JOHANNESBURG – The self-proclaimed caliphate of the Islamic State has fallen, its fighters have spread and its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been assassinated.
But two years after suffering severe defeats in Syria and Iraq, the terrorist group has found a new lifeline in Africa, where analysts believe they have forged alliances with local militant groups in symbiotic relationships that have raised their profiles, fundraising and recruitment. .
Many of the homemade insurgents are only loosely linked to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. In recent years, when violence by Islamic extremists on the African continent has reached a record high, the Islamic State has trumpeted these victories on the battlefield to give a strong image and inspire its supporters worldwide.
Recently, the Islamic State was recognized last week for a day-long riot in war-torn northern Mozambique, where militants with long ties to the terrorist organization were pursuing an important port city. According to the researchers, the attack killed dozens of people, including at least one South African and one British citizen, and spoke on the forums of the Islamic State about the establishment of a new caliphate.
“As an organization widens, ISIS hurts,” said Colin P. Clarke, an anti-terrorism analyst at the Soufan Group, a New York security advisory firm. “To improve morale among his supporters, his leadership wants to display regions that show the most promise in launching attacks and maintaining a robust operational pace.”
The siege of Palma, the city of Mozambique, was the most shameless attack to date by the local uprising and is part of a disturbing rise of brutal clashes involving militant Islamic extremists across the continent. According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a research institute of the US Department of Defense, violence related to the groups in 2020 worsened 43 percent in 2020, compared to 2019.
In recent days, tens of thousands of people fleeing the assault in Mozambique have arrived in neighboring provinces, describing scenes of devastating violence from the bloody trap.
Ricardo Elias Dário, who worked in the hospitable port town as a heavy equipment operator, he could hear the gunfire coming from his house of red clay. Within seconds, he grabbed his black leather jacket and jumped with a friend, Benefica Taou, to the nearby forest to take shelter.
But when they flee, his friend is fatally struck by a stray bullet, and he falls to the ground. Mr. Dário barely got it right.
“They shot everywhere, shot everyone, even the dogs,” he said. Dário (35) said in a telephone interview from Mozambique on Thursday. I just ran and thought, ‘Maybe I’ll survive, maybe I will not survive, but at least I’ll survive if I run. ”
U.S. military and anti-terrorism officials have been warning for more than a decade that Africa is ready to become the next frontier for international terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and more recently the Islamic State. In recent years, both organizations have formed alliances with local jihadist groups and established new strongholds in West, North and Central Africa from which they can carries out large-scale attacks according to experts and officials in the United States and Europe.
More recently, U.S. officials have warned that the Islamic State, even in its weakened state, remains a cohesive organization in its former strongholds in Iraq and Syria, with perhaps 10,000 fighters underground.
While battlefield reports and the coronavirus have dived into rumors of online propaganda and recruitment operations, the Islamic State still has a $ 100 million war chest and a worldwide network of cells outside the Middle East, from the Philippines to Afghanistan, according to the U.S. and United Nations counter-terrorism officials.
Iraqi security forces and their Western allies continue to hunt down the pockets of fighters. For more than two weeks in March, Iraqi security forces backed US and British warplanes carried out 312 airstrikes on Islamic State strongholds, in one of the largest operations against the insurgents since 2019.
Although political leaders in Europe and the United States are grappling with a new threat of domestic terrorism – from right-wing extremists and white supremacists – the fear of a suicide bombing in a Western city by a lone man inspired by the Islamic State is lurking ideology, just below the surface.
Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken and Foreign Ministers of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, a group of more than 80 countries, met virtually on March 30 to address the growing activity in areas that once was controlled by the fighters of the group.
“The threat remains,” the ministers said in a statement.
But as the Islamic State tried to retreat to the Middle East, it has sparked new ground in Africa, according to new analysts, where anger against corrupt governments and poorly equipped local security forces has given rise to armed groups.
Throughout the Sahel region, stretching from Senegal to Sudan, armed groups pushed into areas previously untouched by extremist violence. Along the coastline of the Indian Ocean in Somalia, militants linked to Al Qaeda have taken control of large parts of rural areas. And further south in Mozambique, an uprising with only a few dozen fighters escalated into a full-fledged war three years ago.
“None of these groups are extraordinarily powerful, it’s just that they have enough capacity to destabilize these fragile states that are unable to maintain a security presence,” said Joseph T. Siegle, research director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, said.
The Islamic State forged ties with many of these local insurgents in what analysts described as a marriage of convenience. For the militants, the Islamic State brand brings legitimacy and recognition from local governments that the homemade guerrilla movements have longed for. The Islamic State, in turn, was able to broadcast the attacks of the local attacks as proof that their global jihad is alive.
According to US and other Western terrorist officials, the number of attacks for which the Islamic State is recognized in Africa grew by more than a third between 2019 and 2020.
“At the moment, one of the most important dividends – if not the biggest benefit – is perception, the ability of ISIS to say, ‘Yes, we have lost our territory in Iraq and Syria, but look at our expansion in Africa.’ he said. Charlie Winter, co-founder of the conflict detection system ExTrac.
In some places, such as in northeastern Nigeria, the Islamic State exerts influence on its local branch, the Islamic State in West Africa, and provides it with training and funding, according to the International Crisis Group. But researchers believe the Islamic State maintains much looser ties with other militant groups such as the uprising in Mozambique, which is a largely homemade movement born out of local grievances.
For decades, impoverished residents have seen elites in the capital loot the resource-rich region of Cabo Delgado, along the Indian Ocean, which serves as a hub for illegal timber as well as smuggling of drugs and ivory.
In 2009, one of the world’s largest known ruby deposits in the province was discovered, and two years later, oil companies uncovered a deposit of ten billion dollars worth of natural gas. Speculators flocked to the area, locals were forced out of their land and some small-scale miners were beaten and killed.
By the time the budding uprising in 2017 launched its first attacks, targeting police stations and local government leaders, there was a huge appeal among retailers in the ports and disillusioned youths, local researchers say.
The violent repression of the Mozambican army, which was involved in serious ill-treatment of civilians, may also have helped the uprising gain more traction among the local population.
But in recent years, the nature of the war has changed. The militant group destroyed entire villages, displaced 670,000 people, killed at least 2,000 civilians and abducted many others, monitoring organizations said.
“People in Cabo Delgado have realized that this group is not a solution, it is destroying the local economy and has become very, very violent with the population,” said João Feijó, a researcher at the Observatory of Rural Areas. Mozambique Research Institute, said. . “The group is pretty isolated these days.”
Since the insurgency married to the Islamic State in 2019, the conflict has also attracted international attention. Last month, the United States formally designated the group as a global terrorist entity and imposed sanctions on its leader, identified by U.S. officials as Abu Yasir Hassan.
U.S. officials also sent a dozen Army Green Berets to train Mozambican marines for the next two months. Portuguese officials said they would soon send 60 troops to Mozambique, a former colony. A Mozambican military official said on Sunday that insurgents had been expelled from Palma.
But hundreds of thousands of Cabo Delgado displaced people live in limbo, relying on hospitality and humanitarian aid to survive. Others who migrated to the province for work related to the major gas project have returned after international energy companies halted operations.
“We were scared of the situation there, but there were jobs and we had families to feed us,” he said. Dário said.
After fleeing last month’s attack, he hid for days with dozens of people in the woods – surviving on raw maize and water from a swamp – before being evacuated by boat to Pemba, a town 155 miles south. has. Mr. Dário plans to return to Beira, a city in the south, and find work to support his wife and five children.
‘I have seen old people, young people, children die, pregnant women suffer. “Even if there is no work for me at home, I would rather stay there with my family,” said Mr. Dário said. “But never go back to Cabo Delgado, Palma.”
John Ismay contributed reports from Washington.