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  "path": "/2026/05/the-epicenter-of-terrorism-is-shifting-to-africa/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-13T23:51:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://providencemag.com",
  "tags": [
    "Africa",
    "International Religious Liberty",
    "Islamic State (ISIS)",
    "Terrorism",
    "The Latest",
    "offensive",
    "US State Department",
    "US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF)",
    "Global Terrorism Index",
    "Open Doors",
    "as amended",
    "2026 recommendations",
    "latest formal designations",
    "2026 World Watch List",
    "stormed",
    "Open Doors World Watch List."
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  "textContent": "The latest offensive in Mali, led by al-Qaeda–linked Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) in coordination with the Tuareg-led Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), should be a wake-up call to the international community; it signals not just another attack, but a shift toward territorial control and governance.\n\nBecause several areas JNIM controls are among the worst places in the world for religious persecution, it has been designated by the US State Department and recommended by the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) as an Entity of Particular Concern (EPC). EPCs are the nonstate actor counterpart to Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs), the designation reserved for governments responsible for the world’s most severe religious freedom violations. Both meet the threshold for “particularly severe violations of religious freedom”: abuses that are egregious, ongoing, and systematic. Countries that meet two, but not all three of that threshold may be placed on the State Department’s Special Watch List (SWL).\n\nChristians and others who refuse to submit to extremist ideology remain especially vulnerable as JNIM, other EPCs, and terrorist groups expand across sub-Saharan Africa. The Global Terrorism Index now describes the region as the global epicenter of terrorism. Africa’s religious freedom crisis is no longer a secondary concern. It is central to the continent’s security crisis and to the world’s response.\n\nWhile “particularly severe violations of religious freedom” may sound like a bureaucratic term, the abuses covered include killings, rape, kidnapping, torture, destruction of religious sites, and genocide. In Mali, Open Doors reported that multiple Christians were killed in 2025 and at least 100 churches and Christian properties were destroyed. In Burkina Faso, Islamist militants have executed Christians in church attacks, and JNIM militants attacked a Catholic church in Manni during coordinated assaults across the town. These are communities terrorized, churches destroyed, and believers forced to choose between faith, flight, or death.\n\n**Entities of Particular Concern (EPCs)**\n\nEntities of Particular Concern (EPCs) are not simply violent extremist groups. Under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA), as amended by the Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act, an EPC must be a non-sovereign entity that commits particularly severe violations of religious freedom while exercising significant political power and territorial control outside the control of a sovereign government.\n\nWhile ISIS remains a serious threat, it no longer meets the EPC standard because it lost territorial control after the collapse of its self-proclaimed caliphate in 2019. What is chilling is that affiliates of the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and other armed groups now control territory or exercise coercive control across several parts of Africa. The global epicenter of terrorism has shifted from the Middle East to Africa, but international attention has not shifted with it.\n\nUSCIRF’s 2026 recommendations provide the most current picture of which nonstate actors meet the EPC threshold. These are recommendations to the US State Department, not the Department’s latest formal designations. But they provide a more accurate framework for current analysis than relying on the State Department’s December 29, 2023, EPC designations, which have not been updated to reflect subsequent developments.\n\n**USCIRF’s 2026 recommended EPCs include:**\n\n  * **Al-Shabaab** : Holds territory in parts of Somalia and conducts attacks beyond its borders, including in Kenya and Ethiopia.\n  * **Boko Haram** : Operates across northeastern Nigeria and the wider Lake Chad region, including Cameroon, Chad, and Niger, exerting control in limited and contested areas.\n  * **Islamic State–Sahel Province (IS-Sahel)** : Exercises power in parts of the central Sahel, especially Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, where it imposes its rule through violence and coercion.\n  * **Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP)** : Controls scattered pockets of territory in Nigeria and operates across the wider Lake Chad basin, including Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.\n  * **Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM)** : Exercises territorial influence and coercive control in parts of Mali and Burkina Faso and has expanded operations into Niger and coastal West Africa.\n  * **The Houthis** : Control significant territory in Yemen, including the capital, Sana’a.\n  * **Rapid Support Forces (RSF)** : Newly recommended by USCIRF in 2026, reflecting their consolidation of territorial control and record of severe abuses in Sudan, particularly in Darfur and surrounding regions.\n\n\n\nEPCs are not just designations. They are early indicators of where violent actors are moving from insurgency to governance.\n\n**Afghanistan and Syria: From EPCs to Governing Authorities**\n\nThe Taliban in Afghanistan and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria were included in the State Department’s 2023 EPC designations, but both cases show the limits of treating territorial armed groups only as nonstate actors. The Taliban had already served as Afghanistan’s de facto authorities since 2021, though the United States did not recognize them as the country’s legitimate government. The EPC designation allowed the United States to identify responsibility for severe religious freedom violations without conferring state legitimacy. In Syria, the United States has acknowledged HTS-led authorities as the governing authorities, even as concerns remain given HTS’s long history of terrorism.\n\nHTS’s trajectory in Syria is what JNIM has now announced it is pursuing in Mali, although the two groups are not the same. The limited good news is that JNIM and other groups in sub-Saharan Africa appear to have reduced some attacks on civilians as they attempt to win local support while consolidating territory. But that tactical shift should not be mistaken for moderation. It is often part of a strategy to govern, recruit, and entrench control.\n\nUSCIRF’s 2026 recommendations address Afghanistan and Syria through the CPCs framework, reflecting the reality that religious freedom conditions in both countries continue to meet the threshold for systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations. The category changed not because conditions improved, but because the actors responsible for those violations moved from controlling territory to controlling the state itself.\n\n**Include Countries with EPCs Alongside CPCs and SWL Countries**\n\nOut of the 15 countries Open Doors lists as having extreme persecution of Christians in its 2026 World Watch List, all are either recommended by USCIRF as CPCs, recommended for the SWL, or affected by an EPC operating within the country. The last category includes Somalia, Yemen, Mali, and Sudan.\n\nThis matters because countries affected by EPCs may not always appear on CPCs or SWL lists when governments lack full control over the territory where abuses occur. But the people living under these actors still face some of the world’s worst religious persecution and horrific crimes. Any serious assessment of global religious freedom conditions must therefore include countries with EPCs alongside CPCs and SWL countries.\n\n**Nigeria: Persecution Beyond EPCs**\n\nOn Easter Sunday, armed Fulani militants stormed a church service in Ariko, a farming village north of Abuja, killing seven men and abducting 68 Christians. Thirty-one later escaped, but 37 remained in captivity. At least 33 of them are women. And each week brings reports of more attacks.\n\nThat attack highlights the ongoing crisis in Nigeria. EPCs are only part of the picture. Boko Haram and ISWAP remain central drivers of violence, but much of the killing of Christians—especially in the Middle Belt—has been carried out by Fulani militant groups and other armed actors such as the JNIM-linked Lakurawa that have not been designated as EPCs.\n\nThe urgency is reinforced by both the Global Terrorism Index and the Open Doors World Watch List. The Global Terrorism Index reports that Nigeria had one of the world’s sharpest increases in terrorism deaths, rising 46 percent in 2025. Open Doors reports that Nigeria remains the world’s deadliest country for Christians, with 3,490 Christians killed for faith-related reasons in its latest reporting period.\n\nNigeria shows why the religious freedom crisis in Africa cannot be understood through EPCs alone. In some places, persecution is driven by designated terrorist groups. In others, it is carried out by Fulani militants, criminal networks, or local actors exploiting weak governance and impunity. The result is the same: Christians and other vulnerable communities are left unprotected.\n\n**Conclusion**\n\nThe crisis in Mali and sub-Saharan Africa is not just a security warning. It is a religious freedom warning. When groups like JNIM gain territory, they do more than launch attacks. They impose rule, restrict conscience, and target Christians and other communities that will not submit to their ideology.\n\nIRFA gives the United States a tool to name these actors and respond before they become entrenched governing authorities. But designations without enforcement are little more than diplomatic theater. They name the problem without changing the cost of abuse. EPC designations must be backed by targeted sanctions, visa bans, financial restrictions on perpetrators, and conditions on assistance to governments that fail to protect at-risk communities. The United States and its partners must treat EPCs as an early warning system for mass displacement, religious persecution, and state failure—and act on those warnings.\n\nAfrica is now the center of global terrorism, and Christians and other at-risk communities are often among the first to pay the price. If the international community waits until armed groups consolidate governance, it will already be too late. That means sustained monitoring of EPC-controlled areas and other high-persecution zones, including Nigeria’s Middle Belt; conditioning engagement on protections for at-risk communities; and treating religious freedom as a core indicator of stability, not a secondary concern. The time to act is before JNIM’s ambitions in Mali become another tragedy and conditions worsen across the Sahel.",
  "title": "The Epicenter of Terrorism Is Shifting to Africa"
}