IS, al-Qaeda threat intense in Africa, with growing risks in Syria: UN experts

United Nations: The threat from Islamic State and al-Qaeda extremists and their affiliates is most intense in parts of Africa, and risks are growing in Syria, which both groups view as “a strategic base for external operations,” UN experts said in a new report.

Their report to the UN Security Council circulated Wednesday said West Africa’s al-Qaeda-linked Jama’at Nasr al-Islam

wal-Muslimin group, known as JNIM, and East Africa’s al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab have continued to increase the territory under their control.

The experts monitoring sanctions against the two groups said “the organisation’s pivot towards parts of Africa continued” partly because of Islamic State losses in the Middle East due to counterterrorism pressures.

There are also “increasing concerns about foreign terrorist fighters returning to Central Asia and Afghanistan, aiming to undermine regional security,” they said.

The Islamic State also continues to represent “the most significant threat” to Europe and the Americas, the experts said, often by individuals radicalised via social media and encrypted messaging platforms by its Afghanistan-based Khorasan group.

In the United States, the experts said several alleged terrorist attack plots were “largely motivated by the Gaza and Israel conflict,” or by individuals radicalised by IS, also known as ISIL.

They pointed to an American who pledged support to IS and drove into a crowd in New Orleans on January 1, killing 14 people in the deadliest attack by al-Qaeda or the Islamic State in the US since 2016.

In addition, they said, “Authorities disrupted attacks, including an ISIL-inspired plot to conduct a mass shooting at a military base in Michigan,” and the IS Khorasan affiliate issued warnings of plots targeting Americans.

In Africa’s Sahel region, the experts said, JNIM expanded its area of operations, operating “with relative freedom” in northern Mali and most of Burkina Faso.