Between the 13th and 18th of March, Al-Shabaab’s Politics and Wilaayaat wing responsible for tending to contemporary and strategic affairs organised what it called a “Consultative Forum Regarding the Jihad in East Africa”. As the first of such events to be publicized by Al-Shabaab, the conference was said to have brought together a diverse group […]
Latest Developments on Mozambique’s Ansar al-Sunna: A Deteriorating Security Situation
Editors Note: This month’s much anticipated article is by Jasmine Opperman (@Jasminechic00 on Twitter), who’s currently an analyst at the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) Project. I met Jasmine about 3 years ago following her input on a report published and presented at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) on Violent Extremism in South […]
Busting Myths on Global Jihadism in Nigeria
Editors Note: In the upcoming months, TAJ will be featuring contributions from analysts and scholars in the field of (counter-)terrorism research who I’ve come to learn from and highly respect. This presents a fantastic opportunity to diversify levels of engagement and participation as well as introduce unique perspectives and analyses by some of the top […]
Jihadist Expansion into Burkina Faso
In my previous article I mentioned Burkina Faso to be one of the countries contributing to Sub-Saharan Africa’s account for half of the largest increases in deaths from terrorism in the world between 2017 and 2018. I had this at the back of my mind when speaking to two Burkinabe people in Ghana at a […]
A Recent Overview of Terrorism in Africa
According to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), 23 070 incidents of terror occurred in Africa between 2000 and 2018. The continent’s top five deadliest attacks in this period were instigated by a combination of jihadi and ethnic insurgent/rebel groups, namely: Al-Shabaab in Somalia, (588), the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) (400) and tribesmen (339) in the […]
Violent Extremism in Mozambique: The Importance of Drawing Key Lessons from the Emergence of Terrorist Organisations in Africa
I had the pleasure of attending a seminar on Addressing the Threat of Violent Extremism in Southern Africa late last month with the expectation that it would perhaps offer a crash course on exactly what’s going on with regards to the emerging group in Mozambique. Quite interestingly however, it appeared the group had the distinguished […]
Death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: Implications for African Islamic State Affiliates
Yesterday U.S President Donald Trump declared leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi dead as a result of a U.S military raid of a house he was hiding in Syria’s Idlib province. Certainly, this may be seen as a major (as he would like to say) “win” for Trump as he approaches a major […]
Measuring the Success of Terrorist Organisations: Reflecting on Al-Qaeda’s Public Discourse Post-9/11
Every year since the tragic events of 9/11 when nearly 3000 innocent American citizens lost their lives as a result of a terror attack planned and instigated by Al-Qaeda, countless articles are written about the terrorist organisation, as the events marked a watershed moment in the field of security studies, which precipitated a so-called War […]
Abubakar Shekau: The Al-Qaeda-Islamic State Nexus
Over the course of my research into the nature and types of terrorist affiliations, I thought an examination on Boko Haram’s affiliations would be a worthwhile thought experiment for two reasons: firstly, I found myself asking the simple question of who Boko Haram is affiliated to, leading to the second reason which is the fact […]
Al-Shabaab’s Foreign Fighters and Why they Matter
We are typically drawn to events involving mass casualty terror attacks, affiliatory developments such as mergers (or acquisitions), factional battles and splinter groups, media publications and statements, particularly those with important announcements or a break from the norm in terms of strategy, operational tactics, or rarely seen personalities like Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. These observable activities […]
