KYLE HIEBERT: Islamic State isn’t making a comeback — it never went away

A highly co-ordinated, weeklong prison siege by Islamic State fighters in northeast Syria in late January has prompted major media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others to ask whether the terror group is undergoing a resurgence. But it’s misleading to imply it was ever even defeated. 

After seeing its Middle East stronghold crushed by Western-backed forces in early 2019, Islamic State — known for broadcasting its medieval bloodlust online and executing brazen attacks abroad — simply evolved. An absence from mainstream headlines obscured the group’s strategic shift from being a state-building enterprise to managing a decentralised network that inspires, sponsors and advises local Islamist insurgencies in the developing world.

This is especially true in Sub-Saharan Africa. The world’s youngest and fastest growing region has become the epicentre of militant jihadism, with the growing footprint of Islamic State now posing an outsize risk to national development.

Africa could soon produce unrivalled market and investment opportunities if governments are able to embrace digitalisation and harness the potential of the continent’s abundant resources and 1.4-billion people by implementing the Africa Continental Free Trade Area agreement. Yet Islamic State and other extremist groups will inhibit this trajectory if they remain entrenched.

In December 2020, political risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft ranked seven African countries — Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, Cameroon, Mozambique, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) — among the 10 states worldwide most afflicted by terrorism. Nigeria, by some measures Africa’s largest economy, was ranked 11th. It’s no coincidence that Islamic State affiliates and networks are thriving in each of them.

Jihadists operating in the Sahel under the banner of Islamic State in the Greater Sahara have been launching lethal raids on a daily basis for years now. Many of the attacks are concentrated in the lawless “tri-border area” where the porous boundaries between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso converge. Since 2018, Islamist fighters — which also include groups linked with Al-Qaeda — have killed or abducted at least 300 community leaders, state officials or their relatives, and murdered thousands of others. More than 2.4-million people have been displaced by the violence. 

In Nigeria, a splinter faction of Boko Haram assumed the mantle of Islamic State’s West Africa Province (Iswap) in 2016. Guidance and support from Islamic State’s central brains trust and media channels has helped Iswap eclipse Boko Haram in operational prowess and recruitment, and extended the affiliate’s reach into Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Defections from Boko Haram to Iswap have long been routine, and accelerated since May 2021 when Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, blew himself up after being cornered by Iswap gunmen in Nigeria’s Sambisa Forest.  

Carrying Islamic State’s flag in Central Africa is the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan rebel militia battling for supremacy in the restive eastern provinces of the DRC. The mineral-rich territory contains large deposits of gold, diamonds, rare earth metals and produces about 70% of the world’s cobalt, a substance vital for the manufacturing of advanced electronics and green technology. In October a spate of ADF bombings also rocked Uganda’s capital, Kampala, targeting “members and spies of the Crusader Ugandan government”, according to posts on messaging platform Telegram.

In Mozambique’s northern province of Cabo Delgado, jihadist activity has derailed a $20bn liquefied natural gas development by French energy giant Total. A low-level terror campaign that began in 2017 with radicalised youth lashing out in an area with endemic poverty increased dramatically in its sophistication and use of heavy weaponry after local extremist group Ansar al-Sunna Wa Jamma (ASWJ) developed ties with Islamic State in 2020. This synergy peaked during the brief but bloody occupation of the coastal town of Palma in March 2021.

ASWJ fighters have since retreated in the face of Mozambique’s security forces being bolstered by thousands of troops from Rwanda and Southern African Development Community countries, as well as mercenaries from Russia and SA. Yet the International Crisis Group (ICG), a conflict monitoring organisation, warned earlier in February of the insurgents’ links to both the ADF and other Islamic State networks in Tanzania and Somalia. Unless local grievances are addressed, the ICG says, “the insurgency will persist as a source of regional insecurity” and will rebound if foreign forces withdraw.

Identifying and exploiting chronic deprivation is what allows Islamic State to prosper. Affiliates and operatives embed themselves in marginalised communities in remote areas abandoned by weak governments in faraway capitals — garnering support by filling governance or security vacuums. This can occur through resolving local disputes over land and water resources, providing protection from bandits or rival ethnic militias, or supplying basic goods, services, education and casual employment.

These cultivated safe havens then become ideal locations from which terrorists can spread propaganda and replenish their ranks by appealing to disaffected youth. They also serve as staging grounds for unrelenting attacks against government sites, security checkpoints and high-traffic areas such as crowded markets or upmarket upscale urban districts.

The goal of the violence is to shock and instil fear into electorates, erode faith in governments and paralyse development initiatives that could lessen the poverty and desperation that makes joining an extremist group a dark alternative when social mobility is impossible. The result has been the triggering of broader instability and political turmoil in regions where Islamic State affiliates are most emboldened.

West Africa in particular is seeing the return of military takeovers of government — a throwback to the region’s previous strongman era before democratic norms took hold. The deposal of Burkina Faso president Roch Kaboré on January 24 was the fourth coup in West Africa in 18 months, including one in Guinea and two in Mali. Convinced that constitutional order and corrupt civilian governments are incapable of providing security, local populations have come out in force to celebrate the coups as trust in public institutions has collapsed.

In the DRC, two resource-rich provinces, Ituri and North Kivu, have been placed under a “state of siege” since May 2021, when President Félix Tshisekedi replaced local governments with military officers in an effort to drive out armed militias, including the ADF. Nearly one year on, the move appears to have achieved no concrete effect, even with the arrival of US special forces in August 2021 and now joint operations with Uganda’s military that began in November.

The paradox is that military rule could ultimately aggravate conflict. Human rights watchdogs have documented hundreds of deaths and forced disappearances by security forces in Sahel countries resulting from operations against terror groups. Similar allegations of executions, torture, rape and property destruction have been regularly levelled at government soldiers battling Islamist extremists in Nigeria and Mozambique. Such atrocities by state security forces provide a boon to the propaganda and recruiting efforts of jihadists.

Politicians have pointed to the recent assassinations of Islamic State leaders in the Sahel, Nigeria and now Syria — where the terror group’s overall leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Quraishi, killed himself in Syria on February 2 amid a raid by US special forces — as proof that military actions to weaken the group are paying off. But it’s uncertain whether this will have much effect. Studies have shown that taking out terrorist leaders has mixed long-term results, at best.

All of these dynamics highlight the dilemma of whether in Sub-Saharan Africa security is first necessary before development — or if rapid development is the best way to foster security. Either way, neither will materialise in regions where Islamic State continues to grow.

• Hiebert, a former deputy editor of Africa Conflict Monitor, is now a researcher and analyst based in Canada.