The US failure in Afghanistan resonates in the Sahel – archyworldys

Iyad Ag Ghali did not wait for the capture of Kabul to greet the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan. While he had not spoken since November 2019, the jihadist leader of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM), the Sahelian branch of Al-Qaida, split on Tuesday, August 10, of an audio message in which he paid tribute to “ [leur] Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, on the occasion of the withdrawal of the invading American forces and their allies ”. A reversal which, he added, “Is the result of two decades of patience”.

It is no coincidence that the irresistible offensive of the Taliban resonates to the far reaches of the Sahel. When GSIM was created in 2017, Iyad Ag Ghali pledged allegiance to Al-Qaida, but also to Afghan Islamists. The Taliban, like the Sahelian fighters, are part of the same nebula. “They have a real common insurgency know-how, which is the product of the Al-Qaida matrix, underlines Yvan Guichaoua, researcher at the School of International Studies at the University of Kent, in Brussels. They also share the same objective: the application of Sharia law. “

The jihadists of the GSIM were not the only ones in the region to closely follow the tipping of Afghanistan into the Taliban fold. On August 16, many Malians discovered, dumbfounded, the images of Afghans clinging to military planes about to take off from Kabul. Malians have been living for ten years under the threat of jihadists, sometimes affiliated with Al-Qaida, sometimes with the Islamic State organization. And this, despite a French anti-terrorist intervention launched in January 2013 (“Serval” operations, then “Barkhane”), at the request of the Malian government and under the mandate of the United Nations.

And if hostility towards French troops is gaining ground in public opinion, it does not exclude the fear of a vacuum. “Like the Americans who fled Afghanistan without asking for their rest, the French and the peacekeepers who are in Mali will one day flee and leave us face to face with the terrorist ogre”, alarmed Cheick Oumar Konaré, a famous Malian lawyer, during a televised debate broadcast on Africable on August 15.

Announced end of the “Barkhane” mission

“Let us learn from this Afghan failure, while there is still time, sum Tiébilé Dramé, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta known as “IBK” (overthrown by a coup of August 18, 2020). What message do the images of Kabul airport send us? For years, activists have regularly called for the departure of foreign troops, taking up the demands of warlords in doing so. You have to see reality in the face. Foreign troops are doing useful work. We should seriously consider the consequences of an uncoordinated hasty departure. “

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