A Flying Threat Coming to Sahel and East Africa? A Brief Review

Abstract

Non-state actors have been experimenting with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for two decades. This has become widely known over the 5 years, as both ISIS and the Houthis have adapted weaponized UAVs into their repertoires. As the Sahel and East Africa regions experience a rise in violence from non-state actors, and given that groups here are affiliated with groups in the Middle East, this paper seeks to explore the possibility and likelihood of weaponized UAVs being used on the battlefield in these regions. By utilizing both scholarly work and other reporting from these regions, this paper finds that there is a low risk of weaponized UAVs being adapted in these regions through organizational ties to groups in the Middle East. However, as UAVs are commercially available all over the world, groups with bomb-making experience and technical know-how in general may themselves develop local variations and adaptions of what Jihadist groups have done in the Middle East over the last decade.

The Necropolitics of Drone Bases and Use in the African Context

“…It is not just the state actors who are deploying drones in Africa; violent non-state actors such as al-Shabaab, the Libyan Liberation Army, ISIS-Mozambique (Ansar al-Sunna), Boko Haram, and the Islamic State's West Africa Province (ISWAP) are deploying drones for many tactical purposes, including intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and propaganda video making (Haugstvedt, 2020;Haruna, 2022;Dass, 2023). According to Haruna (2022), in Gubio town, approximately 96 km northwest of Maiduguri, the capital of Borno in Northern Nigeria, an attack by Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) insurgents on July 18th, 2022, led to the death of five members of the Civilian Joint Task Force (CJTF), a government-backed military; it was claimed that the attack occurred following the observation of a drone over the position of counter-insurgency forces.…”

“…However, many scholars have noted https://doi.org/10.33774/apsa-2024-fnjks ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5512-5992 Content not peer-reviewed by APSA. License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 that non-state actors will soon arm their off-the-shelf drones with IEDs or use armed drones for aerial attacks (Zwijnenburg, 2016;Haugstvedt, 2020;Aworinde, 2023).…”

“…The potential for drone use and its implications for future conflicts in Africa have recently garnered increased attention. The possibility of terrorist groups such as ISWAP, Al Shabaab, and Boko Haram weaponising off-the-shelf drones or acquiring advanced armed drones is a significant concern (Haugstvedt, 2020;Aworinde, 2023).…”

A Flying Reign of Terror? The Who, Where, When, What, and How of Non-state Actors and Armed Drones

“…Armed non-state actors in the Sahel and East Africa have also used UAVs for reconnaissance and media purposes, much like similar groups in the areas mentioned above. However, UAV attacks conducted by nonstate actors in the Sahel and East Africa are yet to happen according to open sources [31]. In addition to these areas and Myanmar, armed UAVs have, to a lesser extent, been used in other regions by non-state actors.…”

“…In terms of when non-state actors have used armed UAVs, with a few exemptions, most incidents have occurred from 2016 until the end of 2021. Prior to that, Hezbollah was recorded to use them with a few flights into Israel in 2004 [42] and attacks in 2006 and 2014 [31]. ISIS developed and used its armed UAV program extensively in 2016 and 2017.…”