Working together
With US-Sahel joint intelligence services closing in, Kevin Rideout’s abductors were looking for a way out.
An American missionary who was seized by three gunmen outside his home in Niamey last fall is now in the custody of US officials following improved coordination with the Russian-backed military juntas that control the region.
Kevin Rideout, a pilot with North Carolina-based evangelical group Serving in Mission (SIM), was kidnapped on 21 October by unknown assailants. He is believed to have been moved around the Liptako-Gourma border area between Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso, a volatile region overrun by jihadist groups.
“We are grateful to confirm that our good friend and brother in Christ, Kevin Rideout, has been released after over nine months in captivity,” SIM said in a 14 August statement. “Kevin is in good health in the care of US officials.”
While official details of Rideout’s release, first reported by The New York Times, remain scarce, his freedom has been a priority for the Donald Trump administration.
The White House and the Sahelian states of Mali and Niger set up a joint intelligence group focused on the tri-border area months ago, The Africa Report has learned. An unofficial visit to the region by former presidential envoy for hostage negotiations Roger Carstens and former State Department special envoy for the Sahel J. Peter Pham was in the works before the lucky break. With the joint group closing in, Rideout’s abductors began looking for a way out, US and Nigerien sources tell The Africa Report.
Pham credits improved coordination with the three members of the Alliance of Sahel States (AoSS) in helping secure Rideout’s release. While the three countries turned to Russia for support after military putsches in recent years caused a rupture with the West, the Trump administration has actively engaged with the AoSS rather than lecturing them on human rights and democracy.
In February and March, the State Department’s Africa Bureau senior official Nick Checker visited all three countries in a bid to “renew cooperation on a practical foundation and to rebuild confidence through continued dialogue and engagement”. The talks notably touched on intelligence sharing and getting US eyes in the air in the search for Rideout.
“Our AES [AoSS] security forces are doing everything possible day and night to find and free Kevin Rideout,” Mali’s ambassador to the US, Sékou Berthe, told The Africa Report in March.
During the same time period, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) also deepened its military cooperation with Nigeria following a dust-up over Christian killings. Nigeria has allowed the US to fly surveillance missions from its bases, the Times reported, in part to help locate Rideout.
“Mr. Rideout is a very blessed man,” Pham tells The Africa Report, “not least because the US administration not only made freeing him a priority, but had extensive cooperation from the intelligence and security services of Mali and Niger whose leaders were being engaged rather than shunned by Washington.”
