137 people died in Sunday raids in villages near the Niger-Mali border. 256 people died in the “Three Borders” area in just over a week.
Dozens of people have died in the deadliest jihadist massacre to ever hit Niger, the government said on Monday, underlining the enormous security challenge facing the new president Mohamed Bazoum. Government spokesman Zakaria Abdourahamane also expressed sorrow for the deaths of civilians and insisted on what he called "cowardly and criminal" acts.
It took two days for the soldiers dispatched to the scene of the March 21 attacks to count the 137 civilian deaths. The toll is therefore much higher than the 60 deaths announced earlier. The three villages attacked were in Tahoua, bordering the Tillaberi region, which suffered 13 deadly terrorist attacks by the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS). The most recent attack on Tillaberi took place on March 14, a bus was strafed by terrorists and 66 people died.
A day later, the same EIGS killed 33 in the ranks of the Malian army. On the border between Niger and Mali since January, nearly 350 people have died in the attacks.
Niger out of breath
The election of the new Nigerien president, Mohamed Bazoum, was confirmed on Sunday by the constitutional court. It is therefore no coincidence that the attack took place on the same day. "The EIGS expresses its political ambitions only in civilian deaths," the commander of the joint military force of the G5 Sahel (FCG5S), Didier Dacko, told the newspaper "Le Sahel".
For Emmanuel Dupuy, president of the Institute for Prospective and Security in Europe (IPSE) it would be "to disrupt the image of the Nigerien authorities, to further handicap the anchoring of the Nigerian state", according to the Sputnik France agency.
On January 2, 100 people were killed in attacks on two villages in Mangaize district in Tillaberi. The massacre, one of the worst in Niger's history, occurred between two rounds of the country's presidential election. A year earlier, on January 9, 2020, the Nigerian army had lost 89 men in an attack on a military camp in Chinegodar, a month after the death of 71 soldiers in an attack in Inates and at the start of the campaign.
There is therefore no doubt that terrorist attacks, particularly in Niger, always target civilians and in an electoral context. Bazoum, elected on February 21, is a former Minister of the Interior who was the successor and right-hand man of outgoing President Mahamadou Issoufou. He vowed to fight insecurity and ordered army reinforcements in the Tillabéri region after the bloodshed on March 15. However, with two of his G5 Sahel allies already negotiating with EIGS terrorists, Bazoum may need allies.
In this case, since the G5 Sahel summit, the Chadian army has deployed a contingent of more than 1 soldiers, after an agreement concluded with France. These soldiers are still expected in Niger, however.
What would a truce represent?
Between Mali, which is being pushed more and more into a dialogue with the EIGS by Algeria, and the Burkina Faso, which can no longer afford to lose its territory to terrorist organizations, alone France, Chad and the United States are invested in the long term in the war in the zone of the "Three borders".
However, in the event that Niger negotiates a truce with the terrorists of the EIGS, two consequences are to be expected: France will no longer have any reason to have an army deployed in southern Mali, and half of the continent no longer exists. he will have more than two terrorist threats to face in the immediate future: GSIM and AQIM, representatives of al-Qaeda in Africa.
The latter would be cornered and lacking in resources, but for this to happen, more than nine African countries must come to an agreement. In the Nigerien context, it would be a double victory. The end, even for a short time, of the attacks in western Niger, and a period of calm that Bazoum badly needs to establish himself politically and install his government.