ISIS Is Waging a Deadly War Across Africa That Threatens US

Newsweek

a day ago

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Militant groups aligned with the Islamic State (ISIS) are ramping up violence across Africa, staging a growing number of attacks and expanding their influence in a way that could ultimately pose a threat far beyond the continent, including to the United States.
Over the past week, the jihadis' operations in both the Congo region and Sahel drew headlines as ISIS-affiliated forces claimed a deadly attack against a church in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Sunday and took responsibility for the killing of soldiers in Burkina Faso on Thursday.
Both incidents are part of a growing trend of ISIS-linked violence that analysts say exploits existing conflicts and capitalizes on deep-rooted insecurity to mount the kind of threat that makes combatting the group in Africa an especially complicated endeavor.
"What we're talking about there is a multi-year, prolonged period of investment that realistically the United States doesn't have the capacity to provide," one security expert who has briefed several government and military institutions on the threat posed by ISIS in Africa, told Newsweek. "It has to be provided by the governments in which those communities exist. And so, I think that that's the real challenge."
"What makes it complex is that you're dealing with local issues at the end of the day in order to address this larger problem," said the security expert, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak with the media.
"And if they're not addressed," the person added, "the risk is that it rises into something much larger that then presents a much greater threat on the global scene, so, a threat direct to the homeland of the United States, or to Europe or outside of Africa, just generally."
ISIS is expanding its presence across Africa, "from the Sahel to Somalia to the eastern Congo to Mozambique," and "becoming more lethal."
ISIS is expanding its presence across Africa, "from the Sahel to Somalia to the eastern Congo to Mozambique," and "becoming more lethal."The Spread of ISIS in Africa
While traditionally associated with the Middle East, ISIS' roots took hold in Africa even before late founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi first declared his self-styled "caliphate" upon seizing vast territories in Iraq and Syria in 2014.
A year earlier, militants in Libya, taking advantage of chaos in the wake of longtime leader Muammar el-Qaddafi's downfall at the hands of a NATO-backed rebellion, had begun to tie their ideology to what would soon become a global brand of Islamist violence. In 2017, an ISIS acolyte from Libya conducted the group's first Africa-origin attack in the West, killing 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.
That same year, ISIS' presence in Africa drew headlines when four U.S. soldiers and five Nigerien personnel were killed in an ambush staged by the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), also known as Islamic State Sahel Province (ISSP).
Today, ISIS counts a number of partner groups across the continent. They include ISGS, Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP), Islamic State Mozambique Province and Islamic State Somalia Province.
"Sadly, for several years now, Africa has been the frontline of the violence perpetrated by Islamist terrorists, including those affiliated with the so-called Islamic State," J. Peter Pham, former U.S. Special Envoy for the Great Lakes and Sahel Regions, told Newsweek.
"For three years now, an absolute majority of deaths due to terrorism globally have been in Africa, including roughly half of all terrorism-related fatalities in the world happening in just the Sahel region," he added. "While the threat level of the various IS affiliates varies, all of them from the Sahel to Somalia to the eastern Congo to Mozambique are becoming more lethal."
"Moreover," he added, "they are increasingly demonstrating capacity to hold large amounts of territory or, at the very least, deny governments the ability to function in many areas."
Thus far, ISIS franchises across Africa have largely operated in geographical isolation from another, curbing the level to which they can cooperate effectively.
But this may be changing.
The security expert with whom Newsweek spoke called the situation in the Sahel "a really combustible one" with the potential for ISIS' local affiliates to expand further into Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger and "pose a large enough threat to some of the criminal groups in Northwest Nigeria that maybe it pushes them out."
"Maybe it absorbs some of those groups, and now you have a space that's much more densely populated, larger economic activity, and Islamic State Greater Sahara might be able to carve out its own presence in that space," the person added. "I think that's a real risk right now."
An infographic with map of Western and Central Africa shows instances of political violence by ISIS-affiliated groups and the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), according to ACLED data for one...
An infographic with map of Western and Central Africa shows instances of political violence by ISIS-affiliated groups and the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM), according to ACLED data for one year up to June 6, 2025. More
IOANA PLESEA/VALENTINA BRESCHI/AFP/Getty Images
Wassim Nasr, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Center, echoed concerns over a potential connection being forged between ISIS' fronts in Sahel and West Africa, where the group has stepped up attacks in Nigeria.
Already, he said a "junction" between the two self-proclaimed ISIS provinces is being established, elevating the threat posed by the otherwise geographically isolated outposts of ISIS influence on the continent.
"This situation is not comparable with what happened in the Levant, but we should not underestimate neither the way for the ambition of the Islamic State to link territories, which they are doing in between Nigeria and the Sahel, nor the impact of that on their capacities," Nasr told Newsweek.
"They don't have it for now," Nasr said, "but they might have it tomorrow."
'The Epicenter of Jihad'
The situation in the Sahel presents an especially vexing landscape. With the three junta-led governments of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger having expelled U.S. and French forces in recent years and now focusing Russia-backed operations against Tuareg rebels, the primary challenger to ISIS in this front is another hardline Islamist group, the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Jama'at Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM).
"The paradoxical thing today is that it is the affiliate of Al-Qaeda that is stopping the attempt of Islamic State moving further south," Nasr said, "because local armies are not efficient."
Nasr first observed back in 2017 that "Africa is becoming the epicenter of global jihad." He outlined a complex of array of factors that have allowed the group to thrive in African nations where "you have failed states, you have corruption, you have unsustained borders, and most importantly, you have human rights abuses by local security and armed forces."
This combination of conditions risks threatening to set the stage for new attacks once the jihadis find sufficient footing to project their militant plans abroad, as they did from Libya in 2017.
"When they had a foothold in Libya, on the shores of the Mediterranean, they did not hesitate one second," Nasr said. "They have the will, and they have the ambition to do it, but they cannot because they do not have the means—yet. If they get the means, of course they will."
A vehicle allegedly belonging to the Islamic State West Africa Province is seen in Baga, in northeastern Nigeria's Borno province, on August 2, 2019.
A vehicle allegedly belonging to the Islamic State West Africa Province is seen in Baga, in northeastern Nigeria's Borno province, on August 2, 2019.
AUDU MARTE/AFP/Getty Images
Zacharias Pieri, an associate professor at the University of South Florida who has advised the U.S. and U.K. governments on security issues in Africa, also highlighted the centrality of Africa, and the Sahel, in particular, as it relates to ISIS activity.
"The area of the Sahel that intersects Mali and Burkina Faso has become a global epicenter of jihadist terrorism and continues to pose a severe threat," Pieri told Newsweek. "Jihadist terrorism in the region is broadly split between those groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda (eg. JNIM) and those affiliated to the Islamic State (eg. ISIS-Sahel)."
"AQ franchises tend to be a little more pragmatic while IS franchises tend to be more ideological," he added. "Both have proven lethal, both have made gains, and both are contributing to the rising death toll."
Armies of the Apocalypse
The war-ravaged region is just one of many instances in which ISIS has managed to seize on existing conflicts to forge inroads in the continent. Another example is playing out hundreds of miles away in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), a Ugandan group established in the late 1990s, swore allegiance to ISIS' Central African outfit in 2018.
It was this group that claimed responsibility for the slaying of nearly 40 people at a church in the eastern DRC, along with an earlier massacre against another church in February. Such anti-Christian operations, Nasr argued, demonstrated that the group once known as the ADF is now "applying the orders at the top of the Islamic State by the letter."
While ISIS has infamously made enemies of all who oppose its ultra-fundamentalist doctrine — including other Muslims — targeting Christians both serves the group's desire to inflame sectarian tensions and live up to the prophetic narratives upon which it was founded.
"ISIS affiliated groups have had a history of attacking Christians in DRC but also across other parts of Africa too, and it fits within their playbook," Pieri said. "It also forms part of their apocalyptic narrative about the armies of Islam having to fight against the armies of Rome (sometimes taken to mean Christians) in the end of times."
Caleb Weiss, senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, also observed how targeting Christians has played into the ideological leanings of ISIS' presence in the DRC.
"The group has in the past made mention of an 'economic war against Christians,' while more recently it has made a more concerted effort to convert local Christians to Islam, in addition to forcing others to pay the jizya [tax on non-Muslims]," Weiss told Newsweek.
He also pointed out that "the fact that it primarily combats, or more accurately, kills Christians, has been a main feature of propaganda and internal messaging," but felt that such language was most rooted in the reality that ISIS fighters in the DRC were "operating in an area that is overwhelmingly Christian."
Unlike in the majority-Muslim Middle East, where Christians constitute a minority in each country except for the predominantly Jewish state of Israel, Africa is divided near-evenly between Christians and Muslims. Home to more than quarter of the world's Christians, the highest portion among the continents, Africa also hosts around a third of the world's Muslims.
As in the case with the DRC, ISIS has not limited itself to operating in overwhelming Muslim areas, as it does in Nigeria.
"In Nigeria (as in the Sahel), ISWAP's area of operation is almost entirely in almost-entirely Muslim areas," Ryan O'Farrell, also a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, told Newsweek. "The group (and Islamic State's central propaganda apparatus, which publishes all official public-facing messaging) consistently emphasizes attacks on Christians and has in the past carried out attacks on churches."
"But given the relatively tiny portion of the population that is Christian in their areas of operation," he added, "I think these attacks are probably meant more to antagonize Christians elsewhere in Nigeria—and Christians around the world—than it is to spark religious conflict between Muslim and Christian communities in northeastern Nigeria itself where ISWAP primarily operates."
U.S. jets take off from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier to conduct strikes against ISIS-Somalia positions on February 1, 2025.
U.S. jets take off from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier to conduct strikes against ISIS-Somalia positions on February 1, 2025.
U.S. Africa Command Public Affairs
Threat to Homeland
A number of U.S. officials have come to recognize the threat posed by ISIS and other Islamist militant groups in Africa.
"Left unchecked, they will have a direct threat on the homeland," U.S. African Command (AFRICOM) commander General Michael Langley said in response to a senator's question on the issue during an April testimony referred to Newsweek by AFRICOM.
Yet even as President Donald Trump's administration has entered into the diplomatic realm in ISIS-affected nations, brokering a peace deal between the DRC and neighboring Rwanda, the issue appears to receive comparatively less policy attention that other theaters.
"The problem is not that diplomatic, military, and intelligence professionals have not been tracking all of this," Pham, the former U.S. envoy, said. "The challenge has been that all too many armchair 'experts' who never get into the field—if they travel abroad at all—have are reluctant to acknowledge the problem."
He recalled supporting the campaign to have the DRC-based ADF designated as a terrorist organization during his time serving under the first Trump administration, only to "face a great deal of resistance from the inside-the-Beltway policy community," before the decision was ultimately made under President Joe Biden.
"I have not seen any regrets from some of the people who opined against the terrorist designation after what happened last weekend at the Catholic parish in Komanda," Pham said.
Now, he hoped that the U.S.-facilitated peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda would mark "an important first step in a process which, hopefully, will not only lead to peace and security for the two countries, but also permit attention to be focused on the real threat against both of them and their peoples."
"And, as Americans, we have our own strategic interests in that happening," Pham said. "It is not just a matter of the fighting terrorism, it is also about access to critical minerals that are needed for national security and economic growth, which can only be safely extracted and processed in partnership with African countries when there is security."
Even with the Trump administration stepping up strikes against ISIS in Somalia, others are more skeptical that the U.S., precisely because of its growing focus on Africa as geopolitical arena to compete for resources, would be the force needed to provide solutions.
"U.S. foreign policy has witnessed a significant shift from counterterrorism to competition over resources which has allowed armed groups to take advantage of the situation by spreading into locations beyond America's primary airstrikes," Confidence MacHarry, security analyst at the Lagos-based SB Morgan Intelligence, told Newsweek.
"This competition over resources will expose America's vulnerability," MacHarry said, "especially if American economic interests come under attack from ISIS-affiliates in not only Eastern DRC but beyond."
He argued that the U.S. setbacks and the escalation in ISIS operations may ultimately push African nations to work together
"This gives an opportunity for African states to appreciate the depth of the threat posed by these groups," MacHarry said, "and improve regional collaboration in facing them as history shows that sustained regional pressure goes a long way in improving outcomes."