Africa: Whack A Mole

AFRICA

Whack-a-Mole

Early this month, for the first time ever, the United States launched airstrikes against the Islamic State in Somalia.

A few days later, the United Nations issued a report saying that around 200 jihadists had joined the Islamic State in Puntland, a semi-independent region in the country. “Even a few hundred armed fighters could destabilize the whole region,” an unnamed diplomat told Reuters.

On Saturday, Nov. 11, an American drone killed a handful of terrorists from al-Shabab, an Al Qaeda-linked extremist group in Somalia, the Associated Press reported. In October, al-Shabab militants were responsible for a truck bombing in the Somali capital of Mogadishu that killed more than 350 people.

Meanwhile, terror in North and West Africa remains a major concern, too, among American officials who are still struggling over the deaths of four Green Berets in Niger last month, as well as local leaders who lack the resources to confront jihadism alone.

Militants who called themselves Islamic State Greater Sahara were responsible for the killings, Newsweek wrote.

“The big challenge is the instability in Libya,” Kalla Moutari, Niger’s minister of defense, told the Washington Post. “Fighters and weapons from Libya continue to come to this part of the world because there are no controls over there.”

It was not supposed to be this way.

Almost a year ago, Foreign Policy argued that the Islamic State was on the ropes in Africa. Al Qaeda, meanwhile, was securing its place on the continent. But Al Qaeda was a weaker organization that didn’t control much of Iraq and Syria. If Al Qaeda was bearing out the Islamic State, one could argue that was a welcome result of a divide-and-conquer strategy.

But now – as the Islamic State has collapsed in most of Iraq and Syria – the terrorists have metastasized again in Africa, explainedUSA Today.

The Cipher Brief, an international news outlet devoted to security intelligence, cited “the lack of strong central governance in many countries” as providing fertile ground for Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a Mali-based terrorist organization.

“With these governments unable to hold territory or provide basic social services to many in need, AQIM has been able hunker down in ungoverned spaces,” the website wrote.

Clearly the same could be said for Somalia and Libya – countries where years of civil war have flared in failed states.

As the US bombs East Africa, France is corralling an international army in West Africa to combat terror. The question is whether those efforts are treating the symptom or cause of these developments.

Terror, like nature, abhors a vacuum. The global community might need to consider how to fill Africa’s empty spaces in the long-term.