Terrorist Networks Project

Russian Africa Corps soldiers deployed to Niger on April 12, which will challenge US efforts to remain in Niger in the immediate term—undermining the West’s counterterrorism posture in West and North Africa—and create long-term opportunities for the Kremlin to create conventional and irregular threats that strategically pressure Europe. The Africa Corps contingent in Niger will likely remain small in the coming months because it lacks the capacity for a bigger deployment due to recruitment issues. This small footprint will enable Russia to strengthen its influence in Niger and consolidate its logistical network in Africa without significantly affecting the rapidly escalating al Qaeda and Islamic State insurgencies in Niger. Greater Russian influence and military presence in Niger in the coming years will create several future opportunities for the Kremlin to strategically threaten Europe with energy blackmail, migration influxes, and conventional military threats.

Mali and Russia are increasingly cooperating on mineral extraction to boost both countries’ revenues. Russian companies have made several road-map agreements with Mali for gold refinery construction, geological mapping, and civil nuclear power cooperation since March 25. The Malian and Russian governments also signed several cooperation agreements on oil, gas, uranium, and lithium production on March 31. The signing of these cooperation agreements is a step forward in implementing several memoranda of understanding and high-level discussions held between the two countries in 2023 and 2024.

ISMP is massing forces, temporarily holding and governing territory, and operating across a geographic scope unseen since at least 2022. ISMP began increasing its rate of attacks in December 2023 and maintained a higher rate in January and February 2024 as part of the Islamic State’s global “Kill Them Where You Find Them” attack campaign. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Database (ACLED) recorded that ISMP has initiated 57 attacks since December 19, 2023. This rate is more than double the roughly nine attacks per month it averaged from January to November 2023. The group carried out six attacks in the first half of March, putting it on pace to surpass its monthly average in 2023 despite its offensive peaking in February. The group has sustained this increased activity despite Mozambique’s annual rainy season from January to March, when adverse weather conditions have historically caused attacks to decrease.

Al Qaeda–linked militants in Mali have increased attacks along Mali’s border with Guinea as part of an ongoing campaign to degrade Malian lines of communication around the capital. The al Qaeda–linked militants are unlikely to expand attacks into Guinea, but sustained activity along the Guinean border creates opportunities for the militants to use Guinea as a rear support zone.

Russian mercenary bases in northern Niger would create an opportunity for the Kremlin to deploy drones in the area to threaten NATO’s southern flank in the future.

ISSP has expanded its areas of control and established itself as a hub for foreign fighters from North Africa and Europe since early 2023, which increases the group’s transnational threat risk. ISSP began resurging in the tri-border area of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger after the withdrawal of French forces in 2021. The UN observed that the territory under ISSP control doubled between 2022 and the first half of 2023, including swaths of northeastern Mali that its al Qaeda–linked rivals and communal militias previously controlled.

Al Qaeda’s Sahelian branch conducted its first VBIED attack in southern Mali since 2022, likely to support the group’s efforts to isolate a district capital near the border with Mauritania. Al Qaeda’s Sahelian affiliate, Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wa al Muslimeen (JNIM), conducted a large-scale complex attack targeting a Malian army base near Kwala, 100 miles north of Mali’s capital, on February 28. JNIM militants commenced the attack with a suicide VBIED followed by approximately 100 attackers that stormed the Malian army position.

Russia and Togo are increasing ties as the Kremlin aims to expand its influence beyond the Sahel in West Africa. French-based investigative news site Africa Intelligence reported on February 19 that a contingent of 30 Russian military advisers that recently arrived in Togo are helping Togolese troops build a new military camp on the border with Burkina Faso. The purpose of the camp is to defend against Salafi-jihadi attacks that largely emanate from Burkina Faso.

The Africa File will provide weekly analysis and assessments of state and non-state actors’ activities in Africa that threaten US personnel and the numerous US national security interests on the continent. US national security interests in Africa include preventing adversaries from using Africa as a base to launch attacks or evade sanctions, ensuring access to strategic minerals and economic markets that are crucial to US supply chains, working with partners to manage potentially destabilizing migration flows to Europe and the US, disrupting transnational crime networks that support illicit markets worldwide, and promoting democracy to prevent the spread of anti-Western authoritarianism. Prominent actors on the African continent that threaten these interests include state powers such as China, Iran, and Russia, as well as non-state groups like the Islamic State and al Qaeda. The Africa File distills open-source information to assess these actors’ campaigns and related security and political issues in Africa that could affect their efforts. Irregular editions may be published based on current events.

The Wagner Group and Malian army took control of an artisanal gold mine in northeastern Mali, which will bolster the Kremlin’s sanctions evasion efforts. Wagner and Malian forces captured the Intahaka mine in Mali’s Gao region on February 9. The mine is the largest artisanal mine in northern Mali. Multiple armed groups—including the regional al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates—have controlled and taxed the mine in recent years.