In mid-June, attackers allegedly belonging to the Allied Democratic Forces, or ADF, murdered 42 people, including 37 students, at a school on the border with Congo. The attack has raised complex questions about the assailants’ goals, as well as the domestic implications of Uganda’s cross-border security operations in eastern Congo.
Since 2021, Benin has been battling a violent jihadist insurgency in the north of the country, fueled by a complex mix of political marginalization, religious ideology and intercommunal conflicts. Unfortunately, in doing so, it is repeating the same mistakes made over the past decade by its West African neighbors, Mali and Burkina Faso.
In late November, the leaders of the Accra Initiative, a collaborative security mechanism designed to target the region’s common security challenges, launched a multilateral task force to counter terrorism, violent extremism and transnational crime. But the new force and others like it largely mistake symptoms for causes.
