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Religious Extremism, Insurgent Violence and the Transformation of the New African Security Landscape

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Religious Extremism, Insurgent Violence and the Transformation of the New African Security Landscape 6 Religious Extremism, Insurgent Violence and the Transformation of the New African Security Landscape Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou n the early twenty-first century, Africa has updating its response matrix to generate a proper experienced significant changes in the nature understanding of the ongoing transformation, of the security threats it is facing. Since the whereby new actors are impacting the dominant I1960s and throughout the post-colonial period, conflict grammar in open-ended ways. the African landscape had been dominated by Specifically, a new generation of armed groups political irredentism and territorial disputes has emerged over the past quarter of a century. triggered by the legacy of colonial arbitrariness Understanding this new generation of non- and perpetuated by autocratic regimes. By the state armed groups presents novel analytical 1990s, the scene had transformed, as non-state and practical challenges, as these entities differ actors had become increasingly active across the substantially from those that are traditionally continent. Later, this evolution grew to concern active in civil conflicts (UN System Staff College vectors of statehood, political violence and force and Center for International Peace Operations projection (or a group’s ability to broadcast power). 2015, 7). Just as the state system itself is an evolving These changes are rooted in the synthesis of architecture (Engel and Porto 2010, 159), the new legitimacy crises, the disintegration of prevailing groups have an equally deep historical anchoring. social systems and the rise of disruptive military Guerrillas, rebels and warlords have operated in innovation, and are vividly visible in Africa (Philips fertile frontiers and marginalized zones, both real 34, 2011). As a result, today, African regional and abstract; they have represented, if sometimes conflict management capacity faces a challenge of 65 66 • Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou in the vaguest of terms, a range of disenfranchised states and how it has transformed over the past groups and have pursued many of the same goals 25 years, institutions such as the African Union — however unpalatably — as their nineteenth- (AU), regional organizations and civil society century forebears (Reid 2012, 148). The differences actors will remain in a declamatory rather than a from earlier generations are twofold. On the one regulatory position. For a long time, the prevailing hand, the new groups have varied characteristics, literature in social sciences and in policy making which ultimately constitute groups that are was that the search for durable peace in Africa predominately hybrid. These groups display was directly related to issues of governance and religious extremism, performing terrorist actions democratization (Adebajo 2002, 38). Until recently, that are at times concerned with territorial gains, the international implications of insurgency on and at other times focused mostly on transnational the continent had been neglected. This was due to targets. Present-day armed groups in Africa are the fact that the patterns of international politics hybrid actors whose motivations and beliefs cannot revealed by insurgency often ran counter to the be attributed to a single philosophical cause or act ideologies or mythologies of African statehood of violence. On the other hand, these new groups and unity. A revised and updated understanding are increasingly spilling across borders, embracing of the subject is overdue (Clapham 1996, 209). transnationalism. None of the three main groups The transformation of the landscape is only due discussed in this chapter — Al Shabaab, al- in part to the result of the revolutionary rather Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and than evolutionary actions of the new groups. The Boko Haram — are confined to the countries discontinuity of boundaries is one of the most in which they originated — for example, AQIM important factors in the building of African states has become a bigger issue in Mali than in Algeria and the state system (Herbst 2000, 252; Salehyan where it originated. In this context, the global 2007; Checkel 2013). Present-day armed groups nature of militancy in Africa is characterized by have created a myriad of transnational connections, the simultaneous manifestation of three aspects of laying the groundwork for a new generation to be violence: a resurgence and mutation, a dynamic of more lethal and also be transformed as a result of uncertain and unsettled form, and a trajectory of the influence of a diverse network of forces. To expansion. be certain, this transformation, which gathered momentum in the early 2000s, was foreshadowed by key developments in earlier decades. As a Transformed Landscape and New number of states collapsed in the late 1980s and Actors early 1990s, lines between various forces and their objectives, and between combatants and Understanding the new armed groups in Africa non-combatants, had begun to become blurred and re-mapping the (in)security landscape of or at least highly fluid (Reid 2012, 169). It is, the continent accordingly, is the first critical however, the impact of globalization in the mid- step toward a redefinition of an effective policy to-late 1990s, and more visibly in the 2000s, response. The security environment of the twenty- that forcefully ushered in a new generation of first century is characterized by the influence and self-directed actors in the continent. Put simply, power of non-state armed groups, and because globalization is by far the biggest driver of this these groups are central to understanding regional transformation, which yielded new ungoverned and world politics, the analysis of the nature of spaces. It accentuated asymmetries in wealth and these actors should be taken more seriously (Mulaj rates of development, accelerated demographic 2010, 2). Without a clinical interpretation of the shifts and urbanization, empowered individuals full picture of political violence across African and non-state actors through access to emerging Religious Extremism, InsurgentViolence and theTransformation of the New African Security Landscape • 67 technologies and the dissemination of new Whereas Southern Africa and Central Africa were norms and ideas, and shrank time and distance affected by other internecine identity markers (Clunan and Trinkunas 2010, 277; Raleigh and (Lemarchand 2009; Prunier 2010), the religious Dowd 2013). It therefore also set the stage for and terrorist groups have dominated more the manifestation of various mutations of militant intensely North Africa, West Africa, the Sahel religious and terrorist movements in Africa. and East Africa. Three constellations of key actors active in these four regions can be identified and An important pattern at the centre of this recent are discussed in this chapter: Al Shabaab in East transformation has been the materialization of a Africa, AQIM in the Maghreb and the Sahel, and sequence whereby a nexus is established among Boko Haram in West Africa. the armed groups, politics and religion. During the 1960s, 1970s and most of the 1980s, groups across the continent that began as political entities East Africa and Al Shabaab (on the basis of ideological choices or separatist claims) would remain so. Trajectories away from As is often the case with faltering statehood, the the “political” would take the form of state collapse, path leading to the emergence of Al Shabaab co-optation or criminalization, but seldom in Somalia in 2006 started with the fall of the religiosity. Starting in the late 1980s, insurgencies Mohamed Siad Barre regime in that country in increasingly began to borrow from religious 1991. Barre had led the country since October rhetoric and “cleansing” ideologies. Three main 1969 as a result of a coup conducted nine years stages emerged in the evolution of the trajectory after the country’s independence. The rise of from political to religious. First, groups would the religious dimension in Somalia is, however, essentially be influenced by the increased presence relatively surprising, as cohesion, rather than of religion in world affairs and introduce a layer of fragmentation could have been initially expected. religious terminology in their reoriented mandate. The majority of the country’s population is Second, groups would seek alliances with religious Sunni of the Shafi’i school and the country groups, thereby retaining their original stance enjoys a religious and linguistic unity that is but boasting a forceful religious partnership — rare in Africa. However, the absence of a lasting oftentimes with a view to gain external attention. political authority and the extremely strategic Third and finally, by the late 1990s armed groups position of the country — which garnered the began to make religion their primary basis (i.e., colonial competition of Britain, France and Italy, predication and combat). Overall, with the general as well as Ethiopia in the Ogaden region — led intensity of religious-based conflicts increasing, to the development of informal Islamist power the new armed groups came to inevitably echo this patterns. Somalia only witnessed an Islamist dynamic. A study from the Peace Research Institute revival movement late in the post-colonial period. in Oslo has measured the presence of identity- The movements that emerged in the 1970s and based religious cleavages in 241 intrastate conflicts 1980s — such as the Liberation Front of Western during the period from 1946 to 2004. It shows that Somalia, the Democratic
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