Rethinking security across the Sahara and the Sahel

The nature of conflicts across the Sahel and the Sahara has changed. The conflicts in Libya, Mali and Nigeria show that violence is increasingly cross-border while pre-existing political, ethnic and religious tensions are being reinforced.

The lack of regional cooperation, partly because of rivalry between Algeria and Morocco, makes it easy for a mix of jihadist warlords, criminal gangsters and separatist militants to move freely across this vast area. As a result, there is a real prospect of a further deepening of links between militant groups in the region, such as Boko Haram and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

International and regional institutions, including the European Union, have produced a plethora of Sahel strategies, but they should work much more closely together to tackle Sahara-Sahel insecurity.