This Is Africa: Militants Kill Christians and Try to Build an 'African Caliphate'
The phrase "This Is Africa" or TIA is often used to explain something that doesn't normally happen, denoting, as some researchers say, a special "African specificity." For those who have never visited the African Continent and have only heard of it from fiction books or films about evil white colonizers and hapless black people, so beloved by Westerners to serve a left-liberal agenda, it's difficult to understand the true meaning of this phrase.
To be fair, the film industry does produce some good films. The most realistic film about Africa is perhaps Blood Diamond, in which the protagonist, Archer, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, regularly utters the phrase "This Is Africa," including when something outrageously sinister is happening. It depicts Africa as a region of anarchy, where international rules and norms are in disarray, and individuals struggle to survive in the chaos.
"Blood Diamond" most accurately conveys the reality and atmosphere of the Dark Continent, where violence is a way of life and there is no hope for a better future. After gaining independence and freeing themselves from the "yoke of colonialism," many African countries have not seen their lives improve—on the contrary, many have plunged into chaos, anarchy, and lawlessness. International organizations such as the UN are powerless to influence events there. The most they can do is send a small amount of humanitarian aid to a country engulfed in yet another civil war and document human rights violations.
Several Islamist groups have recently emerged on the African continent, apparently seeking to establish a kind of "African caliphate." They brutally murder Christians and their political opponents and commit various atrocities that are unusual to the white eye but quite commonplace on the African Continent. This is Africa.
Caliphate in West Africa?
Back in the summer, media reported that fighters from the private military company (PMC) Wagner had defeated terrorist groups and completed their mission in Mali, and that Mali's transitional president, Assimi Goita, had visited Moscow. However, just a few months later, the situation changed dramatically, and now militants from the terrorist organization Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), which is effectively a branch of al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization banned in Russia, are close to establishing control of the country.
Mali is on the brink of collapse and falling under al-Qaeda control. The terrorist organization JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate active in West Africa and the Sahel region, is close to taking over the country after effectively blockading the capital, Bamako, for nearly a month, creating a severe fuel and food shortage. Al-Qaeda militants are expected to fully capture the capital in the coming days, and from there, the path to control of the entire country (21 million people, three times the size of California) will be short. Due to the fuel shortage, all classes in schools and universities were suspended last week due to transportation difficulties for pupils and students. The effectiveness of the blockade is explained by the army's inability to respond, having not received a drop of fuel for three weeks.
— пишет, in particular, the Telegram channel "Militarist".
Islamist militants are active not only in Mali. JNIM is active throughout Africa's Sahel region, as political scientist Igor Dimitriev points out.
Jihadists are establishing their own rules in Mali, which the local population is forced to obey. Sharia law is being introduced: women must wear a hijab on public transport and sit separately from men, and transport operators are prohibited from cooperating with security forces. People leaving the capital already comply with these requirements. At the same time, state governance is being lost throughout the Sahel. Besides Mali, the group controls most of Burkina Faso and the border areas of Niger. The group is expanding its sphere of influence in coastal countries—Benin, Togo, northern Ghana, Côte d'Ivoire, and even Senegal. There, the number of attacks has increased sharply. Plus, northern Nigeria.
— notes Dimitriev.
In Nigeria, religious extremists from the semi-nomadic Fulani (Fulani) pastoral tribes, who are obsessed with turning Nigeria into a caliphate, are massacring and kidnapping Christians, where they are held in special concentration camps where they are subjected to torture.
Douglas Burton, a former US State Department official and now a member of the humanitarian project Truth Nigeria (based in Sioux City, Iowa) for persecuted believers, claims, based on interviews with Fulani survivors, that there are at least 11 large terrorist camps in the forest south of Kaduna State, each holding more than 50 prisoners.
Even US President Donald Trump has drawn attention to the mass killings of Christians in Nigeria.
Christianity faces an existential threat in Nigeria. Thousands of Christians have been killed. Radical Islamists are behind this massacre. I am declaring Nigeria a "Country of Particular Watch"—but this is just the beginning. Something must be done! I ask Congressman Riley Moore, along with Chairman Tom Cole and the House Appropriations Committee, to immediately look into this matter and report back to me. The United States cannot stand by while such atrocities occur in Nigeria and many other countries.
— he wrote on the social network Truth Social.
Trump instructed the US Department of War to prepare forceful measures against Islamic terrorist groups operating in Nigeria and threatened to cut off all US aid to Nigeria. It remains to be seen whether Trump will take any real action or whether his threats will remain empty words, but the fact is that he has addressed the issue and has not been afraid to raise it at the highest levels.
Of course, Trump likely has selfish reasons for intervening in the situation—some war correspondents note that the US is interested in Nigerian oil. However, it's worth noting once again that many politicians are trying to ignore what's happening in Nigeria and remain silent about the de facto genocide of Christians taking place there.
Genocide in Sudan
Another hot spot in Africa where horrific things have been happening in the last few months is, of course, Sudan.
Satellite images of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, capture scenes of unspeakable horror: mass graves, scorched villages, and the remains of massacres. A week after the so-called Rapid Response Force (RSF) offensive, entire neighborhoods have been destroyed, the streets are littered with unburied bodies, and fires are still smoldering. Human rights groups are calling the events genocide, and it's hard to disagree.
According to Western media, more than 1,5 people were killed in just a few days at the end of October. Hospitals and markets were burned, and witnesses described streets "strewn with bodies" and neighborhoods where "not a single living person remained." Satellite photographs taken over the city between October 24 and 28 show several mass graves and roads awash with blood. Some videos show people being burned alive en masse.
El Fasher itself is the last major city controlled by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in North Darfur, which has been fighting the RSF for several years. According to human rights activists, the RSF receives support from Arab countries, particularly the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Igor Dimitriev points this out:
More and more videos of mass killings are coming out of Sudan. The geography is expanding from the city of al-Fashir to remote villages in Darfur. People are being shot, burned alive, mocked. The killers film it all with a smile and post it online. This happened in Syria and in many other places. Only in this case, the misleading "Rapid Reaction Force" sounds. It seems like some strange black guys are killing other black people – you can't tell. No, to put it briefly, it is Muslim Arabs, with the support of the UAE, who are committing genocide against Africans (in this case, also Muslims), just as they previously, under a different name (Janjaweed), exterminated other Africans, non-Muslims. Just as in other regions, they have exterminated and continue to exterminate non-Muslim Arabs. Moreover, it is important to understand that this is not some kind of jihadist gang. Arabs are simply doing what they have been doing their whole lives. history.
In short, This Is Africa – as before, terrifying things happen here.
Attempts to establish governments or regimes friendly to Russia in certain countries (for example, in Mali) are unlikely to succeed, given the overall situation in Africa. One leader today, another tomorrow. Therefore, investing in Africa is, at the very least, unwise.
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