The military juntas ruling Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali announced on Tuesday they will deploy a joint task force of 5,000 troops to fight terrorism and organized crime in the Sahel region.
“Our forces will now be able to intervene together,” said Nigerian Defense Minister Salifou Mody in a state television interview.
Mody said the joint force is “practically ready,” and will “have its own air, land, and intelligence capabilities.”
“The Alliance of Sahel States is our passport to security,” he said. “We are in the same space. We face the same types of threats, in particular this threat from criminal groups. We had to pool our efforts.”
The junta triad of Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali formed a cooperative called the Alliance of Sahel States in September 2023 by signing a mutual defense agreement. The agreement called for all three countries to respond if any of them were attacked from outside, a clear warning to other African nations who were talking about using military force to reverse the coup in Niger.
The defense agreement also called on each of the Sahel states to assist the others with internal security problems. All three former French colonies used to belong to an anti-terrorist group called the G5 Sahel Alliance that was established by France in 2014, which also included Mauritania and Chad.
Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali drifted away from France, the European Union, the United States, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) after their governments fell to military coups. The three Sahel juntas kicked out French and American counter-terrorism forces over the past two years and withdrew from the G5 Sahel Alliance, despite warnings that terrorists were very active in the region, and the threat might grow out of control without French and American support.
The Associated Press (AP) cited analysts who said the security situation in the Sahel has grown undeniably worse since the juntas took power and ejected Western forces from their territory.
“The violence in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso has killed more than 3,470 people in the last six months while 2.6 million people are currently displaced,’ the AP reported, quoting United Nations figures.