ISIS reinforces its terrorist presence in Uganda through Central African Province
ISIS Central Africa Province is
trying to consolidate its presence on the continent, starting with the Congo,
Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda, where it has taken advantage of alliances with
armed groups and the fragile security vacuum that exists in that region.
On Sunday, October 24, ISIS claimed
responsibility for an attack with an explosive device in the Ugandan capital,
Kampala, on Saturday evening, October 23.
In its statement, the terrorist
organization said that a group affiliated with it detonated the explosive
device in a bar where “elements and spies of the Crusader Ugandan government”
were meeting in Kampala.
The Ugandan police said that the
explosive device, which killed at least one person in a restaurant on the
outskirts of the capital, was stuffed with nails and pieces of metal. On
Saturday, October 23, local media said that the bomb killed two people and
wounded seven others.
Bomb explosions are rare in Uganda,
which is located in the east of the African continent.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni
said, “It is a terrorist act, but we will eliminate its perpetrators,” adding
to the Ugandan people, “You should not be afraid. We will defeat this crime as
we defeated all other crimes committed by pigs that do not respect life.”
Not the first
time
It is worth noting that on October
8, ISIS claimed responsibility for a terrorist attack in Uganda that targeted a
police station in the Kawempe district of Kampala, which was the first time
such an attack was carried out in the country by ISIS.
ISIS’s adoption of the operation is
an implicit declaration of its presence in the country in light of the
geographical impact of its spread in the Central African region, where the
state of Uganda is located in the middle of the continent and is bordered to
the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It also has a common border
with Kenya, which is affected by the terrorist tide.
Central Africa
Province
The real beginning of ISIS in Africa
came during the era of late ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the latter
focused on Africa to announce the establishment of what he called the Central
Africa Province to lead the organization’s operations in the center, east and
south of the continent.
Indeed, ISIS launched attacks in
Congo, Mozambique and Tanzania, and its elements took control of a strategic
coastal city and villages, killing hundreds of citizens and displacing hundreds
of thousands in Mozambique.
A report by the Soufan Center for
Security Affairs stated that “the Central Africa Province in Mozambique
includes foreign militants, but there are no clear indications of the presence
of Arab elements who came from ISIS strongholds in the Middle East.”
“The majority of the Central Africa
Province's elements are Swahili-speaking foreigners coming from all over East
Africa, including Kenya, Tanzania and perhaps also Uganda and Comoros,” it
added.
Although pro-ISIS media promote
Central Africa Province as a single organization, it is actually divided into
two separate groups.
Allied
Democratic Forces
The Islamist rebel Allied Democratic
Forces have been active in both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
since the 1990s, and the organization is currently led by Seka Musa Baluku.
In early 2017 and mid-2018, the
authorities allocated funds that were transferred to the financial
facilitatorof ISIS, Waleed Ahmed Zein, who was arrested in Kenya in July 2018,
for the benefit of the Allied Democratic Forces.
The AlliedDemocraticForces has its
means to obtain funding for its activities through illegal logging, gold mining
and ivory trade, as well as a network of taxis and motorbikes operating between
local cities in theCongo.
The group, which declared its
allegiance to ISIS via a video clip in October 2017, launched brutal and
violent attacks in North Kivu and Ituri provinces in eastern Congo against
citizens and army forces, killing more than 849 civilians in 2020 alone,
according to United Nations reports.
Ansar al-Sunna
Ansar al-Sunna declared its
allegiance to ISIS in April 2018, but the latter did not recognize it as a
group affiliated with the organization until August 2019. It is currently led
by Abu Yasir Hassan.
Since October 2017, the group has
killed at least 1,300 civilians, and some estimates indicate that more than
2,300 civilians and soldiers have been killed since the terrorist organization
began its violent insurgency in the country.
Ansar al-Sunna committed a number of
massacres, the most prominent of which was a horrific massacre in November
2020, the largest of its kind in the country, when its elements massacred 50
civilians in the stadium of the village of Muatide in northern Mozambique.
