UN General Assembly
2025

Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, the usual narrative states that the situation in the Sahel can be explained away by the fall of the Qaddafi regime in 2011 and the collapse of the Libyan state, which resulted in armed groups being unleashed in our region and large quantities of weapons flowing into that same region. Others might mention the victory of the people of Algeria, a victory over terrorism, which they achieved in the 1990s, which as a result pushed the conflict to the Sahel as terrorists found refuge in the Sahara and the Sahel. We must add to that the indisputable fact that as Western powers and armies set up shop in the Sahel countries, in Mali, in Niger, in Burkina Faso in particular, to supposedly help these countries to combat terrorism, what we actually saw is terrorist phenomena in the region expand and intensify. Furthermore, it is also held up as an indisputable truth that the true, the main leaders of these terrorist movements do not come from the Sahel.