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Experts Warn of Insurgents' Paradise in West Africa

JNIM controls territory five times the size of Texas

Experts Warn of Insurgents' Paradise in West Africa

Courtesy: Gettyimages

CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING– A terrorist group with links to Al Qaeda now controls a swath of territory five times the size of Texas, threatens the governments of at least three nations, and is growing rapidly in number and overall support. Yet there are few headlines about Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), and governments or counterterrorism experts don't seem to have a plan to stop them.

JNIM is now the most powerful terrorist organization in Africa, and among the most potent jihadist groups anywhere. Beyond its territorial conquests, JNIM fields an estimated 6,000 fighters, counts thousands more civilian supporters, and has established streams of revenue based on everything from extortion to drug trafficking to collecting ransom payments from kidnappings.

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