Africa next stop for fight on IS

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Africa next stop for fight on IS

2:12 CAT | 25 Oct 2017

AFP (File photo) / Shift in strategy: US wants more boots on ground as jihadist threat surfaces on continent

The US is considering a stepped-up military presence in Africa to pursue Islamic State jihadists looking for new havens after the fall of their “caliphate”, American officials say.

After IS lost its de facto capital Raqqa in Syria this month, and its Iraqi stronghold of Mosul earlier, the group “has aspirations to establish a larger presence” in Africa, the US military’s top officer, General Joseph Dunford, said on Monday.

From Libya to Egypt’s Sinai, to east and west Africa, the jihadists have already posed a threat, Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a press conference.

He was discussing the October 4 clash in Niger that cost the lives of four US soldiers.

Along with five Nigerien troops, the US soldiers died on the Niger-Mali border in an attack carried out by locals linked to IS, according to Dunford.

The incident shocked many Americans unaware of the hundreds-strong US military presence in that country.

Dunford said the military will make recommendations to President Donald Trump and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis “for the allocation of forces that meet what we see as the threat, what we anticipate the threat to be”.

He was due to meet military chiefs from 75 countries “to talk about the next phase of the campaign” against IS yesterday.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Mattis last Friday, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a member of the Senate’s armed services committee, said bluntly: “The war is morphing. We’re going to see more actions in Africa, not less.”

After the Middle East, Africa already has the greatest presence of American special forces. Official figures show more than 1300 of the troops are deployed on the continent.

These elite units train local forces in counterterrorism and “will only accompany those forces when the prospects of enemy contact is unlikely”, Dunford said.

These rules of engagement “are going to change when it comes to counterterrorism operations”, Graham said.

He hinted that US troops would be authorised to shoot first on “terrorist” targets, which is not the case now.

The EU’s presidency also warned this month that countries in that bloc must monitor “very carefully” a growing IS threat in north Africa, where fighters have relocated.

Dunford said the war was moving to multiple arenas.

“We’re dealing with a challenge that exists from west Africa to southeast Asia,” the US general said.

Source: AFP