Crucial role of drone
A buzzing sound is heard in the sky above Niamey, the capital of Niger.
A few troopers get into position. It's a drill they've been through incalculable times.
As the motor clamor develops louder, what at initially had all the earmarks of being a little plane uncovers itself as something else through and through.
It is an automaton.
This is Base 101, an insight gathering focus set up by the French military as a feature of Operation Barkhane.
Propelled in February 2014, its point is to bolster nations in the area in their battle against Islamist radicals.
The knowledge authorities in Base 101 are watchful for contenders having a place with gatherings like purported Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM).
The officer accountable for Operation Barkhane's five automatons is Lt Col Ben; for security reasons, the French military are currently just alluded to by their first names.
He opens the entryway of what resembles a metal compartment. Inside, there are two seats, a few screens indicating sees from the air, a large number of catches and switches, gleaming red lights and two or three joysticks.
"This is the place we pilot the automatons," he says. "We call this the cockpit."
Human mass migration
There are by and large around 40 ramble forays each month; more than one a day. In this confined and restricted space, Lt Col Ben's collaboration six-hour shifts, eyes stuck to their screens.
Niger has now turned into a key counter-terrorism accomplice for the West. A gander at a guide clarifies why.
Toward the north is Libya which, as of late, has turned into an axiom for turmoil.
Toward the west lies Mali and its radical uprisings.
Travel east, and you achieve Chad, attempting to contain its own particular inner pressures,.
The other real wellspring of concern is on Niger's southern flank, the Boko Haram rebellion in Nigeria.
Conflicts there have started a human departure. What's more, more than 200,000 individuals have fled to Diffa in south-eastern Niger.
Merchants hit hard
It's a dusty summary place only a couple of kilometers far from the Nigerian outskirt.
In the town's principle market, I meet Ousmane Oumara, a nearby English instructor.
"Merchants here have been hard hit by advancements over the outskirt," he lets me know.
"Things aren't care for they used to be."
Adjacent, a grain trader clarifies that the cost of maize and millet keeps going up on the grounds that supplies from Nigeria have been cut off.
"Now and again I hear the sound of gunfire simply outside the town and I'm anxious," says Ousmane.
With such a variety of individuals touching base from Nigeria, there is insufficient sanctuary for them in Diffa itself.
So a huge number of outcasts have needed to manage as well as can be expected, living in makeshift settlements which line the Route Nationale 1 - Highway Number One - which runs parallel to the Nigerian fringe.
The informal boondocks
At one of these provisional outcast towns, Assaga, individuals have isolated along national lines. Along one side of the street are straw shacks lodging the uprooted from Nigeria; on the other, comparable delicate asylums are currently home to the individuals who have fled their homes in the fringe settlements of Niger.
Picture copyright Huong Ly, BBC
He then gestures his head towards the other side, including: "And there is Assaga-Niger."
The street has turned into a kind of informal boondocks.
I ask one young lady on the Niger side in the event that she feels safe here.
"It's more secure along the street than back in my town," she replies. "I can't do a reversal home since I'm frightened of Boko Haram."
Her story is reverberated up and down a 200km (120 miles) stretch of street.
'I have the answer!'
As he sits leg over leg inside a temporary tent, to get away from the sweltering warmth of the late morning sun, a 16-year-old kid clarifies his very own catastrophe.
For his own wellbeing, he inclines toward we don't utilize his genuine name. That is on account of, while he and his family figured out how to get away from the savagery, his 14-year-old sibling has been deserted.
"He was concentrating on in Diffa and Boko Haram took him away. They constrained him to go along with them."
You recognize clearly that he profoundly misses his sibling, but on the other hand he's agonized over what will happen to him.
"They're going to fill his head with a wide range of thoughts I don't care for - and I need nothing to do with that."
In another camp somewhat assist along the street, some enormous white canvas tents emerge.
From inside comes the sound of chuckling and the anxious yells of kids.
With their hands up, they're all getting out: "Educator! Educator! I have the answer!"
The educator is Mustafa Diri. When he was compelled to escape his town, only 8km from the Nigerian fringe, he would not like to desert his school.
So he brought it with him.
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