Rise of Anti-Jihadist Groups in Niger Could Help IS Recruiting
(Bloomberg) -- The rise of anti-jihadist vigilante groups in Niger’s northern Tillabery region could fuel local grievances and provide the Islamic State with additional recruits in one of its last strongholds.
The void left by local and state authorities provides fertile ground for militants linked to Islamic State to expand and cement its reach across West Africa’s Sahel region, International Crisis Group said in a report Friday.
Niger should consider talks with militants open to negotiations and avoid allowing local defense militias from becoming the main security providers in the absence of state forces, Crisis Group said.
Over the past two years a local Islamic State branch, known as the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, has launched major attacks against security forces and army bases along Niger’s border with Mali. As these attacks have now shifted to target civilians -- as in a recent January attack on market goers in the village of Banibangou killing at least 58 -- concern is mounting that retribution from jihadists are spiraling out of control with local self defense militias increasingly engaging in the fight against the militants.
The attacks come amid a fresh military takeover in Mali -- the second in nine months, that threatens to further destabilize a nation that’s a linchpin in an international effort to contain a mushrooming insurgency by Islamist militants in the Sahel region.
It sparks fears of militants expanding their reach, in the absence of tangible state authority, across a region that’s already headed for its deadliest year of Islamist-militant violence in a decade. The current political crisis in Mali risks exposing the region to more Islamist attacks, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari said Friday.
Niger’s recently inaugurated President Mohamed Bazoum told French broadcaster France 24 that Niger’s failure to curb the violence “is the failure of all of us and the failure of the whole coalition,” in an interview days before he took office last month.
France has deployed a 5,100-strong force to fight the Islamist militants in Niger and neighboring countries, while the U.S. has a $110 million drone base in the nation’s desert town of Agadez.
Germany and Canada are among other nations participating in the United Nations’ peacekeeping operations in Mali. Forces from the five most-affected countries -- Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Mali, collectively known as the G5 Sahel -- are also trying to secure the area.
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