Counter-terrorism experts said Tuesday that Africa is now the world’s terrorism hot spot, with half of the victims killed last year in sub-Saharan Africa, though al-Qaeda and ISIS affiliates remain widespread, persistent and active elsewhere around the globe.
Interpol, the international criminal police agency, also reported during a panel discussion at the UN that terrorism linked to extreme right-wing ideology increased an estimated 50-fold over the past decade, particularly in Europe, North America and parts of the Asia-Pacific.
The experts see other trends: Deteriorating global security is making the terrorism threat “more complex and decentralized.”
Extremists are increasingly using sophisticated technology, and drones and artificial intelligence have opened new ways to plan and carry out attacks.
Africa has emerged as the key battleground for terrorism, with a major increase in the number of active groups operating on the continent. Further, local political, economic and social “fractures,” porous borders and “identity-based mobilization” had fueled the emergence of al-Qaeda and ISIS.
Several areas of the continent, from Burkina Faso and the Sahel and more broadly to Chad and Sudan, still face the consequences of the flow of weapons and foreign fighters from Libya, Khiari said.
Oil-rich Libya plunged into chaos following the NATO-backed uprising that toppled and killed President Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
After ISIS’s self-styled caliphate was defeated in Iraq in 2017, many of its foreign fighters fled to the North African nation.
From The Shadows Emerges Knowledge