terrorist recruitment

ADF STAFF Officials in the Borno state of Nigeria began recording “droves” of defectors from two competing extremist groups in late 2021. The defectors were from Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province, also known as ISWAP.…

ADF STAFF Growing up in internally displaced persons camps in northern Uganda in the 1980s, Hakim Owiny was surrounded by armed conflict. There was suffering all around, but the sting of disinformation seared into his memory. Rumors…

ADF STAFF Deep in Benin’s Pendjari National Park, a former luxury resort has become a military base. There, Soldiers are tracking the movements of extremists coming and going from neighboring Burkina Faso in an effort to stop a surge in…

ADF STAFF The 27-minute video shows how one of the Lake Chad Basin’s fiercest extremist groups turns children ages 8 to 16 into religious radicals, gun-toting extremists and assassins. Titled “The Empowerment Generation,” the January…

ADF STAFF For years, Mali’s government and army have had virtually no presence in the strategic northern town of Kidal. Since he came to power in a 2020 coup, however, Col. Assimi Goïta has made clear his desire to retake the Tuareg rebel…

ADF STAFF It only took a matter of days for the Somali terror group al-Shabaab to congratulate Hamas for its deadly October 7 attack on Israel. Al-Shabaab, a branch of al-Qaida, gathered hundreds of supporters on October 15 for pro-Hamas…

ADF STAFF The attack on Lhubiriha Secondary School in Mpondwe, Uganda, began late at night on Friday, June 16, and spilled into the early morning hours. Among the 42 dead were 20 girls who were executed with machetes as they fled.…

ADF STAFF A dramatic rise in attacks by al-Shabaab extremists has scuttled plans to reopen the border between Somalia and Kenya, which closed in 2011. Kenya’s Interior Cabinet Minister Kithure Kindiki made several visits to the region in…

ADF STAFF Tanzanians Abdirahman Shaffi Mkwatili and Sadam Jafari Kitia were lost in northern Kenya, hundreds of kilometers off course when security agents arrested them on July 12. They had nearly reached the country’s border, but it was…

ADF STAFF When a terrorist group launches an attack these days, it is likely that one or more airborne drones are recording the action for use later in social media. Across Africa, violent extremist organizations (VEOs) are quickly…