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US Officials Concerned About Rising Violence in Africa's Sahel

Sirwan Kajjo

   The security situation in the Sahel region of Africa is
   rapidlydeteriorating, U.S. officials warned this week.

   Terror attacks claimed by Islamist militants against civilians and
   military targets have particularly risen in Burkina Faso, Mali and
   Niger.

   The Sahel is a semiarid region that encompasses an area south of the
   Sahara Desert, spanning 10 countries from Senegal in the west to
   Eritrea in the east.In 2019, violence in the area left more than 2,000
   civilians dead.

   Since the beginning of 2020, in Burkina Faso alone, violence has
   displaced 4,000 people a day, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
   said.

   "It would be a mistake to attribute all of this violence to extremism
   or inter-religious conflict," Mark Green, administrator of the U.S.
   Agency for International Development, said during a U.S. Senate hearing
   Tuesday. "But it would be just as wrong not to recognize that
   conditions like unresponsive governance, lack of economic opportunity
   and increasingly limited natural resources, if left unaddressed, will
   make the region even more vulnerable to extremists, their ideology and
   method of recruitment."

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