The U.S. is gradually moving aircraft and commandos into coastal West Africa in an urgent effort to try to stop the march of al Qaeda and Islamic State militants across one of the world’s most volatile regions.
American forces were evicted this summer from their regional stronghold in Niger, farther inland, and now the Pentagon is patching together a backup counterinsurgency plan in neighboring countries—refurbishing an airfield in Benin to accommodate American helicopters, stationing Green Berets and surveillance planes in Ivory Coast, and negotiating the return of U.S. commandos to a base they used to occupy in Chad.
“Losing Niger means that we’ve lost our ability to directly influence counterterrorism and counterinsurgency in the Sahel,” said retired Maj. Gen. Mark Hicks, former commander of U.S. special-operations forces in Africa, referring to the vast, semidesert band just south of the Sahara.
Islamist militants are wreaking havoc across the core of the Sahel—Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger—attacking police and military, stirring local grievances, imposing their harsh version of Islam in occupied villages and causing some 38,000 deaths since 2017, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, which analyzed figures collected by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based, nonprofit monitoring service.
If only the moderators had asked serious questions about topics like this last night….
— Morgan Ortagus (@MorganOrtagus) September 11, 2024
U.S. Forces Try to Regroup as al Qaeda, Islamic State Sow Terror in West Africa https://t.co/2olUuGnpKq
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