Daesh 2.0 threat from Africa: Is the world prepared?

The West appears in a hurry to dismiss Daesh, the brutal terrorist organisation that controlled large swathes of Syria and Iraq from 2014-2017, but there’s fresh trouble brewing from the group and its affiliates in Africa. Some weeks ago, the UAE had warned the UN of a resurgence of Daesh and the rapid spread of its ideology after a lull of five years.

What’s causing this revival of the group’s brand of terror from Africa? Answers are not hard to find. The pandemic has worsened economic conditions; food is in short supply, and with failed states on the rise, the dreaded terror group is sensing opportunities, and vacuums to fill by going local with specific plans for different regions.

The Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC) which tracks extremist and hate groups online, said Africa is the main area of Daesh’s expansion. Nigeria, in particular, is a major concern. “Abuja is surrounded on four sides - TRAC has been predicting a dire situation for a year, yet the group keeps expanding in Nigeria including the Federal Capital Territory,” said Veryan Khan, president and CEO of the Consortium.

She said some extremist ideologues and commanders had traveled from Syria to Marte, Borno State, Nigeria to advise Daesh. There is also heightened terror activity in Mali. “Something big is going to happen across Africa’s belt. And Daesh in Egypt is advancing on the Suez Canal - that should be a global concern,’’ she said.

Africa could be the ‘future of the caliphate’ if the world continues to look the other way, warned Martin Ewi of the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa’s capital Pretoria in a recent speech to the UN. He said 20 countries are “directly experiencing” the group’s activity. The modus operandi of the group is different from Iraq and Syria where mercenaries ran wild. Daesh now recruits at the grassroots in Africa as it reinvents itself. The messaging is in local languages and dialects which experts find hard to decipher. It is also frustrating for analysts because these are considered “low resource” languages in the sense that there are few translations, no online translation tools, and few grammar and sketches of the languages to reference, explained Veryan.

For example, the group released a recruitment video for Daesh Somalia (Abnaa ul-Calipha) that was narrated entirely in the majority language in Ethiopia, Amharic. While many Ethiopians may be bilingual in Arabic and Amharic, the video likely targets the transnational Amhara ethnolinguistic community which is largely centered in north-western Ethiopia but dips into eastern Sudan and southern Eritrea.

The killing of Abu Bakr Al Baghdad by US Special Forces in October 2019 in Iraq may have moved the concentration of activity to Africa. However, Iraq remains a weak link in the fight against the group as the political impasse in the country continues which is exacerbated by sectarianism and Iranian influence. The Global Coalition against Daesh which was formed in 2014, and comprising 85 countries, is now attempting to stabilize Iraq by resettling refugees uprooted by the terror outfit.