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He said the military needed to reassert how its longstanding strategy can foster stability throughout the Sahel, the semiarid region south of the Sahara Desert.

In the Sahel, the semiarid region bordering the Sahara that runs across the African continent, tens of thousands of teenagers have joined militant groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

The city of 3 million sits in the semiarid plains of central India, where summer temperatures can reach nearly 49°C.

Not so in Africa, especially in the Sahel, the vast, semiarid region south of the Sahara where groups linked to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are gaining ground at an alarming pace.

Its eastern region, semiarid and isolated, already has more than 400,000 refugees from Darfur living in 13 camps, which are now filling with new arrivals helped by the U.N. refugee agency.