Alarm As Al-Qaeda, Islamic State Shift To West Africa As War Theatre

West African countries of Mali and Burkano Fasso are under alarm following reports that the fundamentalist Islamic groups, Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group may be turning their backyards to a war theatre.

The two groups are suddenly turning their guns on each other in the Sahel, according to reports and the proverbial grass suffering when two elephants fight is feared about to be reenacted.

If they go on all-out, it would mark a dramatic turn given that they had cooperated for years before now in the Sahel, unlike in Syria where they has been on each other’s jugular.

An AFP reports indicates that the two groups had often worked in tandem in the Sahel, coordinating attacks, and even swapping fighters.

The semi-desert African region has seen years of conflict with Islamic militants, who first emerged in northern Mali in 2012 before sweeping into the centre of the country, and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed to date and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

But since the beginning of the year, sporadic clashes between al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates appear to have escalated into full-blown coa mbat in central Mali and Burkina Faso.

Few details have emerged from this internecine jihadist struggle, with much of it taking place in volatile areas already beset by bandits and ethnic militias, and regular clashes with national armies.

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Experts and local officials point to disputes over territorial expansion or access to fodder crops as some of the reasons behind the fighting.

Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the United Nations special representative in Mali, said that the jihadist civil war is “no longer a secret”. “We don’t know where it’s going to end, each one wants to get the upper hand over the other,” he said, explaining that the groups are fighting over land.

Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists — now grouped under an alliance named GSIM — first emerged in northern Mali in 2012 and then established themselves in central Mali in 2015.

The Islamic State group’s history in the region is shorter.

Islamic militant Abou Walid Al-Sahraoui founded the region’s franchise in 2015, and it is now active in the border regions linking Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Neither al-Qaeda nor the Islamic State group ever formally inked an alliance in the Sahel, according to a western diplomat in Mali’s capital Bamako.

But that did not stop them from working closely together, he said, pointing to joint raids and fighters who would pass from one group to another.

The diplomat added that a person’s reason for joining one or the other group is often tied to local circumstance, such as belonging to a marginalised ethnic group or not having a job.

Likewise, reasons for conflict are also often local, said Ibrahim Maiga, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Bamako.

“These conflicts should not only be understood through an ideological prism,” he said.