Islam - Africa > Muslim Jihad doubles territory in Mali in One year; Shabaab Terrorizing Kenya; African Gov'ts Deny Jihadist Elephant in the Room

 

Islamic State group nearly doubled its Mali territory

in under a year, UN says

Islamic State extremists have almost doubled the territory they control in Mali in less than a year, and their al-Qaida-linked rivals are capitalizing on the deadlock and perceived weakness of armed groups that signed a 2015 peace agreement, United Nations experts said in a new report.

Issued on: 26/08/2023 - 11:18Modified: 26/08/2023 - 11:22

2 min

File photo: Malian women look on in Gao, December 4, 2021. © Thomas Coex, AFP

By:NEWS WIRES

The stalled implementation of the peace deal and sustained attacks on communities have offered the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates a chance “to re-enact the 2012 scenario,” they said.

That’s when a military coup took place in March and rebels in the north formed an Islamic state two months later. The extremist rebels were forced from power in the north with the help of a French-led military operation, but they moved from the arid north to more populated central Mali in 2015 and remain active.

The panel of experts said in the report that the impasse in implementing the agreement — especially the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of combatants into society — is empowering al-Qaida-linked Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin known as JNIM to vie for leadership in northern Mali.

Sustained violence and attacks mostly by IS fighters in the Greater Sahara have also made the signatories to the peace deal “appear to be weak and unreliable security providers” for communities targeted by the extremists, the experts said.

JNIM is taking advantage of this weakening “and is now positioning itself as the sole actor capable of protecting populations against Islamic State in the Greater Sahara," they said.

The panel added that Mali’s military rulers are watching the confrontation between the IS group and al-Qaida affiliates from a distance.

The experts cited some sources as saying the government believes that over time the confrontation in the north will benefit Malian authorities, but other sources believe time favors the terrorists “whose military capacities and community penetration grow each day.”

In June, Mali's junta ordered the U.N. peacekeeping force and its 15,000 international troops to leave after a decade of working on stemming the jihadi insurgency The Security Council terminated the mission’s mandate on June 30.

The panel said the armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement expressed concern that the peace deal could potentially fall apart without U.N. mediation, “thereby exposing the northern regions to the risk of another uprising.”

The U.N. force, or MINUSMA, “played a crucial role” in facilitating talks between the parties, monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the agreement, and investigating alleged violations, the panel said.

The 104-page report painted a grim picture of other turmoil and abuses in the country.

The panel said terrorist groups, armed groups that signed the 2015 agreement, and transnational organized crime rings are competing for control over trade and trafficking routes transiting through the northern regions of Gao and Kidal.

“Mali remains a hotspot for drug trafficking in West Africa and between coastal countries in the Gulf of Guinea and North Africa, in both directions,” the experts said, adding that many of the main drug dealers are reported to be based in the capital Bamako.

The panel said it remains particularly concerned with persistent conflict-related sexual violence in the eastern Menaka and central Mopti regions, “especially those involving the foreign security partners of the Malian Armed Force” – the Wagner Group.

“The panel believes that violence against women, and other forms of grave abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law are being used, specifically by the foreign security partners, to spread terror among populations,” the report said.

(AP)

Kenya: Muslims slit throats of two truck drivers,

torch eight houses and a church

AUG 29, 2023 11:00 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

“When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4)

Two killed in latest Shabaab attack in Lamu

by Kalume Kazungu, Nation.Africa, August 22, 2023 

A lorry driver and his co-driver were killed on Tuesday morning following an ambush by suspected al-Shabaab militants near Lango La Simba area on the Lamu-Witu-Garsen road.

Lamu West Deputy County Commissioner Gabriel Kioni said the vehicle was waylaid by the heavily armed militants between 6.30am and 7am.

After stopping them, the attackers slit their throats, killing them on the spot.

Mr Kioni said the terrorists had earlier torched eight houses and a church at Salama village in Lamu West at night.

The militants, believed to be between 30 and 60, raided the villages between 8.30 pm and 11pm on Monday night and stole household items including television sets, solar panels, lamps, maize flour and goats….

Salama Redeemed Gospel Church Pastor Peter Muthengi said, “I had speakers, chairs and many other items inside my church, all of which have been reduced to ashes. I lost property worth Sh300,000 (About $2,000 USD). I appeal to the government to find a permanent solution to the insecurity incidents in this place. We’re tired of these recurrent attacks.”

This is a rare report of jihadist terror from Kenya, but obviously, they are a lot more numerous than we are hearing about.  It also appears that these jihadists support themselves and their cause by stealing what they need.

Governments blame Africa massacres on economic factors,

but ‘victims were Christians, targeted for that reason’

AUG 29, 2023 4:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER

The governmental and media elites in the West have decided there is no jihad. Meanwhile, the jihad advances, particularly in Africa.

Report: Islamist Massacres of Christians a ‘Regular Occurrence’ in Sub-Saharan Africa

by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, August 26, 2023:

The slaughter of Christians has become a regular occurrence in sub-Saharan Africa, the Barnabas Fund reports on Saturday, and the “cause is Islamism.”

Hotspots of Islamic terrorist activity include the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), northern Mozambique, and northern and Middle Belt Nigeria, the Christian aid and persecution watchdog group asserts, and the perpetrators “are not just rebels or militants, but jihadists.”

The report notes that Islamic terrorists from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) are affiliated with the Islamic State and together with Islamic State Mozambique, they form the Islamic State Central Africa Province.

The violence in Nigeria and across West Africa “is carried out by the Islamic State West Africa Province, jihadi group Boko Haram, and other Islamist extremists,” the document states.

Terrorist groups affiliated with the Islamic State or al-Qaeda “have proliferated across sub-Saharan Africa,” the group observes, leading some observers to make “sobering predictions of an African caliphate stretching from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean.”

Many secular governments and international bodies have condemned violence such as the recent atrocious massacre of Christian schoolchildren in Uganda but downplay the vital religious element in these attacks.

Massacres like that in Uganda are often blamed on “economic downturns, marginalization and lack of opportunity, corrupt or authoritarian government, or environmental problems that reduce the supply of arable and pastoral land,” but the simple fact is: “the victims were Christians who were targeted for that very reason,” the report points out….

For its part, the Islamic State has called its slaughter of Christians and the burning of church buildings across Africa a “Harvest of African Christians.”