At Center of Niger’s Coup Is One of America’s Favorite Generals

NAIROBI—American military commanders were dismayed last month when a clique of top army officers seized power in Niger, the U.S.’s main ally in the fight against Islamist militants in West Africa.

What stung perhaps most sharply were televised images of one particular man, Brig. Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, among the coup plotters.

Barmou is a guy the U.S. military has courted for almost 30 years. He is a guy the U.S. sent to Washington, D.C.,’s prestigious National Defense University. He is a guy who has invited American officers to his home for dinner. He is a guy in charge of elite forces crucial to stemming the flood of al Qaeda and Islamic State fighters across western Africa. 

“Brig. Gen. Barmou,” a U.S. defense official said just a few months ago, “is the guy.”

He may still be.

In the two weeks since Niger’s coup, Barmou has emerged as the main diplomatic channel between the U.S. and the junta. American officers and diplomats have his number in their cellphones and think he’s their best chance of restoring democracy and preventing a messy regional war that would plunge one of the poorest parts of the world deeper into crisis.

Barmou sat down in Niamey, Niger’s capital, for two hours on Monday with Victoria Nuland, the acting U.S. deputy secretary of state. The talks have so far proved frustrating. But Nuland, knowing Barmou’s long affinity for the U.S., urged him to broker a deal that would allow Niger and its longtime Western allies to get back to fighting al Qaeda, Islamic State and Boko Haram militants and stop the country from becoming another African outpost for Russia and its paramilitary Wagner Group.

“A lot of us who like him are sort of hoping he can help guide this thing to a soft landing,” said retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Mark Hicks, who headed American special-operations forces in Africa from 2017 to 2019 and considers Barmou a close personal friend.

And yet the fact remains that there is no more vivid symbol of the dashed hopes of the U.S. counterterrorism campaign in western Africa than Barmou, a man vital to U.S. strategy until their interests diverged.

Sahel strategy

The Sahel is a semiarid band just south of the Sahara where jihadists have killed thousands in recent years, turning it into one of the world’s biggest battlefields in the 20-plus-year battle against Islamist extremists. The heart of U.S. military approach is to dispatch American commandos to train local special forces to lead the campaign. Barmou, whose troops comprise Niger’s finest fighting force, was a linchpin of that approach. 

“The loss of a stronghold in Niger, if that’s the consequence of the coup, would be a setback for U.S. strategic interests in the region,” said Hicks. Niger “was the island of stability in the sea of jihadist unrest.”

Over the past two years, military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and now Niger have cast doubt on whether the U.S. can help Sahelian countries defend themselves against Islamist insurgencies, while keeping Moscow from taking advantage of the instability.

Neighboring countries, led by regional powerhouse Nigeria, have threatened to send troops to Niger to rescue ousted President Mohamed Bazoum, who is still held prisoner in Niamey, and return him to power. Military juntas in Burkina Faso and Mali, which has hired Kremlin-linked Wagner mercenaries in a failed attempt to suppress its own militant threat, have pledged support for Niger’s new military regime.

The standoff raises the possibility that the Sahel could be consumed by a new regional war and the existing Islamist insurgency.

Until the junta promoted him to chief of defense staff, Barmou commanded Niger’s special forces. His men worked shoulder-to-shoulder with American Green Berets up until the moment of the July 26 uprising against Bazoum, just over two years after he took office. Like Barmou, Bazoum was a U.S. favorite and the Biden administration immediately demanded he be returned to power.

The U.S. has spent some $500 million building up Niger’s defense forces, including at a $110 million, American-built drone base in the town of Agadez, and stations some 1,100 American troops in the country. U.S. commandos share outposts with Barmou’s troops in the towns of Ouallam, where they fight local al Qaeda and Islamic State franchises, and Diffa, where combat operations focus on Boko Haram militants who conduct attacks around Lake Chad.

In the wake of the military revolt, the U.S. has suspended its training of Nigerien forces and cut some other military assistance to Niger. Should the State Department formally declare the uprising a coup, American law would require further reductions in military aid. The U.S. has vowed to continue food and other humanitarian assistance to Niger.

Barmou is well aware the coup could cost him critical combat support—no more joint training, tactical advice from U.S. Green Berets or American drones sending real-time surveillance.

“If that is the price to pay for our sovereignty, then let it be,” Barmou wrote to The Wall Street Journal a few days after the coup. He didn’t respond to further questions for this article.

‘Extremely frank’

American officials are trying to figure out whether Barmou has decided he and his fellow generals are the best hope for stabilizing Niger, or if he’s willing to help negotiate a path back to civilian rule.

Nuland, the deputy secretary of state, described this week’s talks with Barmou in Niamey as “extremely frank and at times quite difficult”—diplomat-speak for heated and unsuccessful. 

“They are quite firm in their view on how they want to proceed, and it does not comport with the constitution of Niger,” Nuland told reporters after the meeting. During her talks with Barmou, Nuland played on his long ties to U.S. Special Forces, reminding him that Niger risks losing American military assistance unless democratic order is restored.

Other West African security officials say Washington’s success in getting Barmou on their side will be pivotal. One senior army officer from the region said American diplomatic efforts remain the best hope for an outcome “without any bloodshed.”

“The U.S.A. will have to choose—stay in Niger or leave the place to Wagner,” the officer said.

The military has been the center of Barmou’s life since he was 12 years old, when, inspired by a neighbor, he left Niger for military school in Ivory Coast. He then moved on to a military academy in Cameroon.

Barmou’s father, a civil servant after Niger’s independence from France in 1960, discouraged his son from joining the army, hoping instead that he’d carry on with his studies.

But the younger Barmou was determined and joined up in 1989. The U.S. military pegged him early as a rising star and took steps to draw him into the American orbit.

In 1994, he attended an English-language course at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. Now he’s so fluent in English, French and Hausa—a language spoken from Nigeria to Sudan—that one U.S. officer said at international conferences the general sometimes seemed to lose track of which one he was speaking.

The U.S. government sent Barmou to a series of courses at what was then called Fort Benning, Ga., training him to lead infantry attacks and parachute from airplanes. Among other interactions, he attended courses at the Joint Special Operations University, adjacent to U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa.

As early as the 1990s, Niger recognized the threat from Islamist extremists, who at the time were pouring out of Algeria in search of sanctuary in Niger, Barmou recalled.

“While some other countries denied the fact that they had a terrorism issue, and some were still trying to negotiate with the terrorists, in Niger we decided we aren’t going to let this happen,” Barmou said in an interview in November.

In 2004, Barmou assumed command of Niger’s first special-forces company, trained by American commandos. He left the position three years later, moved to Washington, D.C., and earned a master’s in strategic security studies from National Defense University, on a campus where the Potomac and Anacostia rivers meet.

Back in West Africa, militant groups affiliated with al Qaeda and, later, Islamic State began to gain ground both through brutality and nimble exploitation of existing village grievances, such as disputes over land rights between herders and farmers. In some cases, al Qaeda fighters solidified their positions by marrying local women.

First, the militants swarmed Mali, and by 2017 they were conducting attacks in Burkina Faso and Niger. That year, four U.S. and five Nigerien soldiers were killed in an Islamic State ambush in the village of Tongo Tongo. American Green Beret teams have largely advised Barmou’s troops from positions out of harm’s way.

The U.S. considers Niger’s special forces to be among West Africa’s best, and, after military leaders in Mali and Burkina Faso kicked out Western troops, Washington looked to Niger as a firebreak against violent extremists. The U.S. was especially relieved that Niger showed no inclination to hire Wagner mercenaries.

“Since the very beginning, we’ve had this solid partnership with the U.S.,” Barmou said in November. “They’re very important for us.” Less than six weeks before Nigerien troops blockaded President Bazoum in his residence, the U.S. military posted a photo of Barmou smiling and embracing the commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, Lt. Gen. Jonathan Braga, at a Niamey air base shared by Nigerien and American troops. The visit’s aim was to discuss antiterrorism policy and tactics, according to an accompanying tweet.

At times, those professional alliances merged into personal friendships. Barmou once brought a cooked goat to a safe house in Niamey for a dinner with Hicks, then the American special-operations commander, and U.S. Embassy personnel.

That wasn’t the case with France, Niger’s former colonial power, and in meetings with U.S. counterparts, Barmou freely aired anti-French sentiments. In 2021, he hosted a New Year’s Eve party at his Niamey home, inviting U.S. and British but not French officers, according to a U.S. officer. The officer said Barmou resented France’s practice of conducting its own operations against militant groups without consulting Nigerien commanders. 

Despite the slow start to talks between the U.S. and the junta, Barmou’s American friends hope he has the political wiggle room and personal inclination to lobby for a solution that keeps Niger on Washington’s side.

Nuland, however, left this week’s meeting with Barmou without so much as a promise of further talks. The junta declined to allow her to visit Bazoum, the imprisoned elected president, or Gen. Omar Tchiani, who in a matter of hours had gone from commander of Bazoum’s presidential guard to Bazoum’s self-appointed replacement.

“So we were left to have to depend on Mr. Barmou to make clear, again, what is at stake,” Nuland said.

Write to Michael M. Phillips at [email protected]