U.S. troops withdraw from strategic African base as extremist threat grows

The U.S. military presence here has been a linchpin of American efforts to address rising Islamist militancy in this part of Africa. The pullout comes at a moment when extremist violence in West Africa is reaching record highs and Russia’s influence in the region is growing.

“The security of the region is a grave concern,” Air Force Major Gen. Kenneth Ekman, who is leading the U.S. drawdown from Niger, said in an interview. “The threat has become worse — it has spread and become more acute. … And from a U.S. perspective, our access has been reduced even though our objectives have not changed.”

At a ceremony Monday in an airport hangar marking the withdrawal from the Agadez base, Nigerien and American officials read a joint statement, in French and English, and signed documents making the turnover of the base official.

Already shipped away were the drones used by U.S. Special Forces to gather intelligence about the increasingly powerful al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates operating in the Sahel region, which runs the breadth of Africa below the Sahara Desert, U.S. officials said. The 18 generators that powered the facility were evacuated on C-17 cargo planes, and other sensitive equipment and material have also been removed from the base, which was completed in 2019 and cost more than $100 million to build.

Remaining on the nine-square-mile base are the kitchen, gym and sleeping quarters. U.S. military officers spent Sunday finishing the final tasks, including putting keys in all the door locks and lining up dozens of vehicles with keys in their ignitions, Ekman said. Niger’s plans for the base remain uncertain, as do U.S. plans for how to replace it.

“This is not about Niger alone,” said Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim, deputy director of the International Crisis Group’s Sahel project. “When Niger’s coup happened, it symbolized the fall of the last democratic darling of the West. Now, the withdrawal undermines U.S. strategy not only for Niger but for the Sahel and the entire region.”

Seen from the air, the cluster of white buildings that make up Air Base 201 emerges from the brown sand just outside Agadez, a small city on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. The base took on increasing importance for the U.S. counterterrorism strategy, which began in the early 2000s under President George W. Bush and ramped up further about a decade ago, after extremists and separatists took over much of neighboring Mali.

That base “gave us a window into everything that was going on in the region,” said Cameron Hudson, a senior associate at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Now literally and figuratively, what we are doing is that we are moving to the margins.”

After the coup in Niger, U.S. officials pressed the military junta to begin restoring democracy and warned that American assistance hung in the balance. In a late-night news conference in March, the spokesman for Niger’s military government, the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, declared that the presence of American troops was “illegal.” The next month, Niger welcomed Russian military instructors to the same airfield in the capital where American troops were at the time based.

In an interview in May, Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Mahaman Lamine Zeine blamed the breakdown on the United States, accusing American officials, in part, of failing to justify the U.S. troop presence and essentially giving the Nigerien government an ultimatum.

U.S. officials said that the government was presented with “a choice, not an ultimatum, about whether they wished to continue their partnership with us.”

A rising militant insurgency

As relations with Niger deteriorated, U.S. defense officials have turned to nations in coastal West Africa, promising to bulk up security ties with other countries they fear are at risk, including Ivory Coast, Benin and Ghana. There are now small U.S. military teams in several coastal countries in West Africa.

Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State-Sahel Province have in recent years made Niger and its neighbors a global hot spot. Following a series of coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, extremist violence has largely escalated.

Last year, about 11,600 fatalities were linked to Islamist extremists, more than a threefold increase since 2020, according to the Washington-based Africa Center for Strategic Studies. In Niger, the Africa Center projects 1,230 deaths related to Islamist violence this year, more than double the total in 2020.

Héni Nsaibia, a senior researcher with Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), described the situation as “rapidly deteriorating,” with JNIM and IS-Sahel gaining support because of the harsh response by militaries in the region.

Neither group currently appears to pose a “direct threat” to the United States because of their capacity and local focus within Africa, said Andrew Lebovich, a research fellow with the Clingendael Institute. But should local government succumb, it could destabilize the entire region.

Ekman said the U.S. government faces a growing challenge monitoring extremist activities because Mali, Burkina Faso and now Niger have expelled most Western forces, including the French military, as well as U.N. personnel.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” he said. “We want indications and warnings, and we are losing them over time.”

Leaving the door open

Ekman said he had been surprised by how many U.S. personnel raised their hands to help close down the Agadez base, committed to winding down the mission successfully. They have spent the last weeks training Nigerien military how to run the base, including the water treatment and wastewater facilities. Some facilities will be left with air conditioners and spot generators.

U.S. officials said the goal was to leave the bases in Agadez and Niamey, the capital, in good condition in hopes of preserving relations with Niger and leaving open the possibility of restoring cooperation. The U.S. officials said that contrasted with the approach by the French military, which took or destroyed everything when Niger asked it to leave last year. French officials did not respond to requests for comment.

In Niamey, Russian military personnel who arrived in April are occupying the same airfield that the United States, France and other Western allies built. Nigerien officials have said that the Russians are providing equipment, including an air defense system, and instructors for training.

In Agadez, where protests mushroomed over the past few months calling on the Americans to leave, there were mixed feelings about their departure.

Aboubacar Alio, a 43-year-old taxi driver, said he supported the military government for having “liberated our country from foreign dominance.” He had watched American drones leaving the base and wondered what purpose they served, if not to stop the growing number of attacks.

Issoufou Mohamed, a 31-year-old who worked as a trash collector at the American base, making about $630 a month, said he knew Niger’s military cooperation with the French would end after the coup but “never imagined that it would be the same thing with the American army.”

Most of the U.S. service members who had been deployed in Niger have been sent back to their home bases around the world, Ekman said, but small Special Forces teams are being dispatched to other countries in coastal West Africa.

The U.S. military is committed to the region, Ekman said, “and is not retrenching — but will be listening carefully to what kind of partnerships West African nations want to have with the U.S. military.”

The threat is already being felt in the coastal West African countries, said Daniel Eizenga, a research fellow focused on the Sahel at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.

He said that over the past two years, violence within coastal countries and just over their borders has increased by 250 percent. Among coastal countries, Benin and Togo have experienced the most attacks.

“It’s like a five-alarm fire for coastal West Africa, with all the red lights flashing,” Eizenga said. “The security threat has arrived.”