At an airforce base in Bamako, Mali’s army ruler General Assimi Goita presided over a ceremony marking the creation of a unified force for the Sahel countries.<\/p>\n
The force is the latest in a series of measures by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to achieve closer integration.<\/p>\n
The three countries are all led by juntas and are beset by an Islamist insurgency.<\/p>\n
In January, Niger’s defence minister said that the 5000-strong force would ‘intervene together’ to counter security threats in the region.<\/p>\n
Burkinabe General Daouda Traor\u00e9 was appointed to head the force which will maintain a command base in Niamey, Niger’s capital.<\/p>\n
The ceremony in Bamako was attended by the defence ministers of the Sahel Alliance member states, as well as ambassadors and representatives of international organizations accredited to Mali.<\/p>\n
Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger formed the Sahel alliance after withdrawing from ECOWAS, which the alliance accuses of inhumane, coup-related sanctions and working against the interests of citizens in alliance countries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At an airforce base in Bamako, Mali’s army ruler General Assimi Goita presided over a ceremony marking the creation of a unified force for the Sahel countries. The force is the latest in a series of measures by Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to achieve closer integration. The three countries are all led by juntas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,1129,27],"tags":[319,40,208,187],"class_list":["post-18970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-assimi-goita","tag-bamako","tag-burkina-faso","tag-mali"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18972,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18970\/revisions\/18972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}