The bodies were still warm when the first casualty figures leaked out of Niamey. 35 dead. A massacre at the airport. Islamist gunmen turned a routine morning into a slaughterhouse. The political class in London will pretend this is a Nigerien problem, but the Sahel’s disease has a way of crossing borders.
The attack happened at Diori Hamani International Airport. Reports are still fragmentary, but the pattern is grimly familiar. Coordinated assault. Automatic weapons. Suicide vests. The usual suspects: affiliates of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara or JNIM. They hit the perimeter, then swept through. Civilian passengers, security forces, airport staff. No mercy.
For Number 10, this is a headache. The UK has troops in the Sahel. Training missions, counter-terrorism. Quiet, low-profile. Nobody wants another Afghanistan. But this massacre will force a debate. What are we doing there? Is it working? The answer, from inside the Ministry of Defence, is not pretty.
The French withdrawal from Mali left a vacuum. Niger became the West’s last best hope. Now that hope is bleeding on the tarmac. The junta that took power in Niamey last year is shaky. They expelled French forces, turned to Russia. But the Islamists didn’t care. They never do.
Whitehall is worried. The chatter among defence insiders is that this could be a turning point. If Niger falls, the dominoes tumble. Coastal states like Benin and Ghana become frontline. That means more boots on the ground. More money. More body bags.
The Foreign Office will issue a statement. “Condemn in the strongest terms.” “Our thoughts are with the victims.” But the real business is happening in private. Intelligence reviews. Risk assessments. The PM’s national security adviser will be burning the midnight oil.
I’ve been around long enough to recognise the smell of a policy in freefall. The Sahel strategy was already creaking. Now it’s broken. The question is whether Westminster has the stomach for a new one. Or whether we just walk away, like before.
The dead in Niamey don’t care about geopolitical calculus. They just wanted to catch a flight. But their blood is now a political fact. And the game goes on.
