Attacks Between ISIS, Al-Qaeda Affiliates Exacerbate Threat To Millions


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Security Deteriorating In West Africa As Terror Groups End Alliance

Attacks Between ISIS, Al-Qaeda Affiliates Exacerbate Threat To Millions

(New York, N.Y.) – Recent attacks by Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen
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and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara—local affiliates of al-Qaeda and
ISIS—against one another is punctuating a security breakdown in West Africa, a
region already challenged by ongoing violence. Extremists had held a loose
alliance to fight Western-backed governments across the Sahel, but that has
broken in recent months under the weight of the French-led and American-backed
military campaign to eliminate the terror threat.

In May 2020, ISIS fighters detonated a truck bomb in the border region between
Mali and Burkina Faso. Unlike similar previous attacks—where ISIS fighters
targeted soldiers and villagers—this attack targeted al-Qaeda militants. The
explosion set off a series of al-Qaeda reprisal attacks against ISIS, and both
camps disseminated statements and sermons threatening and denouncing the other
jihadist entity as “apostates.” In its May 7 issue of Al-Naba, ISIS declared
that al-Qaeda had started a “war” against ISIS in West Africa. ISIS criticized
JNIM’s leadership as undermining the jihad in favor of negotiating with the
Malian government. JNIM sought to diffuse the tension by releasing
booklets—indirectly targeted at ISIS sympathizers who are skeptical of JNIM’s
motives—by calling for unity among all jihadists. On May 28, ISIS spokesman Abu
Hamza al-Qurashi asserted that ISIS will actively retaliate against al-Qaeda in
Africa due to violence allegedly instigated by the jihadist camp. U.S.
officials tallied almost 1,000 attacks across Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger in
the year ending on March 31.

More than one million people in the region have fled their homes due to the
worsening violence. The majority are inBurkina Faso
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Nationssays
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is home to one of the “fastest-growing humanitarian crises in Africa.”
According toU.S. government estimates
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, more than 920,000 people are now internally displaced within the country.

In Mali <[link removed]>, which has been
operating under a state of emergency since November 2015, rising ethnic and
jihadist-backed violence has the country poised to quickly surpass the total
number of civilians killed in all of last year. In 2019, more than 456 were
reportedly
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killed and hundreds more wounded. A tally ofU.N.
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Malian civilians were killed in the first five months of 2020.

To read CEP’s Burkina Faso resource, please click here
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To read CEP’s Mali resource, please click here
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