National Interest

by Daniel Swift and Mariam Wahba

    The ongoing civil war in Mali—where a jihadist group is poised to seize power—is spilling over into Nigeria, with ominous humanitarian consequences.

    In Africa, an Al Qaeda militia has surrounded a capital city, killed a defense minister and blockaded 3 million people and it is just getting started.

    On April 27, fighters from Al Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nusrat Al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) helped overrun Russian forces in the northern Malian town of Kidal, seizing weapon caches. On the same day, JNIM killed Mali’s pro-Kremlin defense minister. Days later, JNIM stormed a Malian maximum-security prison dubbed “Africa’s Alcatraz” just 60 miles from the capital of Bamako in an attempt to free high-value JNIM prisoners. Now, the jihadi militia has the capital Bamako—and its 3 million inhabitants—under a partial blockade.

    Some 2,000 miles to the southeast, Nigeria’s defense minister is warning that violence from Mali could spill into his country. And he is right to be worried. But these developments also give the United States an opportunity to re-engage in West Africa productively—before a terrorist caliphate can fully take root.

    For the past three years, Mali’s military junta has taken a gamble by kicking out Western security partners and inviting in Russia. French forces were expelled in 2022. American forces drew down from the region at the request of neighboring governments in 2024. Russia’s Africa Corps, the rebranded Wagner Group, arrived with fanfare and delivered failure. With its attention and resources consumed by Ukraine, Moscow never had the capacity to fill the void it encouraged Mali to create. JNIM filled it instead.

    Iyad Ag Ghali, the man leading the JNIM charge, was once a whiskey-drinkingpunk-rocker from northern Mali’s ethnic Tuareg elite. Having come to jihadism later in life, he is now strangling the capital city, eliminating government leadership and raising funds illicitly. In November 2025, the United Arab Emiratespaid more than $20 million to secure the freedom of an Emirati prince kidnapped by JNIM. Now, the jihadi group is also reportedlyrunning a major node of the trans-Saharan cocaine trade.

    As it consolidates power and gains territory across Mali, JNIM is positioned to export its model eastward to Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, with just under 250 million people and one of its largest economies. A society already walking on a knife’s edge between its Muslim north and Christian south cannot afford to be next.

    Terrorism in Nigeria’s north is already on the rise. Jihadist networks in the Sahel region of Africa are exploiting the country’s religious fault lines, framing their campaigns in the language of holy war. Christian farming communities are under direct and growing pressure. For JNIM, the goal in Nigeria is not conquest. It is chaos. Abuja does not have the capacity to provide reliable security along its north-south fault line alone. Intensified inter-religious violence creates the conditions for jihadist expansion.

    Meanwhile, the Trump administration has made protecting persecuted Christians in Nigeria a priority, carrying out one-time strikes against Islamic State targets in northwest Nigeria on Christmas Day 2025. There could now be an opportunity for more systemic security cooperation with Nigeria to contain the rise of JNIM and similar groups through more cost-effective, sustainable training and drone operations.

    None of this requires boots on the ground. It does not require nation-building, regime change, or an open-ended commitment. What it calls for is targeted, strategic reengagement with the West African partners that want it. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has been weakened by the wave of coups that swept the Sahel, but it has not collapsed.

    Nigeria, Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire and others remain functional states with capable security forces but are under-resourced and under-supported. The United States has the intelligence assets, the training capacity and the relationships to make a meaningful difference without a significant footprint. The joint US-Nigerian strike on May 15 that killed Abu-Bilal al-Mainuki, a senior Islamic State commander operating out of the Lake Chad Basin, is proof of concept—targeted intelligence sharing and partnership can deliver results without a large American presence on the ground.

    The mission is containment. Reestablish security cooperation in the wake of Russia’s failure. Provide intelligence sharing and potentially drone operations targeted at degrading JNIM’s ability to project over borders. Expedite arms and equipment to Nigeria and other at-risk states. Push for confirmed US ambassadors to reconstitute a regional security architecture that Russia’s failure has shattered.

    America has made this mistake before. It disengages and watches as a malign actor fills the void. This exact pattern is playing out in the Sahel. Washington can still break it through intelligence sharing, drone operations, arms transfers and confirmed ambassadors, but the window of engagement gets slimmer by the minute.