The attack on a church in northern Burkina Faso on Sunday, in which up to 30 gunmen killed six worshippers, is just the latest incident in a worrying rise of violence and extremism in the Sahel.
While the global battle against terrorism has largely been focused on ISIS, whose so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria grew to roughly the size of Britain at its peak, militancy has been growing in Mali, Mauritania, Chad, Niger and Burkina Faso, with limited and largely futile attempts to curb its growth.
In the past decade, thousands of people have been killed by a range of extremist groups while another 4.3 million have been displaced. This grim conflict has not received nearly enough worldwide attention but it is time for the world to wake up to the threat.
In the Sahel region, which stretches from Senegal in West Africa to Eritrea in the east, Burkina Faso has become a new frontier in the past few years.
The country, which has a history of religious groups peacefully coexisting, has witnessed two deadly attacks on churches in the past fortnight. The slaughter of worshippers and priests might have made headlines but, as one analyst told The National, there have been "more than 20 attacks in the past month alone".
Overall, militant attacks in Burkina Faso soared from 12 in 2016 to 158 last year. Meanwhile ISIS has stepped up its propaganda operations in the country and in rare footage last month, ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi accepted an oath of allegiance from a Burkinabe affiliate. Other groups, including Ansarul Islam and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara have been active in the region.
Nevertheless, of the African countries which make up the G5 Sahel anti-terrorism force, Burkina Faso is seen as a more stable partner than, for example, neighbouring Mali. Earlier this month German Chancellor Angela Merkel pledged $51m in assistance to the country while the resignation of the entire Burkinabe cabinet in January, amid rising violence, exhibited a level of accountability that is almost unprecedented in West Africa.
The rest of the world must now step in to support Burkina Faso, and the under-equipped, underfunded G5 Sahel, in tackling militancy in the region, which risks destabilising other nations and displacing millions more to Europe.
It will not be easy, as a French hostage recovery operation – in which two French commandos died while rescuing four hostages – illustrated this week. The hostage takers were en route from Benin to Mali, through Burkina Faso, to hand the captives over to a Malian militant group. The operation offered a number of lessons, from the cross-border nature of Sahel militancy to the emergence of Burkina Faso as a new theatre of operations, and the capacity of a handful of militants to kill elite French soldiers.
As guerrilla wars across the Middle East have demonstrated, it is notoriously difficult to fight militants with little sense of self-preservation. The countries of the Sahel are trying to confront this growing threat – but they cannot do so alone.
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David Einhorn closed out 2018 with his biggest annual loss ever for the 22-year-old Greenlight Capital.
The firm’s main hedge fund fell 9 per cent in December, extending this year’s decline to 34 percent, according to an investor update viewed by Bloomberg.
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In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
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Emiratisation was introduced in the UAE more than 10 years ago
It aims to boost the number of citizens in the workforce particularly in the private sector.
Growing the number of Emiratis in the workplace will help the UAE reduce dependence on overseas workers
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
