Islamic State Signals An Expansion in Africa and Gloats Over America’s Wildfires
The last two issues of Al-Naba, the weekly Islamic State (IS) newsletter, showed IS’s ongoing strength in its main theatres in Africa—in the West, the Congo, and Mozambique. There are indicators that IS is gaining ground in a new African theatre, Puntland, one of the de facto breakaway republics from Somalia, and that the group has eyes on another: Sudan. The assassination of a Chinese citizen in Afghanistan gives a clue about the capacity and intentions of the IS node there. Meanwhile, the editorial revelling in America’s troubles with the California wildfires—and attacking rival Islamists—was a monument to the continuity of IS’s ideology.
RECENT ISLAMIC STATE OPERATIONS
The front pages of both Al-Naba 478 (published on 16 January 2025) and Al-Naba 479 (published on 23 January) described IS attacks on security forces in Puntland, which killed one and fourteen people, respectively. IS’s focus on Puntland is growing. Al-Naba 477 (9 January) documented a bombing in the Bari area that killed one and injured a dozen, and Al-Naba 476 (2 January) claimed IS had carried out twelve inghimasi attacks in Puntland.
This is a novel development. The last time Puntland was mentioned in Al-Naba was in edition 384 in late March 2023, a small notice about an attack on a military patrol near Bosaso in the Bari province.1 That item was two months after the United States killed Bilal-al-Sudani in “northern Somalia”. (The location of the raid has never been specified beyond that, so it is unclear if Al-Sudani was killed in Puntland, a de jure part of Somalia.)
Al-Sudani was a key facilitator in IS’s global network, heading Al-Karrar, a regional coordinating office that stretches all the way to Afghanistan. IS soon went quiet about its operations on the Horn of Africa in mid-2023, which is often what it does when it is in the building phase of a local node. Puntland has always been the centre of operations for Islamic State in Somalia (ISS)—it is where its current leader, Abdul Qadir Mumin, was sent when he first arrived (it is, inter alia, a convenient place to coordinate with IS in Yemen). The decision to publicly highlight the activities of ISS this month could indicate ISS now believes it is strong enough to deal with increased attention from Western counter-terrorism authorities.
Most of the other activity reports in Al-Naba 478 come from elsewhere in Africa, where IS boasts of the suffering it has inflicted on Christians. Islamic State’s West Africa Province (ISWAP)—formerly Boko Haram—is said to have killed security forces and Christian civilians in Nigeria and Cameroon. A major attack by IS’s Sahel Province killed twenty-five soldiers in Burkina Faso. Even worse, Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) slaughtered and abducted seventy-five Christians in Lubero, in the North Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There were other ISCAP raids in the Congo and one into Uganda that killed two people. Two IS jihadists in the Cabo Delgado region of northern Mozambique killed several more Christians. The one documented attack outside Africa was against the PKK in eastern Syria.
The pattern is similar in Al-Naba 479 : a Christian killed in northern Mozambique, thirty-five Nigerian soldiers killed and wounded, and one Christian killed and others wounded in attacks on Congolese and Ugandan forces in eastern Congo. The PKK in Deir Ezzor was assaulted again, too. The notable aspect of Al-Naba 479 is not the killing of a Taliban militiamen near Baghlan, nor the targeted assassination of a “spy for the apostate Pakistani intelligence” services in the Bajaur district of what used to be called the North West Frontier—such incidents are commonplace in the Naba reports. The claim that a “Chinese Communist” was killed in Afghanistan is a rarity, though, albeit the focus of Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) on China is not new.
According to Al-Naba 479, the Chinese national—whose photograph is included—was shot in his car “in the village of Katakjar in the Takhar area [of north-east Afghanistan] using machine guns … The attack came one day after the Taliban ‘celebrated the 70th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Afghanistan and China,’ according to an official statement by the [Taliban] militia. During the ‘celebration,’ the [Taliban] deputy foreign minister emphasised that they enjoy ‘good relations’ with the criminal Chinese infidels.”
AL-NABA 478 EDITORIAL
The editorial in Al-Naba 478, entitled, “With a Punishment from Him or By Our hands”,2 is a response to the wildfires in California.
IS is very pleased about this disaster. “This fire struck America in its most splendid cities, burning them, wounding the hearts of its affluent, making them weep, displacing them, and destroying their homes to the extent that they described it as … ‘the end of the world’,” Al-Naba begins. The suffering of “the usurious ‘insurance and housing markets’” was a specific source of delight to IS. The inability of America to stop the blazes, even after the army was called in and prisoners joined in the firefighting effort, showed “the American governmental and security system collapsed in the areas affected by the fires”, Al-Naba said, and the “fear and chaos [that] spread” was “a miniature depiction of American helplessness before the might of the Creator”.
All of this was as it should be, IS insists, quoting the Qur’an [8:59]: “Let not those who disbelieve suppose that they are out of reach [of God]. Verily, they cannot escape.” The forces of jahiliyya (pre-Islamic ignorance) have united “in branding monotheism (tawhid) and jihad as ‘intellectual extremism’ … and they collectively waged war against it and fought to suppress it”, Al-Naba says. In response, “God has afflicted them with ‘climatic extremism’, as they have chosen to call and interpret it.” And it is only a foretaste, according to Al-Naba, which asks rhetorically: “So how will they cope tomorrow when they are burning in the fires of Hell?
The most sinister part of the editorial is the suggestion that the “chaos and loss of control” presents “an inspiring operational opportunity” and “sparks an idea for the lone mujahideen”: “All you need to do is go on a ‘camping trip’ to one of the forests near residential areas, then ignite a fire and quietly withdraw.”
IS’s ideological ire falls on two groups.
First, “the atheists (al-mulhidun) and their offspring among the so-called rationalists [who] always attribute these calamities and disasters to severe climate changes, explaining them with dry interpretations that detach them from the power and decree of God, as if nature changes of its own accord and moves by its own management rather than by the command of its Creator and Sustainer”. Such folly barely merits IS’s attention and is dismissed in passing.
Second and more serious, the “modernist (al-hadathiyyun) preachers [who] have refrained from acknowledging that what happened to America is divine retribution and punishment”.
IS is particularly furious at the Muslim Brotherhood and its ideologues who did see heaven’s hand in the disaster in California, linking it “to the wound of Gaza”, when they have previously “rejected any connection between the calamities striking America and Europe and divine retribution for the oppressed Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Khorasan, and elsewhere”. Not content with that, the Ikhwan have until now “forbade rejoicing over such events” in disbelieving countries, “claiming … these are merely natural disasters with scientifically-explicable causes, with no bearing on punishment, trials, or warnings!” IS’s outrage is quite acute: “This is a partisan jurisprudential selectiveness that manipulates the deen [Islam] for the sake of the party, trading in verses just as it trades in wounds!”
IS has always been very hostile to making Palestine a special priority, seeing this outlook as polluted with nationalism and verging on idolatry. There was a slight modulation in IS’s messaging on this point last year as it recommenced global attacks and sought to capitalise on the inflamed antisemitism in the West, but its historic view basically remains—as can be seen in this editorial. IS is clearly exasperated with the Brotherhood and similar Islamists whose “fluctuations and inconsistencies … are no less erratic than the fluctuations and shifts in the climate”: these factions present themselves in the colours of moderation—until the Palestinian issue comes up. Al-Naba taunts these groups, asking: “now that they have admitted [the wildfires are] divine and just retribution upon America for Gaza, what if the mujahideen [of the Islamic State] succeeded in orchestrating such fires in the future? Would they then share in our joy of retribution, or would it suddenly become ‘terrorism’ contrary to the tolerance of Islam?!”
By IS’s reckoning, the Brethren and other Murji’a preachers (those who postpone judgment on sinners) have gone wrong by treating the afflictions that befall Muslims and the calamities that strike infidel nations and peoples as equivalent “under the guise of a misguided ‘humanitarianism’.” Muslim afflictions might be a punishment from God, or a trial, Al-Naba explains: “every punishment is a trial, but not every trial is a punishment. Evidence for this is that the most afflicted people are the prophets, and it cannot be imagined that their afflictions were punishments!” By contrast, says Al-Naba, the calamities heaped upon infidels “can only be either a punishment or a warning”. That “calamities and punishments upon disbelieving nations will persist until the Day of Judgment” is attested in no less a source than the Qur’an [13:31]: “Disasters will continue to afflict the disbelievers or strike close to their homes for their misdeeds”.
Al-Naba deals finally with those who doubt the fairness of divine punishments that kill children, or bystanders who have nothing to do with the targeted population. IS reminds readers that the Prophet Muhammad “used to supplicate for the destruction of specific groups of disbelievers, even though such destruction would not distinguish between the young and the old”, and Muhammad “is more just and merciful to creation than you”. Moreover, Al-Naba adds, “a calamity might strike a group of disbelievers that includes Muslims among them, and they will be resurrected according to their intentions”. In other words, God will know his own: all non-Muslims are fair game and any Muslim killed gets a fast-track to paradise, so there is no excuse not to celebrate disasters, natural or otherwise, which cause mass-death in infidel countries.
Al-Naba concludes with “a message to the Christians of America and the world: we invite you to Islam before the forces of the earth and the forces of the heavens are upon you! Islam is the true deen, and all else is falsehood that Allah the Exalted will not accept! This is why Jesus will descend at the End Times, giving you the choice between Islam or death. And here we are, delivering this call to your ears before death comes to you from every direction: ‘With a punishment from Him, or by our hands’ [Qur’an 9:52]. This is the promise of God to us, and God does not break His promises.”
AL-NABA 479 EDITORIAL
The title of the Naba 479 editorial is, “The Forgotten Sudan!”
The opening paragraph of the editorial reads:
While the spotlight of television channels and the lenses of “cameras” focus on one scene and leave another neglected, driven by interests and nationalism, the media of the mujahideen shines a light on all the issues of the Muslims, regardless of their races or countries, because Muslims are one umma [community], their wounds are one, and supporting them all is an obligation. Among these silently and incessantly bleeding wounds are those of our oppressed brothers in the forgotten Sudan! There, Muslims are subjected to the most evil crimes of murder, captivity, torture, violations of honour and sanctities [i.e., rape], and the plundering of wealth and property at the hands of the soldiers of the taghut. These are tragedies that shame the conscience and cause hearts to bleed, yet they pass unnoticed by most people, as if they never happened!
It must be conceded there is a lot of truth in IS’s accusation the West is driven by narrow interests—political and identitarian—in the human tragedies it chooses to focus on, especially when it comes to Western opinion-formers in the media and the activist class, the “human rights” set above all. By some estimates, 150,000 people have been killed since Sudan collapsed into civil war in April 2023, with more than seven million internally displaced and over two million made refugees. Whatever the exact tally, it is a disaster of Biblical proportions, accompanied by the most gruesome anti-civilian atrocities imaginable—and nobody cares.
The obvious contrast—and one IS clearly has in mind—is Gaza, where, even if you believe the HAMAS casualty figures, as so much of the Western press does, it is an incomparably smaller tragedy, and yet the agitation against Israel is relentless. As mentioned above, IS opposes any fetishisation of Palestine, seeing it as merely one front in a pan-Islamic war with unbelievers, and IS reiterates its view in this editorial, because, as well as the West, this paragraph is clearly directed at Muslims. Al-Naba emphasises later in the editorial that “supporting the Muslims in Sudan is the duty of every capable Muslim, just as it is in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, and elsewhere”—a pointed admonition not to raise Palestine, which is perhaps not-coincidentally listed last, above other jihadist theatres.
IS main message in Al-Naba 479 is that Muslims should reject both sides in the Sudanese civil war, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)—the reflagged Janjaweed—led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”). Both men are name-checked and condemned by Al-Naba as “enemies of Islam”.
Al-Naba says both Sudanese “disbelieving factions” are “vying for power and competing to plunder the wealth of a land rich in resources”, and using “the people [as] mere fodder for their battles, dragging them into an unceasing cycle of killing and displacement”. “While the taghut militia of ‘Hemedti’, supported by the U.A.E. and others, has been involved in committing the most heinous massacres against Muslims, the taghut forces of ‘Burhan’ are also complicit in such crimes”, Al-Naba goes on, adding that should either prevail they would construct a regime resembling the Arab despotisms. Not much to argue with there.
IS’s ideological objection is that both sides are “part of the global disbelieving system, striving to reinforce jahiliyya borders that confine and imprison Muslims”, and neither wishes to rule by the shari’a. For proof, IS contends, one need only look at the foreign allies both of them have. “Anyone who has followed the series of steps they have taken under the supervision of America and with the endorsement of Al-Sulul [the Saudis] knows that they are diligently working to establish a secular State that wages war against the shari’a and aligns itself with the Jews and Christians”, Al-Naba argues. “Thus, the difference between the two sides is akin to the difference between one falsehood and another falsehood.”
The occasional peaceful protest and media campaign is the sum-total of the Muslim contribution to Sudan’s plight, according to IS, and it is not merely a moral failing, but a religious one. The duty of care between Muslims is an integral part of the deen, and negligence in this duty “undermines the perfection of faith”. Naturally, IS believes the answer is jihad.
Given the coalition of Arab States and others behind the two factions, “it is even more incumbent upon Muslims to unite in support of their brothers in this forgotten cause”, says Al-Naba. “This issue concerns all Muslims, as Muslims in Sudan are part of the umma of Islam and a member of the single body. Muslims should not be divided by national borders or disbelieving laws. These events reaffirm that these borders and their consequences are the greatest obstacle to Muslims supporting one another”. IS congratulates itself for having “realised this early on” and done all it can to “demolish and break these barriers so that the lands of Muslims could once again become unified as they were”.
IS’s call for jihad in Sudan has a “practical side”: “this is a message to the Muslim youth and supporters of the mujahideen in Sudan: you must strive diligently to take advantage of the events in favour of jihad through recruitment, mobilisation, preparation, and readiness, aiming to establish a nucleus for jihad that is capable of confronting the imminent dangers and laying the foundation for long-term jihad. This can only be achieved through sincerity, effort, and soundness of creed (aqeeda)”. It has always been IS’s view that beliefs and methodology are more important than the military dimension, and in revolutionary warfare terms they are quite right.
Those who cannot fight physically are enjoined by Al-Naba to make “financial contributions” and get involved in “incitement” (i.e., propaganda); “at the very least, [Muslims] should pray for [the Sudanese].”
NOTES
Technically, the word “Puntland” did appear in Al-Naba 385 (7 April 2023), but it was in a “Last Week” section about the Bosaso attack that Al-Naba 384 covered.
The word translated as “punishment” comes from “adhab”, which could also be given as “torment”.
Isn’t it Muslim on Muslim killing in Sudan? Not that this excuses the media for never mentioning it while they are completely obsessed with Gaza.