Since the final destruction of the Islamic State’s “caliphate” more than six years ago, the group has struggled to rebuild. This is especially true of its former stronghold in Iraq, where Isis operations are notably down. While the group has perpetrated a number of successful attacks in Syria, notably against a church in June, the country’s new regime under Ahmed al-Sharaa has made efforts to crack down on terrorist activity. Meanwhile, the Americans remain on the scene and conduct occasional raids against the leadership, including one this week that killed a senior Isis member.

Yet Isis is a unified global organization, with nodes — or “provinces” (wilayat), as it calls them. Reports this week have highlighted a strengthened recruitment drive in Africa, with a facilitation network in South Africa and Zambia which raises funds and directs fighters around the continent. In the northern breakaway zones of Somalia, Isis’s crucial Al-Karrar Office collects and distributes funds to active theaters.

Local Somali efforts, with US assistance, have disrupted Al-Karrar to some degree, but it remains able to finance the group in Afghanistan — a concrete example of the global integration of Isis’s jihad. The most recent United Nations report compiling intelligence from member states describes Isis’s presence in Afghanistan as “the most serious threat, both regionally and internationally”. In a country run by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, this is notable.

From the Sahel to Southern Africa, Isis has combined devastating acts of terrorism with an increasingly sophisticated insurgency that is overwhelming local states. This clears the way for the group to govern territory. But what does this mean for Europe?

A key problem here is that Russia has largely displaced America and France as the imperial guarantor in West Africa and the Sahel, where its brutality, distraction in Ukraine, and plain incompetence have allowed Isis to expand its reach and erode the military governments. Isis has been able to steadily infiltrate into North Africa, and this rising tide of jihadism so close to Europe is deeply concerning — not least because of the population displacement it causes and the group’s record of using migrant flows to get its operatives into Europe.

The height of Isis’s global attack campaign in the “caliphate” era is behind us, but the terror organization is not spent on this front. Last year, it proclaimed a resumption of the global campaign: a wave of attacks followed in Europe and even reached America. Isis did this largely from the Afghan node. It would seem logistically easier to use the African infrastructure, and the group seems to be thinking along these lines.

A few weeks ago in Al-Naba, the weekly newsletter in which Isis sets out its priorities and strategy, the group celebrated its war on Christians in Africa, and encouraged its troops to extend this conflict into Europe. It is a threat that cannot be ignored.