From March 2019 to 2022, IS-GS was formally part of the Islamic State – West Africa Province (ISWAP);[5] when it was also called "ISWAP-Greater Sahara".

[19] A week later in Burkina Faso, gunmen stormed a convoy of buses for the Boungou miners, killing 37, although some estimate the death toll to be much higher.

On 10 December 2019, a large group of fighters belonging to the IS-GS attacked a military post in Inates, Niger,[26] killing over seventy soldiers and kidnapping others.

The staff had identified him as leading a group of several dozen EIGS fighters, in the Gober Gourou and Firo area, in western Niger.

[citation needed] Among his other commanders are Doundoun Chefou, Illiassou Djibo alias Petit Chafori (or Djafori) and Mohamed Ag Almouner, known as "Tinka", killed by the French Army on August 26, 2018.

In early 2017, Marc Mémier, a researcher at the French Institute for International Relations (IFRI), estimated that the Islamic State in the Grand Sahara had a few dozen men – not counting sympathizers – mostly Malians in the region of Gao.

In Mali, the latter are for the most part Nigerien nationals whom the droughts in the Sahel and the demographic surge of Zarma and Hausa peasants, which is exerted from the south to the north, have pushed on the Malian side of the border.

Adnan Abu Walid Al-Sahraoui won the support of many members of this community by promising to protect them against raids and theft of cattle carried out by the Tuaregs, starting with the Dahoussahak (Idaksahak).