Niger pushes for peace with jihadist talks

Niger is pressing ahead with an initiative to talk to jihadists whose attacks have shaken the country’s southwest, amid fears that a new wave of bloodshed lies ahead.

The impoverished Sahel nation has been fearing a new onslaught in its Tillaberi region since France last month announced its troops would quit neighbouring Mali.

A source in his office said President Mohamed Bazoum first reached out to the jihadists “three months ago,” offering “an extended hand” to youngsters who had been recruited to an Islamic State-linked group.

Last month, Bazoum announced he had begun “discussions” with jihadists as part of “the search for peace.”

He said he had released several militants and received them at the presidential palace.

He said he had also dispatched envoys to meet nine “terrorist chiefs.” 

A presidential aide said the emissaries were local officials, traditional and religious leaders, and relatives of the jihadist chiefs. 

Tillaberi is located in the flashpoint “three borders” zone of Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali, where jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) operate.

The ISGS controls large areas near Burkina and Mali, and its fighters have already come within 100 kilometres (62 miles) of the capital Niamey.

A relative lull lasting several weeks abruptly ended on Thursday when suspected jihadists killed 21 people in an assault on a truck and bus.

Positive voices

The Sahel region of West Africa has been struggling with a jihadist revolt that sprang up in northern Mali a decade ago and spread to Niger and Burkina Faso three years later.

Thousands of civilians have died, more than 2.5 million have fled their homes and 10.5 million are facing crisis levels of hunger, according to the United Nations.

Niger, the world’s poorest country according to the benchmark of the UN’s Human Development Index, has been brutally affected.

In addition to the strikes in Tillaberi in the southwest, it is also being hit in the southeast by jihadists from neighbouring Nigeria.

Mali’s relations with France became fraught when its government signalled a willingness to talk to the jihadists, something that Paris has always fiercely opposed.

In Niger, some voices also oppose Bazoum’s overtures.

Souley Oumarou, of a campaign group called the Forum for Responsible Citizenship (FCR), said the release of “terrorists” was a “monumental error.”

But others are positive.

“We have always said that we should talk to compatriots who are in ISGS or Al-Qaeda, to see those who we can get back” from their ranks, said Boubacar Diallo, president of an association of cattle herders in north Tillaberi.

Bazoum’s approach “is a path aimed at genuinely resolving the problem of terrorism, which can’t be resolved by military means,” said Bakary Sambe, regional director of Timbuktu Institute think tank.

He and others say that recruitment to jihadist groups often has underlying causes, such as extreme poverty or youth unemployment. 

“You have to promote the return of the state in areas that have been abandoned,” said General Mahamadou Abou Tarka, head of a government panel called the High Authority for Consolidating Peace, or HACP.

Public support crucial

Bazoum has long defended the idea of reaching out to armed Islamists.

In 2016, when he was interior minister, he succeeded in getting dozens of Boko Haram jihadists in southeast Niger to join a programme combining deradicalisation and job training.

“It’s not mission impossible, provided you persuade the public to endorse dialogue and accept they will have to live alongside their former persecutors,” said Bello Adamou Mahamadou, a Nigerien expert at the West African Laboratory for Social Sciences (LASDL).

At the same time, Bazoum has been active in boosting Niger’s poorly equipped armed forces.

Army numbers have risen from 11,000 to 30,000 since 2011. 

Of these, around 12,000 are deployed in anti-jihadist operations, nearly half of them along the 1,400-kilometre (850-mile) border with Mali and Burkina Faso, Bazoum has said.

A military source said that “in the coming months” the army would receive drones, military planes and armoured vehicles ordered from Turkey.