Pentagon Hands Over Last Base in Niger as Extremism Spreads in the Sahel

The U.S. military turned over control of its last base in Niger to local forces on Monday, ending a yearslong counterterrorism mission in the West African country even as violent extremism remains on the rise in the region.

A group of U.S. troops boarded an Air Force cargo plane and flew out of a $110 million air base in central Niger that was built with Pentagon money, among the last of 1,000 personnel that Washington had agreed to pull out by Sept. 15. A small number of troops will remain at the United States Embassy for a short time to wrap up administrative details, officials said.

“The withdrawal of U.S. forces and assets from Air Base 201 in Agadez is complete,” the Pentagon’s Africa Command said in a statement, referring to the installation in central Niger.

“The effective cooperation and communication between the U.S. and Nigerien armed forces ensured that this turnover was finished ahead of schedule and without complications.”

Relations between the once-close partners soured after Niger’s military toppled the civilian-led government last year and ordered the U.S. troops to leave. Military juntas in Mali and Burkina Faso have also ordered U.S. and French troops out in recent months, and American officials are now scrambling to find new security partners in coastal West Africa.

Those negotiations could take months or longer, however, as groups that have declared allegiance to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State menace large swaths of the Sahel, the vast, semiarid region south of the Sahara where U.S. counterterrorism efforts have been focused.