Managing Violent Religious Extremism in Fragile States

Building Institutional Capacity in Nigeria and Kenya

Abosede Omowumi Babatunde, Mahfouz A. Adedimeji, Shittu Raji, Jacinta Mwende Maweu, John Mwangi Githigaro

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000459500
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: African Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines how African states can build the institutional capacity to better prevent, manage and cope with the new security challenges posed by violent religious extremism.

Despite the evidence that violent religious extremism is exacerbated by underlying social, political, economic and governance factors, many states have focused their efforts only on reactive and coercive response strategies, overlooking more long-term measures. This comparative study of Nigeria and Kenya reflects on why insurgency in Kenya has not escalated to full blown terrorism as it has with Boko Haram in Nigeria, in spite of the similarities in relatively weak institutions of governance and colonial legacies across the two countries. The book interrogates the policy and institutional responses that have been put in place in both countries to address security challenges, and the extent of their efficacy in light of the intricate networks of politics, governance, corruption, poverty and violence and the relative fragility of state institutions. The authors highlight the areas of convergence and divergence in institutional capacities and recommend policies to enhance the capacity of institutions to manage violent religious extremism.

This book will be of interest to scholars of African Politics, Security, Peace Studies and Terrorism.

1Historicization of religious extremism in Africa

DOI: 10.4324/9781003004745-1

Introduction

An exploration of the history of violent religious extremism in Africa from the period of transition to independence as well as the post-colonial era provides critical insights into the socio-economic and political contexts in which violent extremist groups became incubated and eventually emerged in African states. It is argued that the fragility of many African states provides the opportunity for extremist groups to emerge, set up operational bases and find sanctuary to launch their violent campaigns. The African continent has experienced diverse forms of resistance movements, military coups, political assassinations and various intra- and inter-state wars right from the period of transition to independence to the post-colonial era (Forest & Giroux, 2011). These resistance movements that permeated several states on the continent have demonstrated extremist tendencies in the quest to attain ideological and political objectives.

Crenshaw (1994) suggests that extremist and ideologically inspired violent non-state groups have deployed terrorist tactics through acts of violence or the threat of violence as a coercive strategy to cause fear and political intimidation. Notable examples include the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in Algeria, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) in Eritrea and the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. Clifford-Vaughan (1987) describes how the ANC openly rationalized the deployment of terror tactics in its violent campaign against the Apartheid regime in 1969, through political subversion, propaganda, sabotage and terrorism, on the basis of their opposition to the political, economic and social structure of South Africa. The violent campaign of some of the violent extremist groups like the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, Al-Shabaab in Somalia and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in North Africa has gained more prominence and global attention in the last half of the century (Mazrui, 1985; Forest & Giroux, 2011). In the 1960s, the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood (MB) spearheaded by theologian Sayyid Qutb laid the foundation for the Islamist ideology that justified the use of violence by many of today's neojihadist groups and terrorist movements, like Al-Qaeda (Forest & Giroux, 2011). McCullough and Schomerus (2017) indicate that some international events like the war in Iraq and Israel's actions in Palestine have inspired some Jihadist movements in Africa.

In the 1990s, extremist groups became more noticeable in Africa as their atrocities became more lethal, and attracted global attention. Since the mid-1990s, the use of terror tactics by the extremist groups has been interwoven into broader conflict systems linked to diverse forms of political violence, insurgencies and civil wars (Forest & Giroux, 2011). In the case of North and West Africa, Gow and Olonisakin (2013: 1) describe how the activities of Islamic Jihadists which were largely localized and contained became more intense since 2001 in the two sub-regions, transforming into complex organizations operating both locally and globally by coalescing religious ideology with criminal networks. For instance, in Mali, the rebellion by the Tuareg started in the early 1960s after the country attained independence, and another episode emerged in the early 1990s, and later in 2006 as a result of the breakdown in the National Pact of 1992, which failed to produce tangible results (Bøås, 2019). Hinds (2013) identifies some of the major Jihadist groups prominent in the early 2000s in the two regions to include AQIM, GIA, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, or GSPC), the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (Majao) and Ansar Dine.

In the 2000s, some of the domestic Islamic Jihadist groups merged and transformed into prominent groups with transnational objectives, such as the 2007 merger of Algeria's GSPC with Al-Qaeda that led to the formation of the Organization of AQIM (Forest & Giroux, 2011). Aside from that, AQIM has pushed south into some sub-Saharan states, with its incursion into Mauritania, Niger and Mali; the movement has also diversified its activities into various types of criminality, including drug trafficking (Hinds, 2013). For over a decade, African countries have been contending with the emergence of transnational terrorist groups that use the continent as a theatre to carry out attacks against both domestic and international targets, as well as to develop and maintain operations (Forest & Giroux, 2011). Some examples that point to the transnational dimension of violent extremist activities include the 1998 US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel and airplane in Mombasa, Kenya and attacks against United Nation (UN) buildings in Algeria and Nigeria.

Walther et al., (2017) provide insights into the common historical and ideological background that led to the metamorphosis of the various Jihadist groups affiliated with Al-Qaeda in North and Western Africa into several components of a single, opportunistic network, rather than independent entities. These Jihadist groups became a single network through mergers, splits and changes of names. An author cited the case of GSPC – a splinter group of the Algerian GIA, which later rebranded itself as AQIM after it formally aligned with Al-Qaeda in 2007. Some of the members later split in 2011 to form the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), while others formed Al Moulathamoun and Al Mouakaoune Biddam. The two spinster groups later merged in 2013 to form Al Mourabitoune, which was renamed Al-Qaeda in West Africa in 2015. An example of a recent merger is that of AQIM, Ansar Dine, Al Mourabitoune and the Macina Liberation Front which fuses on the ‘Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims’ (Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin) (Walther et al., 2017). Bøås (2019) suggests that apart from the fact that the remnants of the original MUJAO insurgency still exist in the three-state border region that divides central-eastern Mali from Burkina Faso and Niger, known as the Liptako-Gourma, new ones have emerged such as the group led by Saharawi-born Abou Walid al-Saharawi that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State (IS), and Ansarul Islam, established by the Burkinabe Ibrahim Malam Dicko. In Nigeria, Boko Haram, the Salafist Jihadist group which emerged in 2002 and came into notoriety in 2009, also split into two major factions: the original Boko Haram known as the Jama’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihad (‘the People Committed to the Prophet's Teaching and Jihad’ or JASDJ led by Abubakar Shekau), and the faction referred to as Ansaru and later the ‘Islamic State West Africa Province’ (ISWAP) led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi (Matfess, 2017).

The Sudan's MB, and the National Islamic Front (NIF), under the ideological leadership of Dr. Hassan al-Turabi which came to power in Sudan in 1989 with the aim of establishing Sharia in Sudan, and throughout Africa, are considered ideological forbearers to Salafist-Jihadist groups like Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram, which emerged in East Africa and West Africa, respectively, in the 2000s (Zenn, 2012). In the 1990s, Bin Laden's close ties with the Sudan's NIF provided him the opportunity to connect with and provide funding for Islamic militants in East African countries, including Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania (Zenn, 2012). In West Africa, Jihadist movements were slow to emerge until the late 1990s, despite the fact that the region is considered to have the largest Muslim population in sub-Saharan Africa. The transition from political authoritarianism to democratic rule in Nigeria in 1999 seemed to have paved way for the emergence of religiously motivated warfare. The Sharia debacle in the 12 predominantly Muslim northern states in Nigeria in the early 2000s later culminated in the establishment of the Nigerian Taliban in 2003, which became known as Boko Haram with the demand for the full imposition of Shari’a-based laws on the example of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan (Zenn, 2012; Matfess, 2017).

The fluidity of the extremist violent campaign across regions is linked to the porosity of the borders on many African states. As Forest and Giroux (2011) aver, some extremists have capitalized on the local context and physical terrain to launch violent attacks within and outside a region. Citing the case of Uganda rebel group, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) which comprised the self-identified ‘religious crusaders’ from the Muslim Tabliq sect opposing the government explained that the ADF were based in western Uganda, along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo where they took advantage of the terrain and local context to set up rear bases in neighboring Congo, recruiting and training fighters with the promise of money and education. The base in Congo serves as a signboard for the sect's violent operations. Zenn (2012) also draws attention to how the Algeria's GSPC used the remote parts of northern Mali, Niger and Mauritania as the operational bases to strike Algeria. Thus, the motive of the sect was not linked to any intent to destabilize the democratic transitions underway in West Africa at that time. The extremists exploited the broad weakness of African governments and the internal fighting and corruption of African regimes to strengthen their operational capabilities across the region.

The socio-economic and political realities in Africa provide a signpost for the gestation of violent extremist groups in the continent. Many observers have elucidated on the structural conditions which produce domestic grievances that extremist groups consider as justification for their recourse to violent actions. Most African states are weak with some degree of fragility, in which extreme ones like that of Somalia experience complete absence of a viable central government which makes the entire state ungovernable (Forest & Giroux, 2011). Some states with moderate level of fragility have ‘ungoverned spaces’ or ‘lawless areas’ within their borders, despite the presence of state authority that allows violent extremist groups to find sanctuary in these states. The presence of ungoverned spaces poses a major challenge that increases the vulnerability of African states to transnational terrorism.

Security analysts suggest that the structural weakness of African states manifests in lack of socio-economic opportunities that provoke grievances related to perceptions of political marginalization and deprivations at the root of violent extremism (Angerbrandt, 2017; Matfess, 2017). In fact, Bøås (2019) demonstrates that some of the countries confronting violent extremists like Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania and Niger are ranked the poorest and weakest countries in the world, with varying degree of fragility relating to instability, chronic violence, humanitarian crises and large-scale migration or displacement. In North and West Africa, decades of conflicts fuel political and cross-border instabilities, coupled with incidence of poverty, political and cultural marginalization, low educational attainment, lack of opportunities, especially for young people and the collapse of traditional Islamic organizations increases susceptibility to extremist groups (Hinds, 2013). Other contributory factors relate to the broader historical context of political and cultural resistance by certain peripheral regional elements to a delegitimized and stagnated central authority (Pargeter, 2009: 1032).

While some observers provide evidence which suggests that authoritarianism contributed to a vicious cycle of repression and extremism in the case of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia (Storm, 2009: 998), others find out that Islamist extremism can occur under other political circumstances, drawing example from the case of Algeria, where local Jihadism in suburbs of Algiers emerged during a period of democratic transition (Belaala, 2008: 15). Thus, Hinds (2013) concludes that the political context of various African countries has provided environment for radical Islamist elements to thrive. In the case of Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, it was suggested that the crises in these countries led to consequences that spawned political vacuum that created conducive environment for Islamic extremism. In Nigeria, governance crisis fuels disillusionment with political authority and perceptions of the ‘hypocrisy’ of state actors that sparked anti-state tendencies by extremist groups (Hinds, 2013; Thurston, 2015). Citing the case of Algeria, Boubaker (2011) finds out that the Wahhabi Salafism leveraged on the disappointment of Algerians with the violence of the recent past and the dominance of the National Liberation Front to gain prominence. In a study on violent extremism in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger (International Alert, 2018) suggest that fragile and conflict-affected states are prone to extremist groups due to the perception of abuse and violation by government authorities that exposed young people to risk of joining violent extremist groups. The historical analysis into the evolution of violence extremism in Africa needs to take account of socio-economic and political contexts in which radical Jihadists emerged in the African continent.

History of violent extremism in Africa

The history of violent extremism in the African continent is rooted in the political and socio-economic experiences of the diverse countries confronting extremist groups in the continent. The diverse contexts in which violent extremism emerged in the African countries and spread to sub-regions can be understood through an analysis of their historical, political, social ...