Benin, which only recorded its first incident of extremist violence in 2019, is among the continent’s countries being increasingly impacted by terrorism. The number of recorded attacks has risen year-on-year since, reaching 20 incidents in 2022 before doubling last year. The Beninese military labeled 2023’s drastic uptick as “the sharpest rise in extremist attacks in Africa.”

An overwhelming share of this activity has occurred in the Park W-Arly-Pendjari Complex, a vast 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) of land that makes up West Africa’s largest protected wilderness.

The sheer size of this area, alongside its location on the periphery of one of the world’s most violent regions, means Benin has struggled to halt the growing presence of Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM), and to a lesser extent Islamic State-Sahel.

Kidnappings in Benin

Evidence of JNIM’s growing presence in Benin is also visible in the country’s increasing rate of kidnappings.

Last year saw northern Benin record at least 75 kidnapping (or attempted kidnapping) incidents, just over triple the number recorded in 2022, which itself witnessed a total higher than the combined number of recorded cases nationwide between 2016 and 2021.

The implications are grave, with kidnappings serving as one of the initial tactics violent extremist organizations frequently deploy to assert presence. Indeed, both JNIM and Islamic State-Sahel typically begin their encroachment into fresh territory by forging alliances with local actors. However, for those less willing to cooperate, methods designed to coerce and intimidate, such as kidnappings, will be used.

This is because they can provide much-needed intel on the local terrain, strike fear into local communities, and announce the presence of an extremist organization as a legitimate violent actor, as well as an additional source of income.

Perhaps most importantly, kidnappings help gradually erode the belief that the state is the primary security provider.

Pre-Existing Grievances

JNIM has found success in northern Benin over recent years, but this says as much about the group’s capabilities as it does about some of the Beninese government policies. JNIM’s expansion would have been far more difficult without the pre-existing grievances in the W-Arly-Pendjari Complex and surrounding areas.

A series of land reforms and sedentarization laws aimed at modernizing its agro-pastoral industry and conserving the local ecosystem, as well as the closure of the Park Complex to the public after two French tourists were kidnapped several years ago, have all been accused of exacerbating farmer and pastoral grievances and conflicts.

JNIM has been able to leverage some of these frustrations to expand deeper into the Park Complex, in turn allowing it to become an increasingly dominant actor in Benin.

Underscoring this notion is a recent study carried out in the Atakora Department, which houses the Pendjari National Park and the largest section of Benin’s border with Burkina Faso. Fieldwork found that 20 percent of participants personally knew someone who had joined JNIM, while 45 percent reported seeing JNIM in their community, and 30 percent had personally interacted with JNIM militants.

Benin now finds itself at a crossroads, although there are several steps the country should take to try to tackle the growing threat posed by violent extremist organizations in its territory.

Address Socio-Economic Pressures

In the Park W-Arly-Pendjari Complex, the government should better address the socio-economic pressures facing farmer and pastoralist communities, even if it comes at a slight environmental cost.

This can be done by declassifying segments of the park’s buffer zones for these communities to use, which would likely alleviate overall levels of conflict and competition.

While this could be a short-term solution, a comprehensive strategy aimed at providing sustainable economic opportunities to the affected areas in northern Benin should also be considered.

Military Cooperation With Neighbors

Benin must also increase military cooperation with Burkina Faso and Niger, the latter of whom the country is currently embroiled in a lengthy diplomatic spat with. With their relationship fraught and Niger facing its own issues with violent extremist organizations, Niamey is unlikely to prioritize terrorist activity near its border with Benin.

This fallout does not only rule out military assistance and cooperation, it has also meant that Niger has kept its side of the border closed for almost a year now. Until reopened, local communities in northern Benin that once relied on cross-border trade will continue to be negatively impacted, further creating socio-economic conditions that are conducive to violent extremists.

While facing its own extensive issues with extremism, Nigeria will be concerned that JNIM militants from the Sahel have transited through Benin and settled in the western Kainji Lake National Park. The threat here is relatively nascent compared to elsewhere in Nigeria, meaning Abuja potentially has a window of opportunity to combat JNIM before it morphs into a far larger threat.

To do so, it will need to cooperate intensely with Benin, and even shoulder more of the burden in attempting to tackle this cross-border threat. Indeed, there is evidence that bandits from Nigeria are now crossing into JNIM-held zones in Benin, underscoring how failing to address this issue will benefit extremist groups traditionally found on opposite sides of the shared border.

Nigeria has ample experience combatting such groups, even if its success in doing so is limited, meaning it must share its experience and knowledge with Benin to implement an effective counter-terrorism strategy that can address all facets of the insecurity multiplying across their shared border.

Western Community Should Help

Finally, the Western community should play a more proactive role in helping Benin.

This should be done via a mixture of civilian and military initiatives. While improving the capacities and size of the Beninese security apparatus will be helpful in fighting extremist groups, providing an outlet for disenfranchised members to leave their groups will be equally productive in the long run.

The US and EU should set up and sponsor disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration programs immediately, as they do elsewhere in the region.

The fate of Benin remains unclear, although it is evident that if trends of the past few years are allowed to progress at their current rates, the country will likely suffer a similar fate as some of its West African peers — many of whom contain some of the highest levels of terrorism and violence in the world.

Charlie Werb is an analyst, writer, and commentator focussing on sub-Saharan African security issues, with a particular emphasis on Islamist extremist groups in the region.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Defense Post.

The Defense Post aims to publish a wide range of high-quality opinion and analysis from a diverse array of people – do you want to send us yours? Click here to submit an op-ed.

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The sources did not identify the gunmen but the attack on Tuesday was the latest in a border area where Benin faces growing spillover from a jihadist conflicts in the Sahel and where criminal gangs and smugglers also operate.

“The information about the loss of seven of our compatriots is confirmed,” an army source said when asked about the attack.

Another security source also confirmed the attack.

No group immediately claimed responsibility and the army has yet to comment officially.

West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea countries Benin, Togo, Ghana and Ivory Coast are all prepared for fallout from growing jihadist conflicts in the Sahel region across their northern borders.

Benin borders on Burkina Faso and Niger, where jihadists linked to Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are fighting wars.

Benin authorities have sent 3,000 troops to reinforce the frontier.

Benin’s government rarely comments about violence on its borders, but officials have acknowledged that since 2021 they have seen around 20 incursions.

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The clash happened in a region where the country faces a growing threat from Islamist insurgencies across its border.

Two military sources told AFP that the army had “neutralised” eight “terrorists” in the commune of Karimama, in the north-east of Benin, on the border with Niger, on Tuesday.

“We carried out an operation in the Karimama area which resulted in a heavy loss for unidentified armed individuals suspected of terrorist activity in the northern part of our country,” said one source.

Benin’s army suffered no casualties, the source added.

Another senior military official said the incident had happened during a troop offensive that had begun 72 hours earlier.

According to an internal army memo seen by AFP, the army recovered significant amounts of military material and captured motorbikes and fuel.

“I know that there were manoeuvres by armed men in our locality,” a local resident of Karimama told AFP when reached by telephone.

Militants connected to Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have been thriving in the Sahel region, pushing their conflicts further south to coastal West African states.

The border region with Burkina Faso, in the north, remains the epicenter of incursions into Benin.

The border with Niger has also recently become a concern, particularly since the overthrow of Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum by the military in July 2023.

In January 2022, Benin deployed some 3,000 soldiers to help secure its borders as part of an operation called “Mirador.”

A few months ago, Benin began recruiting 5,000 additional soldiers to strengthen security in the north.

Beninese authorities, who very rarely communicate publicly about any attacks in the north, reported in April 2023 about 20 cross-border incursions since 2021.

The European Union has announced it would release 47 million euros for the purchase of materials and equipment to support Benin in its fight against terrorism.

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The move reflects Benin’s struggle with spillover from conflicts in the Sahel where militants linked to the Islamic State group and Al-Qaeda have stepped up attacks as they seek to move south.

In a statement on Wednesday, Benin’s government said the National Defense Medal and the Combatant’s Cross would “recognize personnel whose feats of arms deserve to be held up as an example or encouraged.”

The Combatant’s Cross is for soldiers killed or wounded fighting.

Political scientist and security specialist Odilon Koukoubou said the medals were designed to encourage and boost morale of Benin’s security forces who have not experienced war since 1960 independence.

“The army has not been heavily called on at the front for national defence against an external enemy,” he said.

“The situation is changing now with the emergence of the terrorist threat on the country’s northern borders.”

Authorities rarely comment on jihadist attacks in northern Benin, which borders Burkina Faso and Niger.

Beninese forces in April said they had faced around 20 incursions from across the frontier since 2021.

France’s military withdrawal in the Sahel has heightened concerns about security along the borders of Benin and Gulf of Guinea neighbors Ghana, Togo and Ivory Coast.

Benin’s government has recently taken measures to support its troops. Last week it passed a law to provide for the dependents of killed or missing soldiers.

Earlier this year it launched a recruitment drive for 5,000 additional troops to help reinforce the border.

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“We will not relinquish the security of the African continent,” Macron said in a speech in Cameroon, a former French colony and close ally that has been troubled by attacks.

“France remains resolutely committed to the security of the continent, acting in support and at the request of our African partners,” Macron told a gathering of French expatriates in the capital Yaounde.

France is reconfiguring its posture in the Sahel after falling out with the military junta in Mali, the epicenter of a bloody 11-year-old jihadist campaign in the region.

After a pullout from Mali that is expected to be completed in the coming weeks, France’s Barkhane anti-jihadist force will have around 2,500 troops in the Sahel, just under half of the deployment at its peak, say French officers.

The force will also make a tactical shift, acting more in a support role for local forces than in taking the lead, they say.

Macron landed late on Monday on a three-day tour that will also take him to Benin and Guinea-Bissau.

He headed into a meeting with Cameroon’s 89-year-old president, Paul Biya, an iron-fisted ruler who has been in power since 1982.

In his speech, Macron said the changes in Barkhane had been prompted because “the political framework was no longer there” — a reference to the dispute with the Malian junta.

The reconfigured mission, he said, will extend “beyond the Sahel, to the Gulf of Guinea and second-layer countries which now have to face terrorist groups which are expanding and shaking up the whole region.”

The jihadist insurgency began in northern Mali in 2012 and hit neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso in 2015.

Across the region, thousands of people have been killed and more than two million have fled their homes.

Sporadic cross-border attacks have also occurred on coastal countries to the south, sparking fears of an expansion by the jihadists to the Gulf of Guinea.

Macron also pledged French support for countries fighting jihadists in the Lake Chad region, where an older insurgency launched by Nigeria’s Boko Haram is also raging.

These include Cameroon, whose Far North region, which reaches into the Lake Chad basin, has suffered repeated attacks.

Food Crisis Rebuttal

Macron also hit out at “nonsense” that he said had been doing the rounds as a result of the Ukraine war.

“We are being attacked by certain people who maintain that European sanctions (against Russia) are the cause of the world food crisis, including in Africa.

“This is completely false. It’s just that food, like energy, have become Russian weapons of war,” he said.

Macron’s swing through central and western Africa is his first trip to the continent since he was re-elected in April.

France has followed with concern the emergence of Russia, China, and others in seeking footholds in an area it still considers part of its sphere of influence.

The tour “will show the commitment of the president in the process of renewing the relationship with the African continent,” a French presidential official, who asked not to be named, said ahead of the trip.

It will signal that the African continent is a “political priority” of his presidency, the official said.

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Togo’s troops are deployed in the north of the country to try and contain a jihadist threat pushing south from Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger where militants linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group operate.

The attack prompted the European Union to express alarm about the spread of jihadism to the region’s coastal states.

“At around 03:00 GMT, a forward operating base… in Kpinkankandi was the scene of a violent terrorist attack by a group of unidentified heavily armed individuals. Sadly, among the security forces, eight have died and 13 were injured,” a statement read on national television said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Kpinkankandi is located near the border with Burkina Faso.

A senior security source in Togo who asked to remain anonymous told AFP that the soldiers were attacked by a group of 60 gunmen who arrived on motorbikes.

“They exchanged fire for more than two hours… and then a reinforcement unit was hit by an improvised explosive device,” he added.

Soldiers had foiled an attack in November last year in the northern village of Sanloaga, making Wednesday’s attack the first to cause casualties.

Violence from armed groups and criminal networks is on the rise across West Africa.

‘Threat is spreading’

At a meeting of West African defense chiefs last week, Ghana’s Defence Minister Dominic Nitiwul said that in three years the region had suffered more than 5,300 terror-related attacks claiming around 16,000 lives.

A major concern is how the threat is spreading from the Sahel to northern parts of coastal Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Togo.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Wednesday the attack “shows that the terrorist threat is spreading toward the countries of the Gulf of Guinea.

“Efforts must be redoubled to stop it before it is too late,” Borrell warned.

In April, five soldiers were killed in northern Benin in an ambush by gunmen while nine people were killed in February in the deadliest attack to date in the country.

“This territorial expansion by jihadists is going to progressively give birth to home-grown jihadist cells, made up of local recruits, that feed off of the local grievances,” wrote Mathieu Pellerin, Sahel researcher at the International Crisis Group.

Local issues include tensions over access to resources, stigmatization of certain ethnic groups, presence of self-defense groups as well as criminal and trafficking gangs, he added in a report in French published earlier this year for the French Institute of International Relations.

“For coastal West African states, where for now the threat is contained in terms of intensity and limited geographically, there is still time to stop the security situation from deteriorating.”

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Benin’s military has been targeted several times in attacks in the north where troops are deployed to help contain threats from jihadists who operate across the border in Burkina Faso.

An army convoy traveling to a military post located in Pendjari National Park, on the border with Burkina Faso, was ambushed on Monday, a senior security source in Benin told AFP when contacted from neighboring Nigeria.

The attackers first fired on the convoy before one of their vehicles hit an improvised explosive device (IED) placed on the road, the source said.

Five soldiers died and at least eight more were injured, he said, describing the attack as “well-planned and well-executed.”

African Parks, a South Africa-based conservation group that helps manage Benin’s Pendjari park and W park, also confirmed the attack.

“We are aware of an incident that occurred on Monday, 11 April 2022 in Pendjari National Park on the border with Burkina Faso, in which five members of the Benin Armed Forces were tragically killed and another was injured,” it said in a statement.

Local media, including Fraternite FM, the most widely-followed radio station in northern Benin, had been reporting the death of five soldiers since Tuesday morning.

Neither the army nor the government have yet confirmed this attack and the toll. Contacted by AFP from Nigeria, they had not yet reacted by Wednesday afternoon.

The attack comes after several changes made within the military and security structure of the West African country.

Last Wednesday, President Patrice Talon appointed a new Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, General Fructueux Gbaguidi.

“I am aware that I am taking command of all the forces at this time when our nation is facing terrorists who are trying to destabilize the country,” he told reporters on Tuesday.

“The mission that I received from the President of the Republic is to continue to make Benin an oasis of peace whatever the turmoil that could be around.”

Until recently, Benin was seen as an island of stability in West Africa, where many jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) organization operate in neighboring Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso.

Nine people were killed in February in attacks in the W national park in Benin’s remote north bordering Niger and Burkina Faso, according to the government.

The toll was the deadliest in recent attacks Benin has suffered as coastal West African states face spill over from Sahel countries battling jihadist insurgencies.

The W national park, which extends over Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger, is attached to the Pendjari park where Monday’s attack happened and where two French tourists were kidnapped by gunmen in 2019.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Benin’s military has increased its presence in the area following attacks late last year that military sources blamed on jihadists from across the border.

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There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack on Tuesday, which staff said also wounded 10 other people.

But a jihadist insurgency originating in the Sahel region has spread to parts of coastal West Africa, including northern Benin.

“Yesterday… a team of rangers was ambushed in W National Park in Benin,” said African Parks, a non-profit group that has managed the park since 2020.

It is with deep regret that we share that on February 8th a team of rangers was ambushed in W National Park, Benin. Initial reports tragically indicate several deaths & injuries. We are working closely with the Government to intensify safety in the region https://t.co/sR5LynsE33 pic.twitter.com/FYxwWTcWr1

— African Parks (@AfricanParks) February 9, 2022

They were conducting a patrol at the northern limit of the park where it intersects with Burkina Faso and Niger, it added.

“Initial reports indicate that… five rangers and one member of the Benin Armed Forces have been killed, with 10 more injured,” it said.

African Parks said military reinforcements and additional rangers had been deployed to the area, but Beninese authorities did not immediately comment on the incident.

Benin’s army has reinforced its presence in the north since what military sources said were the first two jihadist attacks in the country late last year.

Last month, two Beninese soldiers were killed when their vehicle hit a makeshift bomb in the country’s northern Atakora area.

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Benin, which borders three countries battling a jihadist insurgency that has spread across the Sahel region, has reinforced its military in the north after the nation’s first two officially recognized jihadist attacks last month.

On Thursday, a military vehicle ran over an improvised explosive device in Atakora department.

“One soldier died on the spot, a second died in hospital and a third is in critical condition,” a senior military official told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that there were other injuries.

Another officer confirmed the death toll, saying “it was not an attack, but a military vehicle which ran over an improvised mine while going to carry out an operation.”

A resident of Tanguieta, near where the incident occurred, told AFP that “an army vehicle exploded on a mine not far from Pendjari Park.”

The deaths came eight days after President Patrice Talon told parliament that Benin would strengthen its military to stop incursions by jihadists from neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso.

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In an interview broadcast that day by French radio RFI, the president also urged a more combative role for United Nations peacekeepers in Mali and ruled out dialogue with jihadists.

Sall’s comments come amid growing fears that the violence of the central Sahel will spill over into African coastal states.

Jihadist insurgents first began to plague Mali’s north in 2012, but have since spread to the center of the country, as well as Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed in the conflict and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

Senegal, which shares a border with Mali, has so far been spared jihadist attacks.

However Senegalese gendarmes this month foiled a jihadist cell in the east of the country, heightening fears of the growing reach of Islamists.

The head of France’s external intelligence agency, Bernard Emie, also warned this month that al-Qaeda-aligned jihadists are seeking to expand into Ivory Coast and Benin.

Sall told French radio that he shared fears of a violent spillover, explaining that the jihadists’ “objective is to reach the Atlantic Ocean.”

“Whether it’s Senegal or other coastal countries that are the last defense, we have to prepare to do battle,” he said.

The president added that he was “against talking with terrorists” — a position that puts him at odds with Mali’s interim government, which has said it will pursue talks.

In common with several other African leaders, however, Sall said UN peacekeepers in Mali should be allowed to use military force.

“You keep the peace when there is a peace to keep,” he said. “When you face jihadists, terrorists, there is no peace to keep, you have to fight them.”

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