This month’s In Focus analyzes the major military campaign by Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin in Djibo, in Burkina Faso, in which over 1,000 militants participated. The large number of Mujahideen illustrates the consistent strengthening of the jihadi group – the result of ongoing recruitment efforts and economic terrorism. On the geopolitical level, the recent announcement by Niger and Burkina Faso to follow Mali in quitting the G5 Sahel alliance attests once again to the deteriorating security of the Sahel states, which enhances the challenge posed by regional jihadism and corroborates the accelerated disintegration of Western-supported alliances and frameworks that were formed to counter the jihadist threat in the region.
In the Lake Chad Basin, the Islamic State West Africa Province increased its offensive attacks between October and December 2023. The terrorists enjoy significant freedom of movement in this area. While raids with large numbers of fighters is the most common attack TTP used by the group, IEDs are frequently employed as well, and some evidence may indicate an occasional complex IED attack. Cameroon and the Sambisa Forest region in Nigeria continue to experience extensive violence in proximity to the Lake Chad Basin from both Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, who contest each other for influence in these areas.
The influx of arms smuggling on the Duran Line enables terrorists in Pakistan to carry out more complex attacks and broadens their capabilities and opportunities, including those of the global jihadi groups. The arms trade from Afghanistan is an important source of additional income for the Afghan Taliban, and black market networks continue to facilitate and enable terrorism in south and central Asia, particularly Pakistan, which has seen a substantial increase in terror incidents since the re-establishment of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. A recent example demonstrating this is the complex attack on an air force training base in Mianwali by a group believed to be affiliated with Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. Global jihad affiliates benefit from the situation as well, and although there is no evidence to suggest cooperation between global jihadi groups and the TTP and its affiliates, the outfits tend to avoid stepping on each other’s toes. Under these conditions, Al-Qaeda can be expected to seek opportunities to build its networks and gain power, while the Islamic State, which for now, seems to be the stronger and more active global jihadi candidate in the region, continues to carry out deadly attacks, some of which produce mass casualties.
This month’s Who’s Who? analyzes a Facebook profile belonging to a woman who lives in Morocco and supports Hamas and global jihad. Her profile was selected for investigation following her sympathetic reactions to posts and direct link to a global jihad adherent profile from Gaza who was analyzed in one of our previous Hydra reports. The latter was a Hamas member who participated in the deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
In our Instant Messaging Applications Monitoring, using the Codex IMATM system, we investigated two different phone numbers – one with a Lebanese prefix and the other with UAE prefix. Using the Codex IMATM system, one of the numbers was found to be a participant in Palestinian radical WhatsApp groups affiliated with different terrorist organizations, with emphasis on Hamas, while the UAE phone number was found to participate in WhatsApp groups affiliated with Pakistan-backed terrorist organizations.
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