The Jihadist Wave in West Africa
Editor’s Note: Although the threat from the Islamic State and other jihadist groups appears to be declining in the Middle East, it is soaring in Africa. My Center for Strategic and International Studies colleague Alexander Palmer examines the growth of jihadist groups in West Africa in particular, discussing how their recent conquest of large amounts of territory is reshaping the terrorism landscape.
Daniel Byman
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On April 25, 2026, al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) launched a major offensive against the Malian government alongside the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a separatist group. They have conducted attacks across Mali, killed the country’s defense minister, and established a blockade of Bamako, the capital. The groups now control vast swathes of the country—including positions near Bamako.
The ongoing offensive is the most visible manifestation of a years-long shift in favor of West Africa’s Salafi-jihadist organizations. The growing power and reach of these groups is upending the current order. Policymakers should be planning for multiple scenarios, ranging from the emergence of a trans-national terrorist hub to a frozen conflict.
West Africa’s Salafi-Jihadist Landscape
West Africa is home to three main al-Qaeda or Islamic State affiliates: JNIM, the Islamic State-West Africa Province (ISWAP), and the Islamic State-Sahel Province (ISSP). In 2025, all three of these groups were on the march, demonstrating increasing capability and operating over ever-larger areas.
JNIM’s offensive is the most recent manifestation of its growing capability. In 2022, the United Nations Analytic Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team assessed that JNIM commanded between 2,000 and 3,000 fighters. In 2025, estimates had risen to 5,000-6,000. That year, it imposed a blockade across much of southern Mali and temporarily overran two provincial capitals in Burkina Faso. During the same time period, JNIM also increased its income through both informal taxation and, possibly more important for the current offensive, large infusions of cash acquired by ransoming foreigners. In November 2025, the United Arab Emirates allegedly paid the group $50 million for two of its citizens, an enormous windfall for the group.
JNIM’s main Salafi-jihadist rival is ISSP, which operates primarily in the border areas between Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria. ISSP is smaller and less capable than JNIM, commanding a few thousand fighters and relying on small-scale guerrilla attacks rather than the type of direct military confrontation JNIM increasingly prefers. Even so, it is operating with growing capability and confidence. In early 2026, it conducted an unprecedented attack on Niamey’s international airport and the adjoining Air Base 101, where Nigerien military and international forces (including Russian Africa Corps personnel) are stationed. It has also expanded its operations into Nigeria, in partnership with or under the guise of the group known locally as Lakurawa.
ISWAP is the largest and most powerful Islamic State province in Africa. It operates primarily in the Lake Chad basin, although its spread westward into Nigeria has brought it into closer contact with ISSP. As of mid-2025, it probably commanded between 8,000 and 12,000 members. Between July 2024 and July 2025, it claimed more attacks than any other Islamic State province worldwide. In 2025, it also escalated its campaign against the Nigerian state, launching a set of coordinated attacks against the “super camps” that the Nigerian military established to prevent ISWAP from overrunning its smaller, more isolated military outposts. It has also continued to conduct attacks in Cameroon and Chad.
Countries At Risk
Even if JNIM’s current offensive fails to topple the government in Bamako, it will probably try again. While analysts disagree on JNIM’s exact goals, statements by JNIM leaders suggest that the group wants to overthrow the Malian government and replace it with a government that enforces its interpretation of Sharia. How exactly the group wants to achieve that goal, as well as what it believes will come after, remains murky. Last year, the group attempted to trigger a government collapse through economic warfare, blockading southern Mali and calling on Malians to overthrow the government.
Burkina Faso also faces growing challenges from Salafi-jihadist organizations. Although the country experienced a decrease in terrorism-related deaths in 2025, this may be attributable to JNIM shifting its focus to Mali, and attacks were deadlier on average. As such, if JNIM turns its attention back to Burkina Faso, it could increase pressure on the regime quickly. Salafi jihadists in Burkina Faso already hold vast swaths of territory, and Ibrahim Traoré’s military government has claimed that it put down several coup attempts since coming to power in 2022.
Finally, Nigeria’s role in the region is changing. Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria has a long history of participation in peace and stability operations, including those organized through the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the United Nations. However, its role as a security exporter is declining. The traditionally Nigeria-led ECOWAS’s failure to reverse Niger’s 2023 coup despite threatening to do so by force has demonstrated Nigeria’s decreasing power in the West African security architecture, as did Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger’s withdrawal from ECOWAS in January 2024 and Niger’s withdrawal from the Multinational Joint Task Force in March 2025. While the causes for Nigeria’s declining influence are complex, its deteriorating security landscape plays a role. Terrorist violence in Nigeria increased in 2025, and the Nigerian military is increasingly overstretched by internal challenges. How often it can repeat successes like ECOWAS’s December 2025 prevention of a coup in Benin is an open question. Nigeria’s decline as a security exporter makes instability in West Africa more likely to erupt into major crises.
Potential Futures
The number of active threats, their cross-border nature, and the internal dynamics of the region’s governments—both military and civilian—make it difficult to chart the future of West Africa, but it looks increasingly grim.
Policymakers should prepare for at least three possible outcomes to the continued rise in Salafi jihadist violence in West Africa: that the region becomes a hub for global terrorism, that the Sahel descends deeper into civil war as groups and states fragment, or that the conflict enters a stalemate in which the countrysides and some cities are held by Salafi jihadists while capitals are still held by existing governments.
Despite its strength, JNIM itself is likely to play an indirect role in global terrorism. The United Nations reported internal debates within JNIM regarding its future relationship with al-Qaeda as recently as July 2025 and asserted that JNIM was “observing developments in the Syrian Arab Republic closely,” implying that it is considering severing ties with al-Qaeda in pursuit of recognition and aid. In addition, International Crisis Group interviews suggest that the group’s operational goals are regional rather than global, and the group’s public statements increasingly focus on local conditions and even suggest openness to negotiation with the Bamako government.
That said, JNIM could still host international terrorists seeking the space to plot attacks, much as the Taliban provided safe haven to al-Qaeda in the 1990s. JNIM remains an al-Qaeda affiliate, and some analysts argue that JNIM rhetoric signals a meaningful alignment with al-Qaeda’s global ideology, In addition, JNIM’s calls for dialogue are conditioned on the government’s acceptance of Sharia and the withdrawal of foreign troops—a maximalist position barely better than government surrender. If a JNIM victory leads to increased conflict with ISSP or even its current allies in the FLA, al-Qaeda’s expertise, financial support, and ideological credibility could grow even more useful for JNIM, increasing its incentives to host international terrorists.
West Africa’s Islamic State groups are more likely to engage in global terrorism. They have become more integrated into the global Islamic State network in recent years, and some governments even assess that the head of the Islamic State’s West Africa office may have become the head of the General Directorate of Provinces, which organizes international terrorist attacks. ISWAP has also been bolstered by foreign fighters in recent years, which has increased its operational capability and could shift the group toward a greater interest in international terrorism. While such a development could contribute to the Islamic State core’s continued weakening relative to its more locally oriented provinces, it could also presage an increasing African role in international Islamic State terrorism.
There is also some evidence that terrorists compete with each other by “outbidding,” engaging in increasingly extreme violence to win over potential recruits. Given JNIM and ISSP’s competition in the Sahel—and the global contest between al-Qaeda and the Islamic State—JNIM’s success could prompt Islamic State efforts to outbid it through increasing violence. Such efforts could include international attacks like those the Islamic State-Khorasan Province attempted following the Taliban’s successful counterinsurgency campaign against the group or through the declaration of a caliphate in West Africa, despite the theological obstacles to such a declaration. The need to win back attention and recruits from an ascendant JNIM could push ISWAP and ISSP further toward international terrorism.
Another possible outcome is a descent into even greater chaos, which—like the current conflict—is likely to spill over national borders. JNIM is already at war with ISSP, despite occasional periods of de-escalation. In addition, Mali and Burkina Faso are both home to local self-defense militias that could become insurgents in their own right if those countries’ capitals were to fall. The fact that many of these militias are organized along ethnic lines only increases the situation’s combustibility. Finally, JNIM itself could fragment. The group is aware of the threats that expansion poses to its cohesion, and success could lead to competition within the organization over spoils or increased tensions between the group’s leadership and its foot soldiers.
JNIM’s relationship with the FLA will be particularly important. The FLA is an ethnic separatist group rather than a Salafi-jihadist organization, and its agenda differs from that of JNIM. The predecessors of both the FLA and JNIM collaborated in the 2012 uprising in northern Mali before falling into open war due to ideological and political differences. According to Wassim Nasr, JNIM and the FLA agreed to enforce some version of Sharia in northern Mali and jointly govern urban areas to enable the current offensive. How these two provisions are implemented in the areas the groups now control—especially the northern city of Kidal—will serve as early indicators of whether or not the alliance is likely to hold.
Greater international support for West Africa’s embattled regimes could stabilize the conflict, leading to a scenario in which violence continues but regional governments are unlikely to fall—a situation that has characterized Somalia for decades. Who exactly will support these states remains an open question. Russia is currently the main external partner of the Burkinabe, Malian, and Nigerien regimes, but has withdrawn from positions across Mali during the current offensive. France, which has historically been extremely involved in West Africa, is deeply unpopular in the region. The United States has begun to increase its engagement, but its appetite for the type of extensive and sustained security cooperation needed by West African governments is questionable at best. Other countries like Algeria, China, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates all have important interests in West Africa and could make limited contributions.
Changes to West Africa’s Salafi-jihadist landscape are ushering in an uncertain future. The region’s overlapping ethnic, political, and religious conflicts—as well as the actions of external powers—will all play roles in determining the balance of power between existing governments and these jihadist organizations. JNIM currently has the initiative, and how its actions affect the calculations of ISSP, ISWAP, and al-Qaeda will help determine whether West Africa emerges as a hub for transnational terrorism or whether the crisis remains contained to the region.
