Guineans received surprising news in late March, when the government announced that it had dismantled a suspected terrorist network linked to the al-Qaida-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM).
A nationwide counterterrorism operation in 2025 yielded the arrests of 11 people, including a Malian man named Fotigui Daou, who admitted his involvement in a longstanding hostage-for-ransom operation that helped finance JNIM operations.
“Judicial investigations have revealed that a group of 11 individuals, including seven Malians, two Nigeriens, one Burkinabe and one Guinean, were arrested in April 2025 in the prefectures of Siguiri, Mandiana, and Kankan,” Prosecutor General Fallou Doumbouya said in a March 21 statement. He did not explain the 11 months between the arrests and the announcement.
The investigation also found several JNIM-affiliated WhatsApp groups that Daou and others had used to radicalize 513 members. Daou’s interrogation led to the arrests of two more men who were identified as leading members of the online radicalization network.
“This is the first time that such jihadist connections have been found in the country, and it underscores the broadening reach of JNIM, which appears to be moving increasingly westward,” independent research consultant Jessica Moody wrote in a May 4 article for World Politics Review.
JNIM has not yet claimed any attacks within Guinea, which shares a 900-kilometer border with Mali. But security around Guinea is worsening, according to an assessment by Swedish risk management company African Security Analysis (ASA).
The Sahel region accounts for “one-fifth of all armed group attacks worldwide and 51% of all fatalities,” according to the 2026 Global Terrorism Index, which ranked Mali as the fifth most-affected country by terrorism in the world.
JNIM’s siege tactics against the Malian junta have intensified since it began an economic blockade in and around the country in September 2025. Not coincidentally, in that time JNIM and other terror groups in the region have continued to demonstrate expanding reach, specifically toward coastal states.
“For Guinea, the most exposed areas remain Mandiana, Siguiri, Kankan and border communities connected to mining, trade, transit and informal cross-border movement,” ASA’s May 9 assessment stated. “The threat is likely to remain uneven and difficult to detect: more facilitation than combat, more recruitment than raids, more reconnaissance than open territorial control.”
Former Mauritanian intelligence officer Ahmed Mbarek said that recent forays beyond the Sahel by JNIM and the Islamic State group reflect a shift in the nature of the conflict. No longer limited to sporadic strikes and ambushes, the groups are carrying out sophisticated, highly coordinated attacks targeting established military positions, seizing equipment and using it in subsequent operations.
Mbarek said these types of operations are sending a clear message to countries along the Gulf of Guinea: Successes in the Sahel combined with freedom of movement throughout much of West Africa have boosted the ambitions of terrorist groups throughout the region.
“Overall, it can be said that the scene is heading towards a slow but steady expansion,” he told the Voice of Emirates news website. “Mali remains the center of gravity, but the pressure within it is pushing the parties to expand rather than contract.
“As this path continues, it is no longer sufficient to talk about a local threat within the Sahel, but rather about a gradual reshaping of a wider security space that extends towards West Africa and the Sahel, with all the implications that this has for regional stability in the coming years.”
Guinean and Malian officials met in Conakry in late 2025 and agreed to strengthen security cooperation along their shared border. Experts say that’s a good start but warn that it will be a difficult task for security forces to significantly bolster their presence along a border that is nearly 1,000 kilometers from the capital.
“While Guinea finds itself in a challenging position, the biggest threat JNIM poses there at the moment is not so much the prospect of an audacious military attack, but rather the group’s fundraising and recruitment efforts,” Moody wrote. “Still, over the long term, the Guinean government will have its work cut out in seeking to ensure that jihadists do not establish enclaves and rear operating bases in the country.”
