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Is this the end of the Ghanaian exception? The only country in the Gulf of Guinea to have escaped terrorist attacks so far, the small West African country sees the threat getting closer. In its latest annual reportpublished on May 9, the West African Center for the Fight against Extremism (Wacce) is alarmed by the southward thrust of Sahelian terrorist groups. “This spread makes the situation in the border regions of Ghana extremely worrying,” warns the report in its preamble.
The areas that separate Ghanaian territory from the Cascades region of Burkina Faso and northern Côte d’Ivoire are indeed extremely porous. For the border with Burkina Faso alone, more than 189 unofficial entry points were identified in 2019 by the West African Network for Peacebuilding (Wanep). Many katibas from the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS) settled in the Cascades region during 2021, making northern Ghana an ideal fallback area. for armed groups operating in cross-border areas. Numbers with the Ghana area code (+233) were thus found by the forces of the French operation “Barkhane” in the mobile phones of jihadists arrested in the Sahel.
Personal relations or the outline of a recruitment channel? For the director of Wanep, Emmanuel Bombande, also a conflict mediator for the United Nations, the jihadists already have a foothold in Ghana. The diplomat said on May 10 in the local press that the country had become a “fertile ground” for the establishment of terrorist groups. The threat is to be taken very seriously, he warned.
“See Something, Say Something”
In Accra, the National Security Council had already given the alert in 2016 after the deadly attack perpetrated in the seaside resort of Grand-Bassam, in Côte d’Ivoire, and claimed the same day by Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb ( AQMI). In an internal report, he then estimated that “Ghana and Togo were the next targets after the attacks in Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire”. What followed proved him right: in Togo, the security forces deployed in the north were attacked in November 2021 in Sanloaga, then on May 11 in Kpinkankandi.
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