Description
Foreign military assistance is intended to support security forces in recipient nations to fight insurgencies, maintain stability and political order. However, the literature indicates that foreign, and in particular US military assistance is associated with an increase in anti-regime violence. The negative effects are contingent on certain regime characteristics with new or personalist regimes being more prone to an increase in anti-regime violence. Niger, a country with a personalist regime, experienced a steep rise in foreign military assistance between 2013 and 2023 and a corresponding increase in anti-regime violence. In this paper, I use Niger as a most likely case to investigate whether the causal mechanisms proposed by the literature explain the increase in anti-regime violence. I find that the rationalist causal mechanisms, focused on leaders’ coup proofing strategies in response to foreign military assistance, do not adequately explain the rise in anti-regime violence in Niger. I analyse the micro-dynamics of the increase in anti-regime violence in two regions in Niger and find that the increase follows the typical patterns of violence in civil war whereby insurgent groups increasingly use selective violence until they achieve full control over an area. Foreign military intervention was associated with increased anti-regime violence because interventions happened when violence had started to escalate. However, foreign military intervention didn’t curb the escalation of violence, and it’s probable that the strategies it used (alignment with ethnically based militia groups, targeting of jihadist leaders, lack of operational support to internal security forces in the event of an attack) contributed to increases in violence.
