Kofi Ampeah Woode
The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), in partnership with the Government of Japan and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are implementing a one-year project, to improve knowledge and information-sharing among security personnel and civil society actors in preventing and countering terrorism, violent extremism, and small arms proliferation, diversions and trafficking in seven (7) West African countries.
On Tuesday 6 June 2023, the Steering Committee leading the governance structure project implementation arrangements, met at the KAIPTC, Teshie, Ghana, to consider and approve annual proposals from the project team including commitments to set activities, narrative and financial reporting, project activities and disbursements among others.
The project, which is under the Japan-UNDP Partnership Fund, will also source some logistics in terms of motorbikes, for 4 of the 7 participating countries of the Accra Initiative – Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, Niger and Togo – particularly those in the border areas to improve the effectiveness of their work.
The committee consists of senior representatives from the KAIPTC and all identifiable relevant partners, including the Government of Japan, UNDP, Small Arms Commissions, Civil Society Organizations, Counter Terrorism Units, the Accra Initiative, women groups, and other relevant groups related.
Speaking at the inaugural day of the meeting, the Commandant, KAIPTC – Major General (Maj Gen) Richard Addo Gyane said the steering committee’s meeting on the one-year project would focus on Preventing Violent Extremism, Radicalization and Small Arms Proliferation in the Context of Stabilization in the Sahel and Adjoining Coastal States in West Africa.
The project builds up, he said, on the experiences of past interventions on small arms and light weapons (SALW), border security and violent extremism (VE), and responds to the needs of participating countries for continuous training and support, in ensuring that critical actors in the various states are abreast with relevant knowledge, skills and information on the issues addressed.
General Gyane pulled out a few statistics about the security or otherwise, of the West African subregion, as follows:
“The West African sub-region is increasingly becoming a hotbed of diverse human security threats of which violent extremist activity remains one of the most devastating consequences. The region has, since 2011, witnessed a steady rise in the emergence of insurgent and violent extremist groups, resulting in mass displacements and an alarming increase in fatalities.
According to a February 2023 report by the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies, the Sahel now accounts for 40 percent of all violent activity by militant Islamist groups in Africa, which is more than any other region in Africa. With 2,737 violent events, the western Sahel (Burkina Faso, Mali, and western Niger) experienced the largest escalation in violent events linked to militant Islamists over the past year of any region in Africa which represents a 36-percent increase.
Further, fatalities in the Sahel involving militant Islamist groups rose even more rapidly by 63 percent, resulting in 7,899 fatalities. To put this in perspective, the Sahel has experienced a near doubling (90-percent increase) in fatalities and more than a doubling (130-percent increase) in violent events involving militant Islamist groups since 2020.
The Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) coalition, particularly the Macina Liberation Front (FLM), Ansaroul Islam, and Ansar Dine, were linked to roughly 77 percent of militant Islamist violence and 67 percent of related fatalities in the Sahel. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) has been tied to the balance.
There was a 49 percent increase in fatalities from militant Islamist group violence against civilians in the Sahel over the past year, involving 978 attacks. The region now accounts for 60 percent of all civilian-targeted fatalities linked to violent extremism in Africa. Further, the introduction of the Wagner Group into this theatre has escalated violence against civilians in the Sahel.
The Wagner Group was linked to 726 reported civilian fatalities compared to the militant Islamists’ 1,984, a ratio of 1:2.7 civilian victims of militant violence, and while 90 percent of all violent events in the Sahel occurred in Burkina Faso and Mali, the past year was also notable for the significant increase in violent episodes in the littoral states, for the number of events in Benin jumped from 5 to 37 and in Togo from 1 to 17.
Niger, similarly, saw a 43 percent increase in violent events in the past year, rising to 214. Fatalities were cut in half, however, to 539. Militant Islamist violence in the Sahel is also responsible for the displacement of more than 2.6 million people. Burkina Faso accounts for the bulk of this displacement, with over 1.8 million displaced.
All these attacks have been facilitated by the proliferation of weapons and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the West Africa sub-region. Research also reveals that terrorist groups in the Sahel region are using weapons from looted military barracks. Hitherto, weapons had been sourced from Libya’s plundered arsenals post the Arab Spring, since 2013.
However, these sources have been declining and new sources from weapons diverted from poorly controlled national stockpiles as well as attacks on isolated military barracks indicates that violent extremists are getting their weapons from looted military barracks in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
There have been several interventions in the sub-region to respond to these security threats, one of them being the Accra Initiative, which since its creation in September 2017, has sought to prevent the spillover of terrorism from the Sahel and to address transnational organized crime and violent extremism in member countries’ border areas.”
The Head of Political Affairs Section, Embassy of Japan, Accra – Ms Saaya Amono, said Japan recognizes that promoting peace and security is an essential prerequisite for ensuring human security and economic development around the world, and has been providing assistance to prevent the spread of terrorism and VE, to build the economic and social resilience of each individual.
In addition to this, Japan had also supported the strengthening of governance through assistance in areas such as policing and administrative capacity-building, and that the project is one of the many supports her country has extended to security and peace focused organizations such as the KAIPTC, Ms Amono continued.
She concluded that Japan has provided a cumulative total of approximately USD 9.46 million to the KAIPTC to date, to support numerous projects including training in small arms control, police capacity building and border security management, and that as a proactive contributor to peace in the world, Japan identifies with the work of the Accra Initiative.
By Kofi Ampeah-Woode
