Four Algerian aircraft landed in Niamey after mutinous soldiers seized a military base near the capital’s airport and moved toward the presidential palace, with the Nigerien military junta reportedly seeking assistance.
Yet the deployment did not come in isolation. Algeria had spent months deepening its involvement in Niger, a development that has received far less attention, writes Habib Badawi, Professor of International Relations at the Lebanese University in Beirut.
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In an article for African Arguments, Badawi says the episode points to a broader shift: instability across Algeria’s southern border is increasingly being treated as part of its own strategic sphere, rather than as a distant external crisis.
“The emerging trend may not be a return to African interventionism, but a shift toward regional powers taking responsibility for their own deterrence, rather than waiting for outside actors to clean up after the fact,” Badawi writes.
