A powerful, opaque al-Qaeda affiliate is rampaging across West Africa
In the space of just a few months, the al-Qaeda affiliate has overrun major cities in Burkina Faso and Mali, carried out the deadliest-ever attack on soldiers in Benin and expanded its hard-line Islamist rule across the region. No one knows when its fighters will strike next — or where they plan to stop.
After years spent quietly gaining strength, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) is now the most well-armed militant force in West Africa and among the most powerful in the world, according to regional and Western officials, with as many as 6,000 fighters under its command. Local strategies employed to combat JNIM are accelerating its rise, officials and experts say, as atrocities by West African forces have allowed the group to claim the moral high ground and legitimize its growing authority.
The United States has largely pulled back from — or been pushed out — of the fight, leaving in its wake a deepening security vacuum and mounting anxiety over JNIM’s aims and capabilities.
“They’re creating a proto-state that stretches like a belt from western Mali all the way to the borderlands of Benin. … It is a substantial — even exponential — expansion,” said Héni Nsaibia, West Africa senior analyst for the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, or ACLED, a nonprofit research group.
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