Everything You Need to Know About Niger
Why we're there, why it's dangerous, and what the Trump administration needs to do now.
Since 2002, the U.S. has sought through various State Department initiatives to train and equip African militaries to combat al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)—a group with roots in the Algerian civil war—and its affiliates so American soldiers wouldn’t have to, but this arm’s-length approach only lasted so long.
Islamist violence picked up in the region in 2012, after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya late the previous year. Tuareg mercenaries formerly on Qaddafi’s payroll returned to Mali with heavy weaponry they had looted, joined their comrades in the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), and formed a pragmatic alliance with the Islamist Ansar ad-Dine group to begin a war of secession (the Tuaregs—being of Berber descent in a country dominated by Mande and Fula peoples—aspired to an ethnostate while the Islamists hoped to form an Islamic emirate). A group of officers in the Malian army, convinced they could handle the rebellion better than the democratically elected president, staged a coup that quickly backfired as the rebels overran the entire north of the country in the ensuing chaos. In turn, this prompted the French military to intervene in its former colony in 2013, an operation that morphed into what is now France’s pan-Sahel counterterrorism mission, Operation Barkhane.
Four years later, the situation remains dire. The MNLA has split with Ansar ad-Dine over profound ideological differences and now fights against the Islamists, but a smorgasbord of jihadist groups have taken advantage of the instability. Earlier this year, four groups, including Ansar ad-Dine, AQIM, and the Mourabitoun Brigades of the notoriously hard-to-kill terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, joined under the banner of Jamma’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman az-Zawahiri. While JNIM operates primarily along Niger’s western border with Mali, more than 600 miles away in the southeastern Diffa province, the Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram continues its insurgency, moving easily between Niger and neighboring Chad and Nigeria. The emergence last year of the Islamic State in Greater Sahara, the group believed to be responsible for the October 4 attack, under the leadership of veteran jihadist Adnan Abu Walid as-Sahrawi only further complicates the threat environment. In addition to attacking military and civilian targets throughout the Sahel and West Africa—including several high-profile attacks against soft targets in the region—these groups engage in frequent kidnappings and the widespread trafficking of arms, narcotics, and humans.
Why we're there, why it's dangerous, and what the Trump administration needs to do now.
Since 2002, the U.S. has sought through various State Department initiatives to train and equip African militaries to combat al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)—a group with roots in the Algerian civil war—and its affiliates so American soldiers wouldn’t have to, but this arm’s-length approach only lasted so long.
Islamist violence picked up in the region in 2012, after the fall of Muammar Qaddafi in Libya late the previous year. Tuareg mercenaries formerly on Qaddafi’s payroll returned to Mali with heavy weaponry they had looted, joined their comrades in the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), and formed a pragmatic alliance with the Islamist Ansar ad-Dine group to begin a war of secession (the Tuaregs—being of Berber descent in a country dominated by Mande and Fula peoples—aspired to an ethnostate while the Islamists hoped to form an Islamic emirate). A group of officers in the Malian army, convinced they could handle the rebellion better than the democratically elected president, staged a coup that quickly backfired as the rebels overran the entire north of the country in the ensuing chaos. In turn, this prompted the French military to intervene in its former colony in 2013, an operation that morphed into what is now France’s pan-Sahel counterterrorism mission, Operation Barkhane.
Four years later, the situation remains dire. The MNLA has split with Ansar ad-Dine over profound ideological differences and now fights against the Islamists, but a smorgasbord of jihadist groups have taken advantage of the instability. Earlier this year, four groups, including Ansar ad-Dine, AQIM, and the Mourabitoun Brigades of the notoriously hard-to-kill terrorist Mokhtar Belmokhtar, joined under the banner of Jamma’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman az-Zawahiri. While JNIM operates primarily along Niger’s western border with Mali, more than 600 miles away in the southeastern Diffa province, the Islamic State affiliate Boko Haram continues its insurgency, moving easily between Niger and neighboring Chad and Nigeria. The emergence last year of the Islamic State in Greater Sahara, the group believed to be responsible for the October 4 attack, under the leadership of veteran jihadist Adnan Abu Walid as-Sahrawi only further complicates the threat environment. In addition to attacking military and civilian targets throughout the Sahel and West Africa—including several high-profile attacks against soft targets in the region—these groups engage in frequent kidnappings and the widespread trafficking of arms, narcotics, and humans.
