ISIS Regrouping, Posing Rising Threat in Africa, Says UN Counter-Terror Chief  

UN counter-terrorism chief Vladimir Voronkov says ISIS continues to be a significant threat in Africa. An AP report quoted Voronkov as warning that the  group had increased operations in Iraq and Syria as well as in Southeast Asia.

Voronkov who was briefing the P-5, said ISIS agenda and operations were particularly marked in West Africa and the Sahel region. Referring to the group by its Arabic name, he said that “Daesh affiliates continued to operate with increasingly more autonomy from the Daesh core,” adding that there was a risk “that a vast area of instability may emerge from Mali to the borders of Nigeria.”

Natalia Gherman, executive director of the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate said that UN statistics showed that Africa today accounted for “almost half of terrorist acts worldwide, with central Sahel accounting for about 25% of such attacks.”

UN experts say that despite the defeat of ISIS in Iraq in 2017 there are still an estimated 3,000-5,000 fighters in operation. According to an Africa News report, attacks in Iraq and Syria have intensified since last November.

ISIS also claimed responsibility for the largest-ever attack in Iran. According to Iranian state news IRNA at least 84 people were killed and 284 injured by explosions near the burial site of Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani last month. ISIS claimed the explosions were caused by two suicide bombers wearing explosive vests.          

On the positive side, the UN said in the AP report that ISIS’s inability to name a new leader after the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had hampered the group’s operations. Baghdadi who was killed in 2019 by a US military raid in northwest Syria, was considered the global leader of ISIS by all its followers. The other good news was that ISIS’ finances had fallen to “$10 million and $25 million, down from hundreds of millions a few years ago.”

The news was significant as in 2014 then Undersecretary For Terrorism And Financial Intelligence at the U.S. Department of the Treasury David Cohen stated that Washington had no “silver bullet” to stop the group’s finances and ISIS was probably “the best-funded terrorist organization we’ve confronted.”

On the issue of radicalisation, Interpol Secretary General Jürgen Stock said they were working closely with UN counter-terrorism officials on a project to help prevent that. In the Africa News report, Stock said Interpol’s focus was to “identify and prevent the exploitation for terrorist purposes of enablers such as encryption services, video distribution tools, and new propaganda platforms.”