OUALLAM, Niger—The entrance traces within the warfare between the West and militant Islamists have shifted to Africa, from Somalia on the continent’s japanese tip to the West African Sahel, a semidesert strip south of the Sahara.
Within the Sahel, the U.S. and its allies are betting that Niger, the worst-off nation on the planet by a U.N. measure, provides one of the best hope of stopping the seemingly inexorable unfold of al Qaeda and Islamic State.
