Ghana, 3 other West African countries launch joint anti-terror operations

Ghana security on high alerts for terrorist attacks

Ghana Armed Forces says collaborations are important to fight terrorism

Ghana has joined three other West African countries in a joint operation that was aimed at countering terror attacks in the sub-region.

The countries, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, and Togo, jointly conducted the anti-terror operation recently, the Acting Director of Public Relations of the Ghana Armed Forces, Commander Andy La-Anyane, has confirmed to GhanaWeb.

The exercise, which involved some 5,720 troops, is said to have been deployed to common borders under a security agreement signed in 2017.

“We have this collaboration where we are trying to pool our resources together to fight terrorism and so there was an exercise in the upper parts of the country called Exercise Koudanlgou which ended this past Wednesday,” he told GhanaWeb.

Speaking about the success of the exercise, as well as the benefits this collaboration has brought to the country, Cdr. Anyane said it was a well-executed one.

“It was well-planned and well-executed so everybody left very happy and the troops were highly commended for their efforts. It’s important for these collaborations because the threats, though we may see it to be far from us, if we do not prepare, we may not be able to tackle it when it hits you and you can only prepare when you also work closely with your neighbours.

“It is important that we work with our neighbours, especially Burkina Faso, where the threat is very close to Ghana,” he said.

It must be noted that Burkina Fase, Mali and Niger, which fall within the Sahel region, just south of the Sahara Desert, have been attacked by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and Daesh/ISIS.

French military operation, Barkhane, the European Task Force, Takuba, and the UN Financial Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSMA), have in the meantime been making giant strides at fighting against terrorism in the region even as issues of this nature continue to remain a top issue for Sahel countries.

For instance, in November, the government of Burkina Faso came under severe criticism after the death of 58 soldiers in two terrorist attacks, leading to protests calling for the resignation of President Roch Kabore.

Data available by the United Nations says that thousands continue to leave their countries for security reasons and this is what Ghana, through these operations and collaborations, hopes to tackle.