Niger

So what?  A corridor that closes in one country rarely closes overall — it resurfaces where enforcement is thinner, and the shift toward Cyrenaica and Greece means arrival-processing and screening pressure is moving with it rather than easing. The report flags Senegal's Casamance region and Gambia as the likely next hubs if West Africa's Atlantic route absorbs the same crackdown pressure.

So what?  This is the third attack on Niamey's airport this year, and a junta that keeps surviving mutinies rather than eliminating the conditions that produce them faces a rising baseline risk of one eventually succeeding or of a protracted power struggle inside its own ranks. Continued instability at the seat of government complicates any near-term normalization of security cooperation with Niger and keeps pressure on already-thin humanitarian and counter-terrorism channels across the central Sahel.

So what?  A trafficking route that funds a designated terrorist affiliate even at lower volumes than the maritime corridors means interdiction success on the high-volume routes won't starve the groups actually driving Sahel instability, since they draw on a diversified criminal portfolio rather than cocaine alone. Expect this overland corridor to keep proving resilient to enforcement pressure precisely because it's embedded in state-linked and protection-economy networks that a single seizure or arrest can't dismantle.