ICC Note: Zinder, Niger has become a hotbed of recruitment for Boko Haram. Poverty and social exclusion compels disenfranchised youth into a life of crime as gangs loot, rape, and murder their way to social significance and power in the arid, impoverished urban Sahel. Niger’s security forces contend that Boko Haram, West Africa’s notorious persecutor of the Church, has infiltrated Zinder, seeking to capitalize on the violence many of the city’s youth have already adopted in order to swell its ranks. In a poverty context where money talks, the idea of carrying a gun and receiving a salary might just become the right motivation for gangs to radicalize and fight for the region’s most ruthless Islamist terror group.

By Jillian Keenan

3/9/26 Zinder, Niger (FP) – Idrissa Sani Malam needs a new machete, and like any seasoned street fighter, he knows where to get one. On a bright December afternoon, he makes his way to his favorite knife dealer, weaving expertly on his motorcycle through the narrow alleyways of Dead Man’s Market.

Contrary to its name, this nest of corrugated-metal stalls in Zinder, a dusty city in southern Niger, teems with life. Merchants and shoppers barter, children dodge around the legs of cattle and camels, and chickens squawk before their necks are wrung. The market got its ominous label partly because Nigeriens imagine that only a dead man would give up the used Western clothing — jackets branded with sports teams’ logos, T-shirts screen-printed for long-gone political campaigns — sold here. It has also earned the appellation: Men have died among its booths at the hands of the violent youth gangs that rule Zinder.

Sani Malam, 32, is one of the city’s most feared and respected gang leaders. Some admirers say he’s Niger’s finest street brawler; others claim he’s the best in all of West Africa. His cheeks are speckled with the white scars of stab wounds, and his muscular arms, which test his shirt’s seams, look like they could break a man in half. His old adda, as Nigeriens call the thick, heavy blade that Sani Malam prefers to fight with, is dull from years of cutting into bodies. It’s time to replace it.

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