Al-qaida, IS affiliates team up in W Africa

THIES (Senegal): The only place in the world where fighters linked to al-qaida and the Islamic State group are cooperating is in West Africa's sprawling Sahel region, giving the extremists greater depth as they push into new areas, according to the commander of the US military's special forces in Africa.

"I believe that if it's left unchecked it could very easily develop into a great threat to the West and the United States," US Air Force Brigadier General Dagvin Anderson told the news agency in an interview this week.

The leader of US Special Operations Command Africa described the threat even as the Pentagon considers reducing the US military presence in Africa.

Experts have long worried about collaboration between al-qaida and the Islamic State group. While the cooperation in the Sahel is not currently a direct threat to the US or the West, "it's very destabilising to the region," Anderson said.

He spoke on the sidelines of the US military's annual counterterrorism exercise in West Africa, currently the most active region for extremists on the continent.

The alarming new collaboration in the Sahel between affiliates of al-qaida and IS is a result of ethnic ties in the region that includes Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.

"Whereas in other parts of the world they have different objectives and a different point of view that tends to bring Islamic State and al-qaida into conflict, here they're able to overcome that and work for a common purpose, Anderson said, emphasising that it's a local phenomenon.

The cooperation allows the extremist groups to appeal to a wider audience in a largely rural region where government presence is sparse and frustration with unemployment is high.

The past year has seen a surge in deadly violence in the Sahel, with more than 2,600 people killed and more than half a million displaced in Burkina Faso alone. Al-qaida is the deeper threat both in the region and globally, Anderson said.

"Islamic State is much more aggressive and blunt, and so in some ways they appear to be the greater threat, he said. But al-qaida, which continues to quietly expand, is "for us the longer strategic concern."

Al-qaida has been successful at consolidating efforts in northern Mali and moving south into more populated areas “and taking various groups and galvanizing them together into a coherent movement,” Anderson said.

The most prominent of those affiliates is a coalition of al-qaida-linked groups known as JNIM with about 2,000 fighters in the region, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.