In this month’s In Focus, in Afghanistan, after a period of about two months during which the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province was silent and did not claim responsibility for any attacks, the group returned in the past month in full force. Targeting high-ranking Taliban officials and personnel, as well as government entities, and employing gunmen, suicide bombers and IEDs, ISKP that its temporal decrease in activity, following Taliban counterterrorist operations, was merely to reorganize and recover. In a period of less than three weeks, ISKP targeted the director of the Water Sources department in Herat city, and the governor of Balkh Province, in addition to an award ceremony for journalists in Mazar-i-Sharif, and the Taliban’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul, killing and injuring 20 people, including diplomats, according to the ISKP claim.
Another jihadi group proving its resilience in the face of government antiterror efforts is Al-Shabaab, in Somalia. On March 28, 2023, the US Ambassador to Somalia said the Somali government’s military operations against Al-Shabaab have cost the militants one third of their territory. Three days earlier, the Somali Ministry of Information said 3,000 Al-Shabaab militants had been killed and 3,700 more injured since August 2022, claiming 70 towns and villages had been liberated from the grip of the group. While the numbers presented are perhaps exaggerated, Al-Shabaab has undoubtedly suffered a major blow and lost dozens of settlements. Notwithstanding, the group is fighting back and remains a destabilizing threat in Somalia. In 2022, it was named the deadliest regional terrorist organization in the world, and since the beginning of 2023, several Somali Army advances have been stalled.
Moving to the west, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where around the same period, the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province has been escalating its attacks against Christians. The recent deadly wave, targeting villages in the country’s northeastern Kivu Province, has resulted in the killing of dozens of Christians. On March 19, 2023, IS’ Amaq News Agency announced ISCAP combatants had carried out a raid the previous day in Ngoli, shooting dead 10 villagers. The statement stressed that after Beni and Ituri, this was the first ISCAP attack in Lubero Territory, also in North Kivu Province, south of the cities of Beni and Butembo. A few days earlier, the UN released an alarming report, claiming the recent violent escalation in the DRC had resulted in over 100,000 IDPs, including children.
In this month’s Who’s Who? a Facebook profile named “فرحية الا نصا رية ” was detected among the followers of a prominent Al-Shabaab affiliated profile. The POI’s posts are in Somali throughout the profile. Albeit new, active only since March 23, 2023, the POI has many friends, and this number increases daily, by dozens. His friends list is open and counts some 1,609 friends, quite a few of whom have jihadist characteristics. The POI constantly shares content related to Al-Shabaab, content related to Ramadan, and especially content from Al-Shabaab affiliated Telegram channels, which he is trying to promote through his profile, and directs his Facebook friends to them.
In our Instant Messaging Applications Monitoring, using the Codex IMATM system, we investigated three different phone numbers from different locations. The first has an Indonesian prefix, and according to the system, the POI is a member of 31 radical WhatsApp groups. The second phone number has an Algerian prefix, and the POI a member of 33 WhatsApp groups, at least three of which are radical. The third phone number has a Yemeni prefix, and is a member of nine radical WhatsApp groups, some affiliated with the Islamic State.
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