Common Michael Langley, who leads the U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, testified to Congress final month in regards to 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 advised the Home Armed Providers 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 giant.
“The state of affairs (in West Africa) would possibly find yourself turning into so dangerous that will probably be not possible for the U.S. to disregard,” Jacob Zenn, an Africa knowledgeable on the Georgetown Heart for Safety Research, advised The Cipher Temporary. “Common Langley was urging everybody to start paying consideration now, or else you are going to should 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 20 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 below 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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Recently, JNIM’s strikes have been bolder, together with a coordinated assault on Mali’s worldwide airport final September, and an assault earlier this 12 months on a Malian army base in Boulkessi, a border publish, that killed not less than 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 folks 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), advised The Cipher Temporary. “Not simply when it comes to fatalities…but in addition when it comes to the violence that the group employs to realize their aims.”
These aims differ between JNIM’s factions, Nsaiba stated, 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 knowledgeable on the Australian Nationwide College, tells The Cipher Temporary. “Very like 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.”
Specialists 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 scale of Texas.
“These are huge areas and embrace huge desert terrains as nicely,” Zenn stated. “It is kind 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 may) then drive the counter insurgents to return into the bush to search out you after which ambush them.”
Poverty and poor governance within the area have helped increase help for JNIM. Specialists 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 knowledgeable who requested to stay nameless given safety sensitivities within the area stated, “the true drawback is that the army juntas in energy have determined to double down on among the heavy-handed ways that they’ve used to attempt to suppress the insurgency.” These ways, he advised The Cipher Temporaryembrace 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 conflict booty alongside the way in which. Nsaiba stated 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 – “mainly every part they should maintain their operations,” Nsaiba stated. “All mixed, they’ve a fairly stable conflict 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 will threaten the area’s shoreline.
“Gen. Langley is true to fret in regards to the unfold,” Zenn stated, including that JNIM has made inroads in Benin, Togo, and in direction of the borders of Cote D’Ivoire, Senegal and Ghana – coastal nations which have been comparatively secure. “That is the following space of its enlargement,” Zenn stated. “And until these international locations actually develop robust preventative measures at their borders, there is a main threat 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. Thus far, none of it has stopped the fear.
Actually, 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 international army footprint.
Acknowledging the discount in U.S. army and growth support to the area, Gen. Langley struck a stability 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 stated 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 Could convention with African Protection Chiefs, Gen. Langley introduced a blunt message. “Some issues that we used to do, we could not do anymore,” he stated. “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 current White Home summit, President Trump talked in regards to the “unimaginable business alternatives” within the West African international locations 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 Avenue Journal stated underscored “the overlap between the administration’s aggressive deportation marketing campaign and its international coverage.” Not a lot was stated in regards to the terror risk or the current U.S. support cuts, which specialists have warned will affect stability in Africa.
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Zenn famous that JNIM’s terror, if unchecked, would possibly really result in extra migrants searching for to return 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 secure havens arriving for the coaching of different jihadist militants,” he stated. “The geopolitical fallout would find yourself being vital.
A core drawback in constructing the case for better western involvement is that specialists doubt JNIM has both the potential or the ambition to strike the West. Zenn says the group has prevented assaults towards worldwide targets like resorts, in a calculated effort to keep away from drawing within the U.S. or Europe.
“It will seem that their major goal is native, arguably regional, however not international,” West stated. “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 arduous 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, stated that whereas JNIM lacked the potential to assault the US, it’d search to take action sooner or later.
“And not using a persistent presence within the Sahel, we’re restricted within the potential to watch the increasing affect of terrorist organizations within the area,” he stated in his written testimony. Acknowledging the discount in U.S. army and growth support to the area, Gen. Langley harassed 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 better 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 international locations. 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 stated just lately 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 stated, and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., chairman of the Home Armed Providers Committee that hosted the listening to, echoed the purpose. “We must be placing extra sources in AFRICOM to fight what China and Russia are doing,” Rogers stated, “somewhat than taking a look at taking away consideration and sources.”
“Africa is a entrance line in strategic competitors,” West advised The Cipher Temporary. He stated 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 stop the emergence of a jihadist-dominated space of contingent territory,” he stated. “Nevertheless there appear to be restricted efforts being made to disrupt this from occurring.”
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