Outside of the intense war zones of Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, this week’s devastating bombings in Sri Lanka are the deadliest terror attacks since 9/11, with 359 people killed and more than five hundred injured. The Sri Lanka attacks are part of a wider pattern that has direct parallels with the aftermath of 9/11 and are proof, if any was still needed, that the al-Qaida/ISIS phenomenon is very much with us. Eighteen years of the “war on terror” has achieved little except to see hundreds of thousands of people killed and injured and millions displaced from their homes.
Devastating though these new attacks are, they have overshadowed another development that looks at first sight to be of no consequence but, in its way, is just as telling. Last Thursday ISIS claimed responsibility through its Amaq News outlet for an attack on Congolese soldiers near the village of Kamango close to the Uganda/Congo border. The attack killed and injured government troops and was part of a two decade-long rebellion against the government by a group formerly known as ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) that draws much of its support from among the DRC’s Islamic minority which is mainly in the north and east of the country.
This incident is significant in two ways. First, ADF last year rebranded itself as Madinat al Tawhid wal Muwahedeen (the city of Monotheism and Monotheists - MTM), a transformation that was cited by the ISIS leader, Baghdadi, in a video last August. Secondly, the recent attack was the first to be claimed by ISIS itself. While the real extent of the connection with ADF/MTM is not clear, even a year ago Congolese troops found extensive evidence of links when they raided a rebel camp, and other sources link the group with financial support from ISIS itself.
