Shaping news: terrorism spreads in the Sahel and China plays peace-broker in the Middle East

The clue to “broadcast” news is in the first five letters, but the occasional narrowcast gives context to the broad approach. In most weeks, certain international stories dominate the news. This is understandable. However, it squeezes out coverage of other events identifying trends behind the main stories.

In that spirit, here’s a few of this week’s “missing” stories. Some dramatic, some prosaic, but all contextual to what’s going on.

Several hundred fighters from an al Qaeda affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wa al Muslimeen  (JNIM), overwhelmed an army barracks in northern Togo killing 12 soldiers. The surviving Togolese troops forces fled leaving the JNIM forces to loot the base before withdrawing across the border with Burkina Faso.

The attack is the starkest proof to date that the jihadist violence that has ravaged the Sahel is spreading to the West African coastal states. Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast and other countries are in the firing line. In the Sahelian states of Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Niger, thousands of people have been killed and millions more displaced with large numbers heading north hoping to reach Europe. The region now accounts for more 40% of all terrorist related deaths and has overtaken the Middle East as the region most afflicted. The longer this goes on, the higher the death toll, the greater number of refugees, and the more states falling to military coups.

This Friday is the first anniversary of the coup in Niger which overthrew the democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum. Since then, the junta has kicked out French forces, ordered US troops to leave by 15 Sept, and signed security deals with Russia and Turkey. The country has become significantly less secure. So have Mali and Burkina Faso as al Qaeda and IS militants have taken advantage of the withdrawal of western forces to carry out deadlier attacks and control more territory. The three countries have formed a mutual defence pact called the Alliance of Sahel States and withdrawn from the Economic Community of West African states. France’s Africa policy is in tatters, the US ability to combat terrorism in the Sahel is severely damaged.

Next door, in the Sudanese civil war, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) is on the offensive having taken a military base from the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the southeast and launched attacks in the White Nile region. Intensified fighting threatens to destabilize the neighbouring Ethiopian region of Amhara which is already the location of an insurgency. The flow of weapons and refugees from Sudan into Ethiopia may now increase. The Sudanese civil war has displaced close to 8 million people and more than 2 million have crossed borders and become refugees.

On Tuesday, the United States invited both sides to talks in Switzerland next month aimed at achieving a ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid in but stopping short of discussing the wider political differences. Saudi Arabia will co-host the event. The following day the RSF agreed to attend, the SAF has yet to respond.

China had a busy diplomatic week. It reached a provisional agreement with the Philippines on how Manila should resupply a grounded navy ship it uses as a “base” on the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea. The location is a key flash point in the region with numerous clashes between the two. Last month, China rammed and boarded the Philippines supply ships. However, they’ve already fallen out again, arguing about the timeframe for notifying Beijing about the resupply and whether China inspects the supply vessels. Nothing in the agreement indicates either side will give up its claim to the shoal, indeed China now says its coast guard can arrest “trespassers”. The next supply mission may be interesting. You have to feel for the 12 or so Philippine troops on the ship which has been rotting and rusting away since being deliberately grounded in 1999.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, met his Chinese counterpart, Wang Ye in Guangzhou, on Wednesday, the first visit by a Ukrainian foreign minister since 2012. Kuleba said he was convinced that “China’s role as a global force for peace is important” which translates as “We know you may be a player when ceasefire talks with Russia eventually begin”. Last year, President Xi published his 12 point “peace plan” to end the war. The Guangzhou talks are part of a long-range diplomatic time frame and to boost China’s ambitions to rival the US as the go-to guys for ending international disputes following its success in helping Iran and Saudi Arabia establish diplomatic relations last year.

Wang Yi was on a roll. After hosting three days of talks in Beijing with Hamas and Fatah, he claimed, “an agreement has been reached on post-Gaza war governance and the establishment of a provisional national reconciliation government”. That seems a little optimistic. Hamas, Fatah, and 12 other Palestinian factions signed the agreement, but Palestinian Islamic Jihad said it “rejects any formula that includes recognition of Israel explicitly or implicitly”. Besides, for once the devil wasn’t in the detail because there was no detail. It remained unclear what role Hamas would play in the reconciliation government – none if Israel has a say. Back home, Fatah officials played down the whole thing hinting they’d only signed as a show of respect to their host.

Nevertheless, China has again showed its diplomacy chops, and Yi, a name we should but don’t know as well as, say, Antony Blinken or Sergey Lavrov, got his name in the news. Or rather, he didn’t because none of the stories above got much coverage.

Do they affect us? Yes. Our domestic politics and social attitudes are directly influenced by the number of refugees and asylum seekers on the move around the world. Our economies are affected by far away conflicts, for example the Houthi rockets fired at ships in the Red Sea disrupt trade and increase prices. Chinese influence usually undermines Western ability to shape trends. And that’s the news. Not Breaking! but shaping.

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