According to a report published this week by the Pentagon’s Africa Center for Strategic Studies, terrorist activities carried out by Islamic extremists are on the rise in Africa, except for the Maghreb region.
Based on compiled statistics, the Congressionally-funded centre pointed out that “African militant Islamist groups have demonstrated a decade of nearly uninterrupted growth in violent activity, though the focus of this has shifted over time.”
During the 12 months preceding last June, the report noted a 31% increase in “violent events” perpetrated by extremists on the continent. A total of 4,161 terrorist incidents were recorded, constituting a six-fold increase since 2011.
Terrorist attacks, said the report, have escalated in four particular places: Somalia, the Lake Chad Basin, the western Sahel and Mozambique. A different trend is noted in the Maghreb region: “North Africa is the only theater that has seen a decline, continuing a trend since 2015,” it said.
Terrorist escalation in the Sahel was instigated by the coalition of Jama’at Nusrat al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). Their activity rose seven-fold to nearly 1,000 incidents since 2017.
Most incidents in the Sahel in 2020 occurred in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.
Extremist attacks in Mozambique rose seven-fold between 2018 to the end of June, with 306 attacks in twelve month during the last year of the study.
Activities by extremists also grew more lethal, with reported fatalities rising by 26% in one year (12,507 during the last year compared to 9,944 deaths the year before). Attacks have increasingly victimised civilians. Such attacks increased by 47% since June 2019.
Despite the campaign led by France as part of the G5 Sahel Joint Force, which includes Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger, the combined effort “is not yet capable of disrupting the growing terrorist footprint,” said a recent US State Department report.
Victories such as the killing of Abdelmalik Droukdel, former chief of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, have been described as purely tactical and do not reflect a reversal of the terrorist onslaught and its fallout on local populations. Nearly one million Africans have been displaced by extremist activities. Socioeconomic grievances are exploited by extremist groups for the purpose of recruitment and radicalisation.
“Employing asymmetric tactics and close coordination, these militant groups have amplified local grievances and intercommunal differences as a means of mobilising recruitment and fostering anti-government sentiments in marginalised communities, ” said the Africa Center for Strategic Studies’ report.