What is it about?
This chapter examines how jihadist groups in the African Sahel are trying to build a kind of roaming or “mobile” caliphate that does not depend on holding one fixed territory. It explains how Al‑Qaeda‑ and ISIS‑linked networks blend radical Salafi ideas with local grievances, crime, and cross‑border mobility to survive in deserts and borderlands, attract recruits, and move when they are pushed out of towns. By unpacking their ideology and strategy, the chapter examines how these groups have evolved following the military defeat of Daesh in Iraq and Syria, and why the Sahel has become a new frontline.
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Why is it important?
The chapter is important because it shows that jihadist threats in the Sahel are evolving, not disappearing: groups are becoming more flexible, more mobile, and more deeply embedded in local societies. Understanding this “mobile caliphate” model helps policymakers recognize why conventional military campaigns and territorial victories are insufficient, and why long-term responses must address governance failures, economic marginalization, cross-border dynamics, and ideological factors. For scholars and practitioners, the analysis offers a framework for anticipating how extremist networks may adapt in other fragile regions facing similar social and geographic conditions.
Perspectives
Writing this chapter allowed me to bring together years of work on jihadist movements in Africa and to think more systematically about how their strategies have changed since the fall of the “caliphate” in the Middle East. It was also an opportunity to highlight voices and realities from the Sahel that are often overlooked, and to argue that any serious discussion of global jihadism must now give close attention to this region and the everyday insecurities that make its people vulnerable to such projects.
Professor Hamdy A. Hassan
Zayed University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Making of a Mobile Caliphate State in the African Sahel, January 2019, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/978-981-13-0242-8_158-1.
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