Jihadist Insurgency in NigerNiger · 2016–ongoing“Draw near — the atlas keeps this thread, and tonight the fire lends it a voice.”Niger did not start this fire; it lives downwind of two others. From Mali in the west came the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara and the al-Qaeda-linked JNIM into the Tillabéri borderlands; from Lake Chad in the east came the Islamic State's West Africa Province.