How the attempted coup in Niger could expand the reach of extremism, and Wagner, in West Africa

Niger is not to be confused with Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. Niger lies just to the north, part of the sprawling region directly below the Sahara Desert that for years has faced a growing threat from various groups of Islamic extremists.

Until Wednesday’s coup attempt in Niger, the United States' security ally had avoided the military takeovers that destabilized West African neighbors in recent years, and it was seen as the last major partner standing in a Francophone region where anti-French sentiment had grown.

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Signaling Niger’s importance in the region where the Russian private military group Wagner also operates, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the country in March to strengthen ties and announce $150 million in direct assistance, calling the country “a model of democracy.”

Now a critical question is whether Niger will pivot and engage Wagner as a counterterrorism partner like its neighbors Mali and Burkina Faso, which have kicked out French forces. France shifted more than 1,000 forces to Niger after pulling out of Mali last year.

Niger has been a base of international military operations for years as Islamic extremists have greatly expanded their reach in the Sahel. Those include Boko Haram in neighboring Nigeria and Chad, but the more immediate threat comes from growing activity in Niger’s border areas with Mali and Burkina Faso from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and the al-Qaida affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, known as JNIM.

U.S. partners battling extremists in the Sahel are dwindling. Notably, Mali’s military junta last month ordered the 15,000-strong United Nations peacekeeping mission there to leave, claiming they had failed in their mission. Now Wagner forces remain there, accused by watchdogs of human rights atrocities.

The United States in early 2021 said it had provided Niger with more than $500 million in military assistance and training programs since 2012, one of the largest such support programs in sub-Saharan Africa.

Notably in Niger, the U.S. has operated drones out of a base it constructed in the country's remote north as part of counterterrorism efforts in the vast Sahel. The fate of that base and other U.S. operational sites in the country after this week’s attempted coup is not immediately known. The U.S. Africa Command has not commented.

Niger was the site of one of the deadliest encounters for U.S. forces in Africa in recent years, an ambush by extremists in 2017 that left four soldiers dead. The attack again raised questions by some critics in Washington about why the U.S. would be involved on the continent.

Observers say West Africa’s Sahel region has become one of the world’s deadliest regions for extremism. West Africa recorded over 1,800 extremist attacks in the first six months of this year resulting in nearly 4,600 deaths, a top regional official told the United Nations Security Council this week.

Of those deaths, most occurred in Burkina Faso and Mali and just 77 occurred in Niger, said the official, Omar Touray, the president of the ECOWAS Commission. Observers have warned that the extremist threat is also expanding south toward states like Ghana and Ivory Coast.

The coup attempt in Niger brings yet more insecurity to the region at large. It also brings new challenges to one of the world’s poorest countries that also struggles with drought and migrants from across West Africa trying to make their way across the Sahara and into northern Africa en route toward Europe.