The Islamic State in Africa

The Emergence, Evolution, and Future of the Next Jihadist Battlefront

Jason Warner, Ryan Cummings, Héni Nsaibia, Ryan O'Farrell

• Publisher: Hurst Publishers
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781787383906
• eBook ISBN: 9781787387577
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In 2019, Islamic State lost its last remaining sliver of territory in Syria, and its Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed. These setbacks seemed to herald the Caliphate’s death knell, and many now forecast its imminent demise. Yet its affiliates endure, particularly in Africa: nearly all of Islamic State’s cells on the continent have reaffirmed their allegiance, attacks have continued in its name, many groups have been reinvigorated, and a new province has emerged. Why, in Africa, did the two major setbacks of 2019 have so little impact on support for Islamic State?

The Islamic State in Africa suggests that this puzzle can be explained by the emergence and evolution of Islamic State’s provinces in Africa, which it calls ‘sovereign subordinates’. By examining the rise and development of eight Islamic State ‘cells’, the authors show how, having pledged allegiance to IS Central, cells evolved mostly autonomously, using the IS brand as a means for accrual of power, but, in practice, receiving relatively little if any direction or material support from central command. Given this pattern, IS Central’s relative decline has had little impact on its African affiliates—who are likely to remain committed to the Caliphate’s cause for the foreseeable future.

1

INTRODUCTION

After a nearly four-year, multinational campaign to fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also ISIS/ISIL), on December 19, 2018, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, via Twitter, made a bold proclamation: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”¹ Later that same day, the message was issued again as the US president posted a video declaring that “we have won against ISIS.”² Also on the same day, the US president ordered the withdrawal of some 2,000 American troops from Syria,³ a decision that would ultimately lead to the resignation of both the US Secretary of Defense, Gen. (Ret.) James Mattis,⁴ and the US Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, Brett McGurk,⁵ in protest. Despite the president’s rhetoric of triumphalism, many worldwide, including some in his inner circle, remained skeptical about claims of victory. No such wholesale defeat of the Islamic State (IS) had actually yet occurred, they warned.⁶

Specious as they were, these initial claims about the apparent fall of the Islamic State gained some degree of credence by March 23, 2019. On that date, after months of fighting—under attack by suicide bombers, drone-dropped bombs, and improvised explosive devices (IEDs)—the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS finally liberated the last remaining tract of the Islamic State’s one-time caliphate: a one-and-a-half-mile stretch of land on the Syrian side of the Euphrates River, centered on a town called Baghouz.⁷ With that defeat, a second round of optimism emerged among certain observers who declared that the Islamic State had been defeated once again.⁸ As with similar proclamations, while many onlookers remained skeptical that the Islamic State had been defeated entirely, many agreed that, at the very least, the loss of Baghouz marked a serious—if not fatal—setback for the caliphate.⁹

For the Islamic State, already landless and battered in Iraq and Syria, its fortunes would decline even further months later. On October 26, 2019, global news networks hailed the announcement that its leader, or caliph, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was dead, having detonated a suicide vest when confronted by American military forces in a tunnel in the town of Barisha in northwestern Syria.¹⁰ The death of its ideologue and commander seemingly served as a profound blow to the Islamic State’s already declining fortunes.¹¹ A third round of doomsday predictions for the IS again began to circulate. While few observers went so far as to suggest that the IS threat was completely destroyed, many¹²—though not all¹³—did continue to at least acknowledge that things were looking ever bleaker for its diminished leadership, now in hiding in Iraq, which had once been its core territory.¹⁴

Yet, for its part, the Islamic State’s attitude in public after al-Baghdadi’s death was far from defeatist. On October 31, 2019—just days after al-Baghdadi’s death—through an audio recording released via the Telegram app, the Islamic State admonished: “Do not be happy America, for the death of Sheikh al-Baghdadi,” continuing later: “Don’t you see America, that the Islamic State is now on the threshold of Europe and Central Africa?”¹⁵

The Islamic State’s Presence in Africa

These IS Central claims of penetration into Central Africa by October 2019 were neither haphazardly offered nor mere hollow hyperbole. Since the Islamic State’s declaration of its caliphate in June 2014, across the African continent the transnational jihadi organization had quietly but swiftly built a network of numerous official provinces, official non-province affiliate groups, and unofficial supporters who conducted attacks, undertook varying degrees of territorial control and governance, and publicized many of their activities, all in the Islamic State’s name. Following an initial series of pledges of allegiance, or bayat, in 2014 from militants in Libya, Algeria, Egypt, and Tunisia, enthusiasm for the IS Central remained palpable in 2015, with more pledges of allegiance coming from militants in the Lake Chad Basin, and the Sahara. By 2016, a core of militants in Somalia had pledged allegiance, and, by spring 2019, so too had militants in both Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo. As allegiance to the Islamic State grew, so did the personnel size and scope of its affiliated groups’ activities on the African continent. Beginning as early as 2017, some observers began suggesting that “Africa is the new battleground for ISIS”¹⁶ and that the “fight against the Islamic State is moving to Africa.”¹⁷ Analysts around the world began to proffer group-, country-, and region-level analyses about the future of the Islamic State on the continent.¹⁸ Around the same time, other observers began to question if parts of Africa could serve as the Islamic State’s new “fallback.”¹⁹ The growing prominence of the IS presence in Africa was also becoming increasingly apparent: by mid-2018, the Islamic State enjoyed the collective loyalty of an estimated six thousand fighters on the African continent.²⁰ As IS fighter numbers grew, so too did the violence of groups acting in its name. By mid-2019, IS fighters in Africa were responsible for the deaths of more than twelve thousand people, according to the United Nations.²¹ By the end of 2019, in just that year alone, the IS-affiliated Nashir News Agency claimed that IS militants had conducted some 415 attacks across 13 of the 54 states on the African continent.²² Thus, on the eve of al-Baghdadi’s death in October 2019, the Islamic State boasted four official provinces (one each in Libya, Algeria, Egypt, and Somalia) plus two double-“winged” provinces, one in West Africa (encompassing the IS West Africa Province and its wing, the IS West Africa Province–Greater Sahara), and one in Central Africa (the IS Central Africa Province–Democratic Republic of Congo and the IS Central Africa Province–Mozambique).

And yet, after IS Central’s battering during its annus horribilis of 2019—the loss of Baghouz in March and the death of al-Baghdadi in October—its growing network of African provinces and non-province affiliates would presumably and justifiably have had a waning interest in being connected with an on-the-run and on-the-decline parent group. In reality this was not the case: for all the misfortunes that the IS Central suffered in its 2019, the effects of the parent group’s precipitous decline seemed to have scarcely registered among its official provinces and official non-province affiliate groups in Africa. In the aftermath of its first significant loss, the fall of its territorial caliphate with the capture of Baghouz in March 2019, its affiliate provinces across the African continent each re-pledged allegiance to the Islamic State as part of a video series called “And the Best Outcome Is for the Righteous.”²³ Rather than showing any signs of weakening loyalty, post-March 2019 the Islamic State’s provinces in West Africa and Sinai increased the tempo of their attacks undertaken in the name of the IS Central, while in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique, IS media releases began claiming attacks by its soldiers beginning in April²⁴ and June,²⁵ respectively, under the name of its new, sixth wilaya, or province, in Central Africa.

While the loss of Baghouz in March 2019 did not diminish the apparent en-thusiasm for the IS Central of its African affiliates, neither did the death of its caliph, al-Baghdadi, in October 2019. Within a week of his death, nearly every one of its official African affiliate provinces had released a video statement reaffirming their allegiance to the IS Central and the group’s new caliph, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.²⁶ Individually, its affiliate provinces continued their attacks under the IS Central’s name, with three of the African provinces—in West Africa, Somalia, and Sinai—even claiming their attacks as revenge for the death of al-Baghdadi.²⁷ As one commentator from Al Jazeera warned in November 2019, with the death of al-Baghdadi “ISIL is not dead, it just moved to Africa.”²⁸

Argument and Methodology

Lacking both the land and leadership that had once served as markers of its both revered and reviled brand, the IS Central might have been expected to continue to suffer a decline in 2019, with its satellite provinces, including in Africa, likely losing enthusiasm for its project. As we have shown, however, this was not the case. Thus, at the core of this book, we ask the following: how did the Islamic State’s African official provinces and non-province affiliate groups emerge and evolve, and why have these affiliates continued to show loyalty and strength—by re-pledging allegiance, continuing to conduct and publicize attacks in the Islamic State name, and developing new branches—even as the IS Central itself was in seeming decline following its annus horribilis of 2019?

Overview of Organization of Chapters and Key Claims

To answer these two distinct but interrelated questions—on trends of emergence and evolution of IS groups, on the one hand, and on rationales for their continued loyalty to a declining parent group, on the other—each chapter of this book takes as its focus one of nine IS organizations on the African continent, offering an in-depth investigation of the “life cycle” of each between its emergence and al-Baghdadi’s death in October 2019. These groups treated are the Libya Province (chapter 2), Algeria Province (chapter 3), Sinai Province (chapter 4), Tunisia group (chapter 5), West Africa Province (chapter 6), West Africa Province–Greater Sahara (chapter 7), Somalia (chapter 8), and Central Africa Province–DRC (chapter 9) and Central Africa Province–Mozambique (chapter 10).

To give analytical consistency and clarity to the book as a whole, each chapter is divided into three time periods: the pre-bayah period (pre-June 2014, when IS declared its caliphate); the bayah period (between June 2014 and the time when the African group in question pledged bayah); and the post-bayah period (between the time when each group’s bayah was accepted or acknowledged and that of al-Baghdadi’s death in October 2019). The decision to divide the chapters into these three periods stems from the theological importance of bayah as a binding connection between subordinate affiliate organizations and the leader of the Islamic State. Using this as a marker for periods in the life cycles of groups offers structural uniformity in presenting and analyzing the highly variable relationships between the Islamic State’s central leadership and all its affiliate organizations in Africa, while also serving as a transferable historical heuristic across the chapters.

Within each of these three temporal “life cycle” periods of African IS affiliate groups, and in all the chapters, we ask and seek to answer distinct questions. In the first, pre-bayah period, the main question is: considered in terms of local, on-the-ground dynamics, what made the IS Central, as a global entity, begin to look appealing to local African militant groups or individuals before they pledged bayah? In the second, bayah section, we ask: once a local African militant group deemed affiliation with the Islamic State an attractive option, what did the process of becoming a formal IS African province look like in practice? In the third, post-bayah period, we ask: upon receiving formal provincial or non-province affiliate status, how did these IS affiliate organizations evolve and, importantly, to what extent did their relationships with IS Central inform their evolution and activities?

As we argue in the book, the life cycle experiences of IS groups in Africa can be usefully captured through three new analytical lenses. Though we describe these terms, their meanings, and their applications more fully later, for now it bears stating that, in the pre-bayah period, the global emergence of the Islamic State served to facilitate what we call “the democratization of jihad” on the African continent, offering current or aspirant jihadist groups or leaders a new global pole of ideological and material power to which they might turn to establish or further their goals. Pledging allegiance thus became viewed as a new avenue for personal or group advancement. We next argue that in the bayah period, once African militant groups decided to seek to become formal provinces of the IS, all groups were forced to undergo a process of “affiliate utility validation.” Pledging groups had to prove their usefulness to the IS Central, with utility being a dynamic metric for the IS Central, which proved malleable over time. Finally, in the post-bayah period, as concerns the nature of impact that a formal IS provincial status gave to local groups, we suggest that the Islamic State’s African provinces should be thought of as existing as “sovereign subordinates,” or entities that, while ostensibly subordinate to the IS Central, generally received little direct or tangible material or operational benefit from their parent group; instead, they operated mostly autonomously, being informed more by their local politics and dynamics than directed or assisted from above. By aligning these new terms as organizing lenses around each of these temporal periods in the life cycle of IS groups in Africa, we find them to be useful as common organizing heuristics while also flexible enough to shed light on idiosyncrasies in the trajectories of individual affiliates.

Collectively, this series of observations about the life cycles of African IS groups—their rise through the “democratization of j...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Islamic State in Libya
• 3 The Islamic State in Algeria
• 4 The Islamic State in Sinai
• 5 The Islamic State in Tunisia
• 6 The Islamic State’s West Africa Province
• 7 The Islamic State’s West Africa Province—Greater Sahara
• 8 The Islamic State in Somalia
• 9 The Islamic State’s Central Africa Province—DRC
• 10 The Islamic State’s Central Africa Province—Mozambique
• 11 Conclusion
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover