The U.S. government designated Abdiweli Mohamed Yusuf, the financial emir of the Islamic State’s Somali Province. This move, however, has much wider implications than just the Islamic State’s Somali operations.
The story of the Pan-Ugandan Liberation Initiative, a short-lived splinter faction of the more infamous Islamic State-loyal ADF that was destroyed earlier this year, provides important details and context in the ADF’s overall ideological trajectory and history.
Musa Baluku, the leader of the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province (known locally as the Allied Democratic Forces), has joins other infamous Sunni jihadists actively sought after by the United States government.
U.S. Special Operations Forces killed Bilal al-Sudani, a key Islamic State operative responsible for coordinating the group’s finances and activities across central, eastern, and southern Africa (and beyond).
The raid also marks the first time that the Allied Democratic Forces, the local name for the Islamic State’s Central Africa Province, has struck inside Butembo city.
The Islamic State’s Central African representative, locally known as the Allied Democratic Forces, recently re-pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State’s new overall leader, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Quraishi.
