The office of the president of Burkina Faso, Mali’s southeastern neighbour, said the summit will “review the security situation before charting out new directions for the speedy deployment of west African troops.”
The African deployment follows a United Nations resolution. It was originally envisaged that Western powers including France would provide logistical support to an African-led force but it is now clear that French troops will be at the frontline of operations.
Concerns about the humanitarian situation in landlocked Mali have mounted with UN agencies voicing fear that fighting could displace hundreds of thousands in the coming months.
Bamako’s Archbishop Jean Zerbo said a “new period of suffering has begun for the Malian people” and called for the creation of a humanitarian corridor to transport food and medicines to the affected populations.
“The winter season… makes the humanitarian situation much more complicated.”
The International Monetary Fund warned that the conflict in Mali, which has extended to a hostage crisis at a natural gas field in Algeria, posed a risk to the region’s economies.
“It is certainly a source of vulnerability for the neighbouring economies,” Masood Ahmed, the head of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia affairs, said at a news briefing.
Ahmed said the economies of the Sahel, a region of north-central Africa south of the Sahara Desert, were “likely to be affected” by the battle between Islamist insurgents and the military forces of Mali and France.
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