Jihadists are trying to take over the Sahel

THERE has been no “Mission Accomplished” moment celebrating the defeat of Islamic State (IS) in Syria and Iraq. But the American and other allied troops who helped crush IS are quietly heading home, and their generals are packing away their counter-insurgency field manuals. They deserve credit for a job bravely done. However, IS’s brutal ideology is not dead. A form of it is taking root in and around the Sahel.Even at the best of times this arid, sparsely populated belt of land that runs along the southern fringe of the Sahara desert is poor and badly governed. Some countries broadly along this belt, such as Somalia or the Central African Republic, have not seen peace for decades. In the past few years the sparks of jihad have been struck in this tinderbox. In lethality, the jihadists in Africa have already overtaken their Iraqi comrades. Last year they killed some 10,000 people, mostly civilians. That compares with about 2,000 civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria. They are also more numerous. Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a Nigerian jihadist group aligned with IS, has some 3,500 fighters—probably more than the original IS now has in Iraq and Syria. It is trying to build a “caliphate” in remote border towns ().