A front-page article in The New York Times last week, “Jihadists Widen Their Networks in North Africa,” stands in the sharpest contrast with President Obama’s regular reassurances that his policy for addressing terrorism around the globe is working.
The article refers to French efforts in the Sahara “to cut smuggling routes used by jihadists who have turned this inhospitable terrain into a sprawling security challenge for African and international forces alike.”
The report’s description of the scope of the groups’ activities is jarring:
Many of the extremist groups are affiliates of Al Qaeda, which has had its roots in North Africa since the 1990s. With the recent introduction of Isamic State franchises, the jihadist push has been marked by increasing, sometimes heated, competition.
But analysts and military officials say there is also a deepening collaboration among groups using modern communications and a sophisticated system of roving trainers to share military tactics, media strategies and ways of transferring money.
Their threat has grown as Libya – with its ungoverned spaces, oil, ports, and proximity to Europe and the Middle East – becomes a budding hub of operations for both Al Qaeda and the Islamic State to reach deeper into Africa.
And as Africa’s jihadists come under the wing of distant and more powerful patrons, officials fear that thy are extending their reach and stitching together their ambitions, turning once-local actors into pan-nation threats.
The report also quotes from the March congressional testimony of General David M. Rodriguez, who heads the United States Africa command. Gen. Rodriguez spoke of an “increasingly cohesive network of Al Qaeda affiliates and adherents…[that] continues to exploit Africa’s undergoverned regions and porous borders to train and conduct attacks….Terrorists with allegiances to multiple groups are expanding their collaboration in recruitment, financing, training and operations, both within Africa and transregionally.”
According to the article, “The transfer of expertise can be witnessed in the spread of suicide bombings in Libya, Tunisia and Chad and in the growing use of improvised explosive devices in Mali, analysts and officials pointed out.”
Ominously, the article also reports that “Today, despite French and American efforts to disrupt their networks, they still stretch across the [African] continent.”
In sum, despite President Obama’s confidence in his strategy, which he says will prevail in the long run, the world is on fire. Maybe the jihadists didn’t get the White House memo.