ISIS and Al-Qaeda as Strategies and Political Imaginaries in Africa: A Comparison between Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

Abstract

By analysing Boko Haram and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, this article argues that ascriptions to international jihadist brands are linked to local movements’ political economy and geopolitical imaginaries, and, therefore, driven more by contingent strategic considerations rather than by ideological motives. Consequently, three sets of evidence are discussed, by drawing also on fieldwork conducted in Mali and Niger from 2013 to 2016: the discourses of these actors; their political economies; their use of political violence. In conclusion, we analyse the ‘territorialised-deterritorialised cleavage’ and argue that this has greater heuristic value to understand African ‘jihadisms’ than existing categorisations of political violence.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Professors David Byman, Jennifer Lofkrantz and Francesco Strazzari, who, from different angles, provided fundamental inputs to the drafting of this article. They also want to thank Dr. Matthew Robson for the valuable comments on the last draft of this work. Moreover, they also expressed their gratitude to the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies.

Notes

1. While acknowledging its complexity, the term Salafi Islamism is used here to refer to the variety of movements advocating for the restoration of an uncompromising interpretation of Islam as close as possible to the purported originality of the message. From this perspective, in Africa Salafism opposes Malikism and Sufism. However, one needs to highlight the abstraction of the dichotomy between Salafism and Sufim, as well as between African and Arab Islam, as recent studies have showed (see for instance Lecocq 2015, Amselle 2017).

2. The official name of Boko Haram is ‘Jama’atu Ahlis Sunnah Ladda’awatih wal-Jihad’, i.e., ‘People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad’. This article will stick to the label of Boko Haram in order to stress the relevance of the discursive construction of the organisation itself.

3. Our analysis ends with the end of 2016 as we consider this to be a turning point, potentially leading to further changes that are hard to predict, and that fall beyond the scope of our investigation. Two thousand sixteen marks, in fact, a radical change in the leadership and tactics of both groups: in August that year IS rejects Shekau’s leadership of Boko Haram; a few months later IS is evicted from Libya, and virtually from the whole of Africa; in late November a bombing in Libya severely hurt Belmokhtar, until then one of AQIM’s masterminds, and leads to a reconfiguration of local armed groups that would result in the creation of Jama’at Nusrat ul-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM, Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims) (Raineri and Strazzari 2017).

4. https://maghrebandsahel.wordpress.com/.

5. https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/.

6. This methodological choice depends on the specificity of the research each database allows to carry out. Whereas in the first case, the database provides disaggregated data concerning the different targets of AQIM (state military, international actors, non-state armed actors, civilians, etc.); in the case of the GTD the data allow to differentiate only between the civilian and governmental targets.

7. The label refers to existing policy discourses, but is used with deliberate scepticism here. Recent scholarship (Raleigh and Dowd 2013, Roy 2013, Boas 2014, Briscoe 2014) has convincingly called into question the value of such a trope to characterise Mali’s northern regions.

8. Interviews with local authorities in Kidal and Timbuktu, conducted locally in November 2015.

9. Interview with Arab leader and trafficker from Timbuktu, conducted in Bamako in November 2014.

10. Interview with UNODC senior researcher, conducted in Dakar in November 2014.

11. This view has been further confirmed in the framework of subsequent interviews with traffickers from Timbuktu and Kidal, conducted locally in November 2015.

12. Interview with prominent Arab leader and trader from Timbuktu who joined the armed militias, conducted in Bamako in November 2014.

13. All these labels refer to ethnic groups living in north Mali. Noteworthy, many of them have been engaged in communal struggles conducted by ethnic-based militias.

14. Azawad is the name given by Tuareg secessionist to their homeland in north Mali, as well as to the independent state they advocate for herein.

15. Interview with a north Malian journalist, conducted in Bamako in November 2014.

16. Interview with Arab leader and political representative from Timbuktu, conducted in Bamako in December 2013.

17. Interviews with Gao residents, Bamako, November 2013.

18. Video available at http://jihadology.net/2012/08/page/8/, quote from minute 10.02. See also Lebovich (2013).

19. A member of the MUJAO later acknowledged: ‘80 percent of MUJAO consists of dealers, traders, people looking for money. We’re traffickers, not terrorists’ (Thiénot 2014).

20. Interview with civil society leader from Gao, conducted in Bamako in October 2013.

21. Interestingly, the main proponent of the initiative was Adnan Abou Walid Saharawi, a former Polisario Front fighter converted to armed Salafism. One could conjecture that IS territorialised approach to jihad fits well into the Saharawi claim for sovereignty and independence.

22. It is remarkable that ISIS has recognised this oath of allegiance only in October 2016. However, it is too early to envisage any further consequence this may (or not) have on the group and its dynamics.

23. ‘Characteristic was the celebration by some al-Qaeda supporters at the ‘discretion’ shown by not spilling Muslim blood during AQIM’s November 2015 Bamako (International Crisis Group 2016).

24. Among the recorded attacks, 83 (31%) have been carried out against the Malian security forces, whereas 26 against the French army (31%) and 20 (24%) against MINUSMA (United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali).

25. Information confirmed in the framework of interviews with leaders from the GATIA and the MAA, conducted in Bamako in November 2015 and May 2016. See also Thiénot (2014).

26. While it is sometimes argued that before 9/11Al-Qaeda had a sort of territorial orientation, especially in Afghanistan, the affiliated groups abroad were mainly focused on their local agendas (Burke 2007). The deterritorialised strategy became even more prominent since the publication of Abu Musab al-Suri’s strategic treatise in 2005, that Bin Laden himself reportedly praised (Battiston 2016).

27. The reference to Ibn Tamiyya – the saint patron of modern jihadism (Guidère 2015) – leaves little doubt about the Salafist inspiration of Yusuf. However, recent literature has put forward the hypothesis that the group may be an evolution either of the Sahaba Muslim Youth Organisation or of the Ahlulsunnawal ‘jama’ ah, both of which emerged in 1995 (Okoro 2014).

28. Interview with an officer of the Haute Autorité à la Consolidation de la Paix, conducted in Niamey in October 2015. Here, ‘vertical inequality’ refers to the inequality among individuals – e.g., measured in income distribution –, ‘horizontal inequality’ refers to the inequality experienced by different groups in a society – e.g., in terms of religion, ethnicity, subcultures, etc.

29. Interview with a Nigerien expert of sociology of religions in the Sahel, conducted in Niamey in September 2015.

30. And indeed, the fact that John Kerry recently visited the Sultan of Sokoto to demand his help in the fight against Boko Haram lends itself to easy (abusive?) distortions. See Gaffey (2016).

31. We implicitly endorse Kalyvas’s (2006) view that ethnic identifications are often the consequence (more or less intended), and not the cause, of political violence.

32. Indeed, the ACLED database confirms that in the meantime no other attack attributed to Nigerian non-state actors occurred in the broader region.

33. Religious movement promoting a reformist approach to Islam in Nigeria, particularly popular among business people.

34. Tidjane and Qadiriyyah are Sufi confraternities.

35. Information confirmed in the framework of several interviews, including with security experts and Nigerian military, conducted in Niamey in September and October 2015.

36. Our argument does not claim that all empirically existent armed groups should fit into the analytical grid herein introduced. Instead, the focus on ideal types does not exclude the existence of counterexamples, deviations and creative adaptations to the contexts examined. Ansar-Dine would be a case in point here, in as much as it provides an interesting cocktail of separatist grievances put forward by a marginalised ethnic group (the Tuareg) and framed in terms of territoriality, and a sustained cooperation with Al-Qaeda and its deterritorialised approach to jihad in north Mali. However, Ansar-Dine’s goal has been opaque and changing, and lends themselves poorly to an ideal types-based argument like the one herein developed.