By deploying four Su-30 fighter jets, an Il-76 transport aircraft, an Il-78 tanker and several helicopters to Niger, Algeria has broken with its historic doctrine of not deploying its armed forces beyond its national territory. This marks a fundamental shift in its Sahel strategy. Why?
After a succession of diplomatic failures, Algiers, seeking to regain the initiative in the Sahel, was torn between two options:
- Continue supporting Tuareg independence fighters in order to maintain its hold over its own Tuareg population—a policy that would have meant formalizing its break with Russia and watching its Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline project evaporate.
- Or, on the contrary, align itself with Russia’s strategy of supporting the military governments in Mali and Niger, which meant ending its support for the forces opposing them and therefore abandoning the Tuareg.
Algiers ultimately chose the second option. This shift accelerated on July 10, 2026, the day after the Russian-Malian victory at Anéfis, when Algeria and Mali announced the return of their ambassadors and the reopening of their airspace to civilian and military flights.
For Algiers, time is running out because Morocco’s project to open up the landlocked Sahel through the Atlantic is moving forward. On July 19, 2026, at an ordinary summit held in Freetown, the heads of state of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) signed an intergovernmental agreement approving the construction of a coastal gas pipeline linking Nigeria to Morocco and enabling the export of production from coastal countries.
“Algeria is effectively abandoning the Tuareg it supported for years, but who now stand in the way of its gas interests.”
Moreover, ECOWAS has also endorsed the Atlantic Initiative, Morocco’s vast project to open up the Sahel through roads leading to the port of Dakhla in the Moroccan Sahara. By June 2026, construction of the port, which is intended to become the “hub” of West Africa’s Sahel region, was 60% complete.
Algeria’s involvement alongside Niger’s junta can therefore be explained by three broad sets of factors:
- The need to protect its new energy interests;
- Its geopolitical repositioning in a Sahel undergoing profound change;
- Its direct competition with Morocco over the routes of two rival pipelines: a land-based Trans-Saharan pipeline from Nigeria, backed by Algeria, and an Atlantic pipeline, backed by Morocco—two projects that are shaping the Sahel’s new geopolitics.
For Algeria, the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline is a priority because, with its own production, it is unable to supply the EU—which has voluntarily deprived itself of Russian gas—with more than 40 billion cubic meters of gas a year, barely 14% of the bloc’s consumption. Yet if the Trans-Saharan pipeline project were completed, Algeria could export an additional 30 billion cubic meters. It would then become the EU’s leading gas supplier, radically increasing its leverage over the bloc, particularly on what remains a priority issue for Algiers: challenging Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara. To win Niamey’s favor, Algiers is therefore showering it with gifts: a power plant, oil cooperation, the modernization of energy infrastructure, supplies of kerosene, the delivery of military helicopters and, now, military support.
Algeria has therefore made its choice. It is effectively abandoning the Tuareg it supported for years but who, today, stand in the way of its gas interests. In doing so, it risks losing control over them. Algiers is betting that, deprived of a rear base, the Sahelian Tuareg will eventually be marginalized. Perhaps... But the Trans-Saharan Gas Pipeline will have to cross their territory for more than 1,000 kilometers.
