obvious risks, attested to by the October 2017
ambush. (No incidents of U.S. troops drawing
fire have been reported in the past year.) But the
American military presence is an act of national
security self-interest, not foreign benevolence.
As the State Department starkly describes it,
“U.S. foreign assistance to Niger plays a critical
role in preserving stability in a country vulner-
able to political volatility, terrorism and the
spread of violent extremism, food insecurity,
and regional instability.”
Agadez itself has not been named in recent
intelligence threat assessments, according to a
U.S. defense official. But the presence of a mili-
tary base and the city’s distance from the border-
lands can protect Agadez for only so long. The
conversations behind mud-brick walls reflect
a gathering discontent. Young men enumerat-
ing their all but exhausted options. They had
attended school, looked for work, played by the
rules. With few jobs to be had, some found their
place in the Boss’s racket. After seeing friends
get arrested and their trucks impounded, they
withdrew. And now they are waiting for what-
ever might come next.
Meanwhile they were hearing about other
young men making appeals: Looking for a job?
We will pay. Need money for a wedding? We will
pay. The YouTube videos and WhatsApp texts
from the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram
were making the rounds.
One evening at a fada—an ad hoc social gath-
ering of young Nigerien men over hot tea and
card games—an enterprising individual who had
once made a decent living importing pickups but
now had few takers bowed out of the crazy eights
game and considered his lot morosely.
“Things cannot keep going at this rate,” he
said quietly. “It will become a jungle.”
AT THE SOUTHERN EDGE of the Sahara, a West
African gold rush is under way. Thousands of
men attack a rubble- strewn scrubland. Some
swing pickaxes and use shovels. A few operate
a power drill. Others have no tools at all—only
rocks to loosen the dirt by hand.
Occasionally the ground shakes, accompanied
by a muffled concussive boom: dynamite. It’s a
more efficient way of digging, if rather dangerous
and for that matter illegal—though many if not
most of these men already are going about their
work without an official government permit.
All around them stretches what one might call
here every year,” recalled the city’s mayor, Rhissa
Feltou. “Drivers, hotels, markets, banks, tele-
phone companies—the whole city benefited.”
The migrant flow became a gusher in 2011,
after the fall of Libya’s ruler, Muammar Qad-
dafi, ruptured Niger’s border with Libya. But
the southbound traffic now included guns
diverted from Libyan government stockpiles.
The barely checked acceleration of migrants
further strained social resources in European
countries while creating humanitarian trage-
dies in the desert and at sea. The porousness of
African borders raised concerns about the spread
of terrorism—all the more so since the U.S.-led
efforts in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and in
Iraq against ISIS had compelled those groups to
seek a more hospitable refuge.
After the European Union offered financial
inducements, Niger’s government in 2015 crim-
inalized transporting migrants. In Agadez the
police confiscated scores of pickup trucks. Cox-
eurs and drivers were arrested, along with the
Boss, who spent three weeks in jail. The city’s
number one source of revenue had been offi-
cially banned, in effect consigning Agadez’s
post-tourism economy to the black market.
Even with the crackdown on human smug-
gling, Agadez’s location ensures it will remain
a transit point for foreign travelers. Today it has
a new type of guest. Known as Air Base 201, it is
a military installation owned by the Nigerien
government but leased by the U.S. and inhabited
by some 550 of the latter’s Air Force personnel.
Its existence is hardly a secret, but its American
occupants are a discreet presence—showing up
in Agadez to rebuild a school, or in a nearby vil-
lage to construct a water well, but largely staying
on base. When I visited in December, American
military engineers were busily constructing a
mile-long runway that can withstand desert
conditions. C-17 and C-130 aircraft will use the
runway, along with weaponized MQ-9 drones,
which will not only monitor the activities of
extremist groups but also target them.
These operations will extend well beyond
the Agadez region and into the “rough neigh-
borhood” that has bred extremist groups. “The
enemy exploits these borders—which are very
porous—all the time,” said Samantha Reho,
spokeswoman for the U.S. Africa Command,
responsible for overseeing the U.S. military’s
role in Niger.
The counterterrorism mission comes with
128 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC