Africa: A Rising Threat of Terror
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עברית (Hebrew)
A new study on North Africa and the Sahel reports that terrorist attacks in the region “increased an alarming 60 percent” in 2013, to the highest annual level over the past twelve years. “An expanding array of al-Qaeda-affiliated and like-minded extremist groups” escalated their violent attacks across an ‘arc of instability’ from the Atlantic to the Red Sea.
These extremist groups include several al-Qaeda-affiliated and like-minded extremist formations and their associates, such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Boko Haram, Ansaru, Ansar Dine, Ansar Al-Sharia, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), al-Mourabitoun, the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MLNA), Al-Shabaab, and militant recruits from the Polisario-run refugee camps and other displaced persons.
According to HLS News Wire the study, Terrorism in North Africa and the Sahel in 2013, reports that Libya, Algeria, Mali, and Tunisia suffered the highest rate of attacks in the region, which has seen terrorism rise more than 600 percent since the 9/11 attacks.
iHLS – Israel Homeland Security
The study, authored by Yonah Alexander, director of the Inter-University Center on Terrorism Studies (IUCTS), is the IUCTS’s fifth annual report on terrorism in the Maghreb and Sahel region. It was released last Friday at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. at the 16th annual event on International Cooperation in Combatting Terrorism: Review of 2013 and Outlook for 2014, hosted by the IUCTS/Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.
“The stakes are too high for America to disengage from the Maghreb and the Sahel,” Alexander underscored in the report, adding that “America’s vital interests in the region and those of our friends and allies are under assault by extremists and radicals who are doing us harm and want to inflict more damage.”
The report recommends that regional and global leaders take steps to stem the flow of arms and new jihadi recruits, promote regional cooperation and development, and prevent what the UN Security Council warned last year was becoming “a breeding ground for extremists and a launch pad for larger-scale terrorist attacks around the world.”
