‘Forever wars’? Patterns of diffusion and consolidation of Jihadism in Africa

ABSTRACT

The article will discuss the patterns that jihadism has followed when spreading throughout sub-Saharan Africa, addressing the major scholarly debates but also to bring forward the elements that various African cases seemingly have in common. The discussions over African Jihadism has seen several great debates, over the ungoverned space theory, a dichotomous discussion of the local and the global as opposing explanatory models, and a discussion of the role of ‘greed’ and economic incentives. The article argues that these discussions need to be transcended, and that dichotomous discussions fail to see more complex patterns of interaction between various factors, and the complexity of social relations that at times depend on the different contexts we study. Understanding how global networks can harness local conflicts to gain support is key to understanding African jihadist groups, and how those harnessing strategies can be limited. The article also suggests that there is an emerging consensus over several of the factors that do occur in sub-Saharan African jihadism and present the implications of these findings for the ongoing conflict in Mozambique and Tanzania.

KEYWORDS:

• Jihadism
• insurgency
• Jihadism in Africa
• rebel governance
• Al-Qaeda
• Islamic state
• terrorism
• civil war

Since 2001, the number of organizations that have declared allegiance either to Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State has exploded in sub-Saharan Africa. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, under its former name, the Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat (GSPC), first had units operating in Mali as early as 2001. The organization swore allegiance to Al-Qaeda in 2006, becoming Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The southern offshoot of this organization again merged with three other organizations: Al-Mourabitoun (an offshoot from AQIM); the mainly Tuareg-based Ançar Dine; and the mainly Fulani-based Katiba Macina

to form the Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), in 2017. Somalia’s Harakat Al Shabaab was established in 2006 and declared allegiance to Al-Qaeda in 2012, the same year as Kenya’s Al Hijra. Boko Haram emerged in the years 2002–2003 and declared allegiance to the Islamic State in 2015. The organization subsequently split into two, of which, one part became the Islamic State’s West African province (ISWAP) in 2016. It absorbed another organization (at least on paper if not operationally), the Islamic State in Greater Sahara, in 2020. The other fraction of Boko Haram was led by the now late veteranBoko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau, and its status is now unclear after the Islamic state killed the latter.

The Islamic State declared that it had a Central African Province in 2019, displaying reports and photos from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and later in Mozambique.¹ The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) in Congo, created in 1995, today seemingly have affiliated themselves with the Islamic State, after Musa Baluku, the commander of the organization said that they belonged to the Islamic State in 2019, although this might have led to an internal split, with leaders such as Benjamin Kisokeranio leaving.² Several smaller organizations that declared allegiance to the Islamic State were either short-lived, like the Jabha East Africa, or relatively small and unstable, as the Islamic State in Somalia.³

Other entities, such as the Burkinabe Ansarul Islam (announcing its own existence in 2016), seemingly shared some of the ideological inclinations of the above listed organizations. However, none of these organizations declared allegiance to either the Islamic State or to Al-Qaeda. Al-Sunnah Wal-Jamâa in Mozambique, created in 2007, today holds a relatively unclear role vs the Islamic State, although we know that the Islamic state takes responsibility for attacks conducted in areas in which it operates. The name itself is controversial amongst researchers, and not used by locals, who refer to the organization as Shabaab. Nevertheless, the Al-Sunnah Wal-Jamâa name will be used in this article to avoid confusion with the Somali Harakat Al Shabaab.⁴

The above described developments have changed the landscape of African insurgencies and created many controversies in the research community. After two decades of rapid diffusion by jihadist movements in Africa, it seems timely to take stock of knowledge regarding why jihadism occurs in sub-Saharan Africa and its mechanisms of diffusion. The phenomenon is still ongoing. Understanding the factors promoting jihadism in Africa will thus be important to understand emerging jihadism in relatively new theaters.

The disagreements over sub-Saharan African jihadism are partly influenced by methodological challenges in conducting research on the organizations in question. First, the limited field studies lead to many researchers basing their analysis on secondary source materials, press statements of international press agencies, or recirculating statements from workshops. These problems are increased by the establishment of stringent risk assessment regimes developed by research institutions that prevent researchers from conducting field studies. Given that researchers now must contend with COVID-19 travel restrictions, we will probably see less field studies in conflict zones in the future.⁵ The lack of funding also makes field research in conflict zones difficult and statistics are often, as remarked by Jerven, unreliable.⁶ We have also seen so-called ‘conflict zone tourism’, where researchers travel into conflict zones, staying briefly in a safe zone protected by foreign military contingents, shielded from the local population, in order to be able to say that they ‘ticked a box’. The consequence is that local voices become harder to hear, and the personal links between the organizations become harder to detect.

Second, field studies must be supplemented with a study of documents originating from jihadist organizations either online, through confiscations, through testimonies in courts, and, perhaps more neglected, through local distribution of propaganda materials. At times, area-specific researchers have neglected such sources, which result in missed opportunities for source triangulation. An added complication is that some of these documents are in Arabic, a language which is unfamiliar to many Africanists. Of course, an exclusive use of such sources presents the opposite challenge, namely, to see alliances and similarities between groups where dynamics on the ground may be widely different. Lacking profound insight from fieldwork and/or other types of documents (interrogation reports, court testimonies, etc.) may often result in poor understandings and erroneous conclusions about armed Islamist groups.

We also see a disregard for local news outlets. Indeed the use of these can be problematic. Nevertheless, local news outlets, even when biased or manipulated, can be used if the type of bias or manipulation is assessed, and/or when the material is triangulated with other sources. Indeed, detecting biased information could prove important in and of itself. More than anything, recognizing the complexities of African jihadist organizations is often sacrificed at the altar of simplicity. Rather than acknowledging the existence of a situationally and contingently defined interaction of a variety of dynamics that enhance the growth of armed Islamist groups in Africa, researchers often search for the single cause. Rather than recognizing that different factors have different influences during the different phases of an organization’s life cycle, we often presume that the causes of group origins are the causes of a group’s stability, and at times, as suggested by Hents, reducing our investigations to simple binary discussions.⁷

Still, the academic study of African Jihadists has also seen a plethora of excellent books and articles written by the likes of Thurston, Marchal, Titeca and Vlassenroot, Sandor, and Benjaminsen and Ba, which are rich with nuance and important empirical details.⁸ We have also seen recent examples of excellent historiographical studies that treat sources with dignity and triangulate them, while simultaneously treating ideological links and influences in a proper manner.⁹ Of course, this has not stemmed disagreements between policymakers and researchers. This article analyses some of those disagreements, arguing that in many cases the debate needs to move beyond dichotomous views, and proceed to identify commonalities across various sub-Saharan cases. Most importantly, this includes demonstrating how global and local levels interact in the perpetuation of jihadist insurgencies on the continent.

The great debates

Since 2001, we have seen several debates between researchers focusing on sub-Saharan jihadists. In the early years after 2001, a first major debate focused on the likelihood that Al-Qaeda networks would spread to sub-Saharan Africa. Some commentators went so far as to predict that such a spread would include Al-Qaeda’s leadership’s displacement to Africa, enabling the group to launch attacks against Europe.¹⁰ Conversely, other scholars argued that the political context of African countries would incur heavy costs that would hinder Al-Qaeda’s movement to the continent. For example, the group could become embroiled in local feuds and due to political pragmatism and shifting allegiances common to ‘weak’ or ‘failed’ state-related dynamics, not be able to manage the organization’s smooth entry to this unfamiliar terrain.¹¹

In many ways, both sides of the debate failed to predict the diffusion of Al-Qaeda-affiliated organizations (rather than Al-Qaeda itself), mutations of Al-Qaeda itself. Indeed, local affiliates gained much more importance in the Al-Qaeda network¹²; in some cases, a global ideology mutated, often incorporating and being changed by local narratives, and at times being adopted to explain local conflicts and ideologies, and also local instrumental interests.¹³ The local was essential in this process, which global forces adapting to their local necessities. Sub-Saharan African jihadist groups never attacked western states, although in some cases they argued for such attacks in their propaganda.

The second early debate was a discussion of the ungoverned spaces controlled by jihadist groups. While some researchers highlighted that jihadists would establish themselves in spaces where state penetration was low or ‘failing’,¹⁴ several other researchers pointed out that such ‘ungoverned spaces’ were seldom ungoverned. As Bøås, Cisse, and Mahamane maintain, newly arrived jihadist organizations might rather be contested by different entities attempting to govern.¹⁵ Other researchers referred to the cost of establishing jihadist groups in such areas, maintaining (erroneously) that this would deter diffusion, this has simply not been the case.¹⁶ Finally, jihadist organizations in areas with a larger state presence, such as in Nigeria, Kenya, or Tanzania, tended to be neglected both by researchers focusing on ungoverned spaces and their opponents, perhaps highlighting the need to study what governance and state governance really is, the public provision of goods as personal security, services, and welfare, is it effective dispute resolution?¹⁷ The absence of such functions has as suggested by Morten Bøås and Francesco Strazzari, as a hale mark of the Sahelian states, and is a hallmark of many other states as well, and has, as we shall see in the next section, been taken advantage off by jihadists, especially the lack of security for the local rural population.¹⁸

In this case, both sides produced important insights: spaces are seldom ungoverned; jihadists can establish themselves in relatively functioning states; yet areas where the state is weak seem to result in possibilities for these organizations to grow stronger. In this way, two (JNIM and Shabaab) out of three of the strongest jihadist organizations in Africa seem to have emerged from civil war zones and areas with weak state control. The argument that these zones have governance structures, often through ethnic and clan-based institutions, is important, but perhaps fails to understand that the weaknesses and fluidity of such institutions might give jihadists an advantage when interacting with them.

Moreover, while the presence of alternative governance structures definitively presents challenges for some jihadist organizations, these entities have clearly been able to operate in such circumstances, at times even embedding themselves into local governance structures. The resulting dynamics are often fluid. Often interactions between traditional governance structures have been limited to statements as ‘Tribe x (or Indeed clan X, or ethnic group x) support Jihadist group y’. The relationship tends to be more complex and dynamic. In some cases clans and tribes have attempted to manipulating a jihadi group, to take it over, or to employ the group as a tool against other enemies. In other cases, a tribe or group attempts to accommodate the group in question by sending recruits and resources to build goodwill, out of fear and attempts to avoid violence from the group (at times also gaining influence over the jihadists in the process), or even to gain a form of predictability in daily life.¹⁹ Clan/tribal identity might overlap with a jihadist identity or may vary in importance in different settings. The social capital created by clan/tribal identity can also be used to gain safety and support completely unrelated to jihadist ideology.²⁰ In many cases, the jihadists also view clan and tribal structures as unmodern and unreligious, and in need to be demolished, but nevertheless show pragmatism towards these structures since they are hard to eradicate. These various forms of interactions, in combination with the fluidity of clan and tribal governance structures and shifting or multiple allegiances (a person both being loyal to clan/tribe and jihadist organizations), create a dynamic field where changes can surprise observers, and where local knowledge is essential to understand current, but still temporary configurations.

Another great debate focused on the role of economic incentives. Researchers like De-Waal suggested that one should follow the money by studying the illicit economic incentives for jihadism and jihadist support. In many ways, this echoed an older approach to the study of African conflicts encapsulated in the ‘greed versus grievance’ debate of the ‘1990s and early 2000s.²¹ Such a line of argumentation has its fair share of traps. First, the illegal economy approach does not address how jihadist actors come to legitimize their existence and that of their illegal practices amongst local communities, tending to neglect income generation such as criminal act in order to cause change, as for example practised by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) in the ‘1970s. ‘All about the money approaches’ tend to de-ideologize conflict, and structural and local grievances tend to be left out of the picture. Indeed, the fact that economic practices are anchored in ideological currents and local traditions is also neglected. The very important dynamics characterizing the religious-ideological dimension, including the jihadist’s claim to overcome corruption and social segmentation (and therefore sustain social mobility), thus becomes neglected or simplified into a mere wish for personal profit.

Moreover, even mere instrumentalist jihadists must adhere to certain rules, or at least pretend to adhere to them, in order to appear as jihadists. In this sense, ideology remains crucial as it even influences the behaviors of hypocrites and profit-seekers alike.²² Thirdly, as expressed by Lacher in the Malian case, such an argument has often been used normatively to tarnish the reputation of jihadist actors, while neglecting the fact that local regimes and clan/tribal networks are involved in similar practices. For Lacher, the role of illicit money flows perhaps is overestimated.²³ Fourthly, ideology and grievances might matter more in an early phase, where an organization exists as a small network and where hopes for a quick victory is stronger than in a phase where the organization is larger and has more income-generating opportunities for aspiring opportunists.²⁴ Various actors within an organization might also have different motives, for example if leaders as well as followers decide to join. Admittedly, there are many interesting and well-researched works focusing on the political economy of jihadist networks, including the works of Briscoe, Bøås, Lacher, Raineri and Strazzari, Hansen, and Ahmad. Such approaches have indeed produced vital insights to better understand and respond to jihadists, but these only improve our understanding when applied in a way that accommodates a critical orientation towards ‘follow the money’ approaches.²⁵

The most intensive debate in the study of African jihadists is the local vs global debate. One side, often based in the terrorism research/ terrorist analysis environment, stresses the phenomenon’s global links, and another side, often based in the Area Studies research community stresses local factors, notably emphasizing structural grievances such as poverty, economic inequality, lack of access to power and security. This dichotomy is in many ways artificial, but in some ways can be useful. Interaction with traditional social groups like clans and tribes, and the embeddedness of local politics was at times overlooked in global-leaning analysis. This led to simplistic and often inaccurate claims of organizations like Shabaab moving into the north of Somalia, or Boko Haram venturing into piracy in the south of Nigeria without taking local dynamics into consideration.²⁶ Given the recruitment patterns of the two organizations, amongst specific clan/tribal groups, and their ties with local grievances, such moves are hard to make and take time, often requiring existing networks in the areas in which the organizations in question seek to establish a presence. Even when local networks do exist, a move can be hard due to variations in the local ethnic composition vs the initial ethnic composition of the jihadist group in question. Local offshoots often end up being locally recruited, with fewer members from the outside (although such members might hold important positions), creating profound local embeddedness.

Nevertheless, there has been a diffusion of jihadist movements across many parts of Africa. Networks have spread, and armed groups have established connections that at times transcend borders. Some, not all, area experts seemingly had large problems accepting such links, even though the evidence was rather strong, as, for example, the links between Boko Haram and the Shabaab.²⁷ To a certain extent, the debate hinges on a difference in the use of sources, with globalists often referring to documents from court testimonies or confiscations, while localists tend to focus on information collected through field studies. These divisions have often, but not always, involved political differences in the background of the researchers themselves. Several scholars have been arguing that the dichotomy itself is false and needs to be transcended. The interaction between local social structures, instrumental interests, and grievances, and more global networks, financial flows and ideas need to be studied holistically.²⁸ Marret, for example, convincingly suggested the term ‘Glocal’ to describe the embedded process in which global narratives interact with local histories.²⁹ A way to start such an exploration is to study the entrepreneurship of ideologically conscious individuals who are crucial in establishing local jihadist organizations, at times with the help of external networks. As suggested by Ibrahim, conflict entrepreneurs often take advantage of local conflicts.³⁰ Bøås, Cisse, and Mahamane for example highlights how the Islamic State of West Africa/Greater Sahara integrate into local communities in Tilaberi, partly by employing the ethnic Fulanis inside their organization as a type of ‘ethnic bridge’, by appropriating local grievances and inter-communal conflict through a combination of coercive activities, and by offering basic services such as protection and the establishment of mobile Islamic courts.³¹

It becomes misleading to see these entrepreneurs, as by necessity, being outsiders. The entrepreneurs in question can be locals, like the example of Malam Ibrahim Dicko, former leader of Ansarul Islam. Conversely, figures inspired by global ideological content, like Ibrahim ‘Afghani’ of the Shabaab, have traveled out in search of allies. Still, other local leaders inspired by global ideas adapt them to local grievances and conflicts. Indeed, there can be an element of youth rebellion in these processes, with for example a local youth rebellion against older religious leaders in specific mosques. This situation has played a central role in both the case of the ADF, or at least its predecessor (having its origins in a youth rebellion in the Nakasero Mosque in Kampala), the founding of Boko Haram (having its origins in a youth rebellion against older religious leaders in the Indimi Mosque in Maiduguri), Kenya’s Al Hijra, (The Pumwani Mosque in Nairobi), and now also in the origins of Mozambique’s Al-Sunnah Wal-Jamâa (originating in a youthful rebellion in a Mosque in Nhacole).³² In this intersection between local and global currents, transnational channels of preaching and aid interferes, at times contesting the link between Islam and politics exemplified for example through the struggle between jihadist pious ‘warriors’ and more traditional religious authorities; at other times it can be represented as co-opted by corrupted political authorities, as in the case of both the Pumwani Mosque in Nairobi and the Nakasero Mosque. This struggle also takes the form of a struggle of rigorist, puritan Salafist constellations that occupy the public space, and contests traditional forms of Islam, often sufists, but also at times other Salafist religious leaders. These contestations are often peaceful, as illustrated by the rivalries between Sheik Somow (sufi) and Sheik Umul (salafi) in Somalia, but at times, as in the examples of the above-mentioned Mosques, influence the founding of jihadist organizations, as well as jihadist entrepreneurs. In this sense, entrepreneurs might have local origins, but are influenced by more global ideas as well. Contacts with other jihadist organizations might, if they occur, come later, or may be introduced through more loose networks.

The great debates highlight several points, notably the importance of spatial-temporal conditions and the dangers of reductionism. Factors at the macro-level influence both the environment that enables jihadists to flourish, as well as the organizational dynamics of the organizations in question. In many ways, the soil must be fertile for jihadists to exist. Networks must be created, and individual incentives to join the jihadist organizations need to occur. As suggested by Bøås, Cisse, and Mahamane, an ‘enabling environment’ provides jihadists with advantages and deep-seated grievances will ‘provide the harbingers of such ideologies with emotional entry points’, yet active ideological agency is also needed, and such agency is often influenced by ideas transcending borders.³³

Fertilizing the soil

There is also a relative consensus on several structural factors that contributes to African jihadism, including the role of civil wars and changes of power in facilitating jihadist territorial expansion, the role of previous tension and lack of security for the local population and that jihadists can take advantage of these factors, and the historical occurrence of jihadists used as agents for other political actors. For example, it might be argued that civil war environments are extremely important to understand the inception and early successes of the Ancar Dine, the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Mali, and the Shabaab. At times, a civil war environment seems caused by political transitions, which in some cases opens space for jihadists to gain ground. Such was the case with military coup in Mali in 2012 when Amadou Toumani Touré was ousted from power, or, as highlighted by Thurston, Idrissa, and Crone, the removal of Blaise Compaoré in the neighboring Burkina Faso in 2014.³⁴ It could also be argued that Somalia’s Al Shabaab was influenced by a similar transition, where the power of warlords in Mogadishu shifted to the power of the Sharia courts. Bøås, Cisse, and Mahamane suggest that disrupted and collapsing patrimonial networks, a consistent feature of civil war environments, could be to blame for the flourishing of jihadism in the west-African setting.³⁵ Yet, beyond Mali, Burkina Faso and possibly Somalia, jihadism has also enjoyed successes in contexts where political transitions and civil war have not been present. Smaller scale conflicts are often attempted to be manipulated or internalized by jihadist.³⁶ Jihadist have at times attempted to support specific ethnic groups to ‘jihadise’ ethnic conflict, for example depicting battles between the Kenyan state and Somalis from the Ogadeen clan as battles ‘between Muslims and Christians’, or the conflict between Mali’s Dogons and Fulanis in the Mopti region of Mali as a clash of civilizations.³⁷ The ‘jihadization’ of ethnic conflict is however a complicated process that takes time and is in some cases rejected by the ethnic groups that jihadists attempt to coopt.

In Burkina Faso and Mali, Congo’s Kivu province, the Borno province of Nigeria, and northern Mozambique, centre-periphery tensions also fertilize the soil for jihadism.³⁸ Tied into the centre-periphery dimension is the exclusionary political and economic governance practices of local or central state institutions. This is even an element that supported the growth of Somalia’s Al Shabaab, where in 2006, the group was a part of the sharia court alliance, which had been excluded from the political process. The latter examples are important. Centre-periphery tensions, exclusionary politics, and small-scale ethnic conflicts need not take place in a civil-war setting. They can take place in a country viewed by many as at peace. ‘Ungoverned spaces’ (which seldom exists) and civil war settings seem to enhance the possibilities for rapid jihadist expansion and territorial control, but they are not sine qua non in the spread of African armed Islamist groups.

A lack of individual security seems to be another factor that has influenced several sub-Saharan African cases. In some cases, as in Somalia and Mali, jihadists provide protection to civilians in vulnerable situations, while in other cases the promise of such protection is promised, but never delivered. The lack of local security, both against government oppression, but also against criminal groups was an important element in Harakat Al Shabaab’s rise. Moral rhetoric was extremely important for Boko Haram in its pre-2009 inception, and writers such as Habibe, Forquilha, and Pereira suggest that this was the case for Ansar Al Sunnah’s early phase development in Mozambique as well.³⁹ A ‘law and order’ agenda was also important for the Ancar Dine and AQIM in Mali, as well as in the case of the Islamic State in West Africa/Islamic State in Greater Sahara, in border areas between Mali and Niger. These groups consistently offered to protect the local population against banditry and, at times, exploitation from the local business community. Ancar Dine for example publishing videos where they did price control.

Security can also be deprived of local populations by the very institutions that is supposed to provide it. In some cases, as in Nigeria and Kenya, outright police brutality have been claimed to be a major cause of radicalization. Differences between jihadism in Kenya and Ethiopia, is for example blamed the indiscriminate use of violence of the Kenyan police.⁴⁰ Yet, claims in the latter case seem erroneous, as human rights groups over and over again have reported severe repression by the Ethiopian security forces.⁴¹ Ethiopian ‘success’ in curtailing jihadism prior to 2019 seems to indicate that police violence can both work to suppress and be a factor that stimulates a rise in jihadism. In fact, police abuse may be more important as a cause of jihadism in more semi-open societies, and is of less importance in civil war contexts, or in strongly authoritarian countries with traditions of abuse and large-scale state surveillance. As suggested by Nesser and Gråterud, repression varies in its nature. It can target top leaders of jihadist organizations, entire organizations, target ethnic groups from which jihadists are presumed to recruit, or police violence could be generalized. Nesser and Gråterud suggest that calibrated repression, basically to be hard against the hard-core members of a group while being lenient at the fringes, and this writer might add to avoid targeting entire ethnic groups, is more efficient.⁴² Regardless, police and security forces are often a major part of the problem, and are a part of a larger lack of focus on individual security, and insecurity often in rural areas. It becomes a problem when local security providers see themselves as protecting the state or their own positions rather than what their tasks really is to act as service providers to the local population. Unfortunately, this error is often neglected in security and military reform programmes. Kinetic operations and winning open battles seem to be a general priority rather than securing the local population.

The soil for jihadism can also be fertilized in more direct ways. Abdalla (2019) and Hansen (2019) demonstrate that states and African elites previously have seen jihadists as a tool for policy purposes and sought to promote them, even promoting local legitimacy. Sudan’s policies towards Al-Qaeda in the early 1990s is a good example, as Sudan’s government used Al-Qaeda beyond a mere ideological agenda to support its strategic allies in the south, and to even gain loans.⁴³ Similarly, Mali’s pre-2012 government seemingly saw AQIM as a useful block against both Algerian and Tuareg influence in northern Mali.⁴⁴ Although this might seem as a strategy of the past as the post-September 11th global environment focused on such links, this might again happen in the future as global attention changes to the China–US relationship, pandemics, and climate change.

As illustrated by the above discussions, even factors that are creating relative consensus in the research community, as the role of civil wars and changes of power, the role of previous tension, lack of security for the local population, and the historical occurrence of jihadists used as agents for other political actors need to be historically contextualised. Such factors could both be  underlying causes for the start of a jihadist organization, but also influence its trajectory at later stages in its organizational history. They might have different effects in different stages of a conflict, and be of more importance in some contexts compared to other contexts and historical periods.

Sowing the seeds: entrepreneurship

In various areas, several of the above factors have been present, but jihadist violence as defined in this article does not develop, as South Sudan, and Central African Republic demonstrate. In a way, the presence of an active network, or as the smallest denominator, some common global ideas and/or a local attraction towards them are needed for a conflict to see the entry of a jihadist actor. Ibrahim Yahya Ibrahim for example explores the ‘Jihadi Entrepreneur’. As argued by Ibrahim, ‘for a jihadist insurgency to emerge, jihadist ideology has to be appropriated by local Muslim activists – or “jihadist entrepreneurs” – who then use it to formulate a more pointed discourse that resonates well with the local social and political demands’.⁴⁵ In some cases, we clearly see locals that have participated in wars fought by jihadist organizations outside their state. re-settling in their home-countries and actively attempting to create new jihadist organizations. Cases include members of JNIM, Shabaab, and Ansarul Islam also had such returning individuals.⁴⁶ Ibrahim Malahim Dicko, the first leader of the Burkinabé Ansarul Islam, had a background from the insurgency in Northern Mali in 2012–2013 before he established the jihadist organization in Burkina Faso.⁴⁷ Yet, Dicko personifies the complexity of such linkages, as it seems that his trajectory was defined by events and inspirations that took place before he left for northern Mali. Dicko launched an ardent critique of both local traditional Fulani leaders, and of local religious leadership before he traveled to Mali. Indeed, there was an element of youth rebellion in his actions as he seemingly fought against what he saw as archaic interpretations of the Quran and the Hadiths, unjust power structures, and saw the jihadist actors in Mali as having an answer to how to counter these problems. It is actually notable how many of sub-Saharan Africa’s jihadist organizations have connections to similar youth rebellions in mosques, where younger activists challenge older, more conservative sheiks.⁴⁸

Ideological paths taken following such events are confusing, and these organizations seldom adopted a fully global perspective. Rather, they merged global ideas of religious wars with local ideas of purity. It should be remembered that it has taken time for local Jihadist organizations to swear allegiance to external jihadist networks: for Harakat Al Shabaab 6 years; for Book Haram, 13 years; for AQIM, 8 years; for Hijra 4 years; These facts should not be taken as proof of lack of international connections, but rather as a proof of ideological heterogeneity within some of these organizations, even to the extent of combining subgroups with both sympathies for the Islamic state, Al-Qaeda, and more local affiliations. In some cases, such conflictual sympathies might even exist within the same person. It does, however, seem that a loose belief in Wahhabi-styled Islamic thought is a common denominator for most of these entrepreneurs. At times, profit or status might also intervene and motivate action, and even the funding of an organization, as could have been the case with Ancar Dine in Mali.

Some of these entrepreneurs will have old friends in older jihadist organizations and jihadist-inspired networks, others might seek such connections at later stages, both for prestige and to gain international support. It seems that such connections can be important at times, highlighted by the confirmation of the transfer of €200,000 to Boko Haram from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in a period where the former organization was pressured.⁴⁹ International connections and existing networks were important for many organizations, but these connections are just a part of the history of the organizations in question. The most successful organizations in Africa emerged in a context that favored them and that were reinterpreted and ‘jihadized’ by entrepreneurs.

Watering the plant: explaining ‘joining’

How do these groups grow? How do they attract recruits? In the literature focusing on why individuals join jihadist groups outside the sub-Saharan context, some see members as reclaiming a lost identity in an environment perceived as hostile.⁵⁰ John Horgan explores socio-psychological dynamics between ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors.⁵¹ He also states that emotional vulnerability, dissatisfaction with current political activity, identification with victims of violence, belief that the use of violence is not immoral, a sense of reward, and social ties in the radical group, amongst others, are very important factors for understanding how group members commit to violence.⁵² Ken Reidy highlights how membership in a radical organization can be driven by a positive wish to make changes in the wider society.⁵³

Yet, the local context is different in sub-Saharan Africa, and we need more research as the projects conducted by Botha on recruitment in Kenya and Uganda, by Botha and Abdille on Nigeria and Somalia, as well as Ibrahim in Mali.⁵⁴ Although not based on random sampling, and often drawing upon either defectors or prisoners of war who may be interested in appearing as little influenced by ideology as possible, these works provide insights in rudimentary causes of recruits joining sub-Saharan jihadist organizations. Botha and Abdille highlight the importance of economic incentives in their study of socioeconomic circumstances (education, unemployment, and poverty), yet their research indicates that this was more important in the case of Shabaab than in the cases of Boko Haram and the ADF.⁵⁵ This might be, as suggested by Hansen, because of the territorial control wielded by Harakat Al Shabaab at the time that provided more income-generating possibilities for the organization, and more economic incentives for its members.⁵⁶

The need for a collective identity and a sense of belonging function as important motivators for individuals joining jihadist groups. Importantly, religious motives might also both be influences for a quest for collective identity, a need for self-esteem, as well as by the beliefs themselves. Botha and Abdile indicate that religious institutions were very important for Boko Haram recruitment, although only 9.24% of the former members claimed they were motivated by religion, and 29% of ADF recruits were introduced to the organization by religious figures.⁵⁷ In Botha and Abdile’s research on the Shabaab, 15% of the interviewed recruits were motivated by religion, and as much as 25% by religion in combination with other factors. When religion motivates recruitment, it is often (not always) not a deep and knowledgeable attraction to a specific jihadist creed that provides the strongest attraction. It is rather a loose understanding of ‘Islam’ as something ‘good’ in society, as an identity, as a sense of safety and security for the ‘self’, in a troubled world following the work of Noriss and Ingelhart.⁵⁸ It is also often a perceived threat to the religion that induces action.⁵⁹ Although left out in Botha and Abdile’s research it is also important to remember that religion and economic causes might be related, including the jihadist’s claim to overcome corruption and social segmentation, and therefore sustain social mobility also for poorer members of society.

Botha also highlights the desire for revenge, at times in combination with other factors, as the major factor amongst the recruits she interviewed. Ibrahim also highlights protection as a cause of recruitment, highlighting how individuals flock to jihadists for protection from security threats, often induced by other conflicts. We also see that networks and family are important in channelling recruitment.

Recruitment patterns are, as indicated above, contextual and vary from person to person. There have been attempts in the past to create psychological ideal-types for different groups of recruits.⁶⁰ Maan et al., for example, presents four categories of recruits: identity seekers, justice seekers, significance seekers, and sensation seekers.⁶¹ Identity seekers are mainly driven by a quest for social status and a need to belong to a social group, as highlighted by Botha and Abdille in their study of Boko Haram.⁶² Justice seekers are those individuals who believe their social group is being treated unfairly and is generally less well off than it deserves, including, as highlighted by Botha, a feeling that their religion is under threat. This might also trigger solidarity with other jihadist groups. Events that counter these perceptions would possibly be important triggers to deradicalize for these individuals. Furthermore, justice seekers may be susceptible to trigger factors, showing the inability of an extremist group to obtain their goal. Significance seekers are primarily driven by a quest to feel personally important, to feel that you are ‘a hero rather than a zero’. Individuals who experience a traumatic event, such as the death of close friends or family, may feel particularly attracted to ideologies, which can provide more substantial meaning to their existence. Sensation seekers are those individuals who actively seek excitement and adventure. In many cases where an organization has territorial or semi-territorial control (a situation where the jihadists are inferior militarily to their opponents, but where the latter has abandoned the quest to protect the civilians, leaving them open for sanctions from the jihadists), we might add another category: income seekers. Jihadist organizations can actually provide a stable job over time. For example, when a person worked in Ancar Dine’s organization in Mali in 2012–2013, the latter could provide opportunities for gaining wealth and membership was potentially profitable. Moreover, recruits may be safety seekers: jihadist groups can offer protection in a dangerous environment. We have also seen many instances of forced recruitment, where a jihadist organization, or indeed an allied tribal/clan group, forces youth to join under the threat of violence. Lastly, Botha and Abdille identified a quest for becoming more religiously pious as an element in their study of recruitment to Boko Haram. On the other hand, religion, which the organizations under study here claims to protect, can create feelings of existential security as expressed by Noriss and Ingelhart, which can create social bonds in conflict zones based on local trust in local religious institutions and its leaders.⁶³ The same effects can occur in situations of poverty and where other entities, for example states and tribes, become delegitimized because of exogenous pressures, as indicated by De Bruijn and both in the case of Mali.⁶⁴ Legitimacy can be gained through a generational rationale where organizational ideology becomes a mere excuse for youth rebellion, attracting support and legitimacy from youth who would have engaged in violence and radicalism anyway even without ‘Islam’: the Islamization of radicalism.⁶⁵

As indicated by existing research, the precise weight of various causes will vary from person to person and country to country. These variables might also vary in importance according to what type of territorial control a jihadist group or network in control wields. Hansen explains how a terrorist network living under the auspices of a stable and hostile state seems to be a less tempting employer than a jihadist organization that has controlled an area for a decade or more (as the Shabaab in Middle Juba, Somalia).⁶⁶ In this sense, the composition of these causes for joining might vary from cases where these groups exist as clandestine networks, where these groups exist openly with state support (a type that is rare today, but has occurred historically) and where they exist as guerrillas, either with territorial control, or with semi-territorial control.⁶⁷ Nevertheless, the above-mentioned variables serve as a foundation for studying new jihadist insurgencies, such as what we currently see occurring in northern Mozambique.

Facing the drought: resilience

Another interesting fact with regard to jihadism as a sub-Saharan phenomenon is its resilience. Contradictory to the early culturalists who argued that local conditions were unfavourable to jihadists, these groups have proven to be surprisingly resilient. While some groups have merged with others, or in the face of internal problems even split, most of the entities active 10 years ago are active today, and have been joined by newly emerging armed Islamist groups. In fact, the present-day organizations seem more stable than predecessors from the 1990s, as for example Eritrean Islamic Jihad, and Al itthad Al islamiya.⁶⁸ The claims that jihadist groups have been defeated have been many, and in general erroneous, and false claims of jihadis leaders that have been killed have also been many.

This resilience has at times been overlooked, with factions being interpreted as more fluid than they really were.⁶⁹ They have also been explained by pointing to the failure of counterterrorism strategies, even to the extent of claiming that such policies are a cause of the growth of such organizations. Wing and Charbonneau demonstrate how local dynamics are used to justify interventions to maximize foreign influence in the name of the war on terror,⁷⁰ or on how ‘the war on terror’ actually has created many of the problems it set out to curtail, for example by preventing possibilities to negotiate with these groups. Hansen, Lid and Okwany claim that at times ‘capacity building’ programmes are viewed as a neutral political tool and implemented without taking politics and pluralism into consideration. These institutions become ‘de-politicized’ by capacity-building technocrats within the United Nations and Western states, and end up becoming institutions without any local legitimacy, or worse, as instruments of oppression that contribute to the growth of jihadism.⁷¹ As argued by Aggarwal, Joseba and Douglass, Smyth, Gunning, Jackson, Kassimeris, and Robinson, Winkler as well as Hansen and Lid, disengagement and deradicalization are concepts used by totalitarian, or semi-totalitarian, regimes, to address and change political opposition.⁷² Bedydoun highlights how conceptualizations related to counterterrorism can contribute to anti-Muslim sentiments.⁷³ Deradicalization and increased emphasis on policing and military efforts could easily become an excuse to prevent political activism, democracy promotion, political dialogue, or the promotion of minority rights. These schemes can also justify avoiding pursuing deeper societal changes, and can be a cause for increased recruitment as indicated in the last section. Yet, there have also been examples on how disengagement and deradicalization programmes have been used by marginal voices and opposition forces to gain a voice and to gain influence.⁷⁴ The effects of such programmes are often situational and hard to assess without deep knowledge of the local situation in which they operate, and might also depend on the awareness of implementers and donors with regards to local problems.

Jihadist resilience is also linked to an overestimation of what military kinetics can achieve by bringing about victors in battles. Hansen highlights how many of the previous expansive phases of sub-Saharan jihadists, when they control large territories, have resulted in foreign interventions, such as with the French intervention in Mali in 2013, Chad and other regional countries intervening in Nigeria in 2015, and the Ethiopian (2006), and later Kenyan (2011) and Ethiopian (2012) interventions in Somalia.⁷⁵ Such interventions highlight how this changed the territorial control of the jihadist organizations in question, creating retraction and transformation, but never completely vanquished these organizations. It seems like the struggle against these organizations has transformed into ‘forever wars’: never won; just managed. For Hansen, the key to understand such resilience is the way these interventions failed to take local security, meaning the provision of protection to a local population, into concern, thereby allowing populations to be vulnerable to sanctions and threats from jihadist groups. As a result, local communities have had to accommodate the latter. Rural security for a local population becomes essential in understanding the failures of international interventions. Hoping to minimize causalities, a tendency is strengthened to concentrate military forces in separate distinct camps or bases, as in the case of Nigerian ‘super camps’ that isolate the army from the population. This base/camp mentality increases the likelihood of a lack of understanding from the military of the need to act as service providers to the general population rather than oppressors. It becomes essential to provide services to a local population, to ‘serve and protect’, for example through crime prevention or security provision, as suggested by Ahmad, Hansen, and others. As Bøås, Cisse, and Mahamane argue, if this is not done, jihadists might even ‘do it for you’ and generate local support from diverse groups (including local business actors) who needs protection.⁷⁶ They might also, as suggested by Kilcullen, contribute to stability and predictability appreciated by locals. This is convincingly demonstrated by Sandor and Campana as well as Benjaminsen and Ba, in the Malian context where jihadist groups have at times become protectors for diverse ethnic or clan-based communities.⁷⁷ This view goes beyond a traditional military view of kinetics as the solution to countering such groups, and beyond a traditional focus on development, income-generation and growth as a solution. The last 20 years of ‘War on Terror’ have demonstrated that kinetics don’t work alone, as do the last 72 years of experience that ‘development’, a problematic concept in itself, is hard to achieve in the short term with the current strategies as promoted by development agencies internationally. This does not mean that pursuing kinetic military operations or development support should be neglected. Development efforts could, for example, help to reduce friction between social groups fighting over resources. But it suggests that addressing rural violence against civilians, also of the non-jihadist type, should be essential in the quest to stop jihadism in places like northern Mozambique.

At a micro level, a lack of respect for the local context has at times led to a transfer of western disengagement theories. Western theories are often based on the North American/European context, often tailored to cause disengagement from small groups or clandestine networks without territorial or semi-territorial control. In this sense, many were ill adjusted to sub-Saharan Africa, and had somewhat mixed results.⁷⁸

There are also large variations in who implements, if it is the private sector, international organizations like the United Nations, or state based, and the disengagement/exit arena has turned into a marketplace, where many companies and commercial actors strive for profit. The seminal work of Botha’s study of the pan-African efforts, and Vanda Felbab-Browns studying the impact on the interaction between jihadism and territoriality, suggests that Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) programmes might be more valuable tools than western style disengagement programmes.⁷⁹ Many of the most active African jihadist organizations have controlled territory over time, and have tools at their disposal that are beyond those of groups adhering to similar ideologies in Western Europe, Oceania, East Asia, and North. DDR programmes thus become a more important tool in curtailing these organizations.⁸⁰

Yet DDR programmes have tended to be plagued by problems as well. According to Bhandari, security sector reform problems often hinders the DDR.⁸¹ The DDR discussion is valuable, highlighting very important issues, for example, the need for baseline economic research before starting. Other problems that have been identified are work-programmes training combatants for the ‘wrong’ types of civilian work, i.e. training for work that do not exist in the area. Additionally, economic advantages might create envy or ‘fake’ combatants who attempt to register for demobilization just to gain advantages. Lack of stable funding, the lack of cross-border mechanisms to handle militias that transcend borders, as well as a focus on output (militias demobilized) rather than outcome (how the combatants fare after the programme), has been causing reoccurring problems . A tense security environment might also force DDR implementers to ‘Bunker up’, losing control and monitoring capacity over their projects, including providing security, to the demobilized soldiers, as well as to deradicalize and their families.⁸²

Additionally, while variations of territoriality and its interaction with the capacities of armed groups increasingly have been studied, the influence of territoriality on disengagement strategies is still understudied despite Felbab-Brown's excellent article on the topic. It should also be remembered that not all of the African jihadists hold territorial or semi-territorial control. Some exists as clandestine networks as well.

Conclusion

So what does the above discussion mean for jihadist groups operating in a place like Mozambique or Tanzania? First, the study of jihadists in these countries will probably be plagued by some of the same problems plaguing the study of other jihadist groups. The lack of proper field research due to security and funding-related issues will tend to result in consequences like an increased difficulty in hearing and evaluating local voices, and links between jihadist organizations will be harder to detect. Lacking profound insight from fieldwork and/or a disregard of other types of documents (interrogation reports, court testimonies, etc.) may often result in poor understandings and erroneous conclusions made about these types of groups. We also have to learn to nuance a ‘follow the money’ approach, to analytically separate between ‘war for profit’, where war is wielded for personal gain, from ‘profit for war’, where an organization invests in business to have access to resources and products for warfare, we also need to go beyond over-estimating the economic profit seeking element amongst jihadists compared to local allies of the west, and understand that local grievances, ideology, and international networks actually matter, and avoid economic reductionist explanations, as well as understanding that economy and ideology sometimes interact in more complex ways than ideology just being an instrument for profit.

Yet, some of the lessons of the study of sub-Saharan jihadists should be taken forward, including how mono-causal explanations seldom exist, that jihadists organizations change over time, and that different factors have different influences during different phases of an organization’s life cycle. the complexities of African jihadist organizations are often sacrificed at the altar of simplicity. Analysis of the recent conflict in Mozambique needs to focus on a situationally and contingently defined interaction, taking into account the specific historical context, including centre-periphery dimensions and ethnic tensions (we will probably see a jihadist reinterpretation of these conflict cleavages), but also explores the networks of the leaders of the Ansar Al Sunnah. We also need to understand jihadist entrepreneurship in order to understand what makes the Ansar Al Sunnah’s leaders tick, what ideology inspires them, and their networks – including the international interactions impacting this conflict. We also need to acknowledge that religion does matter, but that it can function more than simply ideologically, but as an identity, a tool to gain group membership, and in the creation of feelings importance for the ordinary rank and file of an organization. If the grip of the north strengthens, and semi-territorial control is achieved, we should also expect recruits to join for economic reasons, and because of the need for protection from both Mozambiquan and Tanzanian security forces, or even from the jihadists themselves. Indiscriminate government violence, and lack of acknowledgement of the security needs of ordinary northern Mozambique and Tanzanian civilians is the key to the survival of the jihadist insurgency in Mozambique and Tanzania. Neglecting this will inevitably turn Mozambique into one of the ‘forever wars’ of the African continent, similar to current conflagrations in Mali, the insurgency in northeast Nigeria, and in Somalia. It becomes a problem when local security providers see themselves as protecting the state or their own positions rather than what their tasks really is to act as service providers to the local population, and we have seen this already in Mozambique. Indeed, rural security has been neglected in the past.

‘Forever wars’ should not be forgotten, they might have global as well as a regional and national impacts. African jihadists have yet to launch attacks outside Africa. But they do participate in global discussions, the continent is of symbolic value on the global jihadist scene, and at times they launch threats and encourage others to attack targets outside Africa. Civil wars also produce local suffering. The best way to counter this is to provide local solutions that cater to and acknowledge local grievances and interests, and to dismantling international connections, this also goes for the current fighting in Mozambique.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Kim Locke, Adam Sandor, Tor A Benjaminsen, Michael Skjelderup and Atle Mesøy, as well as Eric Morier-Genoud and Peter Boffin for extensive comments on drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This article did not receive any financial support from any institutions.

Notes on contributors

Stig Jarle Hansen

Stig Jarle Hansen is currently a professor in International Relations at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway, where he leads the master program in international relations. He was a former research fellow in Harvard Kennedy School (Belfer Center), Harvard University, 2016–2017. His book, Al-Shabaab in Somalia, was widely acclaimed also in Foreign Policy and The Economist. His latest monograph Horn, Sahel, Rift, the Faultline of African Jihad, a comparative study of sub-Saharan African jihadist, arguing that the suffering of the local population facilitates jihadism, and elaborating on jihadist governance has also been positively received by reviewers. He has also been invited to give presentations by the European Commission, and the US Senate, and in the British parliament as well as other institutions.

Notes

1. Hansen, Al Harakat Al Shabaab.

2. Candland, Finck, Ingram, Poole, Vidino and Weiss, “The Islamic State in Congo”.

3. Ibid; Morier Genoud, The jihadi insurgency in Mozambique, It should be noted that while ADF as an organization has failed to declare allegiance, we have seen videos of unknown groups in areas close to ADF’s areas of operations declaring allegiance to the Islamic State, as well as the Islamic State claiming attacks in these areas, this should not be taken as a sign of a general ADF allegiance.

4. Habibe, Forquilha, and Pereira, “Islamic Radicalization in Northern Mozambique, The Case of Mocímboa da Praia” claim that the term was initially used by the insurgents and rejected by the population. Prominent researchers such as Eric Morier-Genoud (in personal communication with the author) claim to never have encountered anyone calling the insurgents Al Sunnah Wa Jamaat. Also, today the insurgents call themselves Al-Shabaab as well as other more generic terms such as the faithful, mujahedeens.

5. This development is in part due to research institutions’ fears of liability court cases should researchers be hurt, providing perverse incentives for researchers to conduct field research in dangerous areas during holidays or by allowing non-permanent staff to conduct such research.

6. Jerven, poor numbers.

7. Hents, «The multidimentional nature».

8. See Thurston, Boko Haram; Marchal, The Rise of a Jihadi Movement in a Country at War; Titeca and Vlassenroot, “Rebels without borders in the Rwenzori borderland?”; Sandor, “Insecurity, the breakdown of social trust, Benjaminsen and Ba ‘Why do pastouralists in Mali’”.

9. For example, Bukarti, “The origins of book Haram”.

10. See for examples see, Block, “Islamic Terrorists Have Found A New Home in South Africa”; Phillips, “Somalia and al-Qaeda: Implications for the War on Terrorism”; and Farah and Shulz, “Al Qaedas Growing sanctuary”.

11. See Menkhaus, “POLITICAL ISLAM in Somalia”; ICG “Somalia, countering terrorism in a failed state” For a summary of this debate see Hansen, Sahel, Horn and Rift.

12. Stenersen, “Thirty Years after its Foundation – Where is al-Qaida Going”.

13. See for example Hansen 2013.

14. Rabasa. Boraz, Chalk, Cragin, Karasik. Moroney, O’Brien and Peters, “Ungoverned Territories”; Piombo, Terrorism and U.S. counter-terrorism programs in Africa: An overview; Rotberg, “Failed States in a World of Terror”.

15. Taylor, “Thoughts on the Nature and Consequences of Ungoverned Spaces”; Bøås, Cisse, & Mahamane,” Explaining violence in Tilaberi, Insurgent Appropriation of Local Grievances”.

16. See for example Watts, Shapiro, and Brown, “Al-Qaida’s (mis)adventures in the Horn of Africa”. A more multicausal version of this stand can be found in Newman, “Weak states, state failure and terrorism”.

17. Keister, The Illusion of Chaos: Why Ungoverned Spaces Aren’t Ungoverned, and Why That Matters.

18. Morten Bøås and Francesco Strazzari, “Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making”.

19. See for example Skjelderup, Ainashe & Abdulle, “‘Qare’Militant Islamism and local clan dynamics in Somalia: the expansion of the Islamic Courts Union in Lower Jubba province”; Skjelderup” Skjelderup” Jihadi governance and traditional authority structures: al-Shabaab and Clan Elders in Southern Somalia,” 553–571 | Received 5 October 2018, Accepted 26 June 2020, Published online: 9 July 2020.

20. See ICG, “Cameroon: Confronting Boko Haram”.

21. See for example De Waal, “Somalia Synthesis paper”.

22. See Hansen, Mesøy and Karadas, The borders of Islam

23. Lacher, “Challenging the Myth of the Drug-Terror Nexus in the Sahel”.

24. Hansen, Horn, Sahel and Rift.

25. Bøås, “Crime, Cooping and Resistance”; Briscoe, “Crime after jihad”; Hansen, “Civil war economies”; Raineri and Strazzari, “State, Secession and Jihad’; and Ahmed, “The security Bazar”.

26. For examples of such argumentation see Yara” Somalia’s al Shabaab, squeezed in south, move to Puntland”; Lah and Johnston, “Kidnapped ship’s captain told ransoms may be funneled to Boko Haram”.

27. A Link confirmed by many Sources. As a recent interview made by the writer Interview with *Osman’, former sub-leader in Shabaabs international office 1 May 2020 and previous research in hospitals in Mogadishu during the period of Shabaab territorial control. Notably, both Boko Haram and the Shabaab, and the Nigerian and Somali government maintained that these links existed in the past, see Staff writer, “Boko Haram import militias from Somalia”; Staff Writer, “Nigeria says Boko Haram, Al Qaeda link behind UN Attack”; Staff Writer, “All Shabab says it will cooperate with Al Qaedas new leader”. For a statement from the Somali police see Bustari, “Boko Haram sought terror training in Somalia, security chief says”.

28. Henze, “The multidimentional aspect of the book haram conflict”; Bukarti, “The origins of book Haram”, Marret, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: A “Glocal” Organization”; Filiu, “The Local and Global Jihad of Al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb”.

29. Marret, “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: A ‘Glocal’ Organization”.

30. Ibrahim, “The wave of jihadist insurgency in west Africa”.

31. Bøås, Cisse, & Mahamane, “Explaining violence in Tilaberi, Insurgent Appropriation of Local Grievances,” 126.

32. Morier-Genoud, “The jihadi insurgency in Mozambique: origins, nature and beginning”; Hansen, Horn, Sahel and Rift.

33. Bøås, Cisse, & Mahamane,“ Explaining violence in Tilaberi, Insurgent Appropriation of Local Grievances,” 124.

34. Thurstone,” Escalating Conflicts in Burkina Faso”; Idrissa, “Tinder to the fire, Burkina Faso in the conflict zone”; and Crone, “The rise of jihadi militancy in Burkina Faso”.

35. Bøås, Cisse, & Mahamane,” Explaining violence in Tilaberi, Insurgent Appropriation of Local Grievances”.

36. See for example Bleck, Dembele, and Guindo, “Malian Crisis and the Lingering Problem of Good Governance”; Lackenbauer, Lindell and Ingerstad, “If our men won’t fight, we will”; ICG, “The Niger-Mali Border: Subordinating Military Action to a Political Strategy’; Lecoq and Klute, “Tuareg separatism in Mali”; Raineri and Strazzari, “State, Secession, and Jihad: The Micropolitical Economy of Conflict in Northern Mali”; Dowd and Raleigh, “The myth of global Islamic terrorism and local conflict in Mali and the Sahel”; Benjaminsen and Ba, “Why do pastoralists in Mali join jihadist groups?”.

37. Benjaminsen and Ba, ”Why do pastouralists in Mali’; Hansen, Harakat Al Shabaab.

38. De Bruijn and Both, “Youth between state and rebel (dis) orders: Contesting Legitimacy from below in Sub-Sahara Africa”.

39. Habibe, Forquilha and Pereira, “Islamic Radicalization in Northern Mozambique, The Case of Mocímboa da Praia,” 31.

40. De Montclos, “A Sectarian Jihad in Nigeria: The Case of Boko Haram”; and Harper, Everything You Have Told Me Is True.

41. See for example, Human Rights Watch, “Journalism Is Not a Crime”; Human Rights Watch, “Such a Brutal Crackdown”; Human Rights Watch, “Fuel on the Fire”.

42. Nesser and Gråterud, “When conflicts do not overspill, the case of Jordan”.

43. Hansen, Rift, Sahel, Horn

44. Abdalla, “Fighting the Enemies of God: The Rise of and the Response to Violent Extremism in Sudan”; Hansen, Rift, Sahel, Horn

45. Ibrahim,” The Wave of Jihadist insurgency in West Africa: Global Ideology, Local Context, Individual Motivations”, 10

46. See note 43 above.

47. Le Roux, “Ansaroul Islam: The Rise and Decline of a Militant Islamist Group in the Sahel”.

48. See note 24 above.

49. Thurston, Boko Haram, 16, Thurston’s claim is based on AQIM documents.

50. Dalgaard-Nielsen, ‘Violent Radicalization in Europe”.

51. Horgan, “Individual disengagement: a psychological analysis”; Horgan, The social and psychological”; Horgan, “The psychology of terrorism”.

52. Horgan, “Individual disengagement”.

53. Reidy, “Benevolent Radicalization”.

54. Botha and Abdile, “Reality and perceptions, towards understanding”; Botha and Abdile Radicalization and al-Shabaab recruitment in Somalia; Botha, “Radicalization to terrorism in Kenya and Uganda”; Ibrahim, “The Wave of Jihadis: insurgency in West Africa”.

55. Botha and Abdile, “Radicalization and al-Shabaab recruitment in Somalia’; 27% of their respondents reported that they joined for economic reasons in the case of Somalia; 25 for a combination of religious and economic reasons, in the case of Nigeria, only 15.13% of former fighters reported that poverty played a role, in the case of ADF only 14%; However, in the latter study, the Shabaab percentage is said to be 4%, with an additional 6% claiming that economic reasons was in combination with other reasons. Botha and Abdile, “Reality and perceptions, towards understanding”; Botha and Abdile Radicalization and al-Shabaab recruitment in Somalia; Botha, “Radicalization to terrorism in Kenya and Uganda”.

56. See note 43.

57. Botha and Abdile, “Reality and perceptions, towards understanding,” 512

58. Noriss and Ingelhart, R, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide.

59. Botha, “Radicalization to terrorism in Kenya and Uganda”.

60. Macdougall, van der Veen, Feddes, Nickolson, & Doosje, 2018 ‘Different Strokes for Different Folks: The Role of Psychological Needs and Other Risk Factors in Early Radicalization’; Venhaus ‘Why youth join al-Qaeda’ 2010; Nesser, Islamist Terrorism in Europe: A History; For examples from the right wing radicalization literature see Willems, Fremdenfeindliche Gewalt: Einstellungen Täter Konflikteskalation,;Willems, “Development, Patterns and Causes of Violence against Foreigners in Germany: Social and Biographical Characteristics of Perpetrators and the Process of Escalation”.

61. Maan, “Exploring the viability of phase-based models in radicalization”.

62. Botha and Abdile, “Radicalization and al-Shabaab recruitment in Somalia”.

63. See note 58.

64. De Bruijn and Both, “Youth between state and rebel (dis) orders”.

65. Smith, “Terror and a Generation of Nihilists, an interview with Oliver Roy”.

66. Hansen, “Unity in the name of Allah?”; Hansen, Horn, Sahel and Rift.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid.

69. For example, De Waal, “Somalia Synthesis paper”.

70. De Wing «French intervention in Mali: strategic alliances, long-term regional presence?”; Charbonneau” Intervention in Mali: building peace between peacekeeping and counterterrorism”.

71. Hansen, Lid and Okwany, “Countering violent extremism in Somalia and Kenya: Actors and approaches”.

72. Aggarwal, “Mental discipline, punishment and recidivism: Reading Foucault against deradicalization programmes in the War on Terror”; Smyth, Gunning, Jackson, Kassimeris, and Robinson, “Critical terrorism studies – an introduction”; Winkler, In the name of terrorism: Presidents on political violence in the post-World War II era.; Hansen and Lid, Routledge Handbook of Deradicalization and Disengagement.

73. Beydoun, American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear.

74. Gelot and Hansen, “They are from within us: CVE brokerage in South-central Somalia”; Hansen, Lid and Okwany, “Countering violent extremism in Somalia and Kenya: Actors and approaches”.

75. See note 24.

76. Ahmad, Jihad & Co; Hansen, “Civil War economies, the hunt for profit and the incentives for peace”; Bøås, Cisse, & Mahamane,” Explaining violence in Tilaberi, Insurgent Appropriation of Local Grievances,” 126.

77. Benjaminsen and Ba, “Why do pastoralists in Mali”; Sandor and Campana, “Les groupes djihadistes au Mali, entre violence, recherche de légitimité et politiques locales”; Kilcullen, Out of the Mountains: The Coming Age of the Urban Guerrilla.

78. Zeuthen, “Disengagement and preventing/ countering violent extremism in the Horn of Africa”; Felbab-Brown, “DDR in the Context of Offensive Military Operations, Counterterrorism, CVE and Non-Permissive Environments Key Questions, Challenges, and Considerations”.

79. Ibid; Botha, “African union initiatives to counter terrorism and develop deradicalization strategies”.

80. Hansen, “Unity in the name of Allah?”

81. Bhandari, “Integration Issue of Ex-combatants in Nepal”.

82. Egeland, Harmer, and Stoddard, “To Stay and Deliver”.