Five countries of the Sahel and France meet at a summit, Monday, February 15, to take stock of the anti-jihadist fight in the region, where Paris would like to see its allies take over the military, but also political, to reduce an eight-year commitment. years.
The presidents of the G5 Sahel (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad) are announced to be present in N'Djamena, the Chadian capital.
French President Emmanuel Macron will participate by video conference in this summit, which will officially open at 2 p.m.
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The two-day summit, initially associating the G5 Sahel and France, then other international partners, takes place a year after that in Pau, France, which, faced with the threat of a rupture under the blows of jihadist slaughterhouse, had led to a military reinforcement in the area known as the "three borders" (Mali, Niger and Burkina) and the sending of 600 additional French soldiers, increasing them from 4,500 to 5,100.
Despite the claimed tactical success, the picture remains very bleak.
More than eight years after the onset in northern Mali of a security crisis that continues to spread its metastases to the sub-region, hardly a day goes by in the three main afflicted countries without an attack on what remains of representation state, the explosion of an artisanal mine or abuses against civilians.
These are the main victims of the conflict.
The bar of two million displaced persons was crossed in January.
Paris wants more efforts from its partners
A year after Pau and the time for the "military surge" must come to N'Djamena that of the "diplomatic, political and development leap", according to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Yves Le Drian.
The French army claims to have seriously weakened the Islamic State organization and killed several Al-Qaeda leaders in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqmi).
The number of attacks on military camps declined in 2020.
But the two main jihadist nebulae remain very active.
And the French government, confronted at home with growing questions about a financially and humanly costly anti-jihadist commitment (50 soldiers killed since 2013), agrees that the remedy cannot be only military.
France considers that too little has yet been done by its Sahelian partners on the political front, for example in Mali to apply a peace agreement signed with the former northern rebellion or to bring back teachers and doctors to the localities. that they have deserted.
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"The past has shown it": if military operations have been able to "slow down here and there" the expansion of jihadist groups, they "are able to turn their backs, bypass the device and continue" as before, warns the director Sahel from the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank, Jean-Hervé Jézéquel.
France does not hide its desire to downsize.
She will "adjust (her) effort", assured Emmanuel Macron in January.
But Paris seems hesitant to immediately cut its workforce.
Dialogue with jihadist leaders
Paris favors two axes to lighten its footprint: "internationalization", embodied by the new group of special forces Takuba, in which several dozen Estonians, Czechs and Swedes participate;
and "Sahelization", that is to say the passing of the baton to the local national armies that France forms with the European Union.
These, under-trained and under-equipped, remain vulnerable.
In Burkina, soldiers hardly ever leave bases when they have not left them.
Politically, Paris insists that it is time to engage in the space opened up by the military successes of recent months and to reinstall the State where it is currently absent.
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In Mali, the epicenter of the crisis, the military - who keep control over the transitional authorities installed after the putsch of August 2020 - take up the need for a dialogue with the Malian jihadist leaders Iyad Ag Ghaly and Amadou Koufa .
A hypothesis officially excluded by Paris.
But the N'Djamena summit could however "act on the effort targeted at the upper hierarchy" of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), a jihadist alliance affiliated with Al-Qaeda, a hierarchy of which the two men are the main heads, explains the Élysée.
This summit will finally mark the taking of orders for the G5 Sahel by Chad, two months before the presidential election, of which Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno, in power for 30 years, is the big favorite.
With AFP
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