“The Sahel – like the Horn, where the Gulf-led proxy war in Yemen is spilling over – is at the centre of what some are calling the ‘new scramble for Africa ’.” However, the recent events in Tinzaouaten suggest “that private military companies and militias are no panacea, and that after the failures of French stabilisation missions, they too will likely struggle to realise their interests in the region.”
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51