Cote d’Ivoire losing US Aid as al-Qaeda groups approach

With its tomato patches and grazing cattle, the Cote d’Ivoire village of Kimbirila-Nord hardly looks like a front line of the global fight against extremism.

But after jihadis attacked a nearby community in Mali five years ago and set up a base in a forest straddling the border, the US committed to spending $20 million to counter the spread of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group here and in dozens of other villages.

The Trump administration’s sweeping foreign aid cuts mean that support is now gone, even as violence in Mali and other countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara has reached record levels and sent tens of thousands of refugees streaming into northern Cote d’Ivoire.

Locals worry they have been abandoned. Diplomats and aid officials said the termination of aid had jeopardised counterterrorism efforts and weakened US influence in a part of the world where some countries had turned to Russian mercenaries for help.

In Kimbirila-Nord, US funding, among other things, helped young people get job training, build parks for cattle to graze so they are no longer stolen by jihadis on Malian territory, and helped establish an information-sharing system so residents could flag violent encounters to each other and state services.

“What attracts young people to extremists is poverty and hunger,” Yacouba Doumbia, the 78-year-old chief of Kimbirila-Nord, said. “There was a very dangerous moment in 2020. The project came at the right time, and allowed us to protect ourselves.” 

Over the last decade, West Africa has been shaken by extremist uprisings and military coups. Groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group have conquered large areas and killed thousands in the Sahel and have been spreading into wealthier West African coastal states, such as Cote d’Ivoire, Benin and Togo.

In 2019, President Donald Trump signed the Global Fragility Act that led to the initiatives in northern Cote d’Ivoire. 

The US goal in this area was to “seize a narrowing prevention window,” according to this year’s congressional report about the implementation of the bipartisan legislation.