How Internal Tensions and a UAE-Algeria Confrontation Threaten Nigeria’s Northern Border
By Fulan Nasrullah
The failure of the August 28–29 mutiny by the Armed Forces for the Restoration of the Fatherland (FARP) at Air Base 101 in Niamey—and President Abdourahamane Tchiani’s subsequent September 11 firing of Chief of Defense Staff General Moussa Salaou Barmou—may mark a point of irreparable structural fracture inside Niger's military regime.
What began as an internal rivalry between General Tchiani’s Presidential Guard and Barmou’s traditional bastion, the Special Operations Command (BSR/COS) is now intersecting with a multi-layered international proxy confrontation spanning southern Libya's Fezzan region to Nigeria’s 1,500-kilometer northern frontier.
When a military junta relies on foreign mercenaries to purge its own battle-tested special forces commanders, the state ceases to operate as a sovereign military administration— A retired Nigerian diplomat during conversation about our neighbour Niger.
The Praetorian Split: Tchiani vs. General Moussa Barmou
The late August mutiny that ultimately enveloped Air Base 101 was not an isolated barracks revolt. The assault elements comprised elite troops from the Special Reconnaissance Battalion (BSR/COS)—the operational core built and commanded by General Moussa Salaou Barmou before his elevation to Chief of Staff of the entire armed forces following the coup that unseated President Bazoum.
A key driver for the 2023 coup against Bazoum - in addition to Tchiani wanting to protect his position in the government - was the amount of casualties the military was sustaining from a failing counterinsurgency in the Tillaberi and Diffa regions.
According to Nigerien sources at the time, there was an explicit commitment from Tchiani that his rule would see a significant expansion of the military’s capabilities and numbers, in order to spread the burden across more evenly. This was supposedly what won over the wider armed forces including the gendermerie and the national guard to the side of the putchists.
However, the instability has over the last two years grown beyond just Tillaberi and Diffa, and has engulfed Dosso and is gradually swallowing Tahoua region too. At the same time, the armed forces have not seen the promised expansion, rather the elite special forces units have been forced to shoulder more and more of the combat burden.
Tchiani’s base in the Presidential Guard have been the beneficiaries of Russian training and new equipment purchases, while remaining ensconced inside Niamey. This has created the conditions for a worsening of interservice rivalry between the Army and the Presidential Guard, a rivalry that many local observers have said is borderline hatred by the special forces units in the regular army who are doing the fighting and dying, for the Presidential Guard.
General AbduRahamane Tchiani.. Source: Mohammadou Hamidou
The immediate trigger for the mutiny that later devolved into an attempted coup, was a month of bloody ambushes and lost battles to Islamic State Sahel Province, from late July into early August 2026, which mostly special forces units were forced to fight alone, with local territorial garrison army units.
I have heard claims that scores of Nigerien soldiers were killed during this period, but while I cannot personally vouch for those numbers the numbers of dead and wounded were certainly enough to sparked a fiery blaze out of latent resentment the Army - especially the special forces- have for the Presidential Guard and Tchiani himself.
Tchiani’s survival was achieved solely through the direct intervention of Russian Africa Corps personnel, who used heavy armor and artillery to suppress Nigerien regulars near Diori Hamani International Airport.
On September 11, 2026, General Tchiani formally dismissed General Barmou, replacing him with Brig. Gen. Mamane Sani Kiaou. This purge - which so far the regime has tried to present as not a purge - is said to have only fueled further severe resentment across the rank and file of still standing army units in Ouallam, Téra, Dogondoutchi and Gaya departments of Tillaberi and Dosso regions.
While so far he has only dismissed Barmou from his position as the head of the armed forces, and as of September 14th, 2026, placed him under house arrest, Tchiani runs a risk of alienating large swathes of the armed forces and causing a fracture should paranoia drive him to go after the ex-chief of the armed forces.
Barmou retains deep loyalty among the most capable field units responsible for counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency. Further attempts by a wary/paranoid Tchiani to contain or even incarcerate Barmou might force the former special forces commander and military chief, to view the situation as a fight for his very survival.
A retired Nigerien security figure I have had several years of personal relations with told me that the only reason Tchiani was able to consolidate the coup against Bazoum, was because he had Gen Barmou and Gen Salifou Modi on board, otherwise by himself he would have failed. In fact, many of the midranking soldiers who took part in the coup against Bazoum, clamoured for Gen Moussa Salaou Barmou to challenge Gen Tchiani for the position of the head of state, but he had declined their requests in the interest of national unity and stability.
According to the same retired Nigerien security source, while Gen Barmou did not partake in or support the attempted coup against Tchiani, the fact that many of the mutineers/attempted coupists in the FARP were from his special forces base and allied units, has left Gen Tchiani unsettled. This wariness from Tchiani is definitely not helped by reports that some units involved in the mutiny and the subsequent attempted coup, had chanted for him to be replaced by Gen Barmou.
Should the situation devolve into an open confrontation between a popular special forces legend and the increasingly resented head of state and his equally disliked Presidential Guard base, it is very likely that Niger’s armed forces (FAN) would implode, and the country with it.
If Barmou or senior commanders loyal to him were to establish a counter-junta resistance hub in the north - which would require joining forces with current rebel groups - or in the west where they possess active support, or even to the far east in Diffa where there’s observable discontent amongst many of the units stationed there- nearly a thousand miles from the capital, the Nigerien Armed Forces (FAN) will undergo substantial territorial and organizational fragmentation.
The Transnational Proxy Grid in Niger
The current instability of Niger’s politico-security apparatus, is happening right as battlelines are being drawn through the Sahara, and a geopolitical confrontation with the potential for spillover in proxy warfare, emerges.
I observe that two primary geopolitical axes have emerged across the Sahara:
A Western / Northern Axis primarily focused around Algeria & Libya’s Tripoli Government (the Government of National Unity), which is further drawing in the . Tchiani Regime in Niger, plus anti-Haftar Fezzan militias such as: the Southern Liberation Operations Room led by Muhammad Wardougou; Southern Military Zone led by Gen. Ali Kanna; the Fezzan Revolutionary Forces, and various Chadian rebel groups operating in Southern Libya.
For Algeria and the Libyan Government of National Unity (GNU) the focus seems to be to roll back Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) in the Fezzan, block UAE/UAE-aligned Russian expansion along Algeria's southern frontier and in Libya’s southern region, and secure trans-Saharan trade and energy routes.
For the Tchiani regime, the focus seems to be on survival both from Haftar’s Eastern Libyan/Benghazi Government support for Nigerien rebel groups, but also from threats of potential coups and mutinies by its own military. A third consideration is the Islamic State Group’s West African and Sahel Provinces.
The Eastern Axis is the United Arab Emirates & the Haftar Benghazi (LNA)/Eastern Libyan Government which in Niger has been building relations with the Nigerien rebel group, the Patriotic Liberation Front (FPL / led by Mahamoud Sallah) and the Council of the Resistance for the Republic/Free Armed Forces (CRR/FAL led by Rhissa Ag Boula). From conversations with regional security and military officers, Chad’s ruling junta is increasingly seen by both Niamey and Algiers as functionally a part of this Abu Dhabi-Benghazi axis including when it comes to Niger, as in addition to its serving as a major enabler of the UAE’s war on Sudan using the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of the Dagolo clan, which is beyond the scope of this piece, it is said to be also enabling the UAE/Benghazi meddling in Niger’s Sahara through gold and people smuggling networks it has coopted.
A major focus of the UAE/Benghazi axis efforts in Niger seems to be coopt and leverage anti-junta rebels to secure smuggling corridors in the Sahara and at the same time serve a counterterrorism purpose for the United States, against Islamic State networks running through the Sahara between Libya and the Lake Chad on one side, and Libya and the River Niger on the other side. These are networks in a region, that the US intelligence community no longer have as much visibility into since the current regime in Niamey curtailed US collection programmes run out of Niamey, Agadez, Dirkou and Diffa.
A side effect of the UAE/Benghazi’s Eastern Axis push into the Nigerien Sahara, is that the Haftar clan is gradually supplanting the traditional backchannel networks for hostage negotiation (for Western hostages) in the region, which usually run through Niamey and then smugglers and associated groups in the desert and which are heavily Al-Qaeda/Jamaa’atu Nusratil-Islam Wal-Muslimeen (JNIM), linked.
The new hostage takers tend to be Islamic State Al-Furqan Office affiliated and run from Agadez north into the Fezzan, which an expanding Benghazi/UAE Eastern Axis in the south of Libya and the Nigerien Sahara is best positioned to run across and interface with.
Side note: If this piece generates enough interest, I might dive further - in another piece - into this Islamic State Al-Furqan Office interfacing/running-across with the UAE/Benghazi Eastern Axis, which recently got a number of American and European hostages released in exchange for quite heavy ransoms, and why Niger in particular is heavily worried by this.
Crucially, Benghazi’s release of Patriotic Liberation Front (FPL) leader Mahamoud Sallah in June 2026—followed by Sallah’s public praise for Saddam Haftar—demonstrated Benghazi’s decision to weaponize Nigerien rebels against General Tchiani.
Direct Strategic Fallout for Nigeria
For Nigeria’s national security leadership, the disintegration of Niger’s security apparatus and foreign meddling pushing towards such an outcome, is not an abstract foreign policy concern; it represents an immediate existential threat across seven northern states (Kebbi, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Jigawa, Yobe, and Borno) and 1,500km of borders.
Should FAN units split into Tchiani-loyalist and Barmou-aligned factions, frontline border posts will be abandoned, as we saw happened when the mutiny/attempted coup of late August 2026, took place. Whichever faction loses the fight will mostly likely seek to maintain a presence in the Dosso/Tillaberi axis in order to put pressure on Niamey. So rogue military units/armed rebels and accompanying criminal syndicates will join Islamic State Sahel Province and JNIM elements in an already crowded space, and like the insurgent groups, it will only be a bit of time before they also cross into Nigerian territory, seeking to raise funds through banditry or illicit mining activities.
An implosion of Niger’s armed forces and security services would provide the leeway for Islamic State especially to expand its control over rural areas adjacent to Nigeria’s borders with Niger. Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) will most likely swiftly seize control of rural expanses left uncontrolled by Nigerien forces, on their side of the Lake Chad basin. At the other end of the front, Islamic State Sahel Province would also gain the freedom of action to complete its take over of the Doss-Sokoto border zones, and dominate rural Sokoto, Kebbi and the north of Niger State.
Then there’s heavy weapons proliferation and diffusion of tactics. The convergence of Ukrainian training for certain Nigerien rebel groups to fight Russia’s presence in Niger (pre Niamey’s realignment towards Algiers and Tripoli), coupled with Benghazi’s training for allied Nigerien rebel groups utilising skills transfered by Russian mercenaries, UAE-supplied LNA munitions being routed to Nigerien rebellions, and Libya’s arms black-market; may create unprecedented inflow of modern infantry centric weaponry, e.g FPV drones anti-tank guided missiles, alongside good old automatic rifles into northern Nigeria. These weapons would come together with the improved skills to use them, which would spell serious trouble for the already overburdened Nigerian Armed Forces.
Nigeria must recognize that allowing foreign powers (UAE, Russia, Algeria, Haftar’s Libya) to turn Niger into a proxy battleground, or standing by and doing nothing while the Nigerien military implodes, is akin to the trees voting for the axe to cut them down. Whether Abuja wants it or not, our buffer with North Africa - which is Niger - is dangerously close to imploding under its own weakness, and Nigeria’s northern border is going to become the frontline of a wider Middle Eastern and North African confrontation if we don’t figure out a way to prevent this from happening.
TLF Editor’s Note: This article was first published by Fulan Nasrullah on Substack on 15 September 2026. The original article can be found here.
It is republished by The Levant Files in full and without alteration with the permission of the writer. The views, assessments and conclusions expressed in the article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of The Levant Files (TLF).
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