ISIL is not dead, it just moved to Africa
After its ousting from Syria and Iraq, the armed group is now trying to build a caliphate in the restive Sahel region.
Rashid Abdallahby Rashid Abdallah
28 Nov 2019
Family members of victims of an ambush on workers near a Canadian-owned mine, react during their meeting with officials in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso November 7, 2019 [Anne Mimault/Reuters]
Illegal armed groups are opportunistic by nature. They usually start their operations and recruit followers in countries where there is poverty, corruption, religious conflict or ethnic strife, and where the security forces are unable to keep the public safe and illegal formations under control.
The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) in the Middle East was a textbook example of this trend. Since the occupation of Iraq by US forces in 2003, the region has been stuck in a vicious cycle of conflict, sectarianism and regime change. It is in the shadows of this crumbling landscape that ISIL first began to emerge, nourished by the increasing frailty and incompetency of Arab states in revolt or at war.
Over the last few years, regional and global powers, aided by non-state actors, managed to eliminate ISIL from most of Iraq and Syria. Today, ISIL does not control any major city or township in these states and many of the group's fighters in the region are either dead, in captivity or on the run.
More at: https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/isil-dead-moved-africa-191126152156781.html
For the most part, ousted out of Iraq and Syria.. but... let's not forget, it was only about 2 months ago, we bombed the daylight out of that one island in Iraq, we may have gotten a lot of their soldiers at that too. There were plenty apparently.
