British Media: West African Extremist Groups are Enhancing Drone Warfare能力

Reference News Network reported on February 12 According to a report from the BBC website on February 8, the Islamic jihadist organization is increasingly carrying out drone strikes in West Africa, raising alarms about its capability to establish "war from the air."

The well-known violence monitoring organization "Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project" (ACLED) has recorded at least 69 drone strikes carried out by an affiliate of "Al-Qaeda" in Burkina Faso and Mali since 2023. Meanwhile, two affiliates of the "Islamic State" have conducted about 20 drone strikes—primarily in Nigeria, where the government has been battling numerous insurgent groups for nearly 25 years. The latest drone strike occurred on January 29 in Borno State in the northeast of the country.

ACLED's senior Africa analyst, Rad Selva, told reporters that jihadists tend to use "commercially available, relatively inexpensive rotary-wing drones loaded with explosives" to carry out attacks, while also using them for reconnaissance and surveillance tasks to prepare for ground assaults.

Malik Samuel, a senior researcher at the think tank "Good Governance Africa" in Nigeria, stated that although the Nigerian government strictly controls the import of commercial and consumer drones and prohibits the use of drones without official permission, jihadists can still obtain drones through smuggling networks that penetrate the region's borders.

Security analyst Audu Brahma Bukarti told reporters that this marks a significant shift: "Drones have lowered the cost of carrying out attacks, allowing militants to gather intelligence with minimal risk and to strike previously hard-to-reach military targets."

The jihadist organization that uses drones the most is the "Al-Qaeda" affiliate "Group for Support of Islam and Muslims" (JNIM). ACLED states that this organization has carried out 69 attacks in Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years and has conducted one cross-border attack in Togo.

An African military website reported that in February last year, JNIM also used what is known as a first-person view (FPV) drone—meaning the operator can receive real-time video signals from the drone—to drop improvised explosive devices made from plastic bottles onto military positions in the town of Djibo in Burkina Faso.

The website reported: "This marks a significant upgrade, as FPV drones—small and agile and frequently used in Ukraine—enable precision strikes."

In a report last year, Taiwo Adebayo, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, wrote that to counter this threat, West African armies need to implement "preemptive strikes" to destroy drone assembly and launch sites and procure more anti-drone equipment, including jamming devices and air defense systems. He warned that otherwise, jihadist organizations could enhance their drone capabilities and carry out "high-casualty attacks," which could exacerbate instability in West Africa. (Translated by Cao Weiguo)