WEST AFRICA
Flexing Muscle
French President Emmanuel Macron said he will propose military action against human traffickers in the fight against modern slavery and invited the United States to attend this month’s summit of the new G5 Sahel force, a security alliance comprising Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger.
Speaking at the African Union-European Union (AU-EU) summit in Ivory Coast, Macron said world leaders should cooperate in annihilating those networks and gangs involved in human trafficking, the French Tribune reported. These networks operate across the Sahel region, moving people through Libya across the Mediterranean Sea.
He didn’t elaborate on what kind of military action was proposed, except to say that he was not advocating a war in Libya, a nation still reeling from the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
At the G5 Sahel summit on Dec. 13, the Sahel leaders will meet with officials from the European Union and the African Union to discuss plans for a joint force of 5,000 regional troops supported by 4,000 French soldiers that have been deployed in the area since France’s 2013 intervention in Mali.
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