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West Africa leaders step up fight against Boko Haram


A regional force put in place to counter the Boko Haram militants will start operations in November, West African leaders decided after a summit in Niger.
Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Benin on Tuesday an­nounced plans to step up the fight against Boko Haram with an additional battalion and a command centre for an already agreed-upon multi­national force to tackle the militants whose insurgency
has spread beyond Nigeria, a statement said.
The leaders agreed to speed up the creation of the head­quarters for the force and have military battalions deployed “to our respective borders” by November 1, the heads of state said in a joint statement.
The four heads of states and a representative of Cameroon’s president said after meeting in Niger’s capital Niamey that the multinational force which will be led by a chief of staff will be in place by Nov. 20.
Benin, Nigeria’s western
neighbour, whose border stretches from the Atlantic to the Sahel north, was also asked to deploy a military bat­talion to its border with Nige­ria. “The heads of state regrets the persistence of Boko Ha­ram Islamic sect’s atrocious acts of terror on people and security forces in Nigeria and other neighbouring countries,” the statement said.
“After gaining indepen­dence, the survival of our countries has never been so threatened by the menace of terrorism, by the forces of
division and by organised crime,” said Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou who hosted the summit.
In July, Niger, Nigeria, Chad and Cameroon had each pledged 700 soldiers to cre­ate a multi-national force to fight the Nigeria-based group, which has killed more than 10,000 people since 2009.
The militants are thought to be in control of more than two dozen towns and villages in northeastern Nigeria. Nige­ria’s military has struggled to meet a vow to retake all lost ground as part of an offensive launched in May 2013.
The Niamey meeting is a follow-up to a May summit in Paris where the leaders prom­ised to improve cooperation in the fight against Boko Ha­ram after the group kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls and threatened to destabilise the wider region.
At the Paris summit called by French President Fran­cois Hollande, Africa leaders agreed to cooperate against the group through a slew of measures including joint bor­der patrols and intelligence sharing.

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