For a partnership in counterterrorism

El Moudjahid – May 18, 2011

The Malian capital of Bamako will host on May 19 a meeting of the Ministers for Foreign Affairs of the four Sahel countries (Algeria, Mali, Niger, and Mauritania) who will discuss issues related to peace, security, and development in the sub-region.

Coming on the heels of the previous meetings of November 2008 in Bamako and March 2010 in Algiers, this meeting is being held in the spirit on consolidating what has been achieved so far and should enable the participants to exchange views in order to better define the axes of a more efficient cooperation against the threat of terrorism.

Algeria, who grants particular interest to regional dimension in its approach to development, has always worked towards better integration of the Sahel region. It is in a context of partnership in the fight against terrorism that the four Sahel neighbors agree to consolidate their effort with a view to implementing a development approach that is able to fight efficiently against terrorism. “The significant convergence of views held with our neighboring countries means that everybody is now convinced that the concept of partnership is the only means of fighting terrorism,” insisted Minister Delegate for Maghreb and African Affair Abdelkader Messahel who remarked, however, that “without peace and stability, there won’t be any development.” Therefore, he said, it is important for all the neighboring countries to be involved to address all these challenges, which have increasingly become a serious threat to the security of the region.

At the March 2010 meeting in Algiers, the Ministers for Foreign Affairs and the representatives of the participating countries had reaffirmed their determination to act individually and collectively to eradicate the phenomenon of terrorism and reestablish the Sahel-Saharan region to its vocation as “an area of exchanges, peace, stability, and fruitful cooperation.” Participants had then agreed as well on the need for counterterrorism authorities to seek the ways and means of strengthening exchanges of information, assessments and analyses related to the terrorist threat and its connections. To that end, the member countries had decided to establish a joint operational general staff committee, or CEMOC, entrusted with conducting yearly assessments of the security situation prevailing in the Sahel region and defining concerted actions to implement a shared strategy to combat terrorism and organized crime.

This is the reason why the member countries consider that bilateral and regional cooperation is the “unavoidable” framework for a fight against terrorism and its connections that “coordinated, efficient, total and without concessions”. At the national level, this implies that States are responsible for conducting an “efficient and comprehensive” fight against this phenomenon. At the bilateral level, the member countries had emphasized the need for strengthening cooperation between the Sates in the region with a view of implementing, namely, bilateral mechanisms and agreements.