Former UK Foreign Minister, William Hague, raised alarms over the escalating tensions in Africa’s Sahel region, following the Niger coup that took place last July.
Hague warns that the volatile situation threatens not just the Sahel but also the stability of Europe and calls for a comprehensive approach involving security, investment, and education for the region.
In an op-ed for The Times, Hague stated that Western countries will pay a heavy price if they continue to neglect the Sahel region.
The UK official highlighted that the West has traditionally left the handling of this area to France, its former colonial power, assuming that France has sufficient expertise to deal with it.
However, France’s nearly exclusive focus on military and security measures has had disastrous outcomes, leading to its decision to cease intervention last year.
“We saw last week that even if you are a ruthless, callous, calculating, battle-hardened criminal mastermind and warlord with global reach and huge resources, you can still be comprehensively deceived and spectacularly assassinated,” he said.
The official added: “For Yevgeny Prigozhin and his closest lieutenants to have boarded the same plane together, for a flight entirely within Russian airspace, they must have been lulled — consistently, convincingly, and elaborately — into a very false sense of their own security.”
In the same vein, the former minister stated that the complacency of Prigozhin and his acolytes up to the moment their plane was blown from the sky is the only surprising aspect of their fate.
“It is almost reassuring to know that such a heartless, violent mindset can be combined with such naivety.”
