A soldier stands guard at sunset in Niamey, Niger, on Dec. 22, 2019. A Dec. 10 terrorist attack killed 71 Nigerien soldiers in the western region of the Sahel country.
The local al Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates responsible for thousands of deaths in the Sahel region of sub-Saharan Africa in the past year — namely, Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) — are now reportedly coordinating their operations. The emerging cooperation between jihadist fighters so far appears to be centered more on de-escalating tensions, rather than actually merging their efforts. But the worrying development nonetheless could empower the two groups to wreak even more havoc in the already unstable region and expand their influence across even greater swaths of Africa. The State of Sahel Militancy JNIM and ISGS initially operated out of central Mali and northern Burkina Faso. Over the past year, increasingly violent and frequent militant attacks have begun affecting the Mali-Niger border area and southern parts of Burkina Faso.
