African states are in the jihadi sights:
The chair of the House Homeland Security Committee says Africa will be the next "hot spot" for Islamic extremism, amid growing concern about Islamic State migration and recruitment after U.S.-led forces in Iraq and Syria reclaimed the group's so-called caliphate in the Middle East.
"They seek ungoverned territories and safe havens," Republican Congressman Michael Thomas McCaul Sr. of Texas said Wednesday. "Africa is going to be the spot, it's going to be the hot spot."
Sadly, Africa is vulnerable because governing institutions lack resilience:
He added that part of the African continent, especially northeastern Nigeria and Libya, have appeared to be a landing place for IS militants. He stressed, however, that Africa's extremism problem cannot be solved by military action alone, emphasizing that good governance is important to help fulfill the needs of people across the continent.
Refugee jihadis from the fall of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq will be coming home to Africa:
The Africa Union’s (A.U.) Commissioner for Peace and Security has said African countries needed to prepare for the return of about 6,000 Islamic State (IS) combatants from former strongholds of Iraq and Syria.
Smail Chergui, whiles addressing a meeting in Algeria said countries needed to work more closely in the area of intelligence sharing and other security arrangements in order to counter the returning insurgents.
I'm going to guess that most of the jihadis "from Africa" will be heading to North African Arab states where they will be a threat locally. Still, with porous borders across the continent they could go elsewhere to spread mayhem.
Africa Command (AFRICOM) is the American military command that has been trying to hold the line without the resources that EUCOM, PACOM, or CENTCOM get to face threats in Europe, the Pacific, and the Middle East and Central Asia.
Yes, denying ISIL sanctuaries in the Middle East doesn't dent their "global reach." Jihadis can go anywhere on cheap air flights or become radicalized where they live.
But denying jihadis the resources of money, people, and time (to train and to plan and organize bigger plots) that physical sanctuaries provide does reduce their depth and impact. So don't be discouraged by thinking the fight against ISIL's state was pointless.
Yet the American military commands that face bigger and better organized threats will continue to get most of America's finite military resources. AFRICOM will get more resources, no doubt. But getting persistent naval power seems unlikely given the need to protect sea lines of supply for oil in CENTCOM and to focus naval combat power in the Pacific and even in European waters.
Yes, naval assets in CENTCOM and EUCOM can sometimes help with adjacent AFRICOM, but Africa is huge and largely out of reach from those better equipped commands.
So for naval power projection capabilities in the long African littorals far from help, America could use The AFRICOM Queen modularized auxiliary cruiser to have fire support vessels (missiles and/or aircraft), training vessels, anti-piracy ships, special forces carriers, and afloat quick response forces that can sail to trouble spots in response to crises or to add weight to land-based efforts or aid them by striking from unexpected directions.
It isn't futile to fight jihadis who keep popping up elsewhere. Remember that the military campaigns are a holding action to degrade the threat to America and other targets of jihadis until Islam itself resolves their civil war to define whether Islam will be defined by the jihadis or by modernizers who truly wish to coexist with the rest of the world rather than make the world submit to Islam.
But until that civil war is won, America will need to lead allies to kill the jihadis where they stand. Got help Africans, but that's where the jihadis will stand.
UPDATE: Related on the G5 Sahel Joint Force intended to fight jihadis in Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. It is funded by America and Europeans, plus in a new factor, by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The force intends to hit strike in 2018.
