Brett Holmgren, the head of the US National Counterterrorism Center, told the newspaper that Daesh cells were operating in the Lake Chad basin, Nigeria, Mozambique, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and could pose a significant threat to the US.
"That could include going after US interests and targets in Africa, or if they bring in foreign fighters, as we have seen in other conflicts, at that point it could become more of an external threat to the United States," Holmgren said.
The rapid rise of terrorist groups in the Sahel is a "ticking time bomb," another senior US counterterrorism official told the US news outlet. They argued that most of Washington was too "consumed" by Ukraine, Israel and China to pay attention, allowing the threat in the Sahel to potentially metastasize.
*Daesh (also known as ISIS/ISIL/IS) is a terrorist organization outlawed in Russia and many other states