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Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 23-6-Africa-19

While we all are looking somewhere else; It’s still Africa but creeping close…

ISIL eyes East Africa - and foments division 1, Nigeria's Boko Haram swore allegiance recently to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in an audio message with French and English subtitles. What most failed to notice was a few weeks earlier an "emissary" of ISIL sent a public invitation to the emir of al-Shabab in Somalia, Abu Ubaidah, urging him to do the same. Abu Ubaidah already pledged loyalty to al-Qaida, reaffirming a long-standing allegiance with that group

• In the message Bushra praised the "brothers in Somalia" and encouraged them to attack "inside Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia". He told Abu Ubaidah all that is needed to pledge loyalty to ISIL is for the al-Shabab media wing, al-Kataib, to issue an audio message.

• Meanwhile, in Somalia there are reports of tensions within al-Shabab, which has never been homogeneous, between those who want to break away from al-Qaida and align themselves with ISIL, and those who remain loyal to its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

• The attack on Tunisia's famed Bardo Museum is just the latest evidence that parts of North and sub-Saharan Africa have become a magnet for Islamist extremism.

• The Malian conflict is one of those entrenched crises, where the emotions have become so high and resentments so strong, while the passions are so uncontrolled that logical thinking has, long ago, deserted the meetings rooms. Therefore, the possibilities of devising a lasting solution have also moved away.

• General Khalifa Haftar, the army chief of Libya's internationally recognised government, said ISIL had seized control of at least two cities along Libya's long Mediterranean coastline and has a strong presence in several others, its first major expansion from its bases in Syria and Iraq

• The surge in Takfiri numbers in North Africa also poses a serious security threat to Europe, the experts said, because North Africans easily can hide among large immigrant communities living in France, Belgium, Germany and other countries. Tunisia is a former French colony.

• Nigeria and its allies appear to be making headway in the fight against Boko Haram. However, these initial victories may not mean that the region is closer to ending its fight against violent radical Islam.

DAMASAK, Marcxh 24 Nigeria: Residents in the northern Nigerian town of Damasak said Tuesday that Boko Haram militants kidnapped more than 400 women and children as they left the town, which was freed by troops from Niger and Chad this month. "They took 506 young women and children. They killed about 50 of them before leaving," a trader called Souleymane Ali told Reuters in the town. "We don't know if they killed others after leaving, but they took the rest with them." Lieutenant Colonel Toumba Mohamed, the Nigerien commander of the Niger-Chad forces in Damasak, said residents had reported between 400 and 500 women and children kidnapped.

Recent ISIL communications show attempts to secure influence in East Africa - the stronghold of al-Shabab and al-Qaida March 23.

1 http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/03/isil-eyes-east-africa-foments-division-150322130940108.html

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Nigeria's Boko Haram swore allegiance recently to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in an audio message with French and English subtitles. What most failed to notice was a few weeks earlier an "emissary" of ISIL sent a public invitation to the emir of al-Shabab in Somalia, Abu Ubaidah, urging him to do the same. The emissary was Hamil al-Bushra, the nom de guerre used by two media outlets that have been described by Washington Institute for Near East Policy fellow Aaron Zelin as "official semi-official accounts" from ISIL. In the message Bushra praised the "brothers in Somalia" and encouraged them to attack "inside Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia". He told Abu Ubaidah all that is needed to pledge loyalty to ISIL is for the al-Shabab media wing, al-Kataib, to issue an audio message. Abu Ubaidah already pledged loyalty to al-Qaida, reaffirming a long-standing allegiance with that group. The public invitation from ISIL through its semi-official channels may be designed to provoke a disruption within al-Shabab at a time when it has lost territory in Somalia because of a military offensive by African Union troops.

Targeting Kenya and beyond Meanwhile, al-Shabab is turning its attention to Kenya and other African countries in a transformation reflected in slick recruitment videos and magazines produced by al-Kataib, which play upon the marginalisation of Muslims and show details of high-profile attacks in Kenya. Christopher Anzalone, from the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, said this is evident in al-Shabab's recruitment tactics. "If they release a video with foreign fighters in it there's a likelihood that most, if not all, will be Swahili speakers or outright identified as being from Kenya," Anzalone told Al Jazeera. Al-Shabab works with hard-line imams and underground groups such as al-Hijra, which help with recruitment in East Africa. The emir of al-Hijra, Sheikh Ahmad Iman Ali, for instance left Nairobi to fight in Somalia in 2009, where he was placed in charge of "Kenyan affairs" a few months after Kenyan troops began operations inside Somalia against al-Shabab. However, al-Hijra's roots go back to the Islamic Party of Kenya in the 1990s, said Matt Bryden, chairman of Sahan Research, "when Sheikh Rogo and Sheikh Makaburi - who became the ideological leaders of al-Hijra - were themselves moving in al-Qaida circles".

Both Rogo and Makaburi were killed in what were alleged to be extrajudicial killings by the Kenyan Anti-Terror Police Unit (APTU) that swept the coastal areas, according to an Open Society Justice Initiative report, which also accused the APTU of arbitrary detentions, torture and "disappearances". Anzalone told Al Jazeera al-Shabab now use the deaths as a recruitment tool in their videos. "They have recognised and taken advantage of growing discontentment about the way the Kenyan government handles terrorism or security threats," he said. Just a taxi-ride away Many of the recent attacks in Kenya were carried out by East African al-Shabab fighters who returned to Kenya after training in Somalia. The high-profile attacks on the Westgate shopping mall and Mpeketoni in Kenya's northeastern Lamu County were echoed in multiple smaller but also deadly attacks in public places across Kenya. Al-Hijra, which also has a Tanzanian wing, is believed to be behind many of these attacks and appears to have gained strength. Anzalone's research identifies an al-Hijra poem that he said emphasised their wish to expand the war in Somalia to Kenya. It ends with the line: "Paradise is just a taxi-ride away." Bryden estimated in terms of al-Hijra's numbers "we can fairly confidently say [they have] upwards of about 1,000 [fighters]". "Now they are a fairly significant fighting force with a core of committed jihadists - they've grown, they've become more militarised, they've become more experienced, they represent more of a threat," said Bryden. A report issued by the UN Monitoring Group in Somalia in 2014 said the investigators were "increasingly concerned by the foreign link to al-Hijra, in particular its foreign financiers".

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In January, a new group emerged in East Africa calling itself al-Muhajiroun. With apparent links to Mombasa in Kenya and Mwanza in Tanzania - and noticeable promotion of public speeches by Ahmad Iman Ali - it is possibly an offshoot of al-Hijra. The group announced its arrival with the publication of a magazine in Swahili and English called Amka and a pledge of loyalty to al-Shabab and al-Qaida. Shortly after it issued a public message to Tanzania calling on the government to "protect our sheikhs". "We've heard of them but the details are very scanty on where they were and where they are now," said Abdulhamid Sakar, executive director of the Kenya Muslim Youth Alliance. Bryden told Al Jazeera, "At the moment this appears to be a group that is more aspirational than real, probably more Swahili than Somali oriented."

Al-Shabab's internal tensions ;Meanwhile, in Somalia there are reports of tensions within al-Shabab, which has never been homogeneous, between those who want to break away from al-Qaida and align themselves with ISIL, and those who remain loyal to its leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Tres Thomas, who runs the Somalia Newsroom blog, said the reason is economic. "My understanding is that it is also about deteriorating terms and conditions - pay going down for instance." But, there are also ideological fissures. In Nairobi a firebrand imam, Sheikh Hassaan Hussein, issued a public call for loyalty to ISIL. While the Sheikh has only a small following, he is known to be close both to the al-Shabab leadership and politicians in Kenya.

Analyst Hassan Abukar told Al Jazeera he believes Hussein may be trying to influence the internal politics of al-Shabab. "Mahad Karate, the deputy emir, favours ISIL, Hassaan perhaps wants to strengthen Karate's position," Abukar said. None of this bodes well for East Africa, which could either see an influx of foreign fighters if ISIL gains a foothold, or increasing links to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula as Yemen becomes more unstable. In recently published papers retrieved from Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, the former al-Qaida leader commented on the al-Shabab attacks in Kampala, Uganda in 2010. "I think the focus should have gone to preparing for a well-planned operation to assassinate Ugandan President Museveni ... If that is unachievable, then the brothers could target important military or economic targets," bin Laden wrote before being killed by US Special Forces in May 2011. Al-Shabab is definitely proving resilient - highly capable of adapting, said Bryden. "We've also seen from recent attacks or attempts in Ethiopia, Djibouti, here in Kenya, they still have these regional networks that are capable of staging fairly sophisticated and spectacular attacks. That threat's not going to go away any time soon." Source: Al Jazeera

UN Special envoy says international community growing impatient with unrest as rival parties meet in Rabat for peace talks. 20 Mar 2015 The UN special envoy to Libya has warned that chaos in the north African country could destabilise the whole region if rival politicians fail to nail down a political agreement within the next few days. Bernardino Leon told rival politicians meeting in Morocco for peace talks on Friday that the international community was growing impatient and feared the unrest could spillover into neighbouring countries. "Terrorism in Libya is becoming a problem for Libyans and a problem for the region," he said.

March 20, CNN)The attack on Tunisia's famed Bardo Museum is just the latest evidence that parts of North and sub-Saharan Africa have become a magnet for Islamist extremism. Tunisia -- lying just across the Mediterranean from Europe, but bordered on one side by Libya and on the other by Algeria -- has until now not suffered the kind of large-scale

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terror attacks seen in both those nations in recent years. But it has emerged as a place of increasing concern as the threat of Islamist extremism has intensified in the region.

Islamist terrorists also have struck in Algeria, where they killed at least 37 hostages at a gas field in 2013, and in Libya, where terrorists killed the U.S. ambassador and three others in 2012 and where ISIS has established a beachhead in the east. Al Qaida's North African offshoot Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which has its roots in Algeria, has captured territory in Mali and taken hostages -- often Europeans -- in countries such as Niger and Mauritania. So what is the world doing about it? The United States has created a military command in Africa and also established a special operations base in Djibouti, which borders Somalia in the Horn of Africa. France has sent troops to Mali. And, as CNN recently reported from Chad, Western militaries have trained special forces from several northern African nations to take on the Islamists. Here's a country-by-country look -- although not exhaustive -- at how Islamist extremism has reared its head across a swath of Africa.

Algeria Algeria is home to a long-running Islamist insurgency. In perhaps the highest-profile incident, Islamist militants attacked the In Amenas oil and gas plant in southern Algeria in January 2013. At least 37 hostages, including three U.S. citizens, died in the seizure of, and ensuing special forces assault on, the remote facility. Dozens of assailants also died in the days-long siege. The attack was the work of the Mulathameen Brigade, which translates as the "Signatories in Blood Brigade." Last September, another Islamist group beheaded a 55-year-old French hiker, Herve Gourdel, after seizing him as he walked in Djudjura National Park in central Algeria. Days earlier, the outfit -- Jund al Khilafa, a splinter group of Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb -- had pledged allegiance to ISIS. Militants affiliated with AQIM had previously also kidnapped foreigners in Algeria, including Italians and Spaniards. In 2007, AQIM launched a suicide bombing campaign in Algeria, which included a deadly bombing against the U.N. headquarters in Algiers.

Libya In January, a suicide bombing and gun attack on a hotel in the capital, Tripoli, killed 10 people, including an American. The attack was swiftly claimed by Wilayat al-Tarabulus, ISIS' name for the province. Politicians in Tripoli disputed the claim. Besides its growing presence in Tripoli, ISIS is now the dominant force in Derna in eastern Libya and controls parts of the town center of Sirte, the hometown of former Libya strongman Moammar Gadhafi. Before the advent of ISIS, an Islamist group called Ansar al Shariah was blamed by the United States for carrying out the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. State Department computer expert Sean Smith and former U.S. Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, then acting as security contractors, also died.

Mali In 2012, Islamist extremists capitalized on chaos in Mali after a military coup and uprising by Tuareg tribesmen to seize control of a large piece of northern Mali, an area the size of France. France intervened militarily in early 2013 and helped to push back the Islamists. Since then, Mali's government has battled various rebel factions, mostly in its northern region, with the help of French and African forces. Recent attacks include a shooting earlier this month at a bar popular with expatriates in the capital, Bamako, which killed five people, including French and Belgian citizens, authorities said. A North African jihadist group, al-Murabitun, claimed responsibility for the attack, according to Mauritanian news agency Al Akhbar. AQIM issued a warning to France via jihadist websites in January, following terror attacks in Paris, stating that "France pays the cost of its violence on Muslim countries and the violation of their sanctity," citing the presence of its soldiers in Mali.

Mauritania According to analysis by Jane's Defence Weekly, despite the shift of jihadist activity east toward Libya, "Mauritania is still an aspirational target for jihadist groups

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due to its military co-operation with France and Algeria." Jihadist groups including AQIM and the Mulathameen Brigade operate in the porous border areas between Mauritania, Algeria, Mali, Niger and Libya. Militants have in the past kidnapped foreign workers for ransom, including three Spaniards in 2011, according to Jane's. However, since 2011 jihadist activity in the country has declined. Mauritanian troops joined the fight against AQIM militants in Mali.

Nigeria Militant group Boko Haram has waged a campaign of terror in mostly northern Nigeria for over a decade. It has attacked the country's police, military, banks, bus stations and crowded markets, as well carrying out a string of church bombings. Perhaps the most notorious incident came last April, when Boko Haram militants kidnapped more than 200 teenage girls from a boarding school in Chibok, in Borno state. Most of the girls remain missing. In January this year, hundreds of Boko Haram gunmen seized the town of Baga and neighboring villages in northern Nigeria, as well as a multinational military base, leaving bodies scattered everywhere and as many as 2,000 people feared dead. The group's stated aim is to institute Sharia, or Islamic law. Earlier this month, in an audio message purportedly from leader Abubakar Shekau, Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS. It had previously declared ties to AQIM.

Somalia Al-Shabaab started with a goal of waging a war against the Somali government in an effort to implement a stricter form of Islamic law, or Sharia. It has since shifted focus to terrorist attacks in Somalia and beyond, notably neighboring Kenya. Its most high-profile attack came in that country in 2013, when gunmen struck at Nairobi's upscale Westgate mall, pulling out weapons and gunning down shoppers. The gunmen were accused of torturing some hostages before killing them. As many as 67 people died in the siege. The group has carried out numerous attacks in Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, and elsewhere. Just last week, its target was government offices in the city of Baidoa. It has also recently called for attacks on shopping malls in the United States, Canada and Britain. The Pentagon said this week that a key Al-Shabaab operative connected to the Westgate mall attack, named as Adan Garar, was killed recently by a U.S. drone strike. In September, Al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane was also killed in a U.S. airstrike near Barawe city.

Tunisia Gunmen who besieged the Bardo Museum in Tunis are thought to have claimed 23 lives, most of them foreign tourists. Interior Ministry spokesman Mohamed Ali Aroui told national radio that the assailants were Islamists, but authorities haven't been more specific than that. Nine arrests have been made in connection with the attack. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack in an audio message posted online Thursday. CNN cannot independently verify the authenticity of the audio statement. The attack occurred even as the country's democratically elected Parliament was meeting to discuss new anti-terror legislation. Up to 3,000 Tunisians are believed to have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight as jihadists, more than any other country, according to the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization in London. The fear is that many of these fighters will return to North Africa to join ISIS-affiliated groups there and carry out attacks. Al Qaida's North African affiliate is also a threat. In late 2012, AQIM set up a branch in Tunisia called the Uqba ibn Nafi Brigade, a 60-strong Jihadi outfit composed of Tunisians, Algerians, and some Libyans. The group, believed to include fighters driven out of Mali by French forces, has been responsible for a string of attacks on Tunisian security services in mountainous Djebel Chaambi region along the Algerian border. CNN's Tim Lister and Paul Cruickshank contributed to this report.

Centre for Strategies and Security for the Sahel Sahara (Nouakchott) 20 March 2015 Mali: 'An Unstructured Conflict'The Malian conflict is one of those entrenched crises, where the emotions have become so high and resentments so strong, while the passions are so uncontrolled that logical thinking

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has, long ago, deserted the meetings rooms. Therefore, the possibilities of devising a lasting solution have also moved away.Indeed, experts are unanimous: the recurrent crises, that have caused so much death since independence in 1960, call for a truly innovative approach. The pursuit of the same old types of settlements has become counterproductive to save Mali, or to maintain the security in the Sahel Sahara or to strengthen the credibility of the international community. Northern Mali has gone through multiple rebellions: 1963-1964, 1991-1994, 2006 and the latest, ongoing since 2012. Spreading over the last 50 years, these crises and their repetitive cycles of violence and repression are the characteristics of " anarchic or unstructured conflict ".

Unstructured, or anarchic conflicts, are civil wars that have no strong internal organization or a well-institutionalized and undisputed leadership, disciplined troops or highly integrated and established civil and political networks within and outside the country. Overall, these conflicts are generally untimely launched by the rebels groups themselves and, worse, often very badly managed by central governments. In this kind of anarchic conflict, rebel movements are pooling their force together only for the struggle to achieve their common cause objectives. Indeed, their unity has little effectiveness beyond that initial ambition as it often gets shattered during the early fighting against the central government and its allies.That is also frequently true during the peace negotiations. In their armed struggle, even though the leaders may pursue a minimum coherence, to ensure the success of theirs overall goals, the fighters generally remain little or not disciplined and tend also to show little cohesion within their ranks and files. Though the rebel soldiers are fighting against the same external enemy, they are often locked in competition, sometimes armed ones, against each other.

Despite a strong commitment in support to the legitimacy of their cause, in reality, the rebel movements consist of powerful conglomerates with their combatants mostly faithful to the single leader of their own group! Hence, the prevalence of internal struggles within each rebel group and between most of them. These infightings result in higher competitive bids for the overall leadership and end up entrenching the conflict, making its final settlement even more difficult to conclude. These contradictions prevent fighters from realizing that wining a military victory is much easier than completing successful negotiations to achieve the original objectives. With this kind of rebels, peace becomes extremely difficult to negotiate and even more difficult to implement. This is particularly true when, in their effort to decredibilize the rebels claims of legitimacy, central governments present them as irresponsible groups and, imprudently exploit their internal divisions and contradictions.

Role of Governments One typical difficulty in resolving unstructured crises is precisely linked to central governments' policies. In seeking to defeat the rebels, they spend time and money to cultivate divisions among their various factions. In these volatile situations, the old method, " divide and rule" is dangerous as it rather encourages bids from the most extremist factions for the control of the whole rebellion. The absence, or at least the weakness of an armed groups' central authority, transforms the search for peace into a daunting task. Thus, over the long term, comprehensive peace agreements, signed during official ceremonies, often mean little in terms of peace on the ground. Experience shows that it is indeed more promising to negotiate and devise a solution with a united and representative group than with radicals' factions each more extremist than the other. Instead of sowing the seeds of divisions among their opponents, governments would do better to help train rebels to the techniques of negotiation and strengthen their unity in order to encourage the emergence of a strong, credible and responsible leadership. That leadership would be able to manage, rather than exacerbate, the internal contradictions within the rebel movements. In this respect, and contrary to suspicions in Mali, countries like Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland are well equipped to help by training rebels to negotiations techniques.

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And the international community? The international military intervention, namely that of France in 2012, is widely recognized as having played a vital role in the survival of Mali. It contributed to its liberation from a winning rebellion and facilitated the restoration of its institutions following the election of a President and a parliament. The pressure and fear abated thus helping Bamako back on the regional scene. However, it is likely that only a few Malians have fully understood the vital importance of that intervention. Indeed, a number of fundamental problems remain unresolved. As in similar situations, elsewhere in the world, this success has had a perverse effect on the national political, civilian and military elites. It did not help them to measure all the risks to which their country had just escaped. And of even more serious risks that threaten Mali if radical measures are not wisely put in place to manage the coexistence between the national communities linked by history, geography and blood. Mali and the Sahel, live through a terrorist threat that is first of all fed from internal sources. The main primarily cause is linked to a governance that underestimates and even despise, the populations aspirations and needs. In this context, France military intervention against violent extremism in the Sahel carries the risk of perpetuating these bad government practices: ethnic and social exclusion, corruption. In other words, it strengthens the roots causes on which thrives extremist violence. Today, at the international community level, an important issue arises: who should pay the price in blood and money for military interventions in the Sahel?

Mali Attack Highlights Continuing Jihadist Threat James Brandon A lone Islamist attacker killed four people—two Malians, one French and one Belgian citizen—in a gun and grenade attack on a bar in Mali’s capital Bamako on the evening of March 7, before being killed himself by the security services. The attack was later claimed by the al-Murabitun jihadist movement via audio message. The recording said that the attack had been carried out to “avenge our Prophet” who had been “insulted and mocked” (Maliweb.net, March 9). The message also said the attack had been carried out in revenge for killing Ahmed al-Tilemsi, a founding member of the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJWA), who was killed in Mali in December 2014 during a battle with French special forces. Al-Tilemsi had also been an important member of al-Murabitun, which was itself formed by a 2013 merger between MUJWA and a smaller Salafi-Jihadist group run by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a veteran Algerian militant (RFI, December 11, 2014). The attack was the first fatal terrorist event in Bamako in several years, underlining the continuing jihadist presence in the country. However, the audio message also claimed a failed January assassination attempt against General Mohamed Ould Meydou, a senior ethnic Arab officer in the Malian Army, whose perpetrators were previously unknown. A suspected accomplice of the attacker was killed in a Malian special forces raid in the following week (Maliweb.net, March 16).

21 March, France has set up a military base in Niger, just south of the Libyan border, hoping to cut off trafficking and supply routes, on which militant groups like Islamic State rely to spread their influence around the region, as BBCThomas Fessy reports. In fact, jihadist groups control the west side of the Libyan border while local Libyan ethnic Tubu militia control the east side. The French are trying to secure this vast zone to stop jihadist fighters and weapons from moving south and destabilising their former colonies in the Sahel region, and potentially linking up with Boko Haram in Nigeria. "We are worried by the situation in Libya because terrorist groups are regrouping in the Libyan south-west and use it as their rear base," says Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas [French officers on assignments are not allowed to give their surnames], Detachment Commander in Madama. "These groups cross into Niger and follow the Algerian border to reach Mali, where they supply terrorist groups

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with weapons," he adds. The French and the Americans have eyes in the sky in northern Niger, but these boots on the ground help them map out suspicious activities. Little by little, the French explore this part of the desert. France and the US are working in partnership in the Sahel, the arid region south of the Sahara. The Obama administration provides financial, logistical and intelligence support to the French, leaving them to deploy combat forces.

Libya army chief warns of ISIL threat against Europe Haftar says ISIL will attack Europe if the West does not provide Libyan army fighting the armed group with weapons.

20 Mar 2015 General Khalifa Haftar, the army chief of Libya's internationally recognised government, said ISIL had seized control of at least two cities along Libya's long Mediterranean coastline and has a strong presence in several others, its first major expansion from its bases in Syria and Iraq. In a sign of the group's expanding reach, ISIL claimed responsibility on Thursday for an attack a day earlier on a museum in neighbouring Tunisia that killed 23 people, mostly foreign tourists. Haftar told the Associated Press news agency in an interview that his forces need backing from the West against ISIL. "We want weapons and ammunition only. We have the men. The army is increasing in number every day," he said. He warned that ISIL will "spread in even the European countries if [the West] does not offer real help to the Libyan people, especially the Libyan army." ISIL, he said, "will head with the illegal migrants to Europe, where corruption and destruction will spread just like Libya. But there it will be hard to confront them". Haftar's comments came as Bernardino Leon, the UN envoy to Libya, was due to meet on Friday delegations from Tobruk and the Tripoli-based government in Rabat, the Moroccan capital. On Thursday, delegates from the Tripoli-based government had to delay their trip to Morocco after the only functioning commercial airport in the capital was attacked by warplanes from the UN-recognised government.

The Ongoing Unrest in Libya and the Hyped Threat Posed by Islamic State Dario Cristiani Making sense of the political turmoil and the potential threat of the Islamic State in Libya is becoming increasingly difficult. At the beginning of March 2015, delegations from various Libyan factions met in the Moroccan coastal town of Skhirat, to negotiate under the auspices of the United Nations. At the same time, leaders of Libyan political parties and activists met in Algeria in a further attempt to ease dialogue between warring Libyan groups. The main declared aim of the negotiations in Morocco, which are ongoing, is to achieve a unity government and a lasting ceasefire. However, on March 13, the delegation representing the Tobruk-based government, the only one recognized by the international community, did not show up, after requesting that the talks be postponed for one week after the Tripoli-based government, which is backed by the forces of the Libyan Dawn, asked the UN clarify its official position on the role of General Khalifa Haftar, the head of the Tripoli-based government’s armed forces (Reuters, March 13;Jeune Afrique, March 9;Libya Herald, March 11; Libya Akhbar, March 13; Terrorism Monitor, December 19, 2014). These developments, as well as the lack of any ceasefires or notable agreements between the warring parties to date, illustrate the challenges involved in bringing peace to Libya, not least because key individuals, such as Haftar are also potentially stumbling blocks to any deal, especially now that he has been appointed commander of the Libyan Army (al-Jazeera,March 9; al-Sharq al-Awsat, December18, 2014). The aim of this article is to provide some background to the ongoing conflict and to contextualize the roles, aims and make up of the various parties.

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Terrorism Monitor is a publication of the Jamestown Foundation. March 20, 2015 Volume XIII, Issue 6

More than 7,000 Tunisians Join ISIL TEHRAN (FNA March 19)- A growing number of Tunisians who’ve joined the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist group, including 4,000 believed fighting in Libya and another 3,000 fighting with the group in Syria and Iraq, pose a threat to their home country and as many as 15 nations in sub-Saharan and North Africa, according to security experts and United Nations officials. Among the countries at risk are Chad, Niger and Mauritania, where poverty is exacerbated by problems ranging from drought to poor governance, the experts say. Until recently, there had been little appreciation for the sheer numbers of Tunisians who’ve joined ISIL, Islam Times reported. A 2014 report by the US State Department’s bureau on counterterrorism flagged the growing security threat that Tunisian Takfiri militants represent and suggested they were more numerous than might be expected, but it offered no specifics. The surge in Takfiri numbers in North Africa also poses a serious security threat to Europe, the experts said, because North Africans easily can hide among large immigrant communities living in France, Belgium, Germany and other countries. Tunisia is a former French colony.

Boko Haram beaten in a month - Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan 20 March BBC Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan has said he hopes that all territory seized by Islamist militant group Boko Haram will be retaken within a month."They are getting weaker and weaker by the day," he told the BBC.But he admitted the security forces had been slow to respond to the insurgents' initial advance in north-east Nigeria. Nigeria's army has recently claimed a series of victories over the militants. The violence has killed more than 15,500 people since 2012. Abducted girls 'alive' In an exclusive interview with the BBC's Will Ross in the capital Abuja, President Jonathan said: "I'm very hopeful that it will not take us more than a month to recover the old territories that hitherto have been in their [Boko Haram's] hands." Mr Jonathan said that newly acquired military equipment, as well as co-operation with neighbouring countries, had helped push the jihadists out of towns and villages. He added that while many militants had poured across the country's borders, he thought some had retreated into a stronghold in north-eastern Nigeria known as the Sambisa Forest. The president also said he believed the 219 schoolgirls abducted from Chibok by Boko Haram last year were still alive, adding that the authorities continued their search for them. "I believe we'll get them," the president added

Scores of bodies found in mass grave in Damasak town retaken from Boko Haram , including some which were decapitated. 21 Mar 2015 At least 70 bodies were found in a mass grave on the outskirts of the town of Damasak after it was recaptured from Boko Haram fighters, Chadian and Nigerien military officials have said. Soldiers discovered the bodies, some decapitated, under a bridge just outside the town on Friday, which was retaken from Boko Haram by troops from Chad and Niger. "There are ... bodies spread around under the bridge just outside the town," Colonel Azem Bermandoa Agouna told the AFP news agency, adding that he had visited the scene himself close to the border with Niger. He claimed the massacre probably happened about two months ago and blamed it on the Boko Haram armed group from Nigeria. Footage showed the bodies were strewn beneath the concrete bridge on one of the main roads leading out of the town. Colonel Bermandoa Agouna told AFP that several of the victims had been decapitated while others had been shot. "There are heads here and bodies there, the mass grave has become like a termite mound," he added. A Reuters news agency military source also claimed that the bodies were Boko Haram's victims. Al Jazeera cannot independently verify these claims.

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By Capt (Ret) C de Waart, feel free to share: in Confidence

South Sudan rebel group frees 250 of its child soldiers; UN says Cobra Faction set to release further 400 children in next two days but thousands still involved in fighting. 22 Mar 2015, A South Sudanese rebel group has freed 250 child soldiers it was using, including a girl as young as nine, the UN children's agency has said, but it warned that thousands were still being forced to fight in the country's civil war. The Cobra Faction is also set to release another 400 child soldiers in the next two days under a deal with the government, out of total of 3,000 it holds, UNICEF said. However, the scourge of child recruitment is far from over in South Sudan, with about 12,000 youngsters are still fighting in the ranks of the country's warring factions, the UN says.

Analysis: Boko Haram loses ground, but remains in the fightLWJ BY LAURA GROSSMAN | March 23rd, 2015 | laura@defenddemocracy.org | @lhgrossman Nigerian soldiers display Boko Haram’s flag. Photograph from Reuters. Nigeria and its allies appear to be making headway in the fight against Boko Haram. However, these initial victories may not mean that the region is closer to ending its fight against violent radical Islam.At the beginning of the month, forces from Chad and Niger joined Nigeria fighting against Boko Haram, and the African Union (AU) supported the development of an 8,000-strong regional counterterrorism force. Last week, the Nigerian army stated that it had pushed Boko Haram from all but three local government areas in Nigeria’s northeast including Abadam, Kala-Balge, and Gwoza. The country’s national security spokesman claimed that the military had begun the “final onslaught” against the terrorist group. Earlier in the year, the State Department-designated terrorist group controlled vast swathes of northeastern Nigeria, including areas of Yobe, Borno, and Adamawa States.President Goodluck Jonathan is also predicting the group’s demise; he told the BBC that “They are getting weaker and weaker by the day … I’m very hopeful that it will not take us more than a month to recover the old territories that hitherto have been in [Boko Haram’s] hands.”While pushing Boko Haram from its physical bases and recovering land is important, Nigeria is far from free of the violence generated by the jihadist group. Boko Haram has continued to launch attacks within the country and across the border even as it weathers assaults by multi-national forces. On Sunday March 15, the group attacked the Chadian town of Djargagoroum. The morning attack was repelled, but one man was killed and at least two houses were burned to the ground.On Wednesday, the group attacked the Nigerian border town of Gamboru, killing 11 civilians. The jihadists were reportedly driven out by Cameroonian forces who responded to their gunfire. Gamboru was taken over by the terrorist outfit last August after it was attacked several times. The besieged border town remained under Boko Haram’s thumb until early February, when the group was ousted by a combination of forces from Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and local vigilante outfits.The recent attack in Gamboru shows that even once expelled from a town, Boko Haram is often not done with it. On Saturday, Chadian forces, who had been stationed across the border in Fotokol, moved into Gamboru to push and keep out any remaining Boko Haram fighters in the area.

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By Capt (Ret) C de Waart, feel free to share: in Confidence

In his interview with the BBC, Jonathan revealed that Boko Haram’s ascendancy caught him by surprise. “We never expected that [Boko Haram] will build up that kind of capacity. We under-rated their external influence,” he said. The group’s rise has contributed to weaknesses in Jonathan’s control and effectiveness as a leader, toughening the current presidential campaign for the incumbent.Active since 2009, the jihadist group’s insurgency has claimed thousands of lives in numerous terrorist attacks and raids across the region. In part, the group’s success is attributed to the questionable capability of Nigeria’s forces and the government’s failure to adequately confront the group from the beginning of the conflict. The inability of Nigerian forces to save the hundreds of girls kidnapped in Chibok nearly a year ago pushed the country’s deficiencies on to the global stage. Wary of repeating past military coups, Nigeria’s army has been kept relatively small in proportion to the country’s massive population. One Nigerian analyst aptly noted “the military and security forces were designed to protect the head of state and his government from coups, not protect national security. That continues to paralyze our response to security issues. It is the fundamental problem.”Joining the Islamic State In early March, Boko Haram publicly declared its allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the emir of the Islamic State. Shortly thereafter, spokesman for the Islamic State Abu Muhammad al Adnani accepted the pledge, noting that recruits to his group had the option to travel to West Africa to fight if they could not get to Iraq or Syria. The announcements underlined what were already suspected ties between the two groups. In early February, NCTC Director Nicholas Rasmussen highlighted “the increased intercommunication between Boko Haram and other terrorist groups in the northern part of, the northwestern part of Africa, and even with [the Islamic State].”While the long-term implications of Boko Haram’s new partnership with the Islamic State are not clear, significant improvements in its media messaging have already emerged. Early videos released by the group were grainy and out of focus, often showing leader Abu Bakr Shekau, flanked by his “soldiers,” standing in front of a row of vehicles and simply ranting in Hausa or Arabic. Recent videos are slick and polished affairs utilizing graphics and videos from battle, layered on top of jihadist music and spoken hadiths. The evolution of Boko Haram’s media strategy may simply indicate that the group is learning from its Middle Eastern cousins.Boko Haram may receive other forms of assistance through its official connections to the Islamic State, including cash, weapons, and, perhaps more importantly, fresh manpower. The new injection of support will likely help Boko Haram maintain a some sort of operational capacity in the region, in spite of the increase in cooperative military action against them. The group may not hold vast swaths of land at the moment, but their ability to build bombs and launch deadly attacks is likely to continue for some time.

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