KIMBIRILA-NORD, Ivory Coast: With its tomato patches and grazing cattle, the Ivory Coast village of Kimbirila-Nord hardly looks like a front line of the global fight against extremism. But after jihadis attacked a nearby community in Mali five years ago and set up a base in a forest straddling the border, the US committed to spending $20 million to counter the spread of Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group here and in dozens of other villages.
The Trump administration’s sweeping foreign aid cuts mean that support is now gone, even as violence in Mali and other countries in the Sahel region south of the Sahara has reached record levels and sent tens of thousands refugees streaming into northern Ivory Coast.
Locals worry they have been abandoned. Diplomats and aid officials said the termination of aid jeopardizes counterterrorism efforts and weakens US influence in a part of the world where some countries have turned to Russian mercenaries for help.
In Kimbirila-Nord, US funding, among other things, helped young people get job training, built parks for cattle to graze so they are no longer stolen by jihadis on Malian territory, and helped establish an information-sharing system so residents can flag violent encounters to each other and state services.

“What attracts young people to extremists is poverty and hunger,” said Yacouba Doumbia, 78-year-old chief of Kimbirila-Nord. “There was a very dangerous moment in 2020. The project came at the right time, and allowed us to protect ourselves.”
“Seize a narrow prevention window”
Over the last decade, West Africa has been shaken by extremist uprisings and military coups. Groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group have conquered large areas and killed thousands in the Sahel and have been spreading into wealthier West African coastal states, such as Ivory Coast, Benin and Togo.
In 2019, President Donald Trump signed the Global Fragility Act that led to the initiatives in northern Ivory Coast. The US goal in this area was to “seize a narrowing prevention window,” according to this year’s congressional report about the implementation of the bipartisan legislation.
Experts say local concerns help drive the popularity of extremist groups: competition for land and resources, exclusion, marginalization and lack of economic opportunities. Across the region, Islamic extremists have recruited among groups marginalized and neglected by central governments.
“Ivory Coast is one of the few countries that still resist the terrorist threat in the Sahel,” said a UN official working in the country who was not authorized to speak on the matter publicly. “If we do not continue to support border communities, a minor issue could send them into the arms of extremists.”
Trump issued an executive order in January directing a freeze on foreign assistance and a review of all US aid and development work abroad. He charged that much of foreign aid was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.
“Everyone was just looking out for themselves”
In 2020, when the jihadis struck a Malian village 10 kilometers (6 miles) away, Kimbirila-Nord in many ways fit the description of a community susceptible to extremism.
The lives of Malians and Ivorians were intertwined. People crossed the border freely, making it easy for extremists, who like residents spoke Bambara, to access Kimbirila-Nord. Many residents did not have identity cards and few spoke French, leaving them with no access to states services or official information. Different ethnic groups lived next to each other but were divided by conflicts over scarce natural resources and suspicions toward the state. And young people did not have opportunities to make money.
“We were very scared” when the extremists attacked, said Aminata Doumbia, the head of the village’s female farmers cooperative. “Everyone was just looking out for themselves.”

The Ivorian government runs a program that provides professional training, grants and microloans. But access is difficult in villages such as Kimbirila-Nord.
Kimbirila-Nord is home to refugees from Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea. Sifata Berte, 23, fled there with his family two years ago from Mali. He is not eligible for the government-run program, but got training through the project funded by the US Agency for International Development and now works as an apprentice in an iron workshop.
Other things the USAID-funded project set up included a network of community radios in local languages, so people could get access to information. It also used mobile government trucks to help tens of thousands of people across the region get their identity documents. And it brought people together with microcredit cooperatives and with a special committee of ranchers and farmers that helps resolve tensions over land.
“It’s thanks to the project that we can sleep at night,” Doumbia, the village chief, said. “We learned how to be together.”

Equal Access International, an international nonprofit, designed and implemented the US-funded project.
The USAID project also has been the only direct source of information on the ground in northern Ivory Coast on violent events for the US-based Armed Conflict and Location & Event Data Project, the main provider of data on violence in the Sahel.
The village had big plans
Ivory Coast became known as a target for extremists in 2016, when an attack on the seaside resort of Grand Bassam killed tourists. In 2021, a string of attacks occurred near the country’s northern border, but the violence has been largely contained after Ivorian authorities, Western governments and aid groups rushed into this impoverished and isolated part of the country with military build up and development projects.
In 2024, the US Africa Command provided over $65 million to projects in Ivory Coast, most of which “focused on counterterrorism and border security” in the northern part of the country, according to the group’s website. The Pentagon said in a statement that it was “not aware of any budget cuts that have undermined counterterrorism training or partnership programs in Africa.”

Ivory Coast has the second-highest GDP per capita in West Africa, but according to the UN it remains one of the world’s least developed countries. Many in remote villages like Kimbirila-Nord do not have access to running water.
“At first we thought that we only had to solve these problems with a military solution,” Famy Rene, the prefect of Korhogo, the region’s capital, said. “But we saw that this was not enough. We had to put in place programs that strengthen the resilience of the population.”
Residents of Kimbirila-Nord had big plans before the US froze aid. The US was supposed to finance the first well in the village, help create a collective farm, and expand vocational training,
Now they fear they have been left alone to deal with extremists.
“If you forget, they will come back,” said Doumbia, the village chief. “As long as there is war on the other side of the border, we must remain on a high alert.”

FLORIDA: Just over a day after blasting off, a SpaceX crew capsule arrived at the International Space Station on Sunday, delivering the replacements for NASA’s two stuck astronauts.
The four newcomers — representing the US, Japan and Russia — will spend the next few days learning the station’s ins and outs from Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Then the two will strap into their own SpaceX capsule later this week, one that has been up there since last year, to close out an unexpected extended mission that began last June.
Wilmore and Williams expected to be gone just a week when they launched on Boeing’s first astronaut flight. They hit the nine-month mark earlier this month.
The Boeing Starliner capsule encountered so many problems that NASA insisted it come back empty, leaving its test pilots behind to wait for a SpaceX lift.
While the seven space station residents prepared for the new arrivals, one of the Russians — Ivan Vagner — briefly put on an alien mask in a lighthearted moment. Wilmore swung open the space station’s hatch and rang the ship’s bell as the new crew floated in one by one and were greeted with hugs and handshakes..
“It was a wonderful day. Great to see our friends arrive,” Williams told Mission Control.
Wilmore’s and Williams’ ride arrived back in late September with a downsized crew of two and two empty seats reserved for the leg back. But more delays resulted when their replacements’ brand new capsule needed extensive battery repairs. An older capsule took its place, pushing up their return by a couple weeks to mid-March.
Weather permitting, the SpaceX capsule carrying Wilmore, Williams and two other astronauts will undock from the space station no earlier than Wednesday and splash down off Florida’s coast.
Until then, there will be 11 aboard the orbiting lab, representing the US, Russia and Japan.