Normal Michael Langley, who leads the U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, testified to Congress final month concerning the risk posed by JNIM. “Our evaluation signifies that, if left unchecked, these organizations will proceed to develop, and their risk to regional stability, in addition to to U.S. nationwide safety pursuits, will solely intensify,” Gen. Langley informed the Home Armed Companies Committee.
As Gen. Langley spoke, the U.S. was considering a thinning of AFRICOM, following deep cuts to USAID applications within the area and a shift to a extra transactional business relationship with Africa writ massive.
“The state of affairs [in West Africa] would possibly find yourself changing into so unhealthy that it will likely be unattainable for the U.S. to disregard,” Jacob Zenn, an Africa professional on the Georgetown Middle for Safety Research, informed The Cipher Temporary. “Normal Langley was urging everybody to start paying consideration now, or else you are going to must do it later when the state of affairs is worse.”
However as a result of JNIM isn’t perceived – for now – as a direct risk to the West, and since governments in West Africa are both disinclined or too weak to push again, the group’s affect is spreading.
JNIM was based in Mali in 2017 as a coalition of 5 jihadist teams, together with the Sahara department of Al-Qaeda within the Islamic Maghreb. The group’s chief, Iyad Ag Ghali, is a former Toureg separatist chief and Malian diplomat who’s reported to have had a “conversion” to radical Islam throughout a go to to Saudi Arabia twenty years in the past.
Ag Ghali was expelled from the Malian authorities for his hyperlinks to extremists, and shortly after, he united the militant teams beneath the JNIM umbrella and pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
JNIM started to realize momentum by seizing land and bringing terror to Mali, after which to neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso, in a collection of ambushes and assaults towards authorities forces, United Nations missions, and civilians.
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These days, JNIM’s strikes have been bolder, together with a coordinated assault on Mali’s worldwide airport final September, and an assault earlier this yr on a Malian army base in Boulkessi, a border submit, that killed a minimum of 60 troopers and wounded 40 others. Burkina Faso has suffered the worst of the carnage – JNIM has carried out over 280 assaults within the nation within the first half of 2025 alone, double the quantity from the identical time in 2024. General, the group has killed greater than 1,000 individuals throughout the Sahel area since April.
“Annually we see the lethality of the battle rising,” Heni Nsaiba, West Africa Senior Analyst at Armed Battle Location and Occasion Information (ACLED), informed The Cipher Temporary. “Not simply by way of fatalities…but additionally by way of the violence that the group employs to realize their aims.”
These aims differ between JNIM’s factions, Nsaiba mentioned, however all share an ambition to impose hardline Islamic rule, and a willingness to make use of violence to additional that purpose.
“Salafi-Jihadist ideology is the muse of their governance method,” Levi West, a counterterrorism professional on the Australian Nationwide College, tells The Cipher Temporary. “Very similar to HTS in Syria and the Taliban in Afghanistan, this implies minority, deeply conservative, and militant interpretations of Islam because the system of governance and the premise of legal guidelines.”
Consultants say the group’s maintain on territory has roughly tripled within the final three years, to cowl areas of Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso that, taken collectively, are almost 5 occasions the dimensions of Texas.
“These are huge areas and embody huge desert terrains as properly,” Zenn mentioned. “It is form of an insurgents’ paradise. If you’ll be able to disguise within the desert and retailer your weapons in hidden locations, retailer your funds in hidden locations, [you can] then drive the counter insurgents to come back into the bush to search out you after which ambush them.”
Poverty and poor governance within the area have helped enhance help for JNIM. Consultants say a collection of coups that introduced army juntas to energy in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have solely made a nasty state of affairs worse, because the juntas have used brute drive in ways in which have boosted help for JNIM.
One professional who requested to stay nameless given safety sensitivities within the area mentioned, “the true downside is that the army juntas in energy have determined to double down on a few of the heavy-handed ways that they’ve used to attempt to suppress the insurgency.” These ways, he informed The Cipher Temporary, embody an “abusive, kick-the-door-down method” that has pushed communities into the arms of the extremists.
As they seize territory, JNIM’s fighters are piling up warfare booty alongside the best way. Nsaiba mentioned the group levies zakat or Islamic alms on the populations it controls, runs smuggling and kidnapping operations, and has pillaged state stockpiles of arms and ammunition – “principally all the things they should maintain their operations,” Nsaiba mentioned. “All mixed, they’ve a fairly strong warfare chest.”
Nsaiba and different specialists say JNIM now has the weapons and warfighting capabilities to seize extra land – together with cities – and pose threats to regional governments.
In his June testimony, Gen. Langley warned that the group is spreading to different components of West Africa, and should threaten the area’s shoreline.
“Gen. Langley is correct to fret concerning the unfold,” Zenn mentioned, including that JNIM has made inroads in Benin, Togo, and in the direction of the borders of Cote D’Ivoire, Senegal and Ghana – coastal nations which have been comparatively protected. “That is the subsequent space of its enlargement,” Zenn mentioned. “And until these nations actually develop sturdy preventative measures at their borders, there is a main danger that JNIM will proceed its unfold.”
West African governments have mounted counterterrorism operations towards JNIM. The U.S. has designated Ag Ghali a “Specifically Designated International Terrorist” and has issued a multi-million greenback bounty and the Financial Neighborhood of West African States (ECOWAS) has known as for a regional response. Up to now, none of it has stopped the phobia.
The truth is, the JNIM risk is rising because the U.S. recalibrates its coverage towards Africa. A posture that has lengthy included army deployments, diplomatic efforts and USAID applications is now being scaled again, in favor of the U.S. administration’s push to minimize its world army footprint.
Acknowledging the discount in U.S. army and growth help to the area, Gen. Langley struck a steadiness in his testimony between the urgency of the risk and a message that West African nations should carry extra of the safety burden themselves. Whereas he mentioned the U.S. would proceed to supply intelligence-sharing and capacity-building assist, he added that “The plan is theirs…we don’t push ourselves to invade on their sovereignty.”
And at a Might convention with African Protection Chiefs, Gen. Langley introduced a blunt message. “Some issues that we used to do, we might not do anymore,” he mentioned. “we’re asking you to step up and burden-share with us…Our purpose is to not do extra for Africa. It’s to assist Africa do extra for itself.”
At a latest White Home summit, President Trump talked concerning the “unbelievable business alternatives” within the West African nations who had been invited to the summit – Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania, and Senegal – and requested their leaders to simply accept migrants deported from the U.S., a pitch that The Wall Road Journal mentioned underscored “the overlap between the administration’s aggressive deportation marketing campaign and its international coverage.” Not a lot was mentioned concerning the terror risk or the latest U.S. help cuts, which specialists have warned will affect stability in Africa.
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Zenn famous that JNIM’s terror, if unchecked, would possibly truly result in extra migrants in search of to come back to the U.S. from Africa. “The ramifications of those capitals in West Africa falling to jihadist teams, not to mention these jihadist teams attacking the coastal West African states, as Gen. Langley talked about, would contain elevated migration, human trafficking, drug trafficking, weapons trafficking, and protected havens arriving for the coaching of different jihadist militants,” he mentioned. “The geopolitical fallout would find yourself being important.
A core downside in constructing the case for larger western involvement is that specialists doubt JNIM has both the aptitude or the ambition to strike the West. Zenn says the group has prevented assaults towards worldwide targets like inns, in a calculated effort to keep away from drawing within the U.S. or Europe.
“It will seem that their main goal is native, arguably regional, however not world,” West mentioned. “JNIM are detrimental to many issues in Mali and the area, however their risk to worldwide safety is comparatively restricted…It will seem that JNIM is basically prioritizing the native jihad as their goal.”
Nsaibia agreed that “It’s onerous to make the case that JNIM is a risk to the U.S. homeland, and even to Europe.”
Gen. Langley, in his testimony to Congress, mentioned that whereas JNIM lacked the aptitude to assault the USA, it’d search to take action sooner or later.
“With out a persistent presence within the Sahel, we’re restricted within the means to watch the increasing affect of terrorist organizations within the area,” he mentioned in his written testimony. Acknowledging the discount in U.S. army and growth help to the area, Gen. Langley burdened the significance of intelligence sharing and capability constructing to assist these nations conduct impartial operations towards militants.
The China and Russia elements
The case many specialists make for larger U.S. engagement in West Africa is much less a couple of risk to the homeland, and extra a couple of contest for affect with Russia and China.
Gen. Langley raised the problem in his testimony, noting that China’s army is outspending AFRICOM about 100-to-1 in African nations. Russia is utilizing surrogates just like the Wagner Group (now rebranded as “Africa Corps”) to extend its affect on the continent, and a Kremlin spokesperson mentioned not too long ago that Moscow would search to spice up its safety alliances in Africa as Western powers retreat.
“Africa is a nexus theater for the great-power competitors [with China and Russia],” Gen. Langley mentioned, and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chairman of the Home Armed Companies Committee that hosted the listening to, echoed the purpose. “We have to be placing extra assets in AFRICOM to fight what China and Russia are doing,” Rogers mentioned, “slightly than taking a look at taking away consideration and assets.”
“Africa is a entrance line in strategic competitors,” West informed The Cipher Temporary. He mentioned that whereas Russia and China “are extremely lively and influential within the area and throughout Africa,” the U.S. stays largely on the sidelines.
“One would hope that the U.S. and its Western allies would take measures to forestall the emergence of a jihadist-dominated space of contingent territory,” he mentioned. “Nevertheless there appear to be restricted efforts being made to disrupt this from occurring.”
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