Africa’s Terrorist Threat

             Terrorist organizations have operated around the world for decades – in the Americas, Europe and Asia.  However, the now-rapid spread of terrorism in Africa with international links is a relatively recent phenomenon.  Groups such al-Shabaab and Boko Haram began as opponents to the ruling governments in their countries, either because of perceived misrule or because of religious discrimination in some form.

            However, the rise of international terrorist organizations such as the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda offered the chance to link with a much larger, more international organization.  The success of IS in the Middle East in building a territory labeled a caliphate was attractive to local groups struggling to survive and grow in their own countries.  Still, as a point was made during a recent American Enterprise Institute (AEI) seminar on African terrorist groups, even when local groups pledged allegiance to the international sponsor, there was usually a faction that refused to fully follow the larger group’s policies.

            As it is, IS central doesn’t demand full allegiance for its national affiliates.  In some cases, such as in Libya, the local affiliate was created by IS veterans of fighting in Iraq and Syria.  So, Ansar al-Sharia (ASL) in Libya was started by jihadists quite familiar with IS policies and tactics, and according to Aaron Zelin of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, ASL leadership is fully integrated into the IS core and uses a similar governance style.  They include about 2,500 foreign fighters, mostly Tunisians, but their leadership are mainly Sunni Muslims from Egypt, Sudan and Tunisia.  Like others in IS, ASL employs the spectacle of public killings of Christians, including beheadings.  They produce provincial level videos.

            In the age of social media, there has been a lot of recruitment of would-be extremists through such platforms, but face-to-face encounters are still being employed for recruitment and training.  Vincent Fourcher of the National Center for Scientific Research said in the AEI seminar that the thirst for internal change and a link to something greater is sometimes answered by foreign recruiters.  He said that Libyan extremists on their own traveled to West Africa’s Lake Chad region to recruit new cells. 

Terrorist leaders such as Nigeria’s Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau refused to make many of the changes called for by IS.  While IS core has allowed variances in policies, Shekau’s outright refusal to cooperate evidently rankled IS central and loyalists within Boko Haram.  The Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP), which is under IS leadership, put out an order to capture Shekau.  Rather than be captured, Shekau reportedly killed himself several weeks ago.  In the wake of Shekau’s death, Boko Haram is expected to operate much like a franchise, i.e., representing IS but operating under some of its own policies.

In John Moore’s paper The Evolution of Islamic Terrorism: An Overview, religious extremists present a growing threat through the use of terrorism.

“As pointed out by RAND's Bruce Hoffman, in 1980 two out of 64 groups were categorized as largely religious in motivation; in 1995 almost half of the identified groups, 26 out of 56, were classified as religiously motivated; the majority of these espoused Islam as their guiding force,” Moore’s report states.

“The colonial era, failed post-colonial attempts at state formation, and the creation of Israel engendered a series of Marxist and anti-Western transformations and movements throughout the Arab and Islamic world. The growth of these nationalist and revolutionary movements, along with their view that terrorism could be effective in reaching political goals, generated the first phase of modern international terrorism,” Moore explained.

Al Qaeda (a,k,a. The Base) was established in 1990 to create and coordinate a transnational mujahideen network.  Mujahideen is the plural form of the Arabic mujahid for “one who wages jihad” or struggle.  Moore’s paper recounts that in February 1998, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladin issued a statement under the banner of "The World Islamic Front for Jihad Against the Jews and Crusaders," saying it was the duty of all Muslims to kill U.S. citizens – civilians or military – and their allies. Al Qaeda allegedly orchestrated the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, on August 7, 1998. Al Qaeda claimed to have been involved in the 1993 killing of U.S. servicemen in Somalia and the December 1992 bombings against U.S. troops in Aden, Yemen. Al Qaeda serves as the core of a loose umbrella organization that includes members of many Sunni Islamic extremist groups, including factions of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ), the Gama'at al-Islamiyya (IG) and the Harakat ul-Mujahidin (HUM).

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or ISIL, also is known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, is now officially known as IS, the Islamic State. The group was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 and gained global prominence in 2014 when it drove the Iraqi military out of key cities in its Western Iraq offensive, followed by its capture of the city of Mosul and other territorial acquisitions.  ISIL at the time pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, and in 2014 proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate, which is when the group began referring to itself as the Islamic State.  As a caliphate, it claimed religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide.

The two groups first came into conflict when IS moved into Syria.  Their verbal discord on Twitter spread to actually killings of each other’s forces on the battlefield, Zelin described in his paper The War between ISIS and al-Qaeda for Supremacy of the Global Jihadist Movement.  With setbacks in the Middle East, Africa initially became a greater staging ground for this rivalry – first in Africa’s northern Mahgreb region and increasingly in places like Nigeria, Somalia and other parts of Africa, but the affiliates of both groups tend to collaborate in Africa as they don’t in the Middle East.

Brenda Mugeri Githing’o, an independent terrorism analyst, said in the AEI seminar that radical materials from the different groups are shared across borders even though each group has its own view of its individual circumstances.  Consequently, she explained, there is no definitive transfer of common knowledge among the groups, just an ongoing cooperation among them.

Audu Bulama Bukarti, an analyst for Tony Blair Institute, reports that there are more than a dozen jihadi groups active across Africa today: al-Shabaab and Islamic State in Somalia (ISS) active in East Africa; Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunnah Liddawati wal Jihad (JAS), the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), and Ansaru al Musulmina fi Bidad al-Sudan (Ansaru) active in the Lake Chad region and other parts of northern Nigeria; Jama’tu Nusrat al-Islam wa al-Musulmin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in Greater Sahara (ISGS) active in the western Sahel; the Islamic State in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Islamic State in Mozambique active in their respective countries under the banner of Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP); the Islamic State in Libya and al-Qaeda in Libya; the Islamic State in Sinai and al-Qaeda in Sinai active in Egypt; Islamic State in Tunisia and al-Qaeda in Tunisia both with just several dozen fighters; and the Islamic State in Algeria and al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) active in Algeria and, in the case of AQIM, parts of the Sahel. Al-Shabaab and ISS were originally one group, as were JAS, ISWAP, and Ansaru (referred to jointly as Boko Haram in this paper). Conversely, JNIM is a merger of four different organizations active in North Africa and the Sahel, including al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).

While these groups do not all adhere to core IS or al Qaeda policies or tactics, there has been a rise in IS/Al Qaeda-style beheadings, public killings and bombings in Africa, targeting not only national and local governments, but also Westerners and their interests on the continent.  The manner in which African leadership and their international allies can successful address this situation remains to be seen.  A solely military response is not likely to succeed and could encourage further terrorist recruitment among families of the fallen and other strong believers in jihad, and negotiations with groups that have an arbitrary definition of cooperation don’t appear likely to succeed either as most seem to want the destruction of the very establishments that would engage in negotiations.

Nevertheless, a continent striving to create an African Continental Free Trade Area and an international business community eager to do business across national boundaries must come up with some workable solution if their aspirations will ever come to fruition and provide for a peaceful and prosperous Africa.

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