Islamic State in the Greater Sahara

By Hassane Ousseini

Amidst the turn to great power competition, Africa has been identified as an area where the focus on terrorism will continue. In this struggle, one of the more prominent cases – yet least understood – is that of Niger, where four U.S. special forces personnel were killed, along with an equal number of Nigerien counterparts, four years ago.

Niger’s 24 million people face an insurgency waged by the Islamic State in the Great Sahara (ISGS) in the Tillabéry region bordering Mali and Burkina Faso (see Figure 1 ).(1) ISGS seeks to seize power to impose an Islamist caliphate in the Sahel. The security challenge intensified after late 2019, with the attacks on the military garrisons of Inates and Chinagodrar, which alone caused the deaths of nearly 200 Nigerien soldiers.

ISGS emerged in 2015 as a splinter from the Almurabitoune group.(2) It gained international notoriety with the ambush noted above, near Tongo Tongo (a Nigerien village) in October 2017, which cost the lives of eight soldiers, including the Americans. Having started by attacking small military detachments, ISGS now conducts guerrilla attacks in the tri-border region. Simultaneously, it terrorizes civilians. The number of civilian casualties rose to at least 530 in 2021 alone.

ISGS is primarily sustained through zakat (or zagat, Islamic charitable donations), kidnapping, and extortion. Its manpower, which presently is estimated at 400-450, is recruited from marginalized elements of soci...