Pentagon official frets climate change is driving Africans to join jihadist groups

Climate change is complicating the fight to purge Africa of jihadists, at least according to one senior Pentagon official.

Maureen Farrell, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs, repeatedly suggested that climate change degrades the overall security situation in Africa and helps extremist groups in the region recruit new members during her Tuesday remarks at the Defense Writers Group, according to DOD News. The Washington Post wrote in December 2023 that the Islamic State “is surging in Africa,” while a number of other recent reports have found that jihadists are on the march across the continent.

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“Climate-stressed areas are a recruiting opportunity for terrorist groups,” said Farrell, according to DOD News.

Farrell explained her view that climate change is resulting in things like flooding, water insecurity, and decreases in available arable land, which in turn cause instability, competition, and population movement that ultimately plays into the hands of violent jihadists looking to bolster their ranks and sow chaos in Africa, according to DOD News. During her remarks, Farrell noted that the savage Somali jihadist outfit al-Shabab saw increases in recruitment when droughts hit Somalia in the past.

“Candidly, these are environments where violent extremists can thrive,” Farrell said, referencing areas in Africa that are hit hard by climate change, according to DOD News. “When people, when families, when communities, reach a sense of desperation because of a lack of economic opportunity or agricultural failure or a lack of sustainable water sources, they are more easily lured by some of the offerings from violent extremists.”

At the end of 2023, the Islamic State’s branch in the Sahel — the northernmost region of sub-Saharan Africa — controlled more territory than it did at any point since its formal establishment in 2015, according to The Washington Post’s reporting.

Gen. Michael Langley, the head of U.S. Africa Command for the military, told Fox News Digital in June that jihadist terrorism in Africa has grown by a factor of ten since 1998, and Foreign Policy wrote in September that “jihadi groups once confined to the Sahel are spreading south and threatening all of coastal West Africa.”

The New York Times reported in June that the expensive effort to stamp out jihadist influence in West Africa “has largely failed” after a decade of work, and a September analysis by Reuters found that the number of violent incidents involving terrorists in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso has almost doubled in the time since 2021.

The Department of Defense did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

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