The U.S. military’s impending withdrawal from Niger, including the relatively new $110 million U.S. Air Base 201, will hamper their counterterrorism efforts on the continent.
Pentagon spokesman Patrick Ryder confirmed on Monday the two sides are “beginning” the discussions for the U.S. withdrawal, though he did not specify when the roughly 1,100 troops would depart.
The announcement wasn’t a surprise — Niger said last month it was revoking its military agreement with the United States — but it does represent the failure of the Biden administration and military leaders’ last-ditch efforts to salvage the partnership.
Niger is the latest African country to experience a military coup and end its U.S. cooperation. The U.S. relationship with Niger changed following the coup and the junta’s rise to power.
Air Base 201 is in the city of Agadez, which is about 550 miles from the capital, Niamey, and the U.S. military has used it for aerial surveillance flights and counterterrorism operations. They’ve largely been unable to continue these missions since the junta rose to power.
“I think Niger is a particularly big one that hurts because the U.S. invested a lot of time and resources into Niger, the drone base, it was obviously very expensive,” Liam Karr, an analyst for the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project, told the Washington Examiner.
Gen. Michael Langley, the head of U.S. Africa Command, told the Washington Post earlier this year that losing the base would be “impactful” and he added, “If we lose our footprint in the Sahel, that will degrade our ability to do active watching and warning, including for homeland defense.”
The U.S. is now exploring other options to continue its counterterrorism operations.
“Don’t want to get ahead of the process other than to say we’ll continue to explore options to address the terrorist threat as it relates to Nisahal in Western Africa and working with regional partners to help address that threat,” Ryder explained. “So, don’t have any additional things to announce on that front, but we’ll keep you updated.”
The U.S. has held preliminary discussions with Benin, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ghana, according to the Wall Street Journal, though these places are not ideal because they would not be able to surveil areas of Libya, Algeria, and northeastern Algeria depending on which of the three countries they are based in, the Institute for the Study of War said in a recent report.
Terrorist groups like al Qaeda and ISIS have offshoots based in Africa, like the Islamic State Sahel Province and Jama’at Nasr al Islam wal Muslimin, that have expanded in recent years. But they do not pose the same threat to the U.S. homeland as Middle Eastern terrorist groups, Karr said, adding, “they could pose some type of threat to Europe even if the risk is low.”
Niger is the latest in a string of African nations that have experienced military coups in recent years, many of which have led to a severing of ties with the United States. Most recently Gabon, Niger, and Sudan have experienced military uprisings, while other military leaders have seized power in Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso, and Chad in recent years.
Langley testified in front of lawmakers last month where he provided his own explanation of why several coups have taken place in the Sahel.
The driving force behind the coups, he said, “include endemic corruption, lagging development, weak democratic institutions, and a shortage in strategic patience,” which criminal and terrorist groups are then able to exploit to gain civilian support. But, the new leaders then find themselves distanced from Western support, and as problems worsen, they are forced to seek partnerships elsewhere, mainly Russia.
One hundred Russian Africa Corps soldiers deployed to the Nigerien capital less than two weeks ago to train Nigerien forces, and they said they want to take over the U.S. base.
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Should Russia move into the base, it would have the opportunity to threaten NATO’s southern flank. Russia, with Iran’s support, has increased production of drones for its war in Ukraine, including the Shahed 136, known in Russian as Geranium, and they could bring those drones to Niger.
The furthest edge of the Shahed 136’s range, if fired from Agadez, includes Sicily, Italy, the southern tip of the Italian mainland, and is just shy of being able to hit Gibraltar and southern Spain, the ISW said.