• On 01/02 December, suspected Islamist extremists executed two separate attacks on military outposts in the Alibori and Atakora departments of northern Benin.
• The attacks, the first of their kind to be registered within Beninese borders, occurred against the backdrop of communal violence in both departments, which insurgent groups may be attempting to exploit to their advantage.
• Communal tensions, a discriminatory state response to this conflict, and the counter-terrorism policy positioning of President Patrice Talon are likely to see further acts of militancy in northern Benin.

On the morning of 01 December, a patrol of Beninese forces was ambushed by unidentified gunmen in Banikoara, a commune located in the north-eastern Alibori department of the country. The ambush, which occurred near the Mekrou bridge, was unsuccessful, with security forces neutralising one of the two assailants who carried out the ambush. Hours later however, reports of a second attack emerged at a military outpost in the settlement of Porga, located in the Materin commune of the neighbouring Atakora department. Two soldiers were killed and several others wounded in the incursion, which was carried out by an unidentified number of assailants. These incidents marked the first attacks on Beninese forces within the country’s borders.

To date, the identity of the perpetrators and the motivation for the attacks are unclear. However, local authorities have speculated that the ambushes were likely undertaken by Islamist extremists who have demonstrated the intent and operational capacity to carry out attacks in Benin. This was highlighted on 02 May 2019, when a local tour guide was killed and two French tourists kidnapped in the popular Pendjari National Park. Along with Burkina Faso’s Arli and W national parks, Pendjari, located in the Atakora department, comprises Benin’s borders with the terrorism-embattled Est and Tillaberi regions of Burkina Faso and Niger, respectively.

The foreign hostages were released just over a week later in a security operation launched by French special forces in Burkina Faso. French authorities suspected that the foreign tourists were kidnapped with the intention of being transferred to the al-Qaeda-aligned Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) , which continues to hold several foreign nationals hostage.

If confirmed as an act of terrorism, the ambush in Banikoara indicates that Islamist extremists may be vested in more than targeted kidnapping operations within Beninese territory. On 03 February 2021, French intelligence services warned that Islamist extremists affiliated with JNIM were actively seeking to expand their operations to include areas of northern Benin, where national parks and porous borders are exceptionally difficult to police. French intelligence specifically referenced a video they obtained through a local source that filmed a meeting between the constituent heads of the JNIM movement, in which leaders such as Amadou Kouffa and Iyad Ag Ghaly were heard to be actively plotting attacks against military bases in the Gulf of Guinea region. In the same statement, French intelligence warned that al-Qaeda had already begun funding militants to garner a foothold in Benin.

In this regard, Benin’s Alibori and Atakora departments may provide extremists with the perfect operating environment. Akin to the most insurgent-embattled areas of the Sahelian states of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, both administrative divisions have experienced long-standing communal tensions, primarily pitting nomadic Fulani herdsmen against sedentary farmers. In 2020, at least 15 people were killed in communal violence in Alibori, with all of the fatalities registered near the W National Park. In Atakora, sporadic violence between herdsmen and park rangers has been reported in the Pendjari national park in recent months; although casualty numbers arising from these incidents were not immediately disclosed.

As highlighted in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, JNIM has been able to expand its operational presence within these countries by favouring certain ethno-political groupings – most notably the Fulani – in their disputes with rival communities. A lack of state presence within northern Benin has led to communities arming themselves and thereby intensifying levels of communal conflict. When state security forces have responded to the violence, there have been allegations of ethnic discrimination by security personnel – often perceiving nomadic Fulani pastoralists as the catalysts for the violence and thereby responding to them as such. Discriminatory state responses are reportedly providing jihadist groups with the opportunity to offer protection to marginalised communities which, in return, may be integrating insurgents within their existing communal networks.

The Signal

The attacks in Banikoara and Porga are indicative of the nature of the terrorism threat in Benin. In this regard, Benin is not assessed as possessing any homegrown extremist groups, but instead faces a discriminate threat of spillover from militant entities – notably the al-Qaeda-aligned JNIM movement – which maintain an acute operational presence in the Est and Centre-Est regions of Burkina Faso and are actively infiltrating Beninese territory for a variety of reasons.

For one, both attacks may be a strategic attempt by insurgent forces to entrench their operational capacity in the Alibori and Atakora regions. In this regard, the ambushes may be aimed at testing the competence and astuteness of Beninese security forces and could mark a precursor to a larger and more coordinated act of violence targeting a major security facility in these regions. Secondly, the acts of violence may be aimed at inducing a counter-insurgency response from Beninese forces which is discriminatory in nature and involves ethno-religious marginalisation. In such a scenario, jihadist groups could exploit grievances among targeted communities by providing them protection in exchange for access and assimilation within their local networks. This strategy has been used with great efficacy by JNIM in Mali and Burkina Faso.

The attacks in Banikoara and Porga could also be a direct response to Benin’s participation in regionally coordinated counter-terrorism initiatives. In recent years, Benin has increasingly provided either direct or tacit support to counter-terrorism operations aimed at curtailing Islamist extremists in the West Africa region. In 2015, Benin offered to support the Lake Chad Basin force – a composite counter-terrorism unit comprising the militaries of Nigeria, Chad, Niger and Cameroon. The mandate of the force was to curtail the threat of the rival Boko Haram and Islamic State-aligned Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) extremist groups in the Lake Chad basin. However, due to a lack of financing and alleged disagreement on its concept of operations, the Lake Chad Basin force was never formally initiated. In addition to offering its support to combat Boko Haram and ISWAP, Benin also added its membership to the Islamic Military Alliance to Fight Terrorism (IMAFT) – an intergovernmental counter-terrorism coalition specifically created to counter the ideological and operational threat posed by the Islamic State globally. To date however, Benin has yet to formally provide any operational assistance to IMAFT outside of pledging its membership to the body.

Benin’s continued support of regional counter-terrorism initiatives could be a motivation for further acts of extremist violence in the country. Areas assessed as being at a heightened threat of such violence include the W and Pendjari National Parks and the wider Atakora and Alibori departments. A latent terrorist threat is also emerging around the town of Kalale in Borgou department, where suspected extremists from the Kanji Lake Forest in Nigeria are believed to be active. Likely targets for militant violence are state and security interests; foreign nationals transiting the aforementioned national parks may also face an elevated threat of being targeted in kidnapping for the purposes of ransom and extortion. At this stage, major terrorist attacks in urban centres such as Cotonou and Port Novo are not expected.