The Islamic State (IS) group’s affiliates in Africa are set for major expansion after a series of significant victories, new alliances and shifts in strategy reinforced their position across much of the continent.
Following recent gains in Nigeria, the Sahel, in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), IS propaganda published by the group’s leadership in its heartland in the Middle East is increasingly stressing sub-Saharan Africa as a new front which might compensate the group for significant setbacks elsewhere.
Detailed accounts of recent internal debates in Nigeria, where the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) recently routed Boko Haram, suggest a new emphasis by the US in Africa on providing security and basic services to local communities.
Illustration: Yusha
Although strategies differ according to local conditions, the new bid by the group to create zones of militant governance could pose a major challenge to weak, corrupt and inefficient national authorities, analysts fear.
“For an organization like ISIS, sub-Saharan Africa is where you can have a lot of impact with minimal [investment of] resources. This is one of the few places in the world where ISIS actually controls territory of many thousands of square kilometers. It’s a frontier for them,” said Vincent Foucher, an expert on Islamist extremism in Nigeria with the International Crisis Group.
The ISWAP last month stormed the Sambisa forest, a swath of strategically important dense forest, in Nigeria’s northeast, killing Boko Haram’s veteran leader, Abubakar Shekau, and inheriting many of his followers as well as his treasury and weapons.
The group has since sought to integrate former Boko Haram commanders and to convince them not to see any Muslim living outside zones they control as an enemy and apostate, as Shekau believed.
The leader of the ISWAP, Abu Musab al-Barnawi, has said that holding a passport and other government identity documents should now be permitted.
RELATIVELY MODERATE
Audio tapes of speeches by al-Barnawi, seen as more educated and relatively moderate compared with other ISWAP commanders, reveal that he has also taken unexpected steps to improve the treatment of children in local communities.
In the past few weeks, the ISWAP has opened up areas of grazing to herders, released detainees from its prisons, started levying religious taxes from the wealthy in some areas it controls, and sought to limit raids for “war booty” to be distributed among fighters in place of pay.
Al-Barnawi was given the leadership role by an “auditing mission” sent from the Middle East by the IS earlier this year, Foucher said.
Western officials fear that in places like Nigeria, the combination of increased firepower, greater discipline and the possible acquiescence of local community leaders to ISWAP rule would make the group a formidable challenge to local armed forces and authorities.
“The problem is once they are there, how do you get them out? You have to offer the local communities some kind of alternative, and there often isn’t one,” said one Western counter-terrorist official based in Mali who monitors Nigeria and the wider Sahel.
The strategy of co-opting and coercing local communities has helped the IS build its reach from northeast Nigeria across the Sahel region, with territory that now extends across thousands of kilometesr as far north as the Libyan border and as far south as parts of Benin and Ghana.
Rida Lyammouri, an analyst at the Policy Center for the New South in Morocco, said many thought the IS had overreached when the group launched an effort to expand in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015, but that it was now in a stronger position on the continent than ever before.
“Progress has been slow, but they have managed to identify very specific areas and communities that they could build ties with to entrench themselves,” he said. “The strategy is determined by local circumstances ... [but] there’s been brutal violence against communities that are opposed to them or collaborate with the state.”
In Niger, civilian militias set up by local government to combat the growing presence of IS-linked insurgents have been ruthlessly targeted. Last month, the IS claimed two high-profile attacks in which more than 150 people are thought to have died, saying in a statement that the victims were “militiamen,” not civilians.
In Mali, at a village close to the frontier with Niger, fighters amputated a hand and a foot from three men convicted by an Islamic court for robbing bus passengers. The punishment was carried out on a market day in front of a large crowd. Similar incidents have been reported in northern Burkina Faso, where the IS is hoping to expand.
“ISIS are demonstrating their intention to provide law and order. Local communities don’t question how it is done,” Lammouri said.
Mali has been destabilized in the past few months by political turmoil in Bamako, where soldiers last month took power in the second change of government this year.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said that France’s deployment of more than 4,000 troops in Mali would soon be dramatically scaled down, with the remnants merged into a broader international mission.
The force has been stationed in the country for almost a decade and has struggled to stem the expansion of the territory contested by groups linked to the IS and al-Qaeda.
PEACE AGREEMENTS
In some parts of Mali, there have been peace agreements concluded between community leaders and extremists as both seek ways to accommodate the new balance of power in the expectation that it will last.
Many such deals are done with groups affiliated with al-Qaeda, which has been present in the Sahel for 15 years and has built up a substantial network of factions and leaders.
Most are at a very local level, such as that in Niono, about 340km from Bamako, during which extremists promised to minimize violence against local communities if they were allowed to preach and if women wore veils.
Not all factions linked with the IS on the continent have adopted the outreach strategy demonstrated by the ISWAP in Nigeria.
The IS Central African Province, which operates in the DR Congo and Mozambique, appears to favor brutal coercion above all else, suggesting that any ties with the senior leadership of the group might be tenuous.
The IS-linked militants in the DR Congo have committed a series of bloody massacres on the borders in the east of the country with no obvious strategic goal. In the middle of this month, at least 50 villagers were killed in two attacks blamed on the Allied Democratic Forces, the Kivu Security Tracker research group said.
In Mozambique, Islamist insurgents who fly the black flag of IS remain in de facto control of much of the restive province of Cabo Delgado, although the degree of IS links among the insurgents is disputed.
Some analysts attribute more effective tactics of insurgents in Mozambique over the past year to outside assistance.
“In 2020, there was no doubt that they had international support ... and there were many videos being shared where they were showing the ISIS flag,” Joao Feij, a respected local researcher, told the Guardian earlier this year.
Interviewees who spoke to Feij said the IS flag was flown at insurgent bases and IS claimed the group’s most recent attack on the port of Palma.
However, there appears limited evidence supporting claims of a close relationship with the IS leadership in the Middle East, and little sign of any effort to build support among local communities.
The recent passing of Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), known to many as “Big S,” due to influenza-induced pneumonia at just 48 years old is a devastating reminder that the flu is not just a seasonal nuisance — it is a serious and potentially fatal illness. Hsu, a beloved actress and cultural icon who shaped the memories of many growing up in Taiwan, should not have died from a preventable disease. Yet her death is part of a larger trend that Taiwan has ignored for too long — our collective underestimation of the flu and our low uptake of the
For Taipei, last year was a particularly dangerous period, with China stepping up coercive pressures on Taiwan amid signs of US President Joe Biden’s cognitive decline, which eventually led his Democratic Party to force him to abandon his re-election campaign. The political drift in the US bred uncertainty in Taiwan and elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region about American strategic commitment and resolve. With America deeply involved in the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the last thing Washington wanted was a Taiwan Strait contingency, which is why Biden invested in personal diplomacy with China’s dictator Xi Jinping (習近平). The return of
Actress Barbie Hsu (徐熙媛), known affectionately as “Big S,” recently passed away from pneumonia caused by the flu. The Mandarin word for the flu — which translates to “epidemic cold” in English — is misleading. Although the flu tends to spread rapidly and shares similar symptoms with the common cold, its name easily leads people to underestimate its dangers and delay seeking medical treatment. The flu is an acute viral respiratory illness, and there are vaccines to prevent its spread and strengthen immunity. This being the case, the Mandarin word for “influenza” used in Taiwan should be renamed from the misleading
Following a YouTuber’s warning that tens of thousands of Taiwanese have Chinese IDs, the government launched a nationwide probe and announced that it has revoked the Republic of China (Taiwan) citizenship of three Taiwanese who have Chinese IDs. Taiwanese rapper Pa Chiung (八炯) and YouTuber Chen Po-yuan (陳柏源) in December last year released a documentary showing conversations with Chinese “united front” related agency members and warned that there were 100,000 Taiwanese holding Chinese IDs. In the video, a Taiwanese named Lin Jincheng (林金城), who is wanted for fraud in Taiwan and has become the head of the Taiwan Youth Entrepreneurship Park
RSS