{"id":697,"date":"2015-01-17T08:41:37","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T08:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=697"},"modified":"2015-01-17T08:41:37","modified_gmt":"2015-01-17T08:41:37","slug":"african-leaders-to-create-multinational-force-to-tackle-militancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/african-leaders-to-create-multinational-force-to-tackle-militancy\/","title":{"rendered":"African leaders to create multinational force to tackle militancy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>West African leaders are mulling to create a multinational force in order to fight the growing militancy across the troubled region.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ghanaian President John Mahama said on Friday that the leaders would seek authority next week from the African Union (AU) to create such a strong force to confront Boko Haram and other Takfiri militants currently operating in the region.<\/p>\n<p>However, he noted that it could take months to resolve issues surrounding the process of establishing such a regional force.<\/p>\n<p>President Mahama made the remarks as his country holds the chairmanship of the West African regional bloc, known as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere in his remarks, the president pointed out that Boko Haram in Nigeria and other militant groups in Somalia, Kenya, Mali, and elsewhere were posing a wide risk to the regional security.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Terrorism is like a cancer and if we don&#8217;t deal with it, it will keep going. It threatens everybody in the sub\u00a0region. When it comes to terrorism, nobody is too far or too near,&#8221; he said, adding, &#8220;Nigeria is taking military action and Cameroon is fighting Boko Haram, but I think we are increasingly getting to the point where probably a regional or a multinational force is coming into consideration.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Boko Haram terrorist group has claimed responsibility for numerous deadly shooting attacks and bombings in various parts of Nigeria, which have claimed the lives of thousands of people since 2009.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, the violence, which has forced 1.5 million people to flee their homes, killed over 10,000 people last year alone.<\/p>\n<p>JR\/AS\/MHB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>West African leaders are mulling to create a multinational force in order to fight the growing militancy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":265,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,1],"tags":[355,103,6,15,113,11],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa","category-news","tag-africa","tag-boko-haram","tag-defense","tag-militants","tag-security","tag-terrorism"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Somalia-militants.jpg?fit=650%2C365&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-bf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":698,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}