President Donald Trump may be looking at potential strikes on another growing Islamic terrorist hotbed in the coming weeks — this time in the West African nation of Mali.
The Trump administration has reportedly been considering strikes against Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an Al Qaeda-linked militant group operating in the Sahel region that has attacked both local militias and international forces and has endeavored to enforce strict Islamic law throughout its areas of control.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the Trump administration is divided on military action — and said that one of those in favor of such is the current National Security Council’s senior director for counterterrorism, Sebastian Gorka.
One official did tell the outlet that, despite that division, the United States had been encouraging other nations in the region “to purchase U.S. equipment and services to support their war efforts against the terrorists.”
The entire region has been in a state of upheaval in recent years as a series of Russia-backed coups upended democratically elected governments in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger — and the three nations have increasingly rejected ties with Western nations, instead joining together as The Alliance of Sahel States.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, Niger overtly rejected the United States when President Joe Biden’s administration delivered an ultimatum just as the West African nation was inking a deal to provide Iran with Uranium. The Biden administration demanded that Niger cut ties with Russia and Iran, but the military junta running things at the time was disinclined to acquiesce. Instead, in addition to refusing Biden’s ultimatum, Niger ousted all remaining American military assets from the country — including a drone base that was used to target terrorists in the region.
Zineb Riboua, a research fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East, told The Daily Wire that the Biden administration’s presentation may have been the crux of the problem: “Instead of presenting it as an ultimatum, they could have presented an alternative. Instead of doing a uranium deal with Iran, why don’t you do one with the United States, and you get a school program or something in Niger, something they don’t have.”
But once the United States was gone, it was soon quickly apparent that the Russian security forces with whom they’d cast their lots were more of a liability than an asset. As previously reported, “The Russians were killing untold numbers of civilians and still somehow managing to cede ground to the jihadists. In fact, in Burkina Faso and Mali, the Russians and government forces actually killed more civilians last year than the jihadists.”
The situation has only deteriorated in the years since, leading to the current consideration of possible military action.
“We urge regional partners and NATO allies to support the Alliance of Sahel States in their war against JNIM and ISIS,” the Trump administration official told The Washington Post, noting that partnership with Russia had clearly only allowed the terrorist factions to fester and grow. “We hope that other African nations take note of Russia’s terrible performance in combating terrorism.”
When asked, Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not say whether he supported military action. Instead, the State Department said that the United States “unequivocally condemns the terrorist activity in Mali.”
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