ISIL Reaches East Africa, Already Attacks

ISIL Reaches East Africa, Already Attacks

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More than 200 fighters of the Somali militant group al-Shabab have reportedly defected from the al-Qaida affiliate and established the first coherent Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant group (ISIL) military brigade in East Africa.

In a terror alert issued over the Christmas holiday, the Kenyan Police Service (KPS) Inspector General Joseph Boinnet said al-Shabab has split into two groups with one remaining loyal to al-Qaida while the new unit, which is made up mainly of foreign fighters, has pledged its allegiance to ISIL.

“They (al-Shabab) have split. As a result of the splits, particularly the ones along ideological and religious lines, are very keen to promote that internal competition by proving a point. They plan to prove a point by staging attacks.They are competing to spread an international jihadist agenda, which could be deadly if and when their attacks happens,” Boinnet told media in Nairobi on Christmas Eve.

For the past two months, the Kenyan Defense Force (KDF) has been deployed to the Boni Forest and the Mandera border area to flush out the militants, but the crackdown has largely failed to secure the border areas. The announcement of a new ISIL group in Kenya comes nearly three months after small units of al-Shabab began defecting in small numbers to align with the Syrian-based group in a move that prompted widespread purges of pro-ISIL fighters from the militia ranks.

Apart from the Kenya-Somali border area, ISIL fighters are reportedly active in central Somalia and in the mountains of northern Somalia, where they have fought numerous battles against the armed forces of the self-declared State of Puntland. The expansion of ISIL to Somalia and Kenya marks an extension of the Syrian-Iraqi group’s to East Africa for the first time.

ISIL already has powerful and militarily capable North African affiliates in Egypt and Libya. In West Africa, its affiliate is the Nigerian Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram, which operates extensively in Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger.

The new East-African ISIL group has over the past month captured several towns in the Juba and Geddo regions to consolidate its hold in southern Somalia.