SPECIAL REPORT
The Candy Maker, The Cop, and The Fireman Fighting America’s Shadow War
On the ground with American Special Forces taking on Islamic extremism in West Africa
BY KEVIN MAURER
Photography by Andrew Craft for Rolling Stone
AUG 28, 2022 10:25 AM
AT DAWN, THE first rays of the sun peek over the horizon, making the Sahel a Mars red. Skinny Nigérien soldiers in surplus American Marine desert uniforms buzz around in Land Cruisers with spray-painted camouflage. The trucks are packed with shovels, sleeping pads, and ammunition. The soldiers are part of the 1st Expeditionary Force of Niger (EFON), the country’s premier anti-terrorism unit. They clamber over piles of gear to mount Russian machine guns. Others tuck backpacks stuffed with snacks, blankets, and gear between ammunition and fuel cans. One truck has a dozen tires and a spare radiator strapped to the hood.
It’s mission-launch day, and the Nigérien soldiers are accompanying French paratroopers into dangerous areas controlled by the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), an offshoot of the terrorist group that has taken over parts of Iraq and Syria. ISGS gained international notoriety after it ambushed and killed four Americans in October 2017. For the past five years, its members have terrorized villages and shattered communities, stealing cattle and food, while burning homes and displacing almost 30,000 people, according to the United Nations. In June, ISGS-linked fighters killed 55 people in neighboring Burkina Faso. Two days later, eight Nigérien gendarmes were killed and 33 injured in an extremist assault on Niger’s side of the border. The goal of this late-spring mission was to stop these kinds of attacks and create stability so that displaced villagers could return to their homes.
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Mike, a lanky major who works for a Midwestern candy manufacturer when he isn’t halfway around the world training foreign armies, arrives with fellow members of the American Special Forces team at the EFON camp to make final checks. For the past four months, U.S. Special Forces soldiers have trained the EFON on everything from infantry tactics to exploiting intelligence gathered on targets. While they are listed as citizen soldiers on paper, most of the team from the National Guard’s 20th Special Forces Group have active-duty experience fighting in Afghanistan and recently ran an anti-ISIS mission on the Syrian border.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/niger-west-africa-american-special-forces-report-1396333/?sub_action=logged_in
