But it has been a “new” front for some time now. Members of MUJAO (Mouvement pour l’unicité et le jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest), now mostly dispersed amongst these other four groups, were also probably involved.įollowing the Ouagadougou attack, the BBC called the Sahel a “new frontier” in the war on terror.

These include al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), al-Murabitoune, Ansar al-Dine, and the Macina Liberation Front (FLM). More recently, the region has gained attention because of a terrorist attack on the Radisson Blue Hotel in Mali’s capital, Bamako, on Novemthe attack killed 22 people, including two attackers - and a similar attack on the Splendid Hotel in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on January 15 of this year, which left a death toll of 30.Īt least four militant jihadist groups have claimed responsibility for one or both of the attacks. Africa’s Sahel region has been in the international news a lot since 2012, largely because of its increasing political instability and insecurity.

Africa armed conflict