Day: June 29, 2021

WASHINGTON – The United States and its Western allies are being forced to confront a grim reality in Africa where years of work to blunt the spread of terrorism, whether inspired by al-Qaida, the Islamic State or local groups, has fallen short, and could soon be eclipsed by the need to focus on adversaries like China and Russia.

“Despite all of our best efforts this terrorism continues to spread,” the commander of U.S. forces in Africa, General Stephen Townsend, told a virtual defense forum Tuesday.

“The spread of terrorism has continued relatively unabated,” Townsend added, noting the fate of future efforts could depend on the U.S. Defense Department’s ongoing force posture review, which will determine whether his command will get more troops or resources or be asked to find ways to do more with less.

This is not the first time Townsend has called attention to Washington’s struggles to prevent the expansion of terrorist groups and ideologies across Africa.

The U.S. general sounded the alarm last year, telling lawmakers, “Western and international and African efforts there are not getting the job done … ISIS and al-Qaida are on the march.”

Around the same time, U.S. Africa Command began changing its language when talking about terror groups in Africa, speaking of “containing” rather than “degrading” them.

This past November, the Pentagon’s inspector general was equally blunt in its final report on U.S. counterterrorism operations in Africa, warning that key terror groups, like the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab in Somalia and various affiliates of the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS or IS, were maintaining their strength if not growing.

However, Townsend’s latest assessment comes just a day after the 83-member Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS announced its intent to form an Africa task force to push back against the terror group’s expansion on the continent.

It also comes as U.S. military leaders wait for the results of a force posture review, initiated by the administration of President Joe Biden, to determine how Washington can best allocate troops and resources as it focuses more on the dangers posed by the growing great power competition with China and Russia.

Earlier this month, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers he would not predict when the review would be complete, but he assured them that the focus “will be to make sure that whether it’s in Somalia or some other place in the world, that terrorists don’t have the ability to threaten our homeland.”

Somalia

Somalia-based al-Shabab, which boasts as many as 10,000 fighters, has been a particular concern.

Al-Shabab is “the world’s largest, best financed, most kinetically active arm of al-Qaida,” Townsend warned Tuesday, noting that, left alone, the group could eventually pose a risk not just to the region but to the United States itself.

And he warned efforts to contain the terror group were not helped by former President Donald Trump’s decision to pull all U.S. troops from the country this past December.

“There’s really no denying our fairly sudden repositioning out of Somalia earlier this year has introduced new layers of risk and complexity,” he said.

“The best way to engage with partners is side-by-side and face-to-face,” Townsend said. “We have limited opportunities to do that when we fly in and fly out to do training and advising.”

Concerns have only grown, with senior Somali military officials telling VOA additional U.S. restrictions on airstrikes in Somalia — there has not been a single U.S. airstrike since January 20 — have only further emboldened al-Shabab, an assessment supported by intelligence from United Nation member states.

US footprint

It remains to be seen how much that will change after the U.S. completes its force posture review, with top officials repeatedly stressing the need to confront China as the biggest “pacing challenge” while also emphasizing the existential threat posed by Russia’s military.

“We’ve given our recommendations to our civilian leaders and we’re waiting on them to make their judgments,” Townsend said.

Washington’s European allies, however, are hoping the U.S. at least finds a way to continue support for the Somali government.

“We are welcomed there and invited by the Somalian government,” Vice Admiral Hervé Bléjean, director-general of the European Union Military Staff, said Tuesday, speaking at the same virtual forum as Africa Command’s Townsend.

“The war is far from over and they need some help,” Bléjean said. “You can really feel the atmosphere of the insecurity there.”

Central African Republic

Bléjean and other European officials also see a need for the U.S. to stay involved beyond Somalia, especially in response to Russia, which has sent mercenaries from the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group to Libya and the Central African Republic.

“I was in Central African Republic last week. I saw Wagner … they are everywhere,” he said. “They bring nothing to the country except immediate security answers, maybe, at the price of committing a lot of … violations of human rights and atrocities.”

“[The Russians] are very happy that they are destabilizing [the situation],” Bléjean added.

The way forward

Other officials and experts worry that whether due to Russian mercenaries, climate change or terrorism, the threat from Africa is only poised to grow, and that it will be worse without help from Washington.

“We’re finding an enormous arc of instability,” said Portuguese Minister of National Defense João Gomes Cravinho. “As the U.S. shifts its focus to the Indo-Pacific, it is very important that through engagement with the European Union, the U.S. should remain a relevant partner.”

Former African security officials, like Samira Gaid, who served as a senior adviser to former Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire, also see a need for the U.S. to stay.

“The support provided by the U.S. is tangible … towards defeating the insurgency,” she said, expressing hope Washington might take on “more of a leadership role in the security sector among [Somalia’s] partners.”

Critics of the U.S. approach to counterterrorism in Africa, though, caution that terrorism and instability will just spread if Washington continues to engage in the same way it has for the past several years.

“The U.S. is losing the war,” said Jennifer Cafarella, research director at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

“We have marshaled a considerable effort over the last two decades against various [terror] elements,” she said, noting there have been short-term victories. “But all of this activity has not actually prevented these groups from adapting and evolving.”

Source: Voice of America

ABUJA, NIGERIA – A 13-minute-long video shows fighters from both factions chanting in solidarity. Soon afterward, the Boko Haram fighters pledge their support for the newly appointed Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) commander, known as “Khalifa Muslimai,” meaning, “The leader of all Muslims.”

A Nigerian military spokesperson was not immediately available to comment. But security expert Senator Iroegbu said a fusion of both groups could mean more lethal attacks.

“They now have the ability to consolidate their energy,” Iroegbu said. “There will be consolidation of leadership, resources, intelligence, which will be more difficult for the Nigerian state to deal with. When they had two factions, you could easily infiltrate an ability to work one against the other.”

Boko Haram and ISWAP have been clashing for control of territory for many years.

Boko Haram is known to hold larger bases in northeastern Nigeria’s Borno and Adamawa states.

In May, the group’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, reportedly blew up himself in order to avoid capture by ISWAP — although it must be noted that Shekau has been reported dead many times before.

Darlington Abdullahi, a retired high-ranking air force officer, said ISWAP will likely take control of more areas but said the rivalry between the groups is not over.

“They’re a more tested set because they’re coming from an environment where they’ve been at war with very strong nations,” Abdullahi said. “The battle between the two groups will still continue for a while but on the whole there’s more danger for the lives of people around generally.”

Abdullahi said government security forces must act without delay or there will be repercussions.

“At this stage is when all elements, all forces should be brought against them because they’re still trying to find their footing and trying to get other elements of Boko Haram into their fold,” Abdullahi said.

ISWAP is known for often targeting the military and easily recruiting civilians from communities. Experts fear that ISWAP’s reign will make the Islamist insurgency much more difficult to control and set back years of progress.

Source: Voice of America

HWANGE, ZIMBABWE – The African wild dog, or African painted dog, is one of the world’s most endangered mammals, with fewer than 7,000 remaining, mostly because of human-wildlife conflict.

Situated near Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe’s biggest wildlife sanctuary, the Painted Dog Conservation’s anti-poaching unit removes and collects more than 3,000 snares a year set up by poachers.

David Kuvawoga, operations manager at Painted Dog Conservation, says that saves a number of animal lives, especially the endangered painted dogs.

“Poachers themselves do not target painted dogs, they target prey for painted dogs, which is mainly kudu and impala. But when they set the snares, they set in tracks where kudus and impala move, and painted dogs who are looking for food move in the same tracks as they track food,” he said.

The anti-poaching unit is mainly made up of people from nearby villages who value wildlife, such as 27-year-old Belinda Ncube.

“Anti-poaching is important. I now know the importance of wildlife through anti-poaching. And we are saving animals, those animals which help us to get employed. Like now, I am employed. It’s also helping us to get tourists,” she said.

July Mhlanga, 53, is one of the artists benefiting from the snares collected from the bush by Painted Dog Conservation’s anti-poaching unit.

The artists turn the snares into crafts and sell them to zoos around the world.

“All my kids have gone to school through money I got from crafts-selling, instead of continuously asking money from others, which means there is an improvement of my life,” said Mhlanga.

Hillary Madzikanga is a former ecologist with the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority. He says Africa has less than 7,000 painted dogs, down from more than half a million at the turn of the century. He said people were receiving incentives to kill them because they were considered useless.

“Because of the informed position of science that we realized that they play a critical role in the environment, then persecution stopped. However, the decline had reached such [painted] dogs for the foreseeable future [and] will remain a low species population,” he said.

With intensified anti-poaching on the continent, Madzikanga says Africa should have a good number of painted dogs to keep the herbivore populations in check to ensure vegetation is not overgrazed.

Source: Voice of America