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David Lewis: How the world’s forgotten terror hotspot is fuelling Europe’s migration crisis

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3 months ago

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David Lewis: How the world’s forgotten terror hotspot is fuelling Europe’s migration crisis

Wagner Group mercenaries have taken over the role previously played by US and French troops in countries including Mali. Photo: AP

Having slipped undetected into Mali’s capital weeks ago, the jihadis struck just before dawn prayers. They killed dozens of students at an elite police training academy, stormed Bamako’s airport and set the presidential jet on fire. The September 17 attack was the most brazen since 2016 in a capital city in the Sahel, a vast arid region stretching across sub-Saharan Africa.

It showed that jihadist groups with links to Al-Qa’ida or Islamic State, whose largely rural insurgency has killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, can also strike at the heart of power. Overshadowed by wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Sudan, conflict in the Sahel rarely garners global headlines, yet it is contributing to a sharp rise in migration from the region towards Europe at a time when anti-immigrant, far-right parties are on the rise and some EU states are tightening their borders.

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