The far-stretching Sahel zone, from Dakar to Dchibuti, is of one the most insatabile regions in the world and will likely create more conflicts during this decade.
At the moment, there are two escalating wars on both ends of the Sahel, the re-emerging fight between Morocco and Frente Polisario in Western-Sahara and the civil war of Ethiopia in the East.While the diplomacy of Morocco during the Trump-era, including the recognition of Israel, is likely the source for Washingtons green light for its operations in the South, Ethiopia suffers under the obviously misleading politics of Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed Ali, strangely enough a positive figure for western media until the current escalations. By now, the war is threatening this anyway instabile region even further.
Another excamples, between these two poles, is Mali, which just saw a coup d´etat from the military and which is still terrorised by Islamists. Going South-East from there, Boko Haram is still in place and causing many crimes, while the East is generally instable, like South-Sudan, Somalia and now Ethiopia.
From an european perspective the view towards this region is influenced by the premisses of the war against terror the fear of larger groups of refugees. This article is no exception. It isn´t easy to change this as both of these developements could create multiple crises once out of control. All of this while the western bilance in action against state-destroying developements in the last decades wasn´t any less than catastrophic. If chinese influence might become more stabelising in the future has to be seen.
In foreseeable future we won´t get around the fact that the crises in the Sahel are of great danger for Europe. But they shouldn´t be underestimated.
Simon Dierich 