Africa's 'Second' World War Is Not Winding Down Anytime Soon

Memri

2 days ago

The First and Second Congo Wars, waged between 1996 and 1997 and then 1998 and 2003 were so bloody and far-reaching that they drew in the armed forces of at least eight separate African countries plus many rebel groups. They have been dubbed "Africa's World War" because of the number of regional belligerents and the sheer destructiveness of the conflict. Millions died and millions more were displaced and made destitute. But despite the carnage, this was a war contained and fought within the boundaries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC); the foreign armies were not fighting each other elsewhere.
There is another world war waging in Africa today, not quite as bloody as the Second Congo War but much more widespread, raging from Mali in West Africa to Mozambique in Southern Africa. This is the war being waged by Salafi Jihadist terror groups in at least seven main fronts – Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, DRC, Somalia, and Mozambique. This Jihadist war has so far also spilled over into terrorist attacks in at least eight other countries – Benin, Togo, Chad, Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
A second brutal African conflict, in Sudan, is the world's worst humanitarian crisis and threatens to spread to neighboring states. It is not a Jihadist insurgency but rather a civil war between rival branches of the security forces, former allies turned bitter adversaries and supported by different regional powers.
The Jihadist Second World War has foreign roots. Most of the Jihadist insurgents have sworn public loyalty to foreign Arab Muslim entities, to either Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. Two of the principal leaders of the Jihadist insurgency in West Africa, JNIM's Iyad Ag Ghaly and Amadou Koufa, were "radicalized" by foreigners, reportedly by itinerant Pakistani Tablighi Jamaat preachers. When I worked in the State Department a decade ago, Niger's interior minister told me about the problem of foreign preachers, flush with Qatari or Saudi money, appearing and telling Africans that "your Islam, the one you have practiced for the past thousand years, is all wrong."
But despite the foreign connections, these Jihadist wars are nothing if not local, relying on local realities and grievances, following local fissures. These insurgencies build upon not only criminal networks – smugglers, cattle rustlers, illicit gold miners, and bandits – but also tribal and ethnic connections. In West Africa, the wars often follow the paths forged by Fulani (or Fula) pastoralists, peoples already in conflict with farmers (Christian, Muslim, and animist) and governments.
Fulani are found from Senegal in West Africa to Sudan in East Africa and form important populations in a dozen countries, including some of the worst hit by Jihadist violence: Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger. Also "local" is the reality that in many of these countries rival Jihadist groups – usually Al-Qaeda-aligned versus Islamic State-aligned – continue to fight each other in a bloody, continuing situation that actually somewhat blunts these groups' effectiveness against the state.
Islamic State official propaganda boasting of attacks on the "Al-Qaeda militia"
But while the conflict is similar from West Africa to East and South, with Jihadist insurgents challenging government security forces and targeting civilian populations, not all of these conflicts are the same. All are dangerous, all are challenges to the state, all are aggressive and ambitious and try to spread, but not all of them have the same prospects for long-term success.
Of the seven main fronts I have mentioned, the Jihadists are mostly contained in specific regions in three countries – Niger, DRC, and Mozambique. Muslims, from where the insurgents draw their recruits, are a small percentage of the population in the DRC and only slightly larger in Mozambique. And while Niger is a Muslim majority country (98 percent), the Jihadist insurgency so far is limited to the country's far southwest (both Al-Qaeda and Islamic State branches) and far southeast (Boko Haram).
It is in Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Somalia that the core Jihadist insurgency is most potent and dangerous. No one expects that Boko Haram (or the larger phenomenon of Fulani herders/terrorists preying on mostly Christian farmers) will ever overthrow the state in Nigeria, but the insurgency, instability, and violence that is generated can certainly help to destabilize Africa's most populous country.
In Mali, Burkina Faso, and Somalia, the goal is definitely to overthrow the state and that possibility cannot be discounted. Al-Shabab in Somalia has made something of a resurgence in recent years, controls considerable territory and dreams of becoming a force again inside the country's capital. That is not impossible but probably unlikely as the Somali National Army is backed up by African Union (AU) Forces, Turkey, and American drone strikes.
So, then Mali and Burkina Faso present the most tempting, promising targets for Jihadist victory where it is conceivable that they could – at least temporarily – be able to seize the state and take its capital. The security situation has been palpably deteriorating in both countries in recent months. Mali, where Jihadists compete with each other, with Tuareg nationalists and with the Russian-backed regime in Bamako, may be too complicated, too difficult of an objective.
Burkina Faso looks much more at risk, with about half of the countryside already dominated by Jihadists. It is already the "most terrorist-affected country in the world," a dubious distinction, according to the 2024 Global Terrorism Index. A quarter of all deaths caused by terrorists worldwide were in Burkina Faso.
"Sheikh Mujahid" Iyad Ag Ghaly as seen in JNIM's official propaganda outlet Az-Zallaqa.
Here it is JNIM, the local al-Qaeda branch, that is most likely to succeed. Jima'a Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (the "Support Group for Islam and Muslims," JNIM) is currently by far the most capable, best-armed, and best-led of all of the rival Jihadist groups in Africa (Al-Shabab and Boko Haram would come second). The group's leaders, the wily veteran Tuareg tribal aristocrat Iyad Ag Ghaly and deputy commander Amadou Koufa, a charismatic ethnic Fulani preacher, were both denounced by the Islamic State as "apostates" for their political flexibility. This seeming pragmatism (and willingness to talk to "unbeliever" media and regimes) is as dangerous as their use of violence. JNIM represents a strategic evolution away from the brutal Algerian dominated days of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) to a broader and looser African alliance, currently led by Malians.
The 64-year-old Fulani preacher and JNIM deputy Amadou Koufa
Led by Ag Ghaly, dubbed "the strategist," JNIM even avoids using the name of Al-Qaeda. "Support Group [Nusra Group] for Islam and the Muslims" harkens to the original name of what became Syria's new Islamist rulers – the Nusra Front (later called Hay'at Tahrir Al-Sham, (HTS)). Like Abu Muhammad Al-Joulani's Syrian organization, JNIM seems increasingly distant from Al-Qaeda. Inspired by the Qatari-supported examples of the "independent" Jihadist Taliban in Afghanistan and HTS in Syria – different (more national than regional) organizations and very different situations on the ground – JNIM seeks to follow its own ambitious regional path to power.
On the surface, it still seems very implausible that JNIM could actually take landlocked Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou, a city of over two million people. Yet the inhabitants of Kabul, Mosul, Raqqa, and Damascus once thought the same thing. However, JNIM does not even need to take the city but rather isolate it from the surrounding countryside. And it would be far more difficult to administer such a large urban population than to seize it. Much will depend on the ability of the beleaguered government of Burkina Faso to retake and hold territory lost to JNIM.
Burkina Faso's interim president 37-year-old Ibrahim Traore faces a major security challenge
The group could also bypass the city and country altogether in its remorseless southern march to the sea and toward the threatened Christian-majority cities and countries on the coast of West Africa. The JNIM-controlled rural regions of Burkina Faso already function as a kind of hub or safe haven for strikes into Benin, Togo, and other littoral states. JNIM's extensive use of swarms of fighters on motorcycles, in addition to the ubiquitous Toyota Hilux, gives them great mobility.
Regardless of JNIM's immediate successes or failures in the coming months, the larger phenomenon of Jihadist pressure against fragile or failed states across a vast swathe of Africa will continue.
*Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of MEMRI.