A new analysis from Lawfare argues that Islamic State-Sahel Province (ISSP) is no longer just a regional insurgency but has grown into a transnational terror hub. The group, which operates across Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, has built a logistical corridor stretching through northern Morocco into Spain, using existing smuggling routes, diaspora networks, and online radicalization to recruit and support operations on both sides of the Mediterranean.
The report points to the July 2026 van-and-knife attack at Berlin's Pride celebration as a sign of this shift. The attacker, Abdul Ballout, had earlier failed to reach Mauritania in May 2025 in an apparent attempt to join ISSP, then traveled to Lebanon with similar intentions before returning to Germany. According to the authors, his trajectory reflects an active support pipeline cultivated by ISSP rather than isolated online radicalization.
The analysis notes that Moroccan and Spanish intelligence have tracked this pattern for years. Since 2025, Moroccan authorities have dismantled multiple ISSP-linked cells, including a Tangier-Mallorca network that funded fighters in the Sahel and Somalia while planning attacks in Spain. Investigators in Austria and France have also uncovered plotters who moved between plans to join ISSP and plans to carry out attacks at home.
ISSP's external ambitions are also visible in its propaganda, which now explicitly calls for attacks in Morocco, Tunisia, and Spain. The authors caution that the number of volunteers heading to the Sahel is far smaller than the foreign fighter wave that once joined the Islamic State's caliphate, but they warn that the group still has the potential to produce more terrorist attacks in the West as intelligence and law enforcement attention is stretched elsewhere.