When the Sanusiya leadership in the Fezzan oasis town of Kufra (in modern Libya) declared a Jihad against the French colonialists in October 1914, Kaocen rallied his forces.

Tagama, the Sultan of Agadez had convinced the French military that the Tuareg confederations remained loyal, and with his help, Kaocen's forces placed the garrison under siege on 17 December 1916.

Tuareg raiders, numbering over 1,000, led by Kaocen and his brother Mokhtar Kodogo, and armed with repeating rifles and one cannon seized from the Italians in Libya, defeated several French relief columns.

[citation needed] Finally on 3 March 1917, a large French force, which had been dispatched from Zinder, relieved the Agadez garrison and began to seize the rebel towns.

[2] While Kaocen fled north, he was hanged by local forces in Mourzouk in 1919, and Mokhtar Kodogo was killed by the French in 1920, when a revolt that he led amongst the Toubou and Fula in the Sultanate of Damagaram was defeated.