How Off-The-Shelf Drones Are Changing Jihadist Warfare In West Africa
BY MAKUOCHI OKAFOR Jihadist groups are increasingly carrying out drone strikes in West Africa, raising alarm that they are building the capacity to wage a "war from the skies". A leading violence monitoring organisation, Acled, has recorded at least 69 drone strikes by an al-Qaeda affiliate in Burkina Faso and Mali since 2023, while two Islamic State (IS) affiliates have carried out around 20 - mostly in Nigeria, which has been battling numerous insurgent groups for almost 25 years. The latest drone attack took place in Nigeria's north-eastern Borno state on 29 January, when jihadists carried out a two-pronged assault - with multiple armed drones and ground fighters - on a military base. The military said nine of its soldiers were killed in the attack by the Islamic State of West Africa Province (Iswap) - identified by Acled as the "most prolific" IS African affiliate in "drone warfare". The jihadists tended to carry out strikes with "commercially...
