However, France, which has some 4,000 troops in the region, has bemoaned that the militants have scored military and symbolic victories in West Africa while the G5 force has struggled to win financing and become operational. Target date of March 2018Macron sees the full implementation of the G5 force as a long-term exit strategy for his own forces that intervened in 2013 to beat back an insurgency in northern Mali. US strike in Somalia kills more than 100 Shabaab militants“Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia are interested in the Sahel. Both have ambitions in large chunks of Africa,” said Jalel Harchaoui, a geopolitics researcher at Paris 8 University. The kingdom is also competing with its main rival, Iran, for influence across West Africa and other parts of the Muslim world.

Source: The Express Tribune December 13, 2017 07:18 UTC