Auteur
Albert MBIATEM
Publicateur
CREGRISA
Date de publication
Jul 17, 2023
COMBATTING TERRORISM IN THE SAHEL REGION : THE NEED TO APPLY HARD AND SOFT POWERS IN CONTEXT
Insufficient attention paid to contexts has over time led to uninformed decisions, unsuitable policies and ineffective actions in the fight against terrorism across the globe including the Sahel region in Africa. The extensive use of hard power or even its relative combination with soft power has not enabled individual states, bilateral engagements and multilateral alliances to curb terrorism as their strategies considerably lack appropriate responses to contextual exigencies and realities. Poor governance, high levels of youth unemployment, poverty and porous borders among other societal vices in Sahel countries, have facilitated the expansion of radical ideologies and deadly terror. Relying on data gathered via desk research, this qualitative study argues that, the use of either hard power or soft power, or their combination, is likely to produce sustainable outcomes when it is guided by a deep knowledge of a context that it fits in. this study maintains that either form of power or the combination of both should be exercised as long as it fits the context and its possible situational mutability.