Fragmentation, Conflict, and Competition: Islamist Anti-civilian Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa

ABSTRACT

In spite of the shared high profile of recent Islamist attacks on civilians in sub-Saharan Africa, patterns of anti-civilian violence differ across and within violent Islamist groups, and the countries in which they are active. This research seeks to explain this variation by situating Islamist violence within the sub-national spaces in which such groups operate, and the wider conflict environment in which they choose to use, or limit the use of, anti-civilian violence. Drawing on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset, the research finds that violent Islamist groups are more likely to target civilians where they are the most active conflict agent, even when other conflict agents are active in the same spaces; but less likely to do so when they are relatively weak and in competition with other non-state armed groups. Anti-civilian violence is thus deployed strategically by violent Islamist groups, while its function as a signalling or retributive policing tool depends on the relative strength of groups in relation to actors in the wider conflict arena.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• fragmentation
• geography
• Islamist violence
• political violence

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council’s Geographies of Political Violence (GEOPV) grant 283755.

Notes

1. BBC News, “Al-Shabaab Massacres non-Muslims at Kenya Quarry,” December 2, 2014, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-30288137 (accessed 26 September 2016).

2. Source: ACLED data, Version 6.

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4. Michael Boyle, “Bargaining, Fear, and Denial: Explaining Violence against Civilians in Iraq 2004–2007,” Terrorism and Political Violence 21, no. 2 (2009): 261–87; Clionadh Raleigh, “Violence against Civilians: A Disaggregated Analysis,” International Interactions 38, no. 4 (2012): 462–81.

5. Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God (London: University of California Press, 2003); Alejandra Bolanos, “The ‘New Terrorism’ or the ‘Newness’ of Context and Change,” in Contemporary Debates on Terrorism, edited by Richard Jackson and Samuel Justin Sinclair (London: Routledge, 2012); Magnus Ranstorp, “Terrorism in the Name of Religion,” Journal of International Affairs 50, no. 1 (1996): 41–62.

6. Boyle (see note 4 above); Raleigh (see note 4 above).

7. Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Timothy Wickham-Crowley, “Terror and Guerrilla Warfare in Latin America, 1956–1970,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 2 (1990): 201–37.

8. Clionadh Raleigh, Andrew Linke, Håvard Hegre, and Joakim Karlsen, “Introducing ACLED: An Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 5 (2010): 651–60.

9. John Esposito, The Oxford Dictionary of Islam (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003); International Crisis Group, “Understanding Islamism,” 2005, http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/middle-east-north-africa/north-africa/037-understanding-islamism.aspx; Caitriona Dowd, “Cultural and Religious Demography and Violent Islamist Groups in Africa,” Political Geography 45 (2015): 11–21.

10. International Crisis Group (see note 9 above).

11. The term “Islamist” is preferred over more normative terms such as “extremist,” “fundamentalist,” or “radical,” and over more doctrinally specific terms such as “Salafi,” “Jihadist,” or similar. For a full discussion of the debates surrounding the use of these terms, see Thomas Hegghammer, “Jihadi-Salafis or Revolutionaries? On Religion and Politics in the Study of Militant Islamism,” in Global Salafism, edited by Roel Meijer (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 244–66; Martin Kramer, “Coming to Terms: Fundamentalists or Islamists?,” Middle East Quarterly 10, no. 2 (2003): 65–77.

12. Victor Asal, Mitchell Brown, and Marcus Schulzke, “‘Kill Them All—Old and Young, Girls and Women and Little Children’: An Examination of the Organizational Choice of Targeting Civilians,” Political Science Research and Methods 3, no. 3 (2015): 589–607.

13. Lisa Hultman, “Targeting the Unarmed: Strategic Rebel Violence in Civil War,” Uppsala University, 2008, http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:172134/FULLTEXT01.pdf.

14. Juergensmeyer (see note 5 above), 149–50.

15. Walter Enders and Todd Sandler, “Is Transnational Terrorism Becoming More Threatening?: A Time-Series Investigation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 3 (2000): 307–32, 311.

16. Bolanos (see note 5 above), 31.

17. Ranstorp (see note 5 above), 54; Asal, Brown, and Schulzke (see note 12 above), 594.

18. Enders and Sandler (see note 15 above), 311.

19. Raleigh (see note 4 above).

20. Hultman, “Targeting the Unarmed” (see note 13 above); Hultman, “Battle Losses and Rebel Violence: Raising the Costs for Fighting,” Terrorism and Political Violence 19, no. 2 (2007): 205–22.

21. Bruce Hoffman and Gordon McCormick, “Terrorism, Signaling, and Suicide Attacks,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 27, no. 4 (2004).

22. See Gordon McCormick, “Terrorist Decision Making,” Annual Review of Political Science 6 (2003): 473–507.

23. Alex de Waal, “When Kleptocracy Becomes Insolvent: Brute Causes of the Civil War in South Sudan,” African Affairs 113, no. 452 (2014): 347–69.

24. David E. Cunningham, “Veto Players and Civil War Duration,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 4 (2006): 875–92; Andrew Kydd and Barbara Walter, “The Strategies of Terrorism,” International Security 31, no. 1 (2006): 49–80; Patrick Johnston, “Negotiated Settlements and Government Strategy in Civil War,” Civil Wars 9, no. 4 (2007): 359–77; Desirée Nilsson, “Partial Peace: Rebel Groups Inside and Outside of Civil War Settlements,” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 4 (2008): 479–95; David E. Cunningham, Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, and Idean Salehyan, “It Takes Two: A Dyadic Analysis of Civil War Duration and Outcome,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53, no. 4 (2009): 570–97; Kathleen Gallagher Cunningham, “Actor Fragmentation and Civil War Bargaining: How Internal Divisions Generate Civil Conflict,” American Journal of Political Science 57, no. 3 (2013): 659–72; Michael Findley and Peter Rudloff, “Combatant Fragmentation and the Dynamics of Civil Wars,” British Journal of Political Science 42, no. 4 (2012): 879–901.

25. Kydd and Walter (see note 24 above), 51.

26. Mia Bloom, Dying to Kill (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 78.

27. Boyle (see note 4 above), 262.

28. Tricia Bacon, “Alliance Hubs: Focal Points in the International Terrorist Landscape,” Perspectives on Terrorism 8, no. 4 (2014): 4–26, 7.

29. Reed Wood and Jacob Kathman, “Competing for the Crown: Inter-rebel Competition and Civilian Targeting in Civil War,” Political Research Quarterly 68, no. 1 (2015): 167–79.

30. Reed Wood, “Rebel Capability and Strategic Violence against Civilians,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 6 (2010): 601–14.

31. Cunningham, Bakke, and Seymour (see note 3 above), 69.

32. Cunningham, Bakke, and Seymour (see note 3 above), 72.

33. Cunningham, Bakke, and Seymour (see note 3 above); Bloom (see note 26 above).

34. Dowd (see note 9 above).

35. Murray Last, “The Search for Security in Muslim Northern Nigeria,” Africa 78, no. 1 (2008): 41–63.

36. Caitriona Dowd, “Tracking Islamist Militia and Rebel Groups,” Climate Change and African Political Stability Research Brief, 2013, https://strausscenter.org/ccaps/publications/research-briefs.html.

37. Thandika Mkandawire, “The Terrible Toll of Post-colonial ‘Rebel Movements’ in Africa: Towards an Explanation of the Violence against the Peasantry,” Journal of Modern African Studies 40, no. 2 (2002): 181–215; Wickham-Crowley (see note 7 above); Kalyvas (see note 7 above).

38. Michael Weintraub, “Armed Group Competition and Civil Abuse in Multiparty Civil Wars: Evidence from Colombia,” 2013, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/522fc0aee4b06bf96fa60e92/t/52535a0ae4b0e9fd10b2a18f/1381194250657/Weintraub+VNSA+Competition+-+September+29%2 C + 2013.pdf, 1.

39. Raleigh et al. (see note 8 above).

40. The sample excludes several potential case studies in the wider African region: North African countries are excluded because of the divergent historical legacies and contemporary dynamics of Islamist violence in the region, in contrast to its relatively recent emergence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Somalia is excluded because of insufficient temporally specific control data at the sub-national geographic level for much of the period under review.

41. Siri Camilla Aas Rustad, Halvard Buhaug, Åshild Falch, and Scott Gates, “All Conflict is Local: Modeling Sub-National Variation in Conflict Risk,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 28, no. 1 (2011): 15–40; Halvard Buhaug and Päivi Lujala, “Accounting for Scale: Measuring Geography in Quantitative Studies of Civil War,” Political Geography 24 (2005): 399–418.

42. There are 520 ADM1 years in which there is only one recorded non-state violent actor, in 63 of which, violent Islamist groups are the sole non-state violent actor.

43. Todd M. Johnson and Brian J. Grimm, World Religion Database (Boston, MA: Brill, 2013).

44. CIESIN, “Global Subnational Infant Mortality Rates,” http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/data/set/povmap-global-subnational-infant-mortality-rates.

45. Clionadh Raleigh and Kars de Bruijne, “Where Rebels Dare to Tread: A Study of Conflict Geography and Co-option of Local Power in Sierra Leone,” Journal of Conflict Resolution. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1177/0022002715603767.

46. Wood and Kathman (see note 29 above).

47. Hultman, “Targeting the Unarmed” (see note 13 above); Mkandawire (see note 37 above).

48. See Stephen A. Harmon, “From GSPC to AQIM,” Concerned Africa Scholars 85 (2010): 12–29, for discussion of the history of anti-civilian by the GSPC.

49. Boyle (see note 4 above).

50. BBC News, “Kenya Mourns Victims of Garissa al-Shabab Attack,” April 5, 2015, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-32187891.

51. Interview with conflict researcher, Nairobi, March 24, 2015.

52. The Star, “Police Conduct a Post-mortem on a Suspected Member of Al-Shabaab,” March 19, 2013, accessed via Nexis.

53. Interview with human rights activists, Mombasa, March 20, 2015.

54. Stephen A. Harmon, Terror and Insurgency in the Sahara-Sahel Region (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014).

55. Abdel-Malek Droukdel, “Mali-Al-Qaida’s Sahara Playbook,” The Associated Press, http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_international/_pdfs/al-qaida-manifesto.pdf (accessed 26 September 2016), 4.

56. Droukdel (see note 55 above), 8.

57. Droukdel (see note 55 above), 5.

58. Afeno Super Odomovo, “Insurgency, Counter-insurgency and Human Rights Violations in Nigeria,” The Age of Human Rights Journal 3 (2014): 46–62.

59. Human Rights Watch, “Nigeria: Boko Haram Abducts Women, Recruits Children,” 2013, http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/11/29/nigeria-boko-haram-abducts-women-recruits-children.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Caitriona Dowd

Caitriona Dowd is a Research Fellow in Conflict and Violence at the Institute of Development Studies.