JNIM consolidated its presence in the central Sahel in 2022, but 2023 will test its credibility as an alternative governance provider.

In 2022, Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) consolidated its presence in most of the central Sahel, and has now firmly established itself as the dominant non-state armed actor in the central Sahel conflict. During its spread through Burkina Faso between 2016 and 2022, JNIM proved itself capable of engaging strategically with illicit economies, more as a vector for building relationships than as a source of revenue.

By facilitating local populations’ involvement in illicit or informal economies (such as smuggling or gold mining), JNIM has been able to win substantial local support. However, in order to fulfil its side of the bargain, the group has needed to push the state out of the areas in question. While JNIM’s expansion into northern edges of the West African coastal states has been marked in 2022, its efforts to build relations with civilians in these areas have been hampered by remnant challenges from government forces and national park rangers.

JNIM has also faced substantial challenges to its governance as a result of the resurgence of the so-called Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) under its new leader Abu al-Bara al-Sahrawi. ISGS registered a number of victories in north-eastern Mali against JNIM in 2022.¹ Since these challenges, JNIM has come under significant pressure and has been pushed back from a number of areas in the Liptako-Gourma region.

These setbacks notwithstanding, JNIM does not have to fear being outnumbered by the ISGS. Estimating the number of JNIM fighters is challenging, but some estimates put them at about 5 000, while ISGS members number fewer than half of that.² In areas where JNIM still has the upper hand, it appears determined to avoid any challenge to its authority in places where it wishes to consolidate its presence.

Figure 1 Conflict incidents and conflict-related deaths in Burkina Faso, 2016–2022.

Source: ACLED, adapted from Eleanor Beevor, JNIM in Burkina Faso: A strategic criminal actor, GI-TOC, August 2022, https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/jnim-burkina-faso.

A facilitator of illicit economies

JNIM has three key objectives. First, to expand territorially, particularly into the littoral states of West Africa, as well as eastwards into Niger.³ Secondly, to govern the residents of the places it occupies, ideally with a degree of local consent and support. Thirdly, to fund these objectives through a variety of activities. Illicit and criminal economies play a role in all of these objectives.⁴

Across the central Sahel, JNIM units have consistently shown a distinct restraint when participating in illicit activities. Rather than attempting to monopolize an illicit sector, they will often open up these resources to local people who had previously been unable to profit from them, a move that can rapidly gain them support. Analyzing how JNIM engages with illicit economies for governance purposes is consequently as important as understanding how these operate as mechanisms for raising revenue, which has traditionally received greater focus.

This approach is evident in JNIM’s liberalization of peoples’ access to natural resources. For instance, by chasing industrial concessionaires out of gold mines, or by ousting armed groups such as the Dozo who had been hired by mine owners to control sites, JNIM has repeatedly opened up new, largely unrestricted sites to artisanal miners. In exchange for occasional contributions, which are viewed by many of the miners as relatively fair, JNIM ensures that the previous controllers of the mine, or the state, do not return to the area. This happened in the Dida Forest on the border between Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire in mid-2021, and the arrangement appears to have endured.⁵

A gold-mining camp in Burkina Faso. Across West Africa, JNIM has been opening up new, largely unrestricted sites to artisanal gold miners.

Photo: Joerg Boethling/Alamy Stock Photo

Another core aspect of JNIM’s engagement with illicit economies is the relationships it builds with smugglers. These are often residents of border communities who are able to source important commodities such as fuel, and thus an important community to win over. Supportive border communities can help JNIM’s integration along the borders of countries they want to expand into, while smugglers can assist them in obtaining necessary supplies. In exchange for the smugglers’ help, JNIM facilitates their work by forcing state actors and customs agents out of their posts.

This is the case in the W-Arly-Pendjari (WAP) complex, a protected area in the triborder region of Burkina Faso, Niger and Benin. Widespread fuel smuggling in the WAP complex allows JNIM to obtain fuel from smugglers.⁶ The park is an attractive smuggling route for small-scale fuel traders, who buy subsidized Nigerian fuel from Benin (where it has been smuggled in) and then bring it back over the border into Burkina Faso in jerry cans. Smugglers supply JNIM with fuel in exchange for the group’s occasional help – for instance, protecting a convoy – as well as for keeping state forces out of the area, which significantly facilitates smugglers’ work.⁷

The W-Arly-Pendjari complex, in the triborder area between Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger, serves as a strategic sanctuary for armed groups operating predominantly in Burkina Faso.

Photo: Matthias Kunert/DPNP

Illicit taxation dynamics

JNIM ­– and particularly one of its component groups, the Saharan wing of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb – has garnered a reputation in security and media circles for profiting from crime, particularly through trafficking and taxing trafficked goods.⁸ In reality, JNIM’s revenue collection from illicit economies is patchy. In northern Mali, where JNIM’s territorial control is more absolute and the situation therefore less volatile, JNIM is known to tax smugglers at checkpoints placed along smuggling routes to and from Algeria. Taxation efforts on illicit economies further south, however, are more limited and less fixed. Thus far in Burkina Faso, JNIM has focused on levying religious taxes (zakat) on civilians as a key means of raising revenue. Herders are commonly subjected to zakat taxes in the form of cattle, and sometimes these taxes are perceived as excessive.

There have been more structured efforts in Burkina Faso by JNIM to tax smugglers. For example, in late 2021 JNIM established checkpoints along certain key roads in eastern Burkina Faso, specifically the Pama-Nadiagou-Koualou and Pama-Kompienga roads. These checkpoints aimed to collect revenue from fuel smugglers, as well as to keep watch of who was passing along the road through Koualou/Kourou. Most of the road users in these areas are carrying smuggled goods, and JNIM reportedly began demanding taxes from them. However, in December 2021, the Beninois army enforced their presence on the Koualou/Kourou road on the Benin side, and closed the border crossing. JNIM checkpoints on the Burkina Faso side have since been much sparser, or non-existent, since there is far less traffic on the road.⁹

The introduction of systematic road checkpoints represented an attempted formalization of JNIM’s relationship with smugglers in Burkina Faso, which, in the earlier phase of their presence, was more informal and based on an ad hoc exchange of goods and services. However, it appears that the presence of both JNIM on the Burkinabé side and Beninois forces on the Benin side has discouraged the use of this road. Much of the smuggling that used to pass through the disputed town of Koalou/Kourou on the Burkinabé-Beninois border has therefore been diverted towards Cinkansé in Burkina Faso,¹⁰ a town bordering northern Togo that acts as a principal transit point for a myriad of illicit commodities both entering and exiting the country.¹¹ JNIM has made use of checkpoints in other parts of Burkina Faso and Niger, although these are often focused on controlling road traffic, and do not always attempt to extract payments from road users.

JNIM’s southward spillover

JNIM’s build-up and escalation in Benin was especially concerning in 2022, with the group having taken almost complete control of the Beninois portion of W Park in the third quarter of 2022. JNIM has not yet been able to make as much headway into the Pendjari Park, however, nor displace rangers from the African Parks Network organization stationed there.

Figure 2 Borderlands national parks as an illicit hub.

Source: Lucia Bird and Lyes Tagziria, Organized crime and instability dynamics: Mapping illicit hubs in West Africa, GI-TOC, September 2022, https://wea.globalinitiative.net/illicit-hub-mapping/map.

In Benin, JNIM has at times been unusually violent towards the civilian communities it would normally attempt to win over. The group has made widespread use of threats towards local communities, and in the department of Atacora, in the second quarter of 2022, JNIM engaged in forced recruitment.¹² There are many factors behind this, but a key dynamic is that JNIM has not yet convinced communities in the area that it is a plausible alternative governor. Unlike in parts of Burkina Faso, JNIM has not been able to fully push state forces or park rangers out of Pendjari Park and therefore cannot offer civilians unrestricted access to the park to exploit its natural resources, nor can they offer complete protection to smugglers from government oversight. Civilians accordingly seem less keen to cooperate with JNIM, meaning that the latter has resorted to more coercive behaviour.

JNIM is increasingly concentrating its efforts in Alibori province in north-eastern Benin. One possible reason for this could be the attacks that ISGS has claimed in the area. ISGS is not thought to be heavily present in Benin, and observers described its presence as comprising small, mobile units with a limited number of temporary bases.¹³ Nevertheless, one interpretation of the recent rise in violence in Alibori is that JNIM is not willing to risk ISGS establishing a firmer hold in northern Benin, from which it could challenge JNIM expansion.¹⁴

Figure 3 Conflict-related events in northern Benin, November 2021 to September 2022.

Source: ACLED and supplemental data (supplemental data added from June 2022 onwards), from Kars de Bruijne, Conflict in the Penta-border area, Clingendael, December 2022, https://www.clingendael.org/publication/conflict-penta-border-area.

Considering the trajectory for 2023, JNIM will no doubt be leveraging the foothold it has gained in northern Benin to try and violently push all state actors out of the national park complex in the north. National parks serve as an ideal rear base for armed groups, given their remoteness and natural cover.¹⁵ If JNIM is able to clear the complex of state forces and rangers, it will be able to offer communities tangible benefits, which may help the group win the local support it would normally seek to cultivate.

However, JNIM will continue to face sustained pressure from ISGS, particularly in the triborder zone, although possibly with some competition in Alibori too. Similarly, it will continue to contend with a variety of armed opponents. Self-defence groups are being mobilized across Burkina Faso by the state, while in Benin, it is likely that Rwandan troops are helping to sustain their army’s resistance to JNIM. These factors could have important implications for JNIM’s relationships with civilians.

JNIM tends to limit violence against civilians to those it suspects of collaborating with the state or opposing armed groups. Larger presences of armed opponents will, however, increase its fear of collaborators, and could result in more widespread violence towards civilians. Furthermore, pressure from ISGS may inhibit JNIM’s ability to provide order, security and access to illicit economies that are the basis of its relationship with civilians. In north-eastern Mali, JNIM’s ability to organize and protect transhumance routes has been diminished by ISGS offensives against it, which is likely to have a negative impact on its relationships with the civilians who depend on these routes. The year 2023 will thus be a test of JNIM’s credibility as an alternative governance provider.

Notes