Islamic State in the Greater Sahara

Elsewhere in the region, fighting between Islamic State and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants is intensifying across the Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger border area.

On October 12, channels associated with the Islamic State's Sahel province claimed to have launched a recent large-scale offensive against positions held by the rival Islamist group and al-Qaeda affiliate Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin near Ganadawari in Burkina Faso's Udalan province, close to the tri-border area.

ISSP claimed to have killed 400 JNIM fighters in a single day of fighting on October 9, as well as another 200 fighters during previous operations in the Duri area.

Meanwhile, on October 9th, JNIM-affiliated channels also claimed a major victory near Tessit in Mali.

Furthermore, we are tracking sustained heavy combat between rival extremist networks.

Namely JNIM and the Islamic state Sahel Province, or ISSP.

Yes, along the highly porous Mali-Burkina Faso border.

So if state forces recapture a major northern hub like Kidal, yet insurgents continue to overrun rural checkpoints, is the state actually expanding its security or simply rearranging the map?

But JNIM and the FLA are not the only armed groups terrorizing Mali.

There's also the Islamic State-Sahel Province, or ISSP, an insurgent group that is aligned with the Islamic State.

Like JNIM, ISSP wants to take territory and impose its own version of Sharia law, which you would assume would make the two groups allies.

And while they did collaborate for a while from 2017 to 2019, they have since become bitter rivals who fight each other nearly as often as they fight the government.

Now, armed groups are not a particularly new phenomenon in Mali.

According to Liam Carr, Africa Team Lead at the Critical Threats Project, JNIM has one militant for every 10 soldiers it faces across Burkina Faso and Mali combined, and this isn't counting the other armed groups that JNIM is also facing in the Sahel.

The other factor holding JNIM back, according to leading terrorism expert Pawel Wojcik, is the Islamic State-Sahel Province.

In a previous chapter, we mentioned that JNIM and ISSP are bitter rivals, but that is the understatement of the century.

Libya remains the primary node of instability in the Maghreb because there is no unified state security apparatus controlling the southern borders.

borders.So Sahel-based jihadist groups such as ISGS and JNIM are able to seamlessly exploit Libyan smuggling routes to move weapons, fighters, and illicit capital without facing state interdiction.

Exactly.

And the political situation in Tripoli offers no immediate remedy to this vacuum.

They are attempting to slowly strangle the state's economic center.

And in Niger, the situation is similarly dire.

The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, or ISGS, recently conducted a highly coordinated series of attacks on the Abala-Falinghe axis.

These ambushes resulted in the deaths of over fifty Nigerien security personnel in a single week.

Here is how it operates.

Militant groups in Mali and Niger, like JNIM or ISGS, take control of local artisanal gold mines.

They smuggle that gold north straight through that permeable membrane into southern Libya, where the fragmented state cannot stop them.

And once it's in Libya?

This directly connects to our assessment of West Africa because the state governments there are the ones on the receiving end of those smuggled weapons.

They bear the brunt of it.

Building on that Sahel dynamic, we are seeing those same networks, JNIM and the Islamic State in the greater Sahara, or ISGS, actively testing the resilience of West African nations.

We are seeing a vicious cycle of deteriorating security, particularly in the states that have recently experienced military coups and political upheavals.

Police have not confirmed which group was responsible for Friday's attack.

One witness told AFP that the gunmen belonged to Lakurawa, an increasingly radical outfit that researchers link to the Islamic State's Sahel Province group.

Another resident told AFP that the attackers were Ansaru, which split from Boko Haram and is now aligned with Al-Qaeda.

Witnesses also said that a third rival jihadi group known as Mahmuddas clashed with the attackers and allowed some of the abductees to escape.