According to seven sources who spoke to Reuters, Islamist militants in Burkina Faso are covertly utilising Ghana’s north as a medical and logistical rear camp to maintain their insurgency. This could allow them to increase their presence in West Africa.
According to the sources, which include regional diplomats and Ghanaian security officials, Ghanaian authorities seem to be largely ignoring the insurgents who are crossing over from neighbouring Burkina Faso to obtain food, fuel, and even explosives, as well as to receive medical attention for wounded fighters.
However, they said that strategy runs the risk of enabling terrorists to establish themselves in Ghana and recruit in some marginalised local areas, even though it has so far spared the country from the kind of devastating Islamist attacks that have afflicted its neighbours.
Ghana is bordered by Burkina Faso, a country at the centre of an insurgency that has killed thousands, displaced millions, and, according to some experts, made the Sahel region the epicentre of global terrorism as Islamic State and al Qaeda-affiliated factions increase their presence. The two countries are 600 kilometres (372 miles) apart.
With the rise of JNIM, a pro-al Qaeda organisation, Burkina Faso has lost control of more than half of its territory. A JNIM senior stated this week that the organisation wants to expand into Ghana, Togo, and Benin, according to French station RFI.
Ghana has not experienced a significant attack, in contrast to Benin and Togo.
Ghana’s ambassador to Burkina Faso, Boniface Gambila Adagbila, told Reuters that the militants were exploiting Ghana’s open borders and considered it as a “safe haven.” However, he refuted claims that the government had inadvertently reached a non-aggression pact with the jihadists. He claimed that Ghana and Burkina Faso were collaborating to “flush them out.”
Ghana, which is a strong democracy and enjoys good ties with Western countries, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom, who frequently commend it for its role in advancing regional peace and security, will have elections on December 7.
“The absence of real attacks on Ghanaian soil seems to result from JNIM’s calculus of not disturbing supply lines and places of rest as well as not provoking a relatively strong army,” Clingendael, the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, said in a report.
The organisation said Ghana was tackling the threat in a number of ways, including joint operations with neighbours.
“Yet, to avoid escalation it also appears to have accepted de facto non-aggression with JNIM,” Clingendael said, citing high-ranking government sources, who said that disrupting the supply networks risked provoking violence.
According to a senior Ghanaian security officer who spoke to Reuters, militants do utilise Ghana as a rear camp for attacks abroad and to obtain medical care.
But because of the delicate nature of the matter, the official, who wished to remain anonymous, claimed they were watched and occasionally utilised as informants. Additionally, there have been instances of militants being turned up to Burkinabe officials.
“We’ve arrested a lot of terrorists in the past and handed them over to Burkina,” the official said, adding that Accra preferred to handle the cases discretely.
Ghana’s Information Ministry declined to comment.
Islamist militants, primarily from Algeria at the time, operated in northern Mali when they first appeared in West Africa 20 years ago. The government at the time made an unofficial non-aggression pact: Bamako assisted in negotiating the release of Westerners who had been abducted by the militants in exchange for them not attacking Mali.
Officials in Burkina Faso and Niger attempted similar arrangements at different points in time when violence escalated after a terrorist attack in Mali in 2012. As governments fell or the insurgency grew stronger, they all fell.
Since 2020, resentment over significant casualties in conflicts with militants has led to coups in all three nations. Power-hungry juntas turned to Russia for assistance after expelling Western military assistance.
Since then, Western countries have redirected their resources towards attempts to support the Sahelian bordering northern regions of Ghana, Togo, Ivory Coast, and Benin.
ACTIVE IN GHANA
Ghana is a centrepiece of that pivot to the coast.
The Ghanaian official gave the following response when asked why the militants had not yet attacked Ghanaian targets: “You won’t destroy where you sleep, would you?”
Only two of the 40 instances that have been reported in Ghana since 2015 and are thought to be connected to violent extremist organisations actually featured violence, according to Clingendael. The remaining ones entailed troops traversing land, recruiting combatants, gathering supplies, or evacuating.
“Violent extremists are indeed active in Ghana,” it said.
According to a U.N. assessment reviewed by Reuters, weapons specialists have linked explosive charges and detonator cords used in bombings targeting government and U.N. troops in Mali to mining operations in Ghana in recent years.
According to Aaron Atimpe, an expert on extremist organisations, local communities were being used as recruitment sites by militants entering Ghana. It is more than just a place for them to relax and resupply. People are being recruited and radicalised in the process.
Source: Citinewsroom