Lawfare Daily: Terrorism and Insurgency in sub-Saharan Africa

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“I think, you know, the center of the action”

is really the Sahel at the moment, although, I mean, it would be a mistake to ignore the horn of Africa to ignore especially Al Shubab. It's the law fair podcast. I'm Daniel Byman, the foreign policy editor of law fair,

with Holly Berkeley Fletcher, a former senior CIA Africa analyst and Alexander Palmer, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and the International Studies. It does go back to state weakness. I do think there's a particular challenge

when you do have a sizable population that would be possibly ideologically receptive to Islamic extremism. Today, we're talking about terrorism, insurgency, and instability in sub-Saharan Africa.

I want to plunge into our discussion of extremism and instability in both East and West Africa. And Zander, I know you have a report coming out on the subject, I can give us the kind of top lines of the extremist groups and the biggest threats they pose

and you're overall conclusion. So our report looks at transnational terrorist groups, which are just one aspect of extremism and violence in Africa, but we look at two to three interlink theaters. There's very much West Africa and the Sahel,

which has been in the news recently because of the ongoing chain-immoffensive, chain-imm is an al-Qaeda affiliate operating across Molly, Burkina Faso, Nishir, a little bit in Nigeria, Benin, Togo, I can multi-country of large group

that is currently kind of sweeping across Molly. In the Western Sahel as well, there is the Islamic states, the Help Province, ISSP, a smaller group that has been kind of in on again, off again, conflict with Janeym for years.

Kind of in the last couple of years, it's been increasingly active in Nigeria. Very recently hit, you may international airport and air base 101, which used to host US troops before the withdrawal.

And it's expanding as well into Northwest Nigeria. Further east in the Lake Chad Basin, you're looking at Islamic state West Africa province, which is currently the Islamic state's most active international province.

It's primarily active in the vicinity of Lake Chad and has been really escalating its campaign in Northeast Nigeria in the last few years. You also have kind of JAS as the kind of remaining kind of Boko Haram group is usually cold,

also active in the Lake Chad region, also in conflict with Iswap, but has been kind of resurgging after several years

and government pressure, kind of shifting further east

in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. You have the ADF, ally Democratic Forces, also a Islamic state affiliate, although there's kind of debate on how active they are and kind of how strongly aligned they are with the Islamic state.

In Mozambique, you have Islamic state Mozambique known by variety of other names, local insurgency, largely confines to couple Delgado province, been under significant pressure in the last couple of years, but is really sort of expanding within Northern Mozambique,

kind of splintering into smaller, more mobile groups and this is changing the nature of the threat, even if it's not kind of an ascendant group the way that this helps, this helps Jihadist groups are.

And then of course you have Somalia, Al Shabab,

probably the wealthiest and most active, al Qaeda affiliate in the world controls large chunk of Somali territory and has been on the offensive again after the Somali government was able to put some pressure on the group with a series of operations

in collaboration with local forces. The Islamic state Somalia province is also still in the country, although it's been really battered by a offensive by the Pluntland Security Forces. Pluntland is one of the federated member states of Somalia,

but there was kind of an internationally backed offensive that really put a lot of pressure on IS Somalia and it remains to be seen whether it'll be capable of resurgent.

So those are the main Islamic state, Al Qaeda affiliates,

Somalfe Jahada's groups across of Somasaharan Africa.

“I think the center of the action is really the Sahel”

at the moment, although I mean it would be a mistake to ignore the horn of Africa to ignore especially Al Shabab. - Thanks, and I know for our listeners, that's kind of a lot to take in, there are a lot of groups and many of the names and acronyms are not familiar,

but we're gonna go deeper on Alali's as the podcast goes forward. Alia, I want to turn to you and just ask you about kind of the broader conditions that are leading to all these groups, the weakness of the states and other problems

that are creating this kind of huge area of crisis. - Yeah, so that's it, the weakness of the state is really the foundation of all of these crises. And then there are particular conditions in each place. Obviously there's also the, in some cases more than others,

there's a strong appeal of actual religious ideology, but I think the state weakness is actually the bigger issue. And I think you see that in particular with the fact that there's an Islamic extremist group and somewhere like DRC, I remember when that one popped up

in the reporting, we were just like, what is this? Like kind of it was kind of a headscratcher because that is not an area of, that's not a heavily Muslim area, but nonetheless Islamic extremists were able to exploit

state weaknesses. And state weakness is a complex issue. And fortunately there's a chicken or egg issue

“where the conditions you need to address state weakness”

are, the conditions needed to create a strong state are the conditions created by a strong state. So you have a real, you are really intractable issue for that reason. You have security economic development, state legitimacy,

inclusive political and economic institutions. Those all tend to reinforce each other. And so you either get the snowball running, rolling in a good direction or a bad direction, and then once in these motions,

it's hard to sort of break out of it. I think the best book I've read on this is James Robertson and Darren Asimolou's "Why Nations Fail." And they describe this throughout history and all around the world.

So it's a very complex issue. And unfortunately it's not one that is easily solved certainly by external assistance.

“I think Molly is a case where all of those things”

seem to be rolling in the right direction for a time, and by Western judgment, they were meeting certain benchmarks of elections and things like that and they had sort of made a piece with the Torx and the North. But it didn't go deep enough.

And then when you had the opportunistic virus of Islamic extremism that really got going after Libya's failure, another state failure,

and shockingly short order.

So that's kind of the bottom line.

“I think to riff on Tolstoy, all stable nations”

are alike, but failed states are failed in their own special ways with some common foundational conditions. - That's a kind of depressing but I think I accurate description as in, let me turn back to you. We often use the term terrorist group

to cover lots of different things. And one thing that a report makes clear, these groups are actually not the same, but in their capabilities and in their orientations. Can you talk a little bit about kind of the balance

between terrorism and surgency, criminality, whatever other adjectives we want to use before these groups in some cases even pseudo state?

And how should we be thinking about them?

- Yeah, I mean, I think of most of these groups with some exceptions, very much as kind of, especially in the Sahel as insurgencies, right? These are insurgencies. They have links to international terrorist groups,

al Qaeda, the Islamic State, but particularly kind of looking at Jainim, there's a focus on local goals. And there's a real local political driver here. Right, Jainim's precursor groups really came to prominence

in the 2012 uprising in Northern Mali. And there were kind of at the time before sort of the breakdown of the kind of cohesion of the rebellion, right? These links between the sort of more traditional

and of plur eg separatists and what then became Jainim and there certainly overlap in kind of these ethnic conflicts with the kind of the terrorist groups. And this problem has probably been worsening, rather than getting better, right?

The polarization of communities is rarely helped by 10 to 15 years of violence. And there are certainly signs that Jainim is trying to position itself as a legitimate alternative to the state, right?

It provides kind of parallel governance structures, the way that a traditional insurgency would, it has been really pointing to atrocities by the Mali and government, by Russian forces backing the Mali and government

and increasingly positioning itself as kind of the defender of Mali's sovereignty, the founder of Mali and communities against what it sees as repatious international forces. Some of the other groups are a little closer to more

kind of opportunistic criminal sort of taking on that kind of malange of ideologies, right?

“I think there's a significant debate on the EDF.”

How much is it really just sort of a criminal group? A bunch of bandits, basically, putting on Salafi Jihadist clothing and legitimizing their predations using religious language.

I think you see kind of a similar discussion always

around JAS kind of the former Boko Haram, right? How much is it really serious about some of these ideas and how much of it is just kind of bandetry, fri, opportunistic, kind of raiding and looting? That is then sort of dressed up and given legitimacy

and that the surf course, right, is you can't reduce this even in the case of anyone group because human beings are complex, groups are complex. People get involved in these types of enterprises for very different reasons.

But it's really important to recognize that these are blurred lines and that they require and of complex multifaceted solutions, rather than just focusing on, this is a terrorist group, we're gonna do counterterrorism. - Ali, I saw a lot of head nodding there.

“So can ask you, first of all, if you want to expand”

at any of Sanders' points, and then I do have additional question for you. - Yeah, I mean, I think he's correct about the local, there's international links and certainly financing. They want to sort of create common cause

with these larger groups so they can get support, money, and support, and so that probably magnifies some of the ideological bearings of the groups. But I think they're all really responding to local conditions in certain ways.

And some of that is a lot of places that it's exploiting sort of ethnic conflict. And certainly the other dynamic that's really key, I think, is the Center periphery divide, which is pervasive in Africa.

where there's the sort of historical structural

“political economy benefits the elite in the sort of center,”

nearest to the capital and center. And then these peripheral areas are sort of left, without any support or development, and they're not really both politically, they're not integrated into the state,

they don't have allegiance to the state. And then economically, they're underdeveloped and they're not being integrated into larger economies, which creates a lot of different grievances. Somalia is an interesting case,

because Somalia is ethnically homogenous. There's clans, of course, a very complex clans structure, and also religiously, homogenous, religious conflict, particularly in Nigeria, is another dynamic you see in a lot of these situations.

But the clan dynamics are definitely driving a lot of the problems in Somalia, and it's also a replication still of a state failure, of a repatious, extractive state,

“and there's never been a broader sense of being Somali”

or sort of buy into a pan clan, if I can call it that project. I'm interested in Sanders' point of view in terms of whether these groups actually do anything, in terms of providing service,

or if it's just sort of fear and extraction, and exploitation that sort of keeps them going. And I imagine that probably varies by region, but I'm interested in his point of view on that. - I mean, my sense is that, right,

when we talk about service provision, we're not talking about, they're providing running water. They're doing this, they're doing that. It's a little bit more kind of the negative service provision

if I can borrow the term and map it over from the negative piece idea.

It's, there's always been kind of an absence of services

in these areas, and kind of the main services security. There's providing a degree of security. They're providing a degree of stability in areas that have recently, of course, been very unstable, and that's not to say that the insurgents,

that you hottest enough play of major role in creating this instability, of course they did. But, again, they've been painting themselves a sort of the protector of these communities. They're sort of a taxation infrastructure,

at least in kind of jenim-controlled areas, right, they're taxing gold mining, that sort of thing. And while they don't provide, like, the services that we would think of as services, right, they are providing a degree of security

in kind of the negative sense. Maybe it looks a little bit more like a protection racket. Maybe that's a better way to think about it. (laughs) But, repeating off of your point as well,

these are countries where the state formed, the way it didn't Western Europe

by either co-opting or basically defeating alternative

power centers, right? They didn't kind of co-op to the tribes, or the ethnic groups, or whatever, the same way, because they're post-colonial kind of constructions. And they're independent power centers in these states,

and there is contestation, there's long been contestation.

“And I think that the jihadist groups are able”

to take advantage of that. - How it'll be followed up with kind of the reverse of this question, which is, when we look at some of the groups in the Middle East, I look at these long-state core, al-Qaeda, I would argue, and I think with a lot

of credibility, that these groups are much weaker than they were 15 years ago, in the case of these long-stay, to our 10 years ago, and 20 years ago, in the case of al-Qaeda. But when we look at groups like J&M and Shabbab,

these areas have been a focus of US Communitarianism for decades, as you know quite well, yet they seem to be not only resilient, but expanding, or at least, you know, able to do government lots of territory,

do major military operations. Why has international Communitarianism our pressure been less effective against these groups? - Yeah, I think that's really complicated. I mean, those short answer, which would still,

I would, you would think would apply to the Middle East is that, you know, they're attacking the problem militarily when it's a deeper governance issue. The 21st century has been humbling for US power in terms of, you know, our ability to do nation building,

whatever, you know, whatever that is. Clearly, an external force cannot build a nation where there's not internal impetus and desire and, you know, not to put the full blame on, you know, the people in these countries.

But certainly the elite in these countries

And there does have to be some internal commitment

“to then, you know, then I think the international community”

could do more on nation building. But you, but you can't, you can't really invent it out of nothing from the outside. And in fact, very often the international community can be seen as an invasive force.

And in fact, these groups exploit animosity towards, you know, the West. And we've seen that very powerfully, particularly in Somalia, I think. So that's the sort of short and long answer, I guess.

It's really, you can do military aid. But then you're not really addressing the root issues and addressing the root issues are just really difficult.

I do think that in the last 10 years,

you know, you've seen that with the international consensus and cooperative framework has really unraveled with the US, of course, leading the way and in creating chaos in that. I think climate change is probably exacerbated things,

but I suppose that would apply to the Middle East as well. And then Russia inserting itself as an alternative to European, Western, more international security forces. And clearly, the Russians are, their motivations are not great. But also, I think we've seen in the Ukraine war,

their capabilities are not good either. That's my best guess, but I don't know. I'm not an expert on the Middle East, so. - Fair enough, but I think your points on Africa and the limits

there are extremely well taken.

Let me ask you both, but start with you, Zander, the kind of so-what question from a very narrow American point of view. We know these groups are devastating to the countries and communities where they operate.

But the Trump administration, I think many Americans would say that's too bad, but not our problem, right? And that this is far away people about which we know nothing, right? This is not something Americans need to concern themselves about. And one of the counters that Congress and people often make

is, yeah, maybe today, it's not our problem. But when we see an international terrorist attack emanating from one of these places, then it suddenly becomes our problem. And it would have been a lot smarter to attack early rather than late.

Is that a plausible argument? Like, what's the likelihood of these groups going from pretty local or most regional to having your national ambition? - It's just not, right?

Yes, we've got the likelihood is. And I'll push back on that framing,

“'cause it's not something I think you can put a number on, right?”

We're looking at essentially, you know, fairly unbounded time frame to that question, right? 'Cause if we're assuming that they're ascendant, we're assuming that this is gonna be a problem in the future. And it seems like that's likely, I don't see kind of any

of these governments reversing the trends anytime soon. We have to be thinking about not just one year in the future, but five years in the future, 10 years in the future. And a lot can change during that time. So we're really talking about isn't sort of a point

estimate on how likely is it that and attack emanates from one of these countries. We're talking about an enormous range of uncertainty over a long period of time. And whether that means the United States

should be engaged in kind of militarily containing or degrading these groups, it certainly means that the United States is taking on, or there is greater risk to the United States as these groups gain power, because right?

Power is gonna give them greater capability, greater potential to develop external operations, capabilities and then intentions can shift, right? And there's a reason why people monitor both intentions and capability.

But there's a reason that there's this focus on kind of figuring out what the capabilities are,

“because that's what kind of brings the potential danger.”

- The new order of the original Hirspir. (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language)

- I'll give a thoughts on this question, 'cause I know it's something that is of concern to, you know, any US administration. - Yeah, and if I could, I'll address what Zander said, and then also to go back a little bit to what I said before,

and that is US engagement, leading international engagement,

but I think the absence of it can definitely make the problem worse.

“And I think on multiple fronts, you've seen, again,”

the unraveling of the US-led international order and the US commitment to Africa and also to democracy in Africa, you know, one of the things that has complicated and fueled the rise and the success of these extremist groups are discrete democratic failures as well.

And I think Mozambique is a case in point, obviously this insurgency began earlier, several years ago, and feeds into longstanding historic, historical, political dynamics in the country, in which the north is marginalized relative to the south,

and you have that center periphery divide.

But the fact is that they had a very bad election in 2024,

followed by a massive protest. And so not only does that sort of weaken the overall legitimacy of the state for the population everywhere, even in places where the state is strong, but it really complicates international engagement,

because now you're engaging with an illegitimate government. And then you see this in West Africa, too, this sort of vicious cycle of these military coups, and then that complicating international and regional engagement. I mean, Eco-Wass, Eco-Wass used to be a real bulwark

for democracy in that region and the sort of consequences

“from Eco-Wass, I think, you know, they did help.”

But then you have a sort of critical mass of countries

where there are military coups and Eco-Wass simply runs out of capacity to respond, you know, strongly. And then these countries can kind of team up against Eco-Wass, you know, and create this other block which undermines regional cooperation

and complicates international engagement. So I think the reduced commitment to democracy, you know, and there were some corrective, you know, measures under Biden, but really it's been since Trump won definitely the U.S. sort of commitment to democracy, you know,

doing the hard work of sort of building civil society and opposition capacity and all of that, all of that very difficult work that the results are not obviously evident, but I think the absence of it makes a difference. So it's not a very satisfying foreign policy stage

in which, you know, you don't see like clear tangible gains for your engagement, but you're mainly working to prevent something worse, not terribly satisfying, but I think that's definitely the case.

“- I think you can see some of these political dynamics”

right in the importance of the political side and the democratic engagement and it's sort of small D in Mali as well, right, the concurrent defensive is being led by Jane Moulong's side as a liberation army, but that kind of alignment came out of the collapse

of the peace deal between the Mali and government and the kind of twerreig separatist groups that then kind of came back together and formed the FLA, right? And that really happened after the shift to Russia as kind of an external security provider.

And right, I can't kind of connect the causal dots and say, here's the smoking gun that this was Russia, not the United States, this comes out of the lack of commitment to democracy and peace and anything like that, but it's certainly a plausible story.

And Russia certainly does not have, kind of as we can, we can see in Ukraine, right? A enormous respect for international agreements, but there's not as a fit and enormous respect for peace and security in general and large.

And I think you can see some of the consequences of that breakdown in the current defensive and the fact that you have two groups that that aren't really ideological allies have now been able to come together in the face of the opposition,

or their enemy in Bamaqo, which is now backed by an authoritarian power. - Holly, wanna ask you a question about variation. I've been kind of lumping these states and regions together as vulnerable or having problems,

but if we think about countries as different as Somalia and Malia and Nigeria, in Mozambique, how do you think about which countries are most vulnerable and conversely, how do you think about which countries

- Yeah, well, I think again,

and for, you know, it's hard to beat a dead horse, but it does go back to state weakness. I do think there's a particular challenge when you do have a sizable population that would be possibly ideologically receptive

to Islamic extremism. Again, I think that's kind of an invasive virus that needs a good host, but still, like part of being that host as a large population, where there's already maybe some religious or ideological

fertile ground there. But again, as we've seen in DRC, you don't even necessarily have to have that when you have general lawlessness and so on. I think Kenya is an interesting case in point.

I always go back to Kenya,

“'cause that's what I know the best anyway.”

But obviously Kenya is not a perfect democracy and there have definitely been abuses of power in combating terrorism and terrorists. But for one thing, it's democratic enough to have a good partnership with the U.S.

and other international, other countries and sort of pro-democracy counterterrorism efforts. So that's always been a very strong partnership. And then again, it's, again, it's not a, believe me, I have some worries about Kenya

in the next couple of years. But it's a, you know, it's a, by African standards, it's a fairly strong state where there is a sense of nationhood. There is real economic development

and there's Kenyans are invested in the system

“enough that they support their government”

in confronting Al-Shabab, for instance. It has not created huge religious divides in the country. Kenya has a sizable Muslim population and they have been able to confront extremists without really marginalizing even further.

Again, not perfect, but where Muslims in general are not sort of this heavily discriminated against class. They are, you know, integrated into the political economy. But again, Kenya has been able to get enough of that good snowball rolling down the hill,

you know, with security, economic development, political, inclusive political institutions and the sort of building blocks of state strength, not perfectly, and it can definitely reverse.

And I am concerned about that always.

But I think it's a case and point of, you could see a scenario with, especially with Somalia right on the border. And Kenya has its own very large indigenous Somali population and then an indigenous Muslim population,

non-Somali Muslim population. And they've suffered multiple terrorist attacks, but they've been able to manage it for the most part and even confront it next door in Somalia.

“So I think Kenya's a good case and point.”

- Zender, I wanna switch gears a bit and ask you about some of the tactics, techniques, and procedures. And in particular, we've seen an increased use by armies around the world,

but also by non-state groups of uncrewed systems. And could you talk a little bit about the use of UAVs by groups in Africa, as well as governments in Africa, and how that's kind of shifting the military balance between the groups and the government?

- Right, it's tough to say how much it's shifting the balance because this is all relatively new and use of drones by in particular terrorist groups is really kind of now on the upswing, but it's a relatively recent development.

So, Genim is kind of the most active terrorist group in Africa in terms of drone operations. Kind of large increase in recent years, especially kind of after March 2025, appears that there's been some kind of cross-pollination

between FLA groups and Genim at the tactical level and some learning by the organizations, learning from one another. There have been kind of weaponization of drones by Genim, by I-Swap, but lessso by kind of ultra-bob,

which is kind of an interesting kind of outlier case, most of ultra-bob's drone use. My understanding is surveillance propaganda

if anything.

“It's really these alien groups that are driving”

the kind of aggregate numbers in terms of UAS attacks in Africa.

On these tend to be kind of fairly simple kind of quadcopter FPV drones that have been kind of weaponized by putting grenades on them, explosives on them, that sort of thing. What I'm worried about and what I'm thinking about a lot

recently is the way that the Islamic state, one of the original ISIS, was such an innovator in weaponization and use of drones and well before the war in Ukraine, kind of put it really in the headlines. And worried about what that innovation looks like in the future,

kind of what a future, innovative uses of drones look like that could come out of these battlefields, that could come out of terrorist experimentation, that could then be kind of exported to other countries.

I may be intentionally but maybe just by an observation

and diffusion.

“- So I want to stand the future a little bit”

and ask you a follow-on, Sander. So we're seeing the Islamic State West Africa province as perhaps the Islamic State's most capable province globally. And how do we think about this in the context of the future Islamic State movement?

Or for that matter, the al-Qaeda where the shabab is, obviously one of the most capable parts of it is, is there kind of an africanization of jihad and we really, for many of our listeners, we kind of mentally situate these groups in the Middle East

and we actually should be shifting how we frame all this. - I mean, this is an open question

at a point of serious debate, right?

And I think it's important to note that an africanization is the world's most active Islamic State group by claims. But that is in no small part, the result of decline in activity by other groups.

And so this is partly driven by extreme weakness in other areas rather than just kind of this colossal surge in icewap activity, so we shouldn't be comparing, I think there might be this idea that icewap is kind of like the original ISIS,

but it's not there, it's not like that, at least not yet. The open question is around the longer term trajectory and the longer term focus on the kind of local or regional goals of the group

and then the parent group, so they're a kaita or the Islamic State's kind of international agenda. While most of the assessments, by both kind of independent, folks,

and kind of U.S. government, african, are that the groups are locally focused for now, but it's not clear that that's going to be permanent. And they may eventually face kind of incentives towards external operations,

but also they can shift their priorities due to internal politics that we don't understand. You see reports of increasing icewap role in kind of the global Islamic State infrastructure. It's governance infrastructure,

the general director of provinces,

“and you know something I think about a lot is,”

right, that involves contact between people and people kind of are influenced by each other and are socialized differently. And maybe that leads to a world in which, the Islamic State's groups like local goals

become more important, but maybe there's kind of a socialization of the West African Gihadists into this kind of more global ideological project, or at least sort of global operational project.

And that's a question that remains unanswered. And I think is if not totally unanswerable is certainly really, really hard to anticipate. - I want to ask you both about another kind of current about that's dominating most of our headlines,

at least on your national fairs. And that's the Iran War. And it's affecting every part of the world, but of course it's having a significant impact on poor countries that have fewer resources

to deal with the resulting problems. How, what you're thinking about how the Iran War is affecting stability in sub-Surian Africa? - Yeah, well, I don't think it's directly affecting this extremism problem,

but what it is, the longer it goes on,

of state weakness, it's really a shame

“because Africa began 2026 in a really strong economic”

position according to the IMF, some of the recorded some of this more, a strong economic growth for a number of years, and this is just potentially devastating, because especially for East Africa,

because it gets all of its fuel pretty much from the Gulf, and fertilizer, countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, heavily agricultural, big agricultural sectors, and they depend on fertilizer. And all sorts of trade, all manner of trade,

goes through the straight of her muse for East Africa, West Africa's a little bit different, I think, because of Nigeria,

but there's some impact there as well.

So I think about a country like Kenya, that again, has a lot of structural strengths, both politically and economically, but it depends heavily on commercial agriculture and tourism, both are which heavily fuel dependent,

I'm supposed to lead a big safari in Kenya, and June, I'm very concerned about getting fuel and getting all the people there on the European airliners, for instance. Not that I'm the major player in this drama,

but you have this coming at a time of a lot of political restiveness as well, where we've seen in Kenya as an example, youth protests the past few years. There's an election next year,

the government is already under the gun. There's also rising political violence of politicians funding ethnic gangs, which, of course, there's a long history there, but as the cost of living and economic hardship increases,

there's gonna be a more fertile ground to recruit people

for this first such gangs and such violence.

And so the longer this goes on, the more you see that good cycle potentially start to reverse, yeah, and then of course it's in countries like Sudan and Ethiopia where there's open conflict and potential conflict. The humanitarian elements of it are devastating,

food security is already spiking in those areas. The other thing I've seen recently is that two ships have been hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia, and that's a problem that we had solved or I thought we had solved some years ago,

but now hijacking ships with goods, particularly oil, is probably gonna be a lot more lucrative, and so that is something to watch as well. So it really throws a huge wrench in a fragile system.

And the longer this goes on, the more concerns I would have of having a big impact on the underlying stability of large parts of the continent.

“- I think the piracy element kind of brings in”

another interesting question here, which is sort of as this goes on, kind of what are the food these actions going to be. There have been reports in the UN Analytics support and sanctions monitoring committee documents

for the last couple of years of that increasing of the alshabab ties, there have kind of constantly been of intimations, allegations that some of this was related to the hoothies attempting to build up shababs. Maritime capability is ability to put pressure on ships

in the bubble and dead, that hasn't materialized. So if the kind of hoothies decide to once again, get involved and put additional pressure on the international system by attacking ships, transiting off the coast of Yemen,

I think you could potentially see kind of activity from the Horn of Africa if these reports are correct. But I think more interestingly, right, that has put pressure, the original kind of wave of who the attacks was associated with a spike

in piracy off of Somalia, because ships rerouted down around the Horn of Africa to avoid the bubble, and that expose them to piracy off of Somalia's eastern coast, southeastern coast. And they're just a lot more opportunity

when there are more ships. And as long as kind of disruption continues, if disruption increases once again,

“because of who the attacks, I think you'll see that”

kind of threat continued to worsen. - How we'd let me start with you. We've covered a lot here, problems with government,

the insurgent and terrorist groups themselves.

Given all this, what sort of thing should the US government be thinking about and probably, or perhaps

“do differently in order to bear addressed the problems?”

- Well, honestly, Dan, I think our own dysfunction is spilling out into the world. And so I really don't see a coherent strategy on Africa or extremism, or much of anything else coming out of this government.

I think what you're seeing here, particularly with the Iran War, is our own sort of mini state failures, which hopefully won't reach African proportions, but our own level of state failure,

because we are a superpower really sucking

much of the world down with us. So I don't see any solutions coming out of this government. I hate to say that, but that's the way I see it. But for sort of the next government, there has to be some sort of more coherent cohesive strategy

in terms of promoting all the pillars of state strength. Counterterrorism is important, but that, in absence of democracy building and more economic development and humanitarian, I mean, I think the collapse of USAID,

the ramifications will continue to unfold some of them dramatic, like just in terms of lives lost,

and some of them more slow burning and hard to measure

in terms of the end of so many democracy and government programs.

“I think we have to get back to a level of engagement,”

high level of engagement that isn't condescending, that is, there's been a shift under Biden, for instance, a shift more towards emphasizing partnership, which is good, but still that addresses comprehensive state failure. But I just don't see us being able to do that

when we're dealing with our own form of state failure, how I'll be at on a much less severe scale. - As Andrew Hallius made this even more depressing. So I welcome your thoughts, ideally, sure it's up, but more realistically, give us your assessment

and tell us where we might do there. - Hi, I'm not gonna cheer you up. I think that, right, the activities of these terrorist groups, these terrorist and surgencies, if you wanna call them that, have been going on for such a long time,

and it's not like they've been into decline. Over those last 10 plus years, they've largely been strengthening over the last 10 plus years, and the idea that we're gonna be able to reverse that in any timeframe that the US government might be willing

to find or stay involved is just really implausible to me. I think this is a long time problem that's going to be dealt with over the next few decades and it's about managing the problem unfortunately, far less than it is about solving the problem,

the idea that the United States could defeat any of these groups is maybe I'm wrong, but it strikes me as pretty implausible.

“I mean, I think where you're looking at sort of”

areas of potential hope is in some of these conflicts where there might be room in kind of the longer term and I don't think we're there yet. I don't think where the situations are right yet for at least some kind of advancement

along kind of more diplomatic tracks, so I mean, I think that the collapse of the peace agreement between Mali and the Torei groups was a major contributor to the current situation and that ship is probably sailed for now, but kind of continued political accommodation

between the center and the periphery in some of these countries or restarted political accommodation between the center and periphery in some of these countries, maybe in some years could bear fruit. In Mozambique, right, there's a large natural gas project

off the coast that the U.S. has just approved, kind of end of last year, I think approved a loan for if the benefits from that actually flow to communities that could help at least sort of undermine some of the appeal of the slotted jihadist group in the area,

but that depends on kind of willingness to exert leverage

to the center the way that they historically have

“and it's unclear to me what appetite for that kind of engagement”

the U.S. has at the moment. - Holly Berkeley, Fletcher, Alexander Palmer.

Thank you both very much.

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