By Solomon "Customs" Bridges
Nairobi and Washington marked the same anniversary this month for very different reasons. In the United States, September 11 is a date of memorial. In the Sahel — the dry belt stretching from Mauritania to Sudan — it has become a measuring stick for how far an old enemy has spread.
According to figures compiled by the conflict monitor Acled, Islamist extremist violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State in the Sahel is set to reach historic highs this year, driven by a series of sweeping offensives across the region. The data arrives as the United States commemorates 25 years since al-Qaida's attacks on New York and Washington — a contrast Acled's researchers say is stark: the group that launched those attacks is comparatively weak elsewhere in the world, but it and its rivals have found fertile ground in the Sahel.
The region — spanning Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and neighboring states — has struggled for a decade with weak central governments, military coups, and the withdrawal of French and, more recently, some American counterterrorism support. Into that vacuum have moved groups affiliated with both al-Qaida and the Islamic State, competing for territory and recruits even as they fight government forces.
What the Acled figures do not settle is cause: whether the surge reflects stronger jihadist coordination, weaker state capacity, the retreat of foreign forces, or some combination of the three. That is a debate for security analysts and regional governments, and this desk has not seen the full breakdown of the data behind the headline figure.
What is clear is the shape of the story: a threat that Washington largely stopped talking about after 2011 never left the map. It moved. And a quarter-century after the towers fell, the fight against the network they inspired is being waged, largely out of Western headlines, across a belt of Africa most Americans could not find on a map.
Nothing happens 'over there' anymore.
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.
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