Sahel ‘Mad Max’ Uranium Convoy Says It All About the New International Order

Niger’s junta is shipping uranium confiscated from a French mine in a massive armed convoy across the Sahel, and appears set to attempt to sell it abroad or send it to Russia. This “Mad Max” convoy, as it’s being called in French media, is a glaring example of an international system that is being rapidly rewired. A United States-led international order that prioritized rules and rule following is coming apart in real time. Scrambles to claim control over energy, minerals, shipping routes, and a willingness to ignore the prohibitions of the old order is the new norm. Routine instruments of statecraft for treaty violations, like sanctions, still exist but their enforcement is uneven. As great power alliances have become unpredictable, middle powers and even small states have become more willing to gamble on rule breaking, because penalties feel avoidable.

As reported by numerous sources, a large shipment of uranium yellowcake concentrate—the raw material used in nuclear energy and weapons—is on the move from Niger’s Arlit mine complex amid a bitter dispute involving Orano, a primarily-French energy company which owned the majority of the mine, and Niger’s military government. The dispute began almost immediately after the junta took power in July 2023, and the mine was officially nationalized in June 2025. The junta framed this as a sovereignty and development imperative, and seized roughly 1,150 metric tons of uranium.

As reported by numerous sources, a large shipment of uranium yellowcake concentrate—the raw material used in nuclear energy and weapons—is on the move from Niger’s Arlit mine complex amid a bitter dispute involving Orano, a primarily-French energy company which owned the majority of the mine, and Niger’s military government. The dispute began almost immediately after the junta took power in July 2023, and the mine was officially nationalized in June 2025. The junta framed this as a sovereignty and development imperative, and seized roughly 1,150 metric tons of uranium.

Then, Niger’s head of state, Gen. Abdourahamane Tchiani, announced on Nov. 30, 2025, that Niger’s uranium would be floated on the international market. That same month, Orano warned that the junta loaded more than 1,000 tons of yellowcake into dozens of trucks. Open-sourcing reporting suggested these trucks were headed for the Port of Lomé in Togo, presumably to sell to a foreign government. Orano claims this is an unlawful transfer, while analysts have warned that the convoy must transit through insecure areas that have been subsumed by attacks from jihadist insurgencies.

It is tempting to treat this as a niche story, a West African thriller complete with radioactive cargo racing through dangerous terrain. That would entirely miss the point. The convoy is a case study in how the new international system now works: resource extraction becomes a central arena of geopolitics, logistics becomes national power, and the boundary between regular commerce and criminality becomes deliberately blurred. In this environment, the most revealing geopolitical stories are not summit speeches or treaty signings but the high-risk, high-reward wagers that move forward anyway. 

A mine worker walks around the residual dump of the Cominak mine near Arlit, Niger, on March 8, 2023.Olympia de Maismont/AFP via Getty Images

Now add the corridor problem. The convoy has already made its way from Arlit to Niamey, the capital of Niger, with 34 trucks currently sitting at Niamey airport. The safest path from Niger to the Atlantic would be through Benin. Although the country has experienced some jihadist instability, its problems are dwarfed by its neighbor, Burkina Faso. However, moving the uranium through Benin would force the Nigerien government to come to an agreement with the Beninese government. Tchiani closed the Nigerien side of the border between the two countries in 2023, citing Benin’s alleged hosting of French military outposts. Such an agreement would mean Tchiani losing face with his allies, Burkina Faso and Mali, and admitting to dependence upon an ally-turned-foe. Thus, it’s unsurprising that Niger’s fingerprints have appeared all over the failed Dec. 7 Beninois coup attempt, according to Le Monde. Most relevant to this story, though, is the revelation that Niger had begun clearing the bridge crossing between Niger and Benin at Gaya-Malanville and that Nigerien officials planned to reopen borders had the coup succeeded. This is a clear indication of Nigerien intention to fast-track the uranium convoy through Benin to the port of Cotonou, while also demonstrating the growing impact of natural resources competition on sovereignty. Now the coup’s failure means that the Nigerien junta will turn to other routes.

A more dangerous route involves crossing from Niger into southeastern Burkina Faso and then into northern Togo, where armed groups have treated the region’s sparse highways as revenue streams and pressure points. For example, the corridor between Niamey and the Burkina Faso border has experienced repeated attacks this year by al Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal al-Muslimin (JNIM). Further, JNIM’s reported experimentation with drone-delivered explosives changes the tactical environment in ways that should worry anyone who still imagines convoys as manageable with conventional route security. In the new international system, battlefield innovations from Ukraine and elsewhere diffuse faster with nearly no barriers from Washington, Brussels, or Paris.

An insurgent attack on the uranium convoy would become a transformational moment in the region’s long struggle with jihadists, which has led to several coups and prolonged disruptions to trade. The consequences of an attack along the Burkina Faso route would be hideous, particularly for civilians. At worst, jihadists could seize some or all of the uranium shipment. While this sort of activity would have triggered global panic in the 1990s and early 2000s, experts understand that low-grade uranium has few battlefield or terrorist uses. It is also technologically difficult to sell, enrich, or move uranium. Regardless, it would be a public relations nightmare for Russia, Niger, and Burkina Faso’s regimes if JNIM secured access to these natural resources, signaling the true incompetence of all parties involved. However, the heaviest impacts would likely be felt by civilians, particularly if the shipment were attacked along the route. Leakage could increase local uranium pollution, a problem that’s existed around Niger’s uranium mines for many years.

A final, if highly expensive, convoy option would involve an airlift from Niamey to Lomé or directly to Russia via Benghazi, Libya, and through Russia’s airbase in Syria. Yellowcake uranium is rarely shipped by air, given its weight and hazardous nature. In this case, Russian jets would need to make approximately 20 flights between Niamey and Lomé aboard Russia’s largest military cargo jet, the Antonov An-124. This would be both expensive and time consuming, with all the added dangers of flight compounded by uranium leakage, sabotage, and drone attacks during takeoff and landing.

Regardless of shipping method, the uranium shipment’s political aftershocks would radiate. Even if the convoy or airlift arrives in Lomé or Benghazi without incident, it would signal to regional militaries that natural resources are up for grabs, threatening the region’s already-vulnerable non-military governments. The world’s largest coup belt could expand even without an attack on the convoy.

Truck drivers from Burkina Faso rest next to their cargo after arriving in Niamey on Aug. 21, 2023. AFP via Getty Images

If the convoy reaches Lomé, the risk shifts from roads to oceans. Maritime export of uranium is highly scrutinized under the old international system, drawing in screenings, insurance, port-state control, and many other rules and processes that combine to regulate international trade. If the convoy shifts to the skies directly from Niamey, physical risks increase and flight patterns become traceable. While airborne nuclear smuggling would be a new phenomenon, it could be deterred through airspace controls, which can be clearly enforced by air forces and deterred by air defense systems. This is a potential weak point for Niger’s operation, as radioactive cargo operates through services that can be pressured, named, or penalized. And yet, which great power should be expected to press for such rule following? Certainly not Russia.

That brings the story to Washington and the Trump administration’s new 2025 National Security Strategy. The administration emphasizes economic security, supply chains, and access to critical materials as core national interests. It also signals skepticism about long-term partnerships, in Africa and elsewhere, favoring ad hoc transactional engagements over open-ended presence. The theory is simple: Focus on tangible interests, avoid costly missions, and let others carry burdens related to an international order that does not narrowly serve immediate U.S. interests.

Niger’s convoy exposes the tradeoffs involved in this pivot. In the Sahel and elsewhere, access to strategic resources requires the ability to secure extraction sites and transport corridors, control ports, and police the financial networks that can turn dangerous commerce into national profit. If the United States walks away from the rules-based global order that it largely created, it invites rivals as well as would-be partners to rush toward destabilizing and dangerous gambits where evasion and coercion dominate.

This tension becomes harder to ignore when contrasted with the administration’s willingness to pursue visible enforcement actions in the Western Hemisphere, including high-profile moves against sanctioned Venezuelan shipping and through the capture of the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. The message to rivals is that some regions will receive muscular U.S. attention while others are treated as peripheral. In a rewired system, selective enforcement is not neutrality but a signal toward 18th-century-style spheres of influence. In short, the United States now seems willing to defer to others in some parts of the world like Africa.

A sign reads “safety is life” at the entrance to the Cominak mine near Arlit on March 8, 2023. Olympia de Maismont/AFP via Getty Images

Any U.S. response, regardless of the administration that oversees it, could start by treating the shipment as an international compliance problem. Border crossings, airports, and seaports are key sites where all the mechanisms of a rules-based system are realized and where the various insurers, financiers, brokers, port services firms, and other actors that make sanctions-running viable can be pressured.

Second, a U.S. response should focus diplomacy on the exits. If the Port of Lomé is indeed the convoy’s destination, then Togo’s decisions matter. So do the decisions of any other port state that might offer refueling, transshipment, or safe harbor—including Libya, Syria, or Turkey—on a direct flight route to Russia. Transactional diplomacy can work here because seaport or airport access is a bargaining chip. Security cooperation, trade incentives, investment, and reputational risk in global shipping markets can be leveraged without pretending to be interested in rebuilding the Sahel.

Finally, the ideal U.S. response would invest in transparency. While a one-time flight may be harder to deny, the repeated flights necessary for this operation would create a pattern of travel that could be denied by airspace controls, particularly for the many states that would prefer to avoid nuclear smuggling in their airspaces. This can and should be notably easier, given significant existing U.S. and international investment in nuclear smuggling detection and prevention. In the emerging system, such information is not a supplement to power. It is a form of power.

The deeper lesson of the “Mad Max” convoy is not simply that West Africa is dangerous. It is that the U.S. seems ready to look away while the world moves toward a system that rewards actors who can move strategic materials through dangerous spaces while external powers hesitate, argue, or ignore such issues altogether. If the United States wants a foreign policy defined by principled statecraft rather than by coercion-driven spheres of influence, it cannot treat episodes like this as background noise. In a rewired international system, the risky transaction that breaks norms and threatens stability is often the story that matters most.