Beneath the Apparent State of Affairs: Stability in and The Potential for Radicalization and Political Violence in Clingendael Report Peter Knoope Grégory Chauzal Beneath the Apparent State of Affairs: Stability in Ghana and Benin The Potential for Radicalization and Political Violence in West Africa

Peter Knoope Grégory Chauzal

Clingendael Report January 2016 January 2016

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About the authors Peter Knoope is a career diplomat who was inter alia Head of Mission to Afghanistan and headed the Humanitarian Aid section at the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Currently he is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, where he was the Director from its inception until August 2014.

Grégory Chauzal is a Senior Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute, where he specializes on security and terrorism issues, with a special emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb and the .

Clingendael Institute P.O. Box 93080 2509 AB The Hague The Netherlands

Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.clingendael.nl Contents

Acknowledgements 1

Abstract 2

Executive Summary 3

Introduction 6

1 Report on the Situation in, and Specifics of, Ghana 9

2 Report on the Situation in, and Specifics of, Benin 17

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations 29

List of Interviews 37

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all those who went out of their way and spent some of their precious time talking to us in , Tamale, and Porto-Novo. Special word of thanks goes to the Dutch MFA for sponsoring this project, and to the staff at the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Ghana and Benin; without their assistance it would not have been possible to write this report. We would also like to acknowledge our colleagues from the Clingendael Institute, particularly Bibi van Ginkel and Luc van de Goor, for their valuable assistance during and after the editing of this report, and Paul Görts for his thoughtful assistance with the template. It goes without saying that any mistakes that the reader may find in the text are exclusively those of the authors.

1 Abstract

Crises in the (from