The W National Park is an 8,000-square-kilometer nature hold that straddles the borders of Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. It is home to plenty of wildlife, including aardvark, baboon, endangered cheetah, African bush elephant, hippopotamus, African leopard, West African lion and warthog. Its most destructive denizens, however, are the violent extremists who have installed bases in the park since 2020 after previously operating it for smuggling routes.
“The park has become a sort of headquarters for the jihadist groups,” Crisis Group analyst Ibrahim Yahaya Ibrahim said in an April 17 video.
“We can see that the park functions as a space from which they organize their expansion into other areas, in all directions to the north, south and west. It has also evolved a place from which they organize attacks in other areas.” The W and two adjacent national parks, Pendjari and Arly, comprise West Africa’s largest secure wilderness with 1.7 million total hectares. Its dense forests connect with the region’s porous borders to give militants easy access. The parks have been closed since 2019 when terrorists seized two French tourists in Pendjari and killed their local guide.
In 2023, the Beninese Army expressed the country experienced the sharpest rise in extremist militant attacks in Africa. In December, two Soldiers on surveillance duty were killed by an impromptu explosive device in the town of Karimama, near the border with Niger. The Beninese military is involved primarily with Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, an al-Qaida affiliate; and the Islamic State-Sahel group, both of which are responsible for killing thousands of people and driving millions more from their homes.
Fierce extremists have displaced more than 2 million individuals in Burkina Faso alone — about 10% of the population. “The Burkina Faso military have long since ditched the area just north of the border,” Beninese Col. Faizou Gomina described New Lines magazine. “As a result, jihadists and criminal gangs have formed large bases, which they use to stage attacks into our sovereign territory.”
Ibrahim says extremist parties have capitalized on local grievances and competition for natural resources, such as water and land, which has pushed more farmers and herders into the park.
“The jihadists are trying to inflict a new form of governance, a code of conduct for women and men and dress codes for women,” he stated. “They prevent women from going to the market, they use physical violence to impose this code of conduct.”
When the militants launched their bases, they welcomed herders to live inside the park.
“This facilitated cooperation between the jihadist groups and the nomadic herders,” Ibrahim stated, adding that the militants’ growing ties to local communities undermine the efforts of the Beninese military as well as park rangers.
Officials at the W let locals fish the Alibori River, feed their animals in buffer zones around the park, and gather plants and honey from the forest. In turn, rangers prompt locals to pass along helpful information to the military.
African Parks, a South Africa-based nongovernmental organization, has operated W National Park since 2020. The group reported several episodes in 2023 that resulted in the deaths of one ranger, several Beninese Soldiers and government officials. The increasing brutality prompted Africa Parks to reevaluate its whole operation. “Withdrawing would have in many ways been the easier option,” the organization noted in an April 17 blog post.
African Parks pulled out of the W’s most dangerous areas, migrated all nonessential staff, reduced road use and provided rangers additional training in identifying IEDs. The Beninese Army deployed troops along the boundaries of Burkina Faso and Niger to reduce further militant infiltration. “For these solutions to work, we must maintain good coordination and transparency on roles and responsibilities,” African Parks said. “Most importantly, close, positive engagement was prioritized and maintained with local communities who play a vital role in supporting security within their regions.”
Ibrahim stated that securing the park won’t crack all of the problems around it. He suggested Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger to engage in discussions with the extremist groups. “At present, nothing is possible inside the park because of the jihadist groups’ occupation,” he stated. “Military action may be necessary. Military action could also be accompanied by dialogue.”