TERRORISMGlobal Coalition Readying 'Holistic' Assault on Islamic State in Africa
The ever-present threat from Islamic State is again being thrust onto the global stage, with the United States voicing hope that it is not too late to prevent the terror group from turning the African continent into a dangerous playground.
Overshadowed for months by Russia’s war in Ukraine, the ever-present threat from Islamic State is again being thrust onto the global stage, with the United States voicing hope that it is not too late to prevent the terror group from turning yet another continent into a dangerous playground.
Officials from 85 countries and a handful of organizations, including the Arab League, NATO and Interpol, are in Marrakech, Morocco, this week for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS’ first ministerial in Africa.
Co-hosted by Morocco and the U.S., the meeting will focus on “ways to sustain pressure on ISIS remnants globally,” according to a State Department statement issued Tuesday. But U.S. officials who spoke to VOA prior to Wednesday’s ministerial said that much of the focus will be on Africa, where the threat from Islamic State, also known to coalition members as ISIS, IS and Daesh, has been percolating.
“It’s a very serious threat,” said Doug Hoyt, the acting deputy envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS. “We’re talking thousands [of fighters].”
“Most troubling is the ISIS affiliates that are currently active in the sub-Saharan continent because the numbers are extraordinary, and they have a lot of territory to play around with,” he said.
Growing West African Presence
U.S. and Western military and counterterrorism officials have warned for years that the IS banner, if not the group’s ideology, has been catching on in parts of Africa, particularly West Africa.
The strongest and largest IS affiliate in Africa, according to many officials and intelligence shared with the United Nations, is IS-West Africa, based in Nigeria.
Having muscled out the area’s al-Qaida affiliate, Boko Haram, IS-West Africa is thought to have as many as 5,000 fighters across Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger.
Another affiliate, IS-Greater Sahara, operates with as many as 1,000 fighters in Benin, Ghana and Togo.
And IS-Mozambique, buoyed by as many as 1,200 fighters from the local group known as Ahlu Sunna wal-Jama’a, is also growing, according to information provided to the U.N., building on notoriety from its brief capture of the key port of Mocimboa da Praia in August 2020.
More recently, the U.S. has raised concerns about the ability of IS-Mozambique to access the international financial system through facilitators in South Africa.
