PARIS: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates put forward $130 million on Wednesday towards fighting violent extremists in West Africa’s Sahel region, as France’s Emmanuel Macron hosted leaders to an effort to boost a fledgling five-nation military force.

The force brings together troops from Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger — some of the poorest countries in the world — and money had been a major obstacle to getting it off the ground.

The $100m (85m euros) from oil-rich Riyadh and $30m from the UAE bring the total pledged funding over the initial 250m euros needed in the short term, a relief for Macron who had lobbied the Gulf and US for cash.

“We must win the war against terrorism in the Sahel-Sahara region,” Macron told reporters after meeting with the five countries’ presidents and other leaders including Germany’s Angela Merkel. “There are attacks every day. There are states which are currently in jeopardy,” he said after the meeting at a chateau outside Paris.

Former colonial power France has been leading regional counterterrorism efforts through its 4,000-strong Barkhane force, but is keen to spread the burden as its military is engaged on various fronts.

Two years in the planning, the G5 Sahel force is set to cover a desert region the size of Europe.

Ambitious goals

The International Crisis Group described the G5 force as a European effort to “bring down the expense of their overseas operations by delegating them partially to their African partners”. The Sahel “is politically and economically strategic, especially for France and Germany, both of which view the region as posing a potential threat to their own security and as a source of migration and terrorism”, it added in a report on Tuesday.

The ambitious goal is to have a pooled force of 5,000 local troops operational by mid-2018, wresting back border areas from militants including a local Al-Qaeda affiliate.

Re-establishing law and order in the border zone between Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, where several hundred soldiers carried out last month’s debut mission, is a top priority.

Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said it was “urgent to ensure that G5 Sahel forces get rapid results”. “We are pursuing these efforts for peace in Mali.”

Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2017