This article was written by Thomas Franklin (pseudonym), who is currently serving as a US Navy officer. This article does not represent the views of the United States Navy or of the US Government.

In February the United States elaborated on its deployment of remotely piloted aircraft (RPA, often called drones) to Niamey, Niger. American RPAs are being employed for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions to support counterterrorism operations, principally French and Chadian, against Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Northern Mali. AQIM and its allies’ descent toward Bamako and the French military intervention in response were catalysts for the RPA deployment, but in reality many in the US Military have desired increased ISR collection in the region for years. What interest does the US have to deploy RPAs to Niger? This post focuses on the advantages of such a deployment, leaving the drawbacks to a later post.

It is in the interest of the United States to counter AQIM and other terrorist groups in the Sahel and to stabilize national governments in the face of the regional upheaval caused by the overthrow of Kaddafi in 2011 and the coup d’Etat in Mali in 2012. The ultimate goal is to set the conditions for regional reconciliation, stable democratic government and economic growth.

The Threat

2012 marked a rupture for AQIM and allies as they expanded their control over northern Mali and made a move on the capital at the end of the year. Over previous years, they intermittently succeeded and failed in a variety of terrorist attacks and kidnappings and collected ransom money to finance larger attacks, such as the bombing of the French Embassy in Mauritania in 2009. AQIM is now degraded, but hard work lies ahead: it has dispersed and its cells must be found, watched and prevented from regrouping.

Zooming out from Mali, AQIM represents part of a larger and growing problem. Other terrorist groups – such as Ansar al-Dine and Boko Haram – are increasingly active in tough to locate cells across the Sahel. Most of these terrorist groups have regional ambitions and a desire to attack western targets. Few have demonstrated both the intent and the capability to attack the American homeland or European continent, yet they are growing more ambitious. Supporting these terrorist groups in alliances of convenience, Touaregs control lands adjacent to international borders, facilitate arms transfers and logistical movements, and sometimes rebel against national governments.

In this context, RPAs based in Niger can conduct ISR and pass actionable intelligence to French, Chadian, Nigerien, and other local forces “on the ground” to track and pursue terrorists and their facilitators. Soldiers on the ground will be safer as RPAs’ “eyes in the sky” reduce the risk of their being ambushed. Manned aircraft also conduct ISR, but the geography and mission favors RPA.

Fit for the Geographical Environment

Niger is an excellent staging point to conduct airborne ISR against terrorism in the Sahel regardless of the aircraft deployed: it is near Northern Mali and right in the middle of the Sahel, a huge, land-locked, sparsely populated area with few good roads. Even under normal circumstances, the region’s international borders are too large to be patrolled. If the US has trouble patrolling the border with Mexico, imagine Niger’s problem: the country with the lowest human development index in the world (UN Development Program, 2012) must patrol borders with Chad, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Algeria, and Libya. Up until January, the US had little or no persistent ISR coverage over the region. The local countries’ governments did not either.

The US likely deployed MQ-9 Reapers to Niger (here is a decent but dated graphic comparing American RPA). The Reaper has a maximum range of 1,150 miles (1,850 kilometers) and the airborne endurance to conduct 24-hour ISR missions. Reapers provide persistent ISR coverage over all of Niger, and, assuming overflight rights are granted by neighboring countries, all of Nigeria, most of Mali and part of Chad, Libya, and Algeria.

The clear advantage of RPAs over other forms of ISR in the region, including manned aircraft, is their ability to loiter and provide a persistent “stare” to observe people, vehicles, caravans, camps, and buildings. Terrorist groups would have to observe strict, disciplined operational security to avoid being identified and tracked. At a minimum, this would disrupt their operations, possibly deterring some of their more brazen kidnapping stunts, saving Western lives and preventing ransom money from reaching AQIM.

An Opportunity for African, French and American Security Cooperation

International operations where US military RPA operators work closely with French and African soldiers on the ground leverage all parties’ strengths to locate and track terrorists and prevent them from carrying out future attacks. The US military technical expertise in operating RPAs to track terrorist groups, honed after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and combined with French and African language skills and cultural knowledge on the ground, make for an effective counter to terrorism in the Sahel. The French and Chadians, now deeply involved in counterterrorism operations in Northern Mali, need more RPA assets: Chad does not have RPAs and France does not possess the number and type of RPAs necessary to fully support their soldiers in harm’s way.

This presents a unique opportunity for Franco-American counterterrorism cooperation. The gains in support of Operation SERVAL could be significant, saving French soldier’s lives and preventing AQIM from slipping away. Patience and the establishment of the right international military-to-military relationships could also lead to effective and economical long-term cooperation to help stabilize the region. Even if such multinational coordination would be difficult, as sharing intelligence often is, the payoff would be worth the cost.

Such RPA cooperation would be only one aspect of a larger anti-terrorism effort emphasizing training, military-to-military engagement, and non-military cooperation such as economic and institutional development assistance, which over the long term are the most important. It would also be in synch with the kind of partnerships Washington is eager to develop to minimize its military footprint in distant theaters.

If the Situation in the Sahel Deteriorates

RPAs can provide actionable intelligence on the planning of future attacks, allowing the US to avoid, prevent or stop them. These assets could provide the US one more source of intelligence to climb the leadership hierarchies of terrorist groups in the Sahel, assess their activities, and find and arrest their most dangerous leaders. If they become a bigger problem in the future, for example launching attacks directly on the American homeland or the European continent, the US will be in a better position to strike them directly. Yet in the current context, working with African partners and the French to fight terrorism – with them in the lead – should be the main effort.

Yet another attack was perpetrated on Sunday against a church in the Nigerian city of Jos by the group Boko Haram. In November last year, the U.S. House of Representatives Committee had issued a report stating that this Muslim sect, which has been carrying out increasingly violent attacks in Nigeria in the past months, was “an emerging threat to the U.S. homeland.” The organisation, whose name translates as “Western education is a sin” in the Haoussa language, is a Salafist jihadist group based in northeast Nigeria. Seeking to establish Sharia law across a country divided between a mainly Muslim north and mostly Christian south, it has killed 935 people since 2009 through bombings and assassinations of Christians living in the north of the country. Last August, it moved up a notch when it managed to attract worldwide attention by attacking U.N. headquarters in Abuja, killing 25 people and injuring more than 80. But has Boko Haram really become the “next battalion” of global jihadists?

Whether this terrorist organisation is linked to al-Qaeda or not is a question which has been on many experts’ minds during the past months. A UN Security Council Report stated that Boko Haram members had been arrested last year as they were travelling to Mali, in possession of documents on the manufacturing of explosives and details of AQIM members. More generally, some officials claim that the similarity in the frequency and ingenuity of Boko Haram’s and al-Qaeda’s methods suggests there is some form of cooperation with international terrorist networks: Algeria’s branch of al-Qaeda or Somalia’s Shebabs, even though the latter hypothesis is highly questionable. In addition to these assumptions, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, determined to stand as a front-line ally in the West’s war on terror, has kept such suspicions going by referring to the group as a “terrorist organisation with global ambitions.”

But in spite of Boko Haram’s attempts to recall, notably in their YouTube videos, the style of al-Qaeda, at the end of the day it remains firmly focused on domestic Nigerian grievances. Joe Brock explains that “[the group’s] anger is directed not at America or Europe but at Nigeria’s elites: at their perceived arrogance, their failure to deliver services, and the brutality of their security forces.” Even though Boko Haram officially covets the general implementation of Sharia law in Nigeria, and even if, as the late Samuel P. Huntington would argue, religious and cultural differences are enough to trigger a conflict, a careful analysis of the group demonstrates that its resentment already existed decades ago and does not have everything to do with a broader Islamist programme.

There is, indeed, a cocktail of explanations for the ongoing violence in Nigeria. First of all, in spite of extensive natural resources, Nigeria ranks among the most unequal countries in the world. Although it cannot be denied that there is a radicalisation of Islam in the region, the perception that there exists a differential treatment between the poor northern states and the more developed south has been a crucial factor in the recent upsurge of violence. In the north, the feeling of injustice is rampant. Oil, produced in the Niger delta in the south, is the country’s primary financial resource and yields approximately 60 billion dollars each year (2010). However, the federal system which characterises Nigeria has led to a highly unequal distribution of these revenues: while 13% goes to the oil-producing states, the rest depends on the leanings of the government (who, in addition, takes a mighty piece out of the lion’s share). The south has always been favoured, notably in the hope of easing activists in the Niger delta and of preventing oil from getting out of the country. The north, on the other hand, has been deprived of its rightful share, leading to a feeling of alienation from the government. Today, three quarters of northerners live on less than 200 dollars a year. Furthermore, the Nigerian tradition of alternating between a southern Christian president and northern Muslim one, was ended when Goodluck Jonathan succeeded Olesegun Obasanjo, who died before the end of his mandate. Northerners have found the appointment of Jonathan, a Christian from the south, very hard to swallow.

It is difficult to assess how to best tackle the issue. Boko Haram is said to have become a “franchise that anyone can buy into” and needs to be looked at from several perspectives. Although there is an urgent need to put an end to the massacres that Nigeria is witnessing and to the threat of civil war, it would be a mistake to solely deal with the Muslim sect as a security issue. In 2009, the killing of Mohamed Yusuf showed that the death of a terrorist group’s leader was insufficient to annihilate it. More generally, the harshness of the response, which has been essentially military, is said to have fuelled the violence. The need for economic readjustment, on the other hand, is urgent. A bit of governance reform and human development wouldn’t be a bad idea either. But as economic development expert Jeffrey Sachs asserted in a New York Times article, “at 155 million people and rising, Nigeria is the world’s eighth most-populous country and one of the hardest to govern…Very few [countries] come close to Nigeria’s scale and complexity of challenges.”

While Americans may not have so much to worry about regarding their homeland security, Mr Jonathan, on the other hand, has serious reasons to be disquieted given the gargantuan task ahead of him.

“After a 30-year winter of sectarian violence, Northern Ireland today has the promise of a springtime of peace.” It is with these words of hope that the former US President Bill Clinton commented the signing of the Belfast Agreement on April 10^th 1998 which put an end to years of bloodshed and centuries of tensions. Yet, less than two weeks ago, on April 2^nd, Ronan Kerr, a Catholic Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) officer, was murdered by dissident republicans when a bomb exploded under his car. Thirteen years after the Belfast Agreement, terrorist attacks have suddenly increased and cast doubt on the durability of the peace process in Northern Ireland.

‘The Troubles’ evolved from 1969 to the end of the twentieth century and led to the deaths of over 3 500 people. The Good Friday Agreement finally addressed the deep rooted causes of the conflict. Based on compromise and inclusiveness, it led to the creation of a successful power-sharing government. The main Loyalist and Nationalist terrorist groups such as the UVF, UDA and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA), agreed to put an end to their campaigns and had their weapons decommissioned. In 1995, the European Union launched its Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation in Northern Ireland and the Border Counties of Ireland. Two other EU PEACE programmes followed over the years and in total almost two billion euros will have been invested in peace and reconciliation initiatives in Northern Ireland by 2013. On paper, all signs seem to point to the success of the peace process in Northern Ireland and the progress of stability and reconciliation.

Yet, according to various sources there has been a recent surge in paramilitary activities in the country. As stated by the MI5, these dissident republican groups are the Continuity IRA, the Real IRA as well as Óglaigh na hÉireann (the “soldiers of Ireland”) and were formed after successive splits within the PIRA. As far as the other side is concerned, there has been no evidence of recent activity from dissident loyalist groups.

On March 27th, a bomb containing 50 kg of explosives was left outside a courthouse in Derry and the attack was blamed on dissident republicans. Back in March 2009, the Real IRA killed two British soldiers and the Continuity IRA was responsible for the death of a policeman. More recently, August 2010 was a particularly violent month: the Real IRA intensified its campaign and planted booby traps and car bombs in various areas. On August 3^rd, a car containing 200lb of explosives exploded outside the Derry police station, damaging several businesses. The MI5’s Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre has classified the threat level as “severe” in Northern Ireland and “substantial” in Great Britain. Even more alarming, the threat from Northern Ireland-related terrorism was published for the first time on 24 September 2010. Before that, the MI5 would only assess the international terrorist threat.

In November 2010, King’s College’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) published a report entitled “Return of the Militants: Violent Dissident Republicanism”. This study stresses that republican dissident groups have increased their activity and still represent a possible threat for both Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom. It points out that the rise in activities by these hardline splinter groups was not expected by security forces.

For the author of this report, Martyn Frampton, Northern Ireland finds itself at a critical moment because two generations are coming together and joining the ranks of militant dissident groups. These generations are the disaffected youths and delinquents that did not witness the violence of the “Troubles” along with veterans from the Provisional IRA who rejected the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly and feel disillusioned by Sinn Fein and what they see as unkept promises. In the next four years, 245 million pounds of additional funding will be paid to help the PSNI, the successor to the controversial Royal Ulster Constabulary, struggle against attacks from dissident groups. This need for extra funds highlights the new intensity of the threats which have been at their highest since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Could the resurgence of terrorist attacks reflect the stagnation of post-conflict peace in Northern Ireland? The advancements that have been made since the 1998 Agreement need to be put into perspective. The number of “peace walls” that were built to divide rival Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods has increased. In his article for the Financial Times, “Downturn puts Northern Ireland peace under fire”, John Murray Brown states that since the ceasefire, these walls have grown from 18 to 88. Sectorisation is still pervasive and today, integrated education covers only 9 per cent of schoolchildren. The massive injection of funds by the EU into Northern Ireland has now proved to have its limits as far as changing mentalities is concerned; economic aid is not sufficient without a solid strategy for peace.

Mari Fitzduff explains that a conflict never ends, it only evolves. This could perfectly reflect the case of Northern Ireland. The 1998 peace resolution led to idealistic hopes that were rapidly transformed into a certain disenchantment. This is epitomized by the recent resurgence of paramilitary activity which represents an unsettling and unexpected threat to peace in Northern Ireland. Yet are the growing number of attacks only part of the post-conflict path to peace or could they mean that the Troubles are back?