US urges tighter West Africa responses

West Africa's armed forces, police and governments need to ramp up cross-border links to contain Islamist groups now increasingly staging spectacular attacks on civilian targets, US and local top brass said this week.

The region faces "an adversary that does not recognise geographic boundaries," General David Rodriguez, head of the US Africa command, said at the closing ceremony this week of the continent's US-led Flintlock military exercise.

The three-week manoeuvres bring together African, European and US counter-terrorism forces every year, but 2016's edition of 28 nations took on an edge of urgency.

"I am certain that we will all have the opportunity to execute what we have learned together here," Rodriguez told dignitaries gathered in the northern Senegalese city of Saint-Louis.


Security at the closing ceremony was remarkably light, underlining the fact that stable countries such as Senegal have only very recently faced the reality of an Islamist threat. Children ambled up to the military parade and took seats while a troupe of dancers later entertained over chicken and cola.

But attacks in recent months on luxury hotels in the capitals of neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso left dozens dead, giving Flintlock participants a very clear heads-up, said exercise director Lt. Colonel William Rose.

Mali was "always a topic of discussion, as well as Burkina Faso," he said. "That came up all the time." Rose pointed to several lessons from those two attacks, including the importance for police of comprehensively gathering evidence to track down perpetrators and their backers once the violence is over.
"What was really different was a large incorporation of law enforcement," Rose said as police and customs officials were integrated into Flintlock's counter-terror work for the first time.

West African countries must encourage their militaries to work "with other government agencies as well as other civilian government entities," he added.