MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st March, 2023) The European Union's personnel are visiting the greater Sahel region to examine the possibility of deploying combined police and military crisis prevention units, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Tuesday.
"We do not have to run behind the crisis, but to prevent the crisis from happening. The Gulf of Guinea is a case in point. They need an urgent support to tackle the spill over of the terrorist threat from the Sahel region," Borrell said at the EEAS Schuman Security and Defence Partnership Forum.
The top official noted that the bloc in general uses a broad understanding of security and wants to put more emphasis on crisis prevention.
"Instead of large military training missions, we need small, agile teams of experts and trainers - from the military but also from the police - that could be deployed quickly to address specific requests for targeted trainings, advice, intelligence or equipment. Our planners are currently visiting the countries in the region to put this new approach in motion," Borrell added.
The Sahel, a region in Africa, covers the nations of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Algeria, Niger, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. The region has witnessed a lot of violence for years, resulting in migration and displacement of local population, security issues and increased extremist activities, impairing stability in the region.
