This dyad belongs to the conflict Niger: Islamic State
Summary of conflict Niger: Islamic State
The territorial conflict between the Nigerien government and the Islamic State (IS), which commenced in March 2015, is closely connected to the conflicts in neighboring Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Mali. In 2014, IS had declared that it considered the legality of those states to which its troops were positioned to be null, wherefore IS quickly found itself in conflict with several states in the region, one of them being Niger. The conflict between IS and the Nigerien government subsequently focused on IS’ aim of integrating Niger into its Islamic State.
In 2025, the territorial conflict between the Nigerien government and IS continued to increase and reached the highest levels of violence recorded in UCDP data. While IS West Africa Province (ISWAP) remained active in the southeastern Diffa region of Niger, the IS Sahel Province (ISSP) was responsible for several large-scale attacks and the majority of violence, mainly centered in the Tillabéri region. A particularly deadly attack occurred on 25 May, when IS fighters attacked military camps in Eknewane in the Tahoua region, which resulted in at least 58 soldiers killed. At the same time, ISSP also increased its activity along the Niger-Nigeria border.
Background to the conflict
The territorial conflict between the Nigerien government and the Islamic State – and more specifically the Islamic State’s West Africa wing, ISWAP – is closely tied to the previous conflicts involving Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad (JAS), against the Nigerian and Cameroonian governments.
The conflict between the Nigerian government and JAS erupted in northern Nigeria in 2009, and became increasingly bloody as the years passed. In early 2015, the group also challenged the Cameroonian government resulting in yet another conflict over government power. However, both these conflicts ceased in March 2015, when JAS pledged allegiance to IS - a Salafi jihadist militant group with its origins in Iraq – and a few days later the latter accepted the pledge. With that, what had previously been JAS was integrated into IS, and thus became IS’ West Africa Province (ISWAP), or Wilayat West Africa. The group subsequently switched its goal to the more wide-reaching one stated by IS: the creation of a global Islamic State. Thus, while the actual fighters on the ground remain the same, they have announced a new name for themselves and are now fighting for a different goal.
While the conflict between the Nigerien government and IS began in 2015, the country had been involved in the fight against IS’ predecessor JAS since 2012, assisting the Nigerian government with troops as a secondary warring party. The reason for the changed role of Niger – going from being a secondary warring party to a primary party in its own conflict against the group – can be found in a 2014 IS declaration, where it stated that it considered the legality of those states to which its troops had arrived to be null. This meant that the group found itself in conflict with the Nigerien government as soon as JAS evolved into IS, seeing as its fighters had been on the ground in the country since the JAS-period. The group had operated intermittently in Niger since at least 2009 when many of its members fled Nigeria after the military assault that left its founder Muhammad Yusuf dead. The relative ease with which they appear to have been able to establish themselves not only in Niger, but also Chad and Cameroon can be explained by the strong linkages that exist between the four countries in the Lake Chad region, with languages, ethnicities, cultures and patronage networks spanning the porous borders.
Accompanying the transformation from JAS to IS was an expansion of attacks on Nigerien soil. This process started just before JAS leader Abubakar Shekau’s pledge of allegiance to IS. In February 2015, JAS threatened to launch attacks on both Niger and Chad, and on 6 February, the group launched its first major attack in Niger, targeting Bosso and Diffa towns. The clashes were heavy and caused over 50 fatalities.
Islamic State's West Africa Province (Wilayat West Africa) attacks Niger
Soon after JAS’ transformation into IS, the group’s attacks on Niger intensified. Late March and April saw the most large-scale attacks in 2015. On 30 March, IS fighters launched a significant cross-border attack on Bosso village from Nigeria but were pushed back after sustaining heavy losses. A month later, in late April, the roles were reversed, with the Islamists scoring a victory against Nigerien forces on an army base on Karamga Island, a strategic location among mazes of waterways and swampland. Hundreds of militants aboard motorized canoes attacked the island on 25 April, catching the Nigerien troops off guard. At least 48 government troops were killed in the fighting.
The rest of the year saw a string of cross-border attacks on villages scattered along the Niger-Nigerian border. Furthermore, the Islamists carried out numerous suicide bombings, targeting both military and civilian targets. The Nigerien military, for its part, aside from fighting off IS attacks, also carried out cleaning up operations and aerial bombardments of IS. By early 2016, the situation had become relatively calm and there was a general sense that the IS question had been managed and that the group no longer posed a serious threat. However, this turned out to be a false sense of security. In early June, Bosso once again became the target of an IS; hundreds of heavily armed IS fighters were able to temporarily defeat the army and briefly occupy the town. Subsequently, the army launched a large-scale counter-attack, using air and land forces, succeeding in pushing the militants out of Bosso. Also, the following months saw high levels of violence, with a government offensive scoring victories against the Islamists. The level of violence subsequently decreased somewhat during the following two years, only to escalate once more in 2019, as IS continued to launch cross-border attacks on mainly military targets near the border with Nigeria.
A new front in the conflict
In addition to the continued fighting in southern Niger in 2017, a new front opened up along the country’s western border. This process had started in neighboring Mali two years earlier, when the Islamist rebel group al-Murabitun splintered due to divergent views regarding whether to stay in al-Qaida’s fold of to shift allegiances to the Islamic State. In June 2015, the group’s senior spokesman and self-proclaimed emir Adnan Abu Waleed al-Sarhawi pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, stating that the pledge was on behalf of al-Murabitun in its entirety. Mokhtar Belmokhtar, leader of al-Murabitun’s second constituent group Signed-in-Blood Battalion, quickly refuted this, though, announcing that he remained a staunch ally of al-Qaida. The group subsequently fell apart, and al-Sarhawi began calling his group the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). However, the core IS leadership failed to acknowledge the pledge for more than a year. It was not until 30 October 2016, when ISGS had conducted a series of cross-border attacks in Burkina Faso and Niger, and core IS was under pressure in Iraq and Syria, that the group officially recognized the pledge via its Amaq news agency, hailing the integration of al-Sahrawi’s faction of al-Murabitun into the “Islamic Caliphate.” With that, what had previously been ISGS became integrated into IS proper.
While organizationally part of IS proper, the group continued to be referred to and call itself ISGS until an organizational restructuring was carried out in March 2019. At that point, ISGS was incorporated into IS’ West Africa Province (ISWAP). This modification probably indicated an increase in communication between what were previously two distinct groupings within the IS umbrella, and analysts have argued that what was earlier ISGS has received increasing technical support from ISWAP. However, there are few signs of close cooperation between the two. What was previously ISGS has been based in the “tri-state border area” (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger known as Liptako-Gourma, and the group, from the outset, carried out attacks in all three countries. Its’ existence reached the international headlines in October 2017, when IS carried out an ambush on a joint patrol of American and Nigerien forces in the small village of Tongo Tongo, near the Malian border. Four US troops were killed, as were four Nigerien soldiers.
Over time, the Greater Sahara section of ISWAP stepped up its attacks and 2020 saw several large battles between IS fighters and government forces early in the year. Overall violence by IS decreased somewhat in 2021, despite increased activity from ISWAP in eastern Niger. ISGS continued to be the most violent faction, however, engaging government forces in smaller and larger battles throughout the year. The deadliest battle between IS and Nigerien forces this year took place in Fantio, close to the Burkinabe border, where 29 soldiers and 79 IS fighters were killed.
In March 2022, the Greater Sahara section of ISWAP declared its own province, thus becoming IS - Sahel Province (ISSP).
