BURKINA
FASO – GEOGRAPHY
News: Mali, Niger, Burkina sign mutual
defence pact
What's
in the news?
●
The military leaders of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger signed a
mutual defence pact, ministerial delegations from the three Sahel countries
announced in Mali's capital Bamako.
Key
takeaways:
●
All three countries have undergone coups
since 2020, most recently Niger, where soldiers in July overthrew President
Mohamed Bazoum.
●
The
West African regional bloc ECOWAS has threatened to intervene militarily in
Niger over the coup.
●
Mali and Burkina Faso quickly responded by
saying that any such operation would be deemed a "declaration of war"
against them.
Defence
pact:
●
Its aim is to "establish an
architecture of collective defence and
mutual assistance for the benefit of our populations".
●
The charter binds the signatories to
assist one another — including militarily — in the event of an attack on any
one of them.
●
It states that any attack on the
sovereignty and territorial integrity of one or more contracting parties shall
be considered as an aggression against the other parties and shall give rise to
a duty of assistance including the use of armed force to restore and ensure
security.
●
It also binds the three countries to work to prevent or settle armed
rebellions.
Go
back to basics:
Burkina
Faso:
●
Burkina Faso is a landlocked country in West Africa.
● It is a former French colony.
Operation
Barkhane:
●
In January 2013, France started conducting
military operations in the Sahel.
●
Operation Serval, as it was known, was
restricted to going after Islamic extremists affiliated with al-Qaeda who had
taken over northern Mali.
●
The operation, now known as Operation
Barkhane, was renamed and scaled up in 2014 with a counterterrorism focus.
●
The goal was to support regional military
forces in their efforts to stop the emergence of non-state armed groups
throughout the Sahel.
●
The Operation Barkhane initiative, which
aims to combat terrorism in Mali, Niger,
Burkina Faso, Mauritania, and Chad, was launched as a result of the 2014
success.
Sahel
Region:
●
In Africa, the Sahel is the region of
ecoclimatic and biogeographic transition between
the Sudanese savanna to the south and the Sahara to the north.
●
It covers the southern central latitudes
of Northern Africa, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, and has a
semi-arid climate.
●
The Sahel part includes from west to east
parts of northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, extreme north of
Burkina Faso, the extreme south of Algeria, Niger, the extreme north of
Nigeria, the extreme north of Cameroon and the Central African Republic,
central Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea
and the extreme north of Ethiopia.