With its tomato patches and grazing cattle, the Ivory Coast village of Kimbirila-Nord hardly looks like a front line of the global fight against extremism. But after jihadis attacked a nearby community in Mali five years ago and set up a base in a forest straddling the border, the U.S. committed to spending $20 million to counter the spread of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group here and in dozens of other villages.
The Trump administration's sweeping foreign aid cuts mean that support is now gone, even as violence in Mali and other countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara has reached record levels and sent tens of thousands refugees streaming into northern Ivory Coast.
