Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari warned this week that Africa is fast becoming the world’s new epicenter of Islamic terrorism, Voice of America (VOA) reported Tuesday.
The global “war on terror” is increasingly shifting to “a new frontline in Africa,” VOA relayed, citing an August 15 op-ed by Buhari published by the Financial Times in which the Nigerian leader detailed the growing dangers posed by jihadist terror groups on the African continent.
Buhari mentioned several Islamist terror organizations based in Africa, noting that most had increased deadly attacks over the past year. African affiliates of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other Islamist terror groups have targeted civilians and government forces across Africa in recent months, ramping up an established campaign of jihad. The offensive extends from the Sahel, which is a geographic region running east-to-west across central Africa just below the Sahara desert, to eastern nations such as Somalia and Mozambique.
Soldiers gesture while standing on guard during Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to the Maimalari Barracks in Maiduguri on June 17, 2021. (Photo by Audu Marte / AFP) (Photo by AUDU MARTE/AFP via Getty Images)
Nigerian Army soldiers stand at a base in Baga on August 2, 2019. – Intense fighting between a regional force and the Islamic State group in West Africa (ISWAP) has resulted in dozens of deaths, including at least 25 soldiers and more than 40 jihadists, in northeastern Nigeria. ISWAP broke away from Boko Haram in 2016 in part due to its rejection of indiscriminate attacks on civilians. Last year the group witnessed a reported takeover by more hardline fighters who sidelined its leader and executed his deputy. The IS-affiliate has since July 2018 ratcheted up a campaign of attacks against military targets. (Photo by AUDU MARTE / AFP) (Photo credit should read AUDU MARTE/AFP via Getty Images)
Nigerien officials stand near the car belonging to French aid group ACTED in the Kouré Reserve, about 60 km from Niamey, on August 21, 2020, at the scene where six French aid workers, their local guide and the driver were killed by unidentified gunmen riding motorcycles on August 9, 2020. (Photo by Boureima HAMA / AFP) (Photo by BOUREIMA HAMA/AFP via Getty Images)
Men carry the bodies during a burial prayer held in Ngala, on December 15, 2019, of the 19 cattle herders that were gunned down by Boko Haram jihadists outside the Fuhe village, near Ngala, on December 14, 2019. – Boko Haram jihadists gunned down 19 cattle herders on December 14, 2019, in northeast Nigeria.
Ethnic Fulani herders, besieged by a spate of armed attacks targeting their cattle, pursued Boko Haram, sparking a fierce gunfight outside Fuhe village, near Ngala close to the border with Cameroon. (Photo by AUDU MARTE / AFP) (Photo by AUDU MARTE/AFP via Getty Images)
“Nigeria and Somalia are the countries most affected by terrorism in Africa in terms of attacks and life losses,” according to a November 2020 report by Statista.
“Between 2007 and 2019, Nigeria recorded 4,383 terrorist attacks, while Somalia counted 1,923. Several militant groups are active in Nigeria, with Boko Haram being the deadliest terrorist group,” the database found. Boko Haram is an ISIS affiliate.
“In Somalia, the militant group of Al-Shabaab, also a jihadist fundamentalist group, is responsible for a very large part of all terrorist attacks carried out in the country. Despite counter-terrorism efforts, Al-Shabaab retains control over 20 percent of the country,” according to Statista.
Buhari in his August 15 op-ed noted “recent attacks in Cabo Delgado in northern Mozambique.” He referred to terror attacks across Mozambique’s eastern Cabo Delgado province — the site of Africa’s largest liquefied natural gas projects — over the past year.
A Mozambican affiliate of ISIS known locally as Shabaab, or “the youth” in Arabic, claimed responsibility for a deadly siege of Palma from March 24-29. Palma was a Cabo Delgado resort town that served as the home base for foreign workers employed by the French company Total, which ran a natural gas processing plant just south of the town. The siege of Palma “resulted in the deaths of 55 Mozambican forces and Christians including contractors from outside the country,” the Islamic State revealed through its online propaganda outlet, the Amaq News Agency, on March 29.
The Islamic State’s Central Africa Province (ISCAP) seemingly conferred membership to Mozambique’s Shabaab group in 2019 when it named the group “Ahl al-Sunnah wa al Jamma’ah (ASWJ).”
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