After years of sidelining the Sahel's military rulers, the United States is moving to engage more with countries in the region.
Top military officials warned a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday, that extremist groups had expanded their operational capacity.
“Today, the epicentre of global terrorism is in Africa. ISIS leadership is African. Al-Qaeda’s economic engine is in Africa. Both of these groups share the will and intent to strike our homeland,” said General Dagvin Anderson, Commander of the United States Africa Command.
Referring to militant advances in West Africa, including a recent attack near Mali’s capital, he said the “capture of a capital city would provide al-Qaeda with all the trappings of a nation-state to sponsor global terrorism”.
“In West Africa, al-Qaeda affiliate JNIM has demonstrated increased capacity to control key terrain in the Sahel, most notably by strangling fuel supplies around population centres.”
