The U.S. handed over its last base in Niger to local authorities yesterday, bringing to a close more than a decade of U.S. security presence and investment in the country. Following a coup in Niger just over a year ago, the ruling military junta ended the country’s security partnership with the U.S. in March. (AP)
Our Take
The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Niger is a significant development in three stories that WPR has followed closely over the years.
The first is the fallout from the wave of military coups that has swept the Sahel region: in Mali in 2020 and 2021, Burkina Faso in January and September 2022, and Niger last year. All three were either directly or indirectly the result of pressure put on the civilian governments in these countries by longstanding jihadist insurgencies in the region. But the insurgencies and the coups themselves are also a response to even longer-standing governance failures by those governments, including democratic backsliding, corruption and marginalization of communities in peripheral regions.