IS-Somalia doubles in size in one year amid growing terror concerns — UN report

The Islamic State’s Somali branch is still small but steadily growing, due to in part to what United Nations experts describe as an “influx of foreign fighters,” a new report published by the UN Sanctions Monitoring Team for Somalia warns.

“Foreign fighters arrive in Puntland [Somalia] using both maritime and overland routes,” says the report, which is based on intelligence estimates from UN member states. The so-called IS-Somalia has thus more than doubled in size to between 600 and 700 fighters over the past one year. Foreign fighters from countries all across Africa and also some in the Middle East “have expanded and enhanced the group’s capabilities,” the report noted, strengthening the terrorist organization’s presence in Somalia’s Puntland region, including at the expense of its key rival, al-Qaida-linked terror group al-Shabab.

The new report builds on previous warnings from US and Somali officials that hundreds of foreign fighters had been flocking to Somalia to join the ranks of the IS affiliate. “This reporting on an influx of foreign terrorist fighters in Africa is concerning,” said Austin Doctor of the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology and Education Center (NCITE). The UN report also echoes concerns about the group’s “growing threat” expressed in a study published by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point in September. “Over the last three years, the [IS-Somalia] has grown increasingly international, sending money across two continents and recruiting around the globe,” the study found. “There are also growing linkages between the group and international terrorist plots, raising the possibility that [IS-Somalia] may be seeking to follow in the footsteps of Islamic State Khorasan in going global,” it added.