U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Counter-Terrorism Vladimir Voronkov told the Security Council on Thursday that the Islamic State and its affiliates are gaining power in West Africa and the Sahel region. Voronkov said ISIS still wants to carry out terrorist attacks around the world.
Voronkov warned ISIS could soon take “effective control” over a “vast territory stretching from Mali to northern Nigeria” if current trends continue. ISIS and its allies are also gaining strength in parts of Mozambique, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The U.N. counterterrorism chief said the Islamic State has become increasingly decentralized and flexible, enabling it to take advantage of the “complex” political situation in Africa’s Sahel region, where legitimate governments have been overthrown by juntas and ethnic warfare creates constant instability.
“They are exploiting the political instability and expanding their radius of influence, their operations and territorial control in the Sahel, with growing concerns for coastal West Africa,” U.N. counter-terrorism committee director Natalia Gherman told the Security Council.
“The African continent now accounts for almost half of terrorist acts worldwide, with central Sahel accounting for about 25% of such attacks,” she reported.
Gherman said ISIS is growing more comfortable with using sophisticated technology like drones, cryptocurrency, and 3D printing. She said one of her committee’s top priorities is working with national governments and Interpol to defend against ISIS on the Internet.
Interpol Secretary-General Jurgen Stock told the U.N. Security Council that his organization is examining the “interactions between terrorist groups and criminal organizations,” such as cocaine smuggling operations running through the ISIS-haunted Sahel region.
Stock said there are numerous examples in which the “interests and operations” of terrorists and criminal gangs “converge to benefit both sides.”
Voronkov also warned the Islamic State’s operation in Afghanistan, known as ISIS-K, has “improved its financial and logistical capabilities” over the past six months, and is recruiting more fighters.
ISIS-K still poses a real threat to the equally odious Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, but Voronkov said the Taliban has been able to reduce “the ability of the Daesh affiliate to conduct attacks inside the country.” Daesh is another name for the Islamic State.
“We must unite to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a hotbed of terrorism,” Voronkov said.
U.N. representatives from Mozambique, Algeria, and Sierra Leone agreed that their region has become the “new epicenter of terrorism,” as Sierra Leone’s envoy put it. Algeria called for the U.N. to provide more funding to the African Union to counter the growing influence of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and other terrorist organizations.
China and Russia are members of the Security Council, so they had a chance to weigh in as well. China snarled that counter-terrorism should not be used as a “pretext for interfering in other countries’ internal affairs,” while Russia claimed “double standards” on human rights are “now the calling card of Western countries.”
The Russians claimed terrorism is flourishing in areas like Syria that are “illegally occupied by the United States military,” and the terrorists are stealing Syrian oil to finance their endeavors. The Russians unsurprisingly insisted that Ukraine should be added to the roster of international terrorist organizations, portraying Ukraine’s remarkably successful military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region as a terrorist attack.