Islamic State Claims Responsibility for Deadly Ambush on Niger Military Convoy

The Islamic State on Saturday used its Amaq “news agency” to claim responsibility for a deadly ambush on a military convoy in Niger. The Nigerien military confirmed that 23 soldiers were killed in the attack, and 17 were wounded.

Niger’s Defense Ministry said 30 of the attacking extremists were killed in the battle, which took place near Teguey, a town in Niger’s western Tillaberi region.

The Defense Ministry said the troops were performing a security sweep along the borders with Burkina Faso and Mali when they were attacked with a “complex ambush” involving more than one hundred terrorists armed with “home-made bombs and suicide vehicles.”

The security sweeps were necessary to “reassure local people” after armed extremist groups in the area targeted them for “murder, extortion, and cattle rustling.” Al-Qaeda and Islamic State terrorists have haunted the Tillaberi region of Niger since 2017.

Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali all underwent military coups over the past few years, driven in part by public frustration with their governments’ inability to protect them from ISIS and other extremists. The coups left all three countries ostracized from both the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and Western governments, which only made them more unstable and dangerous.

On Saturday, the Niger junta announced it would terminate a 2012 agreement with the United States to operate a $100 million counter-terrorism drone base in the northern part of the country.

“The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, revokes, with immediate effect, the agreement concerning the status of United States military personnel and civilian Defense Department employees,” declared junta spokesperson Col. Maj. Amadou Abdramane.

Abdramane indicated his government was displeased with U.S. criticism of military rule and the ineffectiveness of the junta’s counter-terrorism efforts, which a high-level U.S. delegation expressed during a visit in early March.

He continued:

Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships truly capable of helping them fight against terrorism. The government of Niger forcefully denounces the condescending attitude accompanied by the threat of retaliation from the head of the American delegation.

The March delegation was the third time since the July 2023 coup that the Biden administration tried to pressure Niger into resuming civilian rule in exchange for counter-terrorism assistance.

The junta declared the presence of all U.S. troops in Niger to be “illegal,” but the Biden administration merely described the political situation as “dynamic” on Friday and said closed-door negotiations to maintain an American military presence in the country were still underway.

One U.S. official described Abdramane’s hostile statement as a “fit of pique over the deep concerns we expressed to them last week about the direction they’re moving on a number of fronts.” The Washington Post quoted regional analysts who said Niger appears to be aligning itself away from the U.S. and toward Iran and Russia, neither of which is terribly concerned about whether or not Niger ever holds democratic elections again. This was the realignment Abdramane alluded to when he insisted that his government has “the right to choose its partners and types of partnership.”

The Washington Post noted the Biden team is privately worried that Niger will begin selling uranium to Iran, “crossing what Washington considers a red line.”