch of refugees and now, it does become our problem.
