There are terror organisations, then there are dreadful terror organisations and then those, who exude bone-chilling fear in the minds and hearts of the helpless. For over half a decade, starting from the pre-COVID era, ISIS aka, the Islamic State has been one such ruthless terror outfit that’s wrecked havoc in the world and continuously so.
Not that it was only present in the war-torn parts of the Middle East, most noticeably, Iraq and Syria, the presence of the wretched terror organisation that stands for Islamic State And the Levant even reached Africa.
There in the continent that was so often described with a sense of bitterness- the “Dark Continent”– Daesh only caused more destruction. This was especially in the region of Sahara desert, where in the Sahel region.
Things took a turn for the ugly when last year, when the Daesh-linked terror network was involved in the killing (read massacre) of six French charity workers along with their Nigerian driver.
This was just one of the many incidents that France noted and with embitterment, and expectedly so. Now, President Emmanuel Macron has stated that the Sahara-chief of Daesh (aka ISIS/ISIL) has been killed. The news was ‘confirmed‘ just hours back by the 43-year-old Amiens-born leader.
The dreadful ISIS leader of Sahara, now believed to be no more, Adnan Abou Walid al Sahraoui was personally commandeering a string of terror operations at the behest of which the most benign occurrences, in the words of the organization itself, was the abduction of young girls.
Not the only parallel with Boko Haram, one would reckon!
France, in particular, has had to unfortunately face the ire of extremist terror groups in the recent past.
That said, here’s what Republic world had to say on the occurrence:
The jihadist militant was involved in the massacre of six French charity workers and their Nigerian driver last year. In addition, his group has also abducted foreign citizens and conducted multiple attacks on them. According to multiple reporters, he is believed to still be holding American Jeffrey Woodke, who was abducted from his home in Niger in 2016.
Last year in October, an armed man with a 12-inch-long knife stabbed people praying inside the Basilica of Notre-Dam in Nice at 8.29 AM (local time). The man reportedly slit the throat of a 60-year-old woman, a church worker and also left a woman severely injured. While the 60-year-old woman and the church worker reportedly died on the spot, the other 44-year-old woman managed to get out of the church. However, she later succumbed to her wounds in the nearby cafe. The gruesome attack, which is now being treated as a terror attack by prosecutors, came in the backdrop of thousands rallying across France in solidarity with the teacher Samuel Paty, a French middle-school teacher, who was killed and beheaded by an Islamist.
But that being said, here’s a statistic from Andalou Agency’s report recently that goes on to highlight why the bold step by France was perhaps for the best (undoubtedly so):
“There are around 5,100 French soldiers deployed in the African region fighting terrorist groups, some of which have pledged allegiance to ISIS/Daesh or al-Qaeda.”
Imagine the ramifications the Western European nation might have been facing given the magnitude of troop deployment in that particular region.