The ivory coast loses American help because Al Qaeda and other extremist groups are approaching

Kimbirila-Nord, ivory coast- With its stains of tomatoes and grazed cattle, the coastal village of ivory in Kimbirila-Nord is hard to look like a front line of global fight against extremism. However, after Jihadis attacked a nearby community in Mali five years ago and set up a basis in a forest that passed on the border, the US committed to spend $ 20 million to counteract the spread of Qaeda and the Islamic State group here and in dozens of other villages.

Trump administration’s external aid discounts mean that support has now disappeared, even though violence in Mali and other countries in the Sahel region south of Sahara has reached record levels and sent tens of thousands of refugees transmitting to the north of the ivory coast.

The locals worry that they were abandoned. Aid diplomats and officials said that the cessation of aid endangers efforts to combat terrorism and weakens the influence of the US in a part of the world in which some countries have resorted to Russian mercenaries.

In Kimbirila-Nord, US financing, among other things, helped young people to get work, built parks so that the cattle grazed, so that they are no longer stolen by Jihadis on the territory of Malian and helped to establish an information sharing system, so that residents could report to each other.

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

“Siap a restricted prevention window”

In the last decade, Western Africa has been shaken by extremist uprising and military strokes. The groups related to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have conquered large areas and killed thousands in Sahel and spread to richer coastal states, such as ivory, Benin and Togo.

In 2019, President Trump signed the Law on global fragility, which led to the initiatives in the north of the ivory coast. The US objective in this area was “confiscating a window to prevent restriction”, according to this year’s Congress report on the implementation of bipartid legislation.

Experts say that local concerns help determine the popularity of extremist groups: competition for land and resources, exclusion, marginalization and lack of economic opportunities. Throughout the region, Islamic extremists have recruited among marginalized and neglected groups by central governments.

“The ivory coast is one of the few countries that continue to resist the terrorist threat of Sahel,” said a UN official working in the country that has not been authorized to speak publicly in this regard. “If we do not continue to support the border communities, a minor problem could send them to the arms of the extremists.”

Trump issued an executive order in January, directing an external assistance freezing and a revision of all US help and development works abroad. He accused that much of the external aid was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.

“Everyone is just looking at themselves.”

In 2020, when Jihadis hit a Malian village 6 miles away, Kimbirila-Nord is in many ways to describe an extremism community.

The life of the Malians and the ivory have been interwoven. People passed the border free, making it easy for extremists, who, like the residents, spoke to the Bambara, to access Kimbirila-Nord. Many residents did not have identity cards and few spoke French, leaving it without access to state services or official information. Different ethnic groups lived next to each other, but were divided by conflicts on rare natural resources and suspicions towards the state. And the young people had no opportunities to earn money.

“We were very scared” when the extremists attacked, said Aminata Dombia, the head of the female cooperative of women. “Everyone just looked at themselves.”

The Ivorian government runs a program that offers professional training, subsidies and microlets. But access is difficult in villages like Kimbirila-Nord.

Kimbirila-Nord is hosting refugees from Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea. Berte Sifa, 23 years old, ran there with his family two years ago from Mali. He is not eligible for the program managed by the Government, but has received training through the project funded by the US Agency for International Development and now works as an apprentice in an iron workshop.

Other things that the USAID funded project has set up included a community radio network in local languages ​​so that people can access information. He also used mobile government trucks to help tens of thousands of people from all over the region to obtain their identity documents. And he brought people along with microcredit cooperatives and a special committee of farmers and farmers who help to solve tensions on land.

“It is because of the project that we can sleep at night,” said Dougbia, the head of the village. “We learned how to be together.”

Equal Access International, an international non-profit, has conceived and implemented the US-funded project.

The USAID project was also the only direct source of field information in the north of the ivory coast on violent events for the project of armed conflicts and location and data for locations and events, the main provider of violence in Sahel.

The village had big plans

The ivory coast became known as the target for extremists in 2016, when an attack on the seaside resort in Grand Bassam killed tourists. In 2021, a series of attacks took place near the northern border of the country, but the violence was largely contained after the Ivorian authorities, Western governments and aid groups rushed into this poor and isolated part of the country, with military development and development projects.

In 2024, the US Command Africa provided over $ 65 million to ivory coast projects, most “focused on counter-terrorism and border security” in the northern part of the country, according to the group’s website. The Pentagon said in a statement that “it is not aware of budgetary reductions that have undermined programs for the formation of counter-terrorism or partnership in Africa.”

The ivory coast has the second largest GDP per capita in Western Africa, but according to the UN, it remains one of the least developed countries in the world. Many of the distant villages, such as Kimbirila-Nord, have no access to running water.

“At first we thought we had to solve these problems with a military solution,” said Famy Rene, the prefect Korhogo, the capital of the region. “But I saw that this was not enough. We had to implement programs to strengthen the resistance of the population. “

The inhabitants of Kimbirila-Nord had big plans before the Froze help. The US had to finance the first well in the village, to help create a collective farm and extend the professional training,

Now they are afraid they were left alone to cope with the extremists.

“If you forget, they will return,” said Doumbia, the head of the village. “As long as there is war on the other side of the border, we must stay in a large alert.”

Pronczuk and Apawu write for Associated Press.