ISIS penetrates the heart of Africa with the ‘terrorist envelopment strategy’

Ahmed Sultan

In April 2019, late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi released a video in which he called on his supporters in Africa to continue reviving the organization after the fall of its territorial caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

Baghdadi, who was subsequently killed in a US military operation on the Syrian-Turkish border in late October 2019, had praised Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, the leader of ISIS operations in Africa’s Sahel and Sahara region, calling for a military and economic “war of attrition” against the organization’s enemies in Africa.

Baghdadi’s call was heard by the continent’s terrorists, who increased the frequency of terrorist operations during the second half of 2019 until the beginning of this year, despite the continuation of counterterrorism activities across the continent.

Terrorist envelopment strategy

The fall of ISIS’s territorial caliphate in Syria and Iraq posed a challenge for the terrorist organization, prompting it to transfer its greatest operational weight from the central organization to its branches, especially in Afghanistan and Africa. The ensuing months proved that the ISIS branches in Africa are the most dangerous.

ISIS fighters launched a series of coordinated attacks that they called “revenge for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Abu al-Hasan al-Muhajir,” which were followed by another series of attacks on military bases in Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali.

The terrorist organization seeks to envelop the African continent and establish its footing in the Great Lakes region and southern Africa, starting from Somalia, where there are hundreds of ISIS elements, especially in the Puntland region in the country’s northeast.

The African Union’s Peace and Security Council warned earlier of the danger of the “terrorist envelopment strategy,” explaining that there are 2,000-2,500 ISIS fighters trying to establish a presence in the Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes region, in addition to the presence of other fighters in the Sahel and Sahara regions.

The terrorist organization is exploiting the state of chaos and instability in African countries, seeking to spread throughout the continent and take it as a base for planning and carrying out attacks elsewhere, especially against European countries, and in particular France for its participation in counterterrorism operations in Africa.

ISIS’s goals of expanding in Africa

A previous study published in the magazine Qiraat African indicated that ISIS seeks to achieve several goals through its expansion in the Horn of Africa, foremost among which is the establishment of the “East African State”, which is expected to collect the organization’s cells dispersed throughout Somalia, Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Mozambique, along with new elements that the terrorist organization aims to attract.

ISIS is also seeking to expand its organizational spread in the region in order to restore its luster and take control of a large geographical area following its defeats in Syria and Iraq, in addition to strengthening its financial resources by trying to acquire the region’s wealth, including oil, smuggling operations and gold mines, allowing the organization to finance its elements and cells in different regions around the world.

In addition to the previous goals, ISIS also seeks to steal the limelight from the Somali terrorist Al-Shabaab movement, which comes in the context of the competition and conflict between al-Qaeda and ISIS in Africa for a number of years.

The rivalry between the two terrorist organizations rose to the surface after a number of the leaders of terrorist movements affiliated with al-Qaeda, including the Al-Shabaab and Al-Mourabitoun terrorist groups, announced their allegiance to ISIS, which has led to an unending conflict between supporters of ISIS and al-Qaeda since 2015.