Angry Planet - Inside Africa's ISIS Franchises

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

The Islamic State has fallen out of the headlines, but it’s still a major force around the world. Affiliates flourish across the Middle East and, especially, in Africa. The spread of the group there has some analysts calling it the Next Jihadist Battlefront.Here to help us with all this is Ryan O'Farrell. O'Farrell is a Senior Analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation and a researcher focusing on Islamist movements in east and central Africa. He’s also a contributing author of the book The Islamic State In Africa: The Emergence, Evolution, and Future of the Next Jihadist Battlefront.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello, and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Matthew Galt. And I'm Jason Fields. The Islamic State has fallen out of the headlines, but it's still a major force around the world. Affiliates flourish across the Middle East and especially in Africa. The spread of the group there has some analysts calling it the next jihadist battlefront. Here to help us with all of this is Ryan O'Farrell. O'Farrell is a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation and a researcher focusing on Islamist movements in East and Central Africa.

He's also a contributing author of the book, The Islamic State in Africa, the emergence, evolution, and future of the next jihadist battlefront. Sir, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you so much for having me. All right. So we just did another show recently that went kind of through a brief history of the war on Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. And I thought we won.

Now you're telling me they're back in Africa. What is going on? Yeah. Yeah. So essentially what's happened is in a somewhat similar way to al-Qaeda and its various affiliates around the world. Following the June, July, 2014 announcement of the caliphate with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the caliph. A bunch of insurgencies around the world, particularly in Africa, have pledged allegiance to Islamic State. And eight of them so far have been in a... given by Islamic State's central leadership kind of provincial status or willi, which is ostensibly

on the same level as its provinces in Iraq and Syria. So to the Islamic State, at least in its narratives, these are part and parcel of the exact same organization as Iraq and Syria. They are administratively categorized similarly. But in terms of their actual real origins, most of these groups are local insurgencies that have now pledged allegiance. So is it, you almost make it sound like a branding exercise. Like we were going to do militancy anyway and we are adopting the, the franchise logo of IS Central. Is that kind of accurate in any way or am I dumbing it way, way down? No, that's very accurate. We, me and my co-authors and other analysts have used kind of the franchise term very frequently. Essentially, these local insurgencies for a variety of,

you know, ideological, ideational, reputational, and in some cases, material reasons have found very useful for their own struggle to kind of attach themselves to the Islamic State brand, which is somewhat counterintuitive because, you know, ISIS is probably one of the most toxic brands you can imagine, but within the kind of Islamist, jihadist, milieu, it still does have a great deal of utility, particularly for groups that are attempting to emerge and attempting to kind of break out onto the scene in a big way. It's hard to imagine kind of a brand name or an identity that's more salient or important or just in terms of gaining notoriety has more of a presence than being attached to the Islamic State. All right. You said that there were

eight that have officially been given provincial status or province status. Are there more, are there aspirational groups? Do we have any idea how many different groups are associated with the Islamic State in Africa? Yeah, although this number does change over time. So currently as it stands, there would be about seven active groups. So Sinai in Egypt, near Gaza and the Israeli border, The Islamic State Greater Sahara, which is technically, at least according to Islamic States kind of org chart, is one wing of Islamic State West Africa Province. And then the other wing of Islamic State West Africa province is, you know, what originated is Boko Haram. There is an affiliate in northern Somalia, though it also has operations in Mogadishu,

as well as another kind of two-wing province, which is Islamic State's central Africa province, which has one branch in eastern Congo and then one branch in northern Mozambique. So in the past, there have been other provinces. There was a short-lived group in Algeria, Wailajazeera. And then originally in 2005, Libya was, again, according to Islamic States, kind of organizational conception was split into three provinces, but it has subsequently merged into one, which is all kind of a process that happened in 2018 and 2019,

where individual countries that had multiple provinces were then consolidated. So the same thing happened in both Syria and whereas when Islam state was at its height, there were, I think, a couple dozen provinces across the two countries, and they made a pretty concerted effort to abolish the idea that there was Syria and in Iraq. But then subsequently after, you know, the caliphate collapsed, they merge them together. And so we now have just will I at Syria and will I at Iraq or will I have Shammuz to say.

So there's been some ups and downs, but as it stands currently in terms of active groups, there's seven in Africa. What does it mean to be an Islamic state province? Does that mean you have to, you know, execute a certain number of Westerners per week, put out particular kinds of propaganda? the videos, what does it mean? What are the rights and responsibilities? So this is kind of a big part of the book, actually, and what we really tried to dive into is kind of what is the Islamic state's central command criteria for granting provincial status to these groups? Because for most affiliates on the continent, it's the attempt to join the Islamic State is pretty much. So it's commanders on the ground who for whatever reason want to join Islamic State and they reach out or they release a video in which they pledged by or allegiance.

And then there's usually a dance for a period of time where they kind of get to know each other. And then at some point in at least these seven cases, they've just been granted this status by Islamic State and it starts calling them by these terms and its propaganda releases. But what that criteria is is kind of difficult to parse out and seems to have changed over time. So when things first started out, as long as it was basically accepting, you know, provincial or granting provincial status to aspiring affiliates seemingly without much regard for their actual capacity. So I think of pretty prominent cases in Algeria where basically a sub faction of AQIM kind of broke off. Their commander was, is reportedly not very. happy with the leadership of AQM at the time under Djukdale. And he wanted to kind of be at the center of a revival of the insurgency in northern Algeria that had really tapered off over the 2000s. And so they did behead a Westerner who was kidnapped a Frenchman. But at the same time, the actual strength of the group was pretty limited. It was probably no more than 30 to 50 people at any one time. And as you can imagine, having a westerner really brought a ton of counterterrorism pressure by the Algerian authorities. And the group was wiped out in pretty short order.

You compare that to Boca of Iran, which by the time it pledged in 2015 under Chakao, who ended up being killed by his successor. You know, this was a group that was very, very strong by the time it had pledged allegiance. It had taken over massive swathes of northeast Nigeria. This was after a Nigerian military counteroffensive, which had somewhat weakened the group. but prior to that at its height, this was a group that had probably had tens of thousands of fighters. I mean, it was probably one of the strongest jihadist insurgencies in the world at the time. So there seems to be a bit of a shifting criteria and kind of one of the conclusions that my co-authors and I kind of came to is that as the Islamic State's self-conception as the Caliphate and as a state and this administrative apparatus really cemented over the kind of latter half of 2014. and then particularly in 2015, it started to see itself as having a bit more important of a brand to protect.

And so just granting the status to any small local insurgent group around the world, if that group was then defeated, that doesn't look very good for the central organization. And so they became a bit more discerning. And then as the caliphate was defeated militarily in Iraq and Syria, it seems that their criteria, Again, shifted and became a little more open. And so they started accepting new groups that they had previously kind of held off on recognizing, even though the pledges of allegiance had happened, you know, in some cases years prior. They kind of turned back and said, oh, no, wait a minute, you are, you are now a Wollaya

because they needed to kind of re-bolster their brand as this, you know, remaining and expanding jihadist and insert kind of supergroup around the world. And that gave them a presence in more places and made them seem like more of a threat. as the core organization was kind of whittled away. Where is IS Central? Do we have any idea what its org chart looks like, how big it is, how many are involved? So that's fairly difficult to ascertain. I mean, I have to say that it's really not my central focus, and it hasn't been in the book either.

I mean, we trace a fair bit of the history out, but in terms of its present status, My read on it, at least from reading others work on it, is that the central leadership that is involved in finance, propaganda, coordination across all of these different provinces is probably quite distributed and not centrally located because that would make it pretty vulnerable. So a lot of the money that they were able to collect, you know, during their, during the height of their power. It's a fair bit of research on how they've kind of used that to invest in businesses in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and then kind of laundered that money back out again as needed. In terms of the central leadership, I mean, I think the death of Baghdad is pretty instructive and that he was hiding in Syrian rebel-held terror. And I think that's probably true of a lot of the central leadership in that they're distributed over a whole bunch of different places, kind of hiding amongst their enemies. and have really moved back into a clandestine format. Obviously, they still have combat formations that are stronger in certain concentrations than others.

So their units in the Syrian desert are quite strong, more clandestine units in northeast Syria, as well as various parts of Iraq. But they've definitely transitioned back into an insurgency rather than kind of your conventional non-state actor that they were during the territorial caliphate phase. What is daily life like in one of these provinces? So it varies a lot. I mean, a lot, there's a huge amount of variation in terms of how civilians interact with these groups going from, you know, an almost entirely adversarial position where this, where the group quite systematically attacks civilians. It's true in Congo.

It's true in Mozambique to others where they're kind of up in the hills. who are out in the desert and quite far away from population centers and, you know, intermittently launching attacks on civilian and military targets, which is true now in Libya. It wasn't, you know, four years ago when they controlled quite large swaths of territory. They're pretty severely weakened now. It's true in in Somalia and also true in Tunisia where there's also kind of a remnant up in the hills, which I should say that we also cover Tunisia in the book and it's, Tunisia's kind of odd in that they had a pretty durable, sustained insurgency for a long time that carried out some pretty dramatic attacks, but they were never granted Wiliat status. I'd say in terms of interactions with

civilians, the most consistent are the West Africa province, so both of the branches. One in the Sahel, which is kind of in this tri-border area between Mali Niger and Burkina Faso, and then the other in northeast Nigeria and the kind of adjoining border regions of Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. Out of all of the affiliates currently, the northeast Nigeria branch of Fiswap, so the former Boko Haram is definitely the strongest and has the most kind of capable and sustained governance apparatus. So social services, justice systems, taxation, it's been something that they really focus on. And I'd say currently, probably out of any Islamic State affiliate around the world,

and that includes in Iraq and Syria, they have the most built-out governance apparatus and emphasize it the most in the propaganda releases. They're really all about, you know, we are a state, we are a government. And there's been some excellent work by international crisis group on this. By most accounts by locals who deal with them, they're quite professional and kind of easy to predict and judge. And they've been kind of actively encouraging civilians to return to areas under their control. because there's just such a huge IDP population clustered in urban centers that are, frankly, quite miserable places to live. And so this Islamic State affiliate has built out a fairly capable governance apparatus

and is actively trying to get people to move into areas under its control. The other branch of... What's the pitch? Is it just that it's better here where we're getting the trains to run on time, so to speak? In a lot of ways, yeah. Yeah, that's essentially what they're offering. I mean, northeast Nigeria, the economy is primarily agricultural, and so employment opportunities in cities, particularly that are flooded with hundreds of thousands of IDPs are pretty limited. So it's not a great place to live if you're in an IDP living in these giant tent cities on the outskirts of Midguri and some of these other towns.

So the opportunity to return to your village and farm and live under a relatively stable, if often quite brutal, system of governance is apparently attractive to at least some proportion of the population. You know, they've fairly consistent accounts of, you know, farmers running into checkpoints and, you know, the fighters at these checkpoints charging a certain relatively low level of taxation, issuing receipts, punishing fighters that rob people. And in some cases, that's a preferable experience to what people have experienced at the hands of Nigerian security forces. So, you know, it's a bit of a low bar, but in some ways for certain people, that's a preferable place to live, given the alternatives that are immediately available to them. And that's making it such as certainly seems to be a priority for the Islamic State.

Is there enough of a commonality between each of these Islamic State provinces that, let's say it's like a McDonald's franchise. is if you were dealing with Islamic State in Syria a couple of years ago back when they were in control, would that be the same as dealing with, you know, a well-organized province in Africa? Do they share beliefs to that extent? Aspirational, yes. I think the real difference is probably capacity in local circumstances. I mean, the Islamic State's core group in Iraq and Syria when it's at its height, I mean, this was an extremely. well-resourced organization. And they had billions of dollars at their disposal.

They had tens of thousands of foreign fighters. And these are not just people who are picking up guns in fighting, but also people who join the administrative apparatus with a fairly built-out skill set. And that also came on the heels of 10 years of insurgency in Iraq, where they had in many places built up a shadow government. So there was, you know, even not including the foreign fighters who came, there was. there was already a fair amount of administrative experience. And of course, you know, the administrative aspect of it kind of comes hand in hand with

social mapping and surveillance and control that they all kind of go together. So it's, you know, their ability to provide social services was certainly not altruistic. And I think just a lot of these insurgencies in Africa right now, they just don't have that capacity. They don't have the financial resources. They don't have enough personnel with those. administrative skill sets, they don't have that kind of administrative background that allowed them to tee up an administrative apparatus that wasn't clandestine. I mean, this Iraq kind of experience that transition from a clandestine governance or social order mechanism into a, you know,

explicit and public version of governance. And a lot of these groups don't, haven't had that equivalent background experience to be able to tee it up. But there definitely seems to be an intention to replicate that sort of governance apparatus. I think most clearly that was seen in Libya. So Libya is kind of an interesting case in that a lot of the fighters who stood up, you know, originally it was these three provinces and now it's been merged into one. A lot of these guys went to Iraq and Syria, pledged allegiance and then came back. So unlike most of the other insurgencies around Africa, which were really entirely local and maybe they met with some envoys, but probably most the communications or are online or over the phone, the Libyan provinces were really much more

of a direct connection. And so you saw a lot of that. Like when they controlled Derno and they controlled CERT, these two large towns, I mean, they controlled pretty wide swaths of territory and they probably controlled, you know, at one point or another, a couple or 300,000 people, something in that range, maybe. A lot of those people subsequently left because it turns out. that's not actually a very nice place to live.

But they definitely built up a governance structure that doesn't appear to have been replicated by any Islamic state province in Africa since then. And in 2016, they were ultimately in a military offensive. And so ever since the Libyan province have been kind of out in the desert in these cave hideouts occasionally mounting, you know, IED attacks on convoys or whatever, but pretty low level, particularly in the Libyan context, considering everything else that's happening. But I think the West Africa province in northeast Nigeria, they've got as close as and considering the trajectory of the Islamic State around the world, you know, the province

in Afghanistan took pretty severe hits in 2016, 2017, though obviously since August, there's been a bit of a resurgence. But in this group in Nigeria, they're attempting to create a governance structure and identity as a group that does govern physical territory and putting it, particularly in the propaganda releases, framing it as closely as they can to the kind of apparatus that IS was advertising in its height.

They've just not got their resources yet to really kind of create something as universal in daily life as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria with infrastructure, health care, schooling, taxation, all these other aspects of its administrative average. They're not quite there yet, but they very clearly want to be. I want to shift focus here at the end and get specific. So you just published something in Newlines Institute, neither local nor transnational, but both the Islamic State in Congo,

which is kind of this deep dive into the Allied Democratic Forces, which is a militant group in Congo and how it became part of the Islamic State and kind of what has happened since then and the like what the response to it has been. And I want to I want to dive into that now if we can. By the way, link in the show notes if anyone would like to follow along at home. First, can you explain when you say that this group is neither local nor transnational? What does that mean? Sure. So in some ways, this is kind of a response to this ongoing debate that doesn't just apply to this Islamic state affiliate, you know, that kind of originated as the Allied Democratic forces in Congo,

but is really something that's been common for affiliates across the entire continent is how much are these groups part of the Islamic State? How much does that, you know, what kind of, you know, if the Islamic State is only providing an identity, does that change these groups' behaviors vis-a-vis civilians in areas around them? Does that change their military capacity? Like, does it really impact what these groups are and what they're doing and how much should policy decisions, you know, by international actors, like the U.S., or by local and regional actors, in this case, Congo and now the Ugandans, how much should that actually impact their decision-making in terms of how to approach these groups? So essentially what I'm trying to argue is that,

and this is a theme that's broadly echoed in the book at large, as well. well is that a lot of these groups are born of local circumstances and their trajectories are largely determined by those local circumstances. So the resources they have available to them, where recruits are coming from, how they interact with civilian communities and what pressures and benefits that brings to the groups, that's by and large determined by where they are and what the situation is in those places. You know, there's no one-size-fits-all kind of explanation for any of those factors for Islamic state groups. But at the same time, these groups very enthusiastically believe themselves to be part of the Islamic State. They pledged allegiance. They want to be a part of it.

It shapes how they see themselves and it shapes how they behave because it's created an kind of aspirational rubric for them to a set of skills, a set of modalities and how to behave. So there's kind of this odd dynamic where both are. true at the same time because you've got local circumstances kind of providing certain guardrails for what these groups are capable of. But within those guardrails, these groups have a direction and identity that in most cases they very enthusiastically stick to. And in some cases, that comes with material benefits. I mean, there's a fairly substantial amount of research on flows of finances to Islamic State, West Africa province in Northeast Nigeria, also some for the

ADF. And then obviously you can see kind of the aspirational governance in northeast Nigeria. But that's their prioritization of that kind of identity and that sort of interaction with neighboring communities. That's shaped by local circumstances, but it's really the ideology and being a part of this identity that makes them want to do it. It's useful for sure. I mean, there's like there are practical benefits, but I mean, I think you can see pretty clearly like in northeast Nigeria the difference between how Abuqqqar Shakao treated civilians in areas under his control when he led the group and after when he kind of split off to to form his splinter faction and how the his successors interacted with local civilian communities

while like more following the Islamic State rubric in a more orthodox way. Like that was a choice. That was not something that was determined by outside circumstances that the leaders of these groups couldn't really determine. It was a decision influenced by ideology and circumstance. And so there's that creates kind of a common thread throughout a lot of these affiliates and that there are circumstances and the resources available to them put some limits on what they're capable of.

but within those limits, there's, there are commonalities, and that's, that's pretty important. Aren't these groups growing? Are there going to be more provinces or more people flocking to the banner inside the existing provinces? So that's a little hard to determine kind of as it stands right now, it doesn't seem like there are any particularly strong candidates. But that's mostly because pretty much all of these groups were preexisting insurgencies in some fashion or not. other, you know, different strengths, different capabilities. But it seems one of the pretty standard things for being a province of the Islamic State is that you've got a fairly durable structure that can withstand the leadership change. So if the leader of the group gets killed, someone can take this place. There's enough of an apparatus that succession process can exist. And it doesn't seem like

there are any substantial insurgencies in Africa that are either not already part of the Islamic state or very enthusiastically part of Al-Qaeda. There's really no kind of free agents out there that might choose one side or the other anymore. Obviously, the Islamic State attracts, you know, small cells of sympathetic individuals who might carry out attacks. I've seen that in Morocco, seen out in South Africa, seen that in Tanzania. But most of these rise and fall. in pretty quick succession when kind of police or kind of terrorism pressure comes on them. So it doesn't seem like any right now are good candidates for quite getting to that level. What do you think is the future of Islamic State in Africa?

Kind of hard to paint with a broad brush, frankly. I mean, these are insurgencies in very different circumstances with very different resources available to them. And as we said before, like the big, broad rushes of their trajectories are really determined by those local circumstances. So in some cases, the trajectories are on a pretty downward slope for these groups. This group in Libya is not very strong. Same with Tunisia. The group in Sinai seems persist, especially considering the amount of resources that the Egyptian military is thrown against them, but also fairly contained.

Same with Somalia, though that's less due to kind of counterterrorism pressure and more due to pressure from al-Shabaab is a much, much stronger competitor and kind of internal clan dynamics in northern Somalia. But other ones, the trajectory is quite bad. So northeast Nigeria, they are doing quite well, obviously, you know, being able to stand up this governance apparatus and controlling pretty large swads of physical territory in this group in the Sahel, so that, again, that tri-border area.

They've got a lot of competition from the Al-Qaeda affiliate in the area of Jainim, but they've expanded their attack area over pretty wide swads, and it doesn't seem like there's any really competent counterterrorism pressure to deal with them effectively in a way that that really pushes them back. ADF in Congo, for the last few years, has been rapidly expanding. You know, me and a few other colleagues have kind of tracked their area of operations, and it's over the last three years, basically since their relationship with Islamic State began,

they've expanded their territory of attack by almost 400%. So they're now covering, I think, 7,600 square kilometers, so like over a pretty wide area. And over starting in the summer, and then particularly over the last few months, they've been staging kind of urban bombings, which has, at least for the last few years, not been something they've done

and staged them in Uganda and attempted to stage them in Rwanda. So kind of metastasizing into a regional threat. Then lastly, there's the group in Mozambique. So they actually were doing, you know, very, very well for a while, included seizing a city called Mosinboa to Praia, which is kind of the largest urban center that any Islamic state affiliate was able to take control of anywhere in the world since probably 2017. But there was a large-scale intervention by Rwanda and Sattuck,

the Southern Outfranchine Development Community, that has pushed them out of most of those major urban centers. So just a lot of local variation and then obviously some pretty dramatic swings depending on what the group is doing and what the kind of international pressure against them is like. All right. I have an existential question that I ask every time we talk about Africa on this show, something I've known to be kind of a truism in conflict journalism, is that if you're writing about Africa, you can't put it in the headline

because no one will read what you've written. People in the West just, their brain shuts down as soon as they learn that it's anything about Africa. Why do you think that we turn away from news of the continent? Yeah, that is a big existential question. I mean, I think you kind of have to mention there's a certain aspect of prejudice there, of people just not wanting to care. but I think another big factor is also that the continent is massive. And I think a lot of people here, you know, just by lack of exposure or ignorance or whatever

it may be, kind of don't realize how large Africa is and, you know, how many countries there are and how many people. And it's just incredibly diverse. And so attempting to parse out enough of those details and gain enough of like a base understanding to even have a basic idea of what's happened. I think for a lot of people seems like too much of a learning curve, and it's easier to just turn away, which is foolish in my mind. People need to.

I mean, this is the second most populous continent in the world. It's, I think I saw some estimates by the end of the century. Africa's population will be like 45% of the global population, and disproportionately it's youth. most of the fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa, it's incredibly important. And it affects, it increasingly so will affect everyone. For China Hawks,

China is investing in infrastructure in Africa at incredible levels. Right? Like, there's reasons to be paying attention here. And, you know, the thrust of, one of the thrusts of your book is that this is the place where the big fight against Islamism is taking place now and is going to be taking place in the future, right?

So that's another reason to pay attention. Yeah. I mean, it's, I think for a variety of reasons, it's proven itself to be, or at least, certain places on the continent. Obviously, the continent is huge, and we're only covering, you know, nine locations across it. Out of, you know, 54 countries, 55, depending on who you ask. But at least certain places have proven themselves to be fertile ground for jihadist movements. And not just, you know, purely local, but very much plugged into the global jihadist movement,

both in terms of personnel, expertise, finances, all of it. So, you know, the policy focus in the West seems to be shifting away from the war on terror, which, you know, maybe has some. some good aspects to it, but at the same time, it's, it's not like they're giving up. This is still very much a problem, still very much something that people need to keep the handle on. And then frankly, the most important thing, at least for me, is that these groups have tremendous impact on the local communities in which they operate, you know, in terms of just casualties, displacement, you know, the outlays that local governments have to put into security that they

otherwise could be putting into development. I mean, the, the impacts there can't be understated. And if you look at the total number of conflicts in Africa, you know, I don't want to put a specific number on it, but like a huge, huge percentage, if not a majority, are related to Islamic extremism. So if we're concerned about conflict, development, humanitarianism, this has to be a part of the conversation. It just, it just has to. Ryan O'Farrell. The book is The Islamic State in Africa, The Emergence Evolution and Future of the Next Jihadist Battlefront.

Thank you so much for coming on to Angered Planet and walking us through all of this. No, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. That's all for this week, Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Adele. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, you want to hear it ad-free and you'd like access to bonus episodes, as well, that'll cost you about $9 a month. Go to angryplanet.substack.com or angryplanetpod.com.

Sign up. It helps us keep the show churning along and helps pay my taxes. Again, that's at angryplanetpod.com or angry planet.substack.com. $9 a month. Bonus episodes, commercial-free versions of the mainline episodes. We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe. Until then.