In 2022, the Islamic State (IS) carried out nearly half of its attacks in Africa, reports said on Thursday.The Islamic State published on Wednesday, January 4, via its propaganda agency “Amaq,” the assessment of its operations in the world in 2022. The jihadist organization claims 2.058 attacks in 22 countries. These actions have cost the lives or injured 6,881 people.
Nearly half of the jihadist group’s operations, or 1,027 attacks, took place in 13 African countries and resulted in the death or injury of 3,195 people.
Nigeria tops the list
Nigeria tops the list, all continents combined, with 517 attacks in which 887 people lost their lives or were injured. The most recent attack even targeted the President of the Republic Muhammadu Buhari, on Thursday 29 December 2022. A car bomb exploded just 30 minutes before the arrival of the Nigerian head of state in Kogi State (central), precisely in the town of Okene, southwest of Abuja, the federal capital of Nigeria. Africa’s most populous country with 213 million inhabitants (2021) is followed by Iraq, which has recorded 484 incidents linked to the jihadist insurgency.
On the African continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the Islamic State has a “province,” comes second. In this central African country, the IS has claimed 167 attacks with 607 deaths or injuries.
In Mozambique, where 156 raids were carried out by the “Shebaab” of Cabo Delgado affiliated to the Islamic State, while their “brothers” of Ansar Bait al Maqdis of Egypt perpetrated 95 and killed 263.
In Somalia, jihadists claim to have killed or injured 61 people in 22 attacks.
In the central Sahel, the IS claims responsibility for 22 attacks in Mali, eleven in Niger and four in Burkina Faso. In total, 37 operations resulted in 938 deaths or injuries. Since March, the jihadists have embarked on a series of abuses in northern Mali, specifically in Menaka where they are accused by several human rights organizations of killing hundreds of civilians.
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In the Lake Chad Basin, the jihadist organization has also targeted countries such as Chad and Cameroon, where it claims to have been behind 17 attacks. In these attacks, 99 people were reportedly killed.
However, there has been a limited presence in Libya, Benin and Uganda, where the IS has committed six attacks overall, killing or injuring 19 people.
Decentralization
Of Salafist jihadist ideology, the Islamic State was proclaimed in 2014 in the Syrian-Iraqi area by the Iraqi national, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, killed in 2019 by the U.S. Army in Syria. Under his leadership, the jihadist group, which had to administer territories where it applied the ultra-rigorist version of Sharia law, expanded into other parts of the world. Building on this momentum, his successor Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al Qurachi has worked to export the ideology of the jihadist organization, which, in 2022, has a total of seven “provinces” in Africa.
In March, the central Sahel region was made a province in its own right, no longer dependent on Nigeria. Mozambique, which was under the authority of the “Province of Central Africa,” has also been “promoted” and is now on its own. A policy of expansion that will undoubtedly be maintained by the current “caliph” Abu al Hussein al Husseini al Qurachi, who has taken over from Abu al Hassan al Hachimi al Qurachi.
