The U.S. military turned over control of its two bases in Niger to local forces on Monday, ending a yearslong counterterrorism mission in the West African country even as violent extremism remains on the rise in the region.
A group of U.S. troops boarded an Air Force cargo plane and flew out of a $110 million air base in central Niger that was built with Pentagon money, among the last of 1,000 personnel that Washington had agreed to pull out by Sept. 15. A small number of troops will remain for a short time to wrap up administrative details, officials said.
Relations between the once-close partners soured after Niger’s military toppled the civilian-led government last year and ordered the U.S. troops to leave. Military juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso have also ordered U.S. and French troops out in recent months, and American officials are now scrambling to find new security partners in coastal West Africa.
Those negotiations could take months or longer, however, as groups that have declared allegiance to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State menace large swaths of the Sahel, the vast, semiarid region south of the Sahara where U.S. counterterrorism efforts have been focused.
“This does make safeguarding U.S. security interests in the Sahel that much harder,” Maj. Gen. Kenneth P. Ekman of the Air Force, the top American officer overseeing the withdrawal, said in a telephone interview from Niamey, Niger’s capital. “The threats from ISIS and Al Qaeda in the region are getting worse every day.”
Indeed, a new United Nations report concluded last month that “complete destabilization of the countries in the region in the medium term remains a possible risk.”
Unlike the chaotic, deadly U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, the much smaller troop pullout from Niger was conducted largely without a hitch or any mayhem.
Departing in stages, just under 400 troops at a base in Niamey withdrew in the spring followed by about 600 forces at the sprawling air base in Agadez, in central Niger, that the Americans used as a hub for surveillance drone operations.
Military officials prioritized which equipment to ship home and which to leave behind. Weapons and other lethal or sensitive equipment were flown out. Modular housing units and most of the vehicles — many already well worn when they first arrived — were left for Nigerien forces to use.
Other equipment that still functioned and had value was crated up to be used in other missions. For instance, the air base in Agadez was not connected to the city’s power grid, so the U.S. military’s Africa Command brought in 18 40,000-pound generators, worth $1 million apiece, General Ekman said. Now the military is moving all 18 back to Europe, even though each generator requires a separate C-17 cargo plane flight.
U.S. relations with Niger steadily worsened after the military ousted the country’s president, Mohamed Bazoum, in July 2023. The Biden administration waited until October to declare the junta’s takeover a coup, hoping to resolve the crisis and avoid a congressional mandate to halt economic and military aid to any government deemed to have been installed by a military coup until democracy is restored.
U.S. counterterrorism training in Niger was suspended as were Pentagon surveillance drone flights, except those to protect U.S. troops and to alert the authorities if a terrorist threat was detected. Humanitarian, food and health assistance continued, and the United States ambassador to Niger, Kathleen A. FitzGibbon, remained in the country.
But negotiations to resolve the impasse went nowhere. The junta said in March that it was ending its military cooperation deal with the United States after a contentious set of meetings in Niamey with a high-level American delegation. Nigerien leaders accused the U.S. officials of telling them how to run their country, a charge that Biden administration officials rejected.
Other countries in the region have also broken ties with Western countries, notably France, the former colonial power that for the past decade has led counterterrorism efforts in West Africa but has lately been perceived there as a pariah. Some of these countries have partnered with Russia instead.
In early April, about 100 Russian instructors and an air-defense system suddenly arrived in Niger. The Russian personnel were part of Africa Corps, a new paramilitary structure intended to take the place of the Wagner Group, the military company whose mercenaries and operations spread in Africa under the leadership of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, who was killed in a plane crash last year.
As part of the final negotiations with the Pentagon, Nigerien officials assured the Americans that the Russians would not be allowed to use the prized air bases or American gear left behind.
“While we made no formal agreement with the Nigerien authorities, they clearly recognize the bad press they would receive if malign actors were allowed to use former U.S. bases and equipment,” General Ekman said.
Senior American officials say the competition with Russia, which is playing out across the continent, is entering a new phase in Niger. But the United States will stay engaged.
“This is like a skirmish in a much longer war,” Christopher P. Maier, the Pentagon’s top official for special operations policy, said in an interview. “Fundamentally, the Russians now have to prove that they bring something there now that they may be on the inside and we’re on the outside.”
Regional analysts emphasized the importance of the United States remaining engaged in the region, providing humanitarian and other assistance.
“The U.S. still has an important role to play,” said Franklin Nossiter, a Sahel researcher at the International Crisis Group in Dakar, Senegal. “These countries need more than mercenaries, and the U.S. is able to provide in ways that the Russians simply cannot.”
Still, the loss of the two bases will be a blow to counterterrorism and broader security in the Sahel, American officials acknowledged. Discussions are underway with coastal West African nations like Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and Benin, officials said, but the talks are still in the very early stages.
“Our security objectives in West Africa have not changed,” General Ekman said. He added that one important difference in any future negotiations would be “listening first, to understand what they need for an enduring solution to terrorism.”
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