Terrorism_Reflection Memo

We started off with the question: who are these terrorists groups in Sub-Saharan Africa and whether they differ from other terrorist groups in Africa?  Furthermore, what do these groups have in common and how do they differ?

First of all it is important to note which groups are currently active in Africa. I think it is safe to say that there are five main terrorist groups active in mainly northern Africa. The first one is Al-Qaeda in the Maghrib, which has been active since 2007 and has its aim to overthrow the Algerian government. During the civil war in Libya in 2011, they have slowly moved fighters into Libya in order to establish a base there as well. They cover the area of Algeria, Libya, Mali and Niger. Then in the Horn of Africa Al-Shabab (2006) is active in Somalia, but also performs attacks in northern Kenya. The Lord Resistance Army (LRA) is active in Uganda since 1987, but after fights with government forces they were forced to move to the DRC, South Sudan and Central African Republic. Furthermore there is Boko Haram in north Nigeria, but they spread across the lake Chad region. Lastly we have the Islamic State active in Libya since 2013. This group also used the chaos in Libya after the oust of Ghadaffy to set foot in the country.

What four out of these five groups have in common, is the fact that they are Sunni Islamist, except the LRA, which preaches a fundamentalist Christian religion. What these groups furthermore share   is their indiscriminate use of violence against civilians. They all seem to stick to the idea, if you are not with me, you are against me. This idea, I would argue, is supported with evidence from the four articles we had to read this week. It is interesting to note that while the LRA and Boko Haram do not share a common religion, both of them are quite notorious for their crimes against humanity, for example by abducting and raping women and forcing children to join their armies. I am wondering why specifically these two groups are so well known for their brutality and why they participate in that, especially compared to the other three, who mainly stick to the ‘conventional’  tactics of terrorism?

 I think it was also interesting that we talked about the mobilisations of the different groups. Dowd and Drury were clear when comparing the bases of mobilization  of the LRA and Boko Haram. In both cases, grievances and marginalisation of the northern population were the main motives of the population to join the different groups. The other Sunni Islam groups mainly draw their support from actual believers. Take for example Al-Shabaab: being an offshoot of the Islamic Courts Union which was formed by several sharia courts in Somalia. Al-Shabaab has remained support from at least some part of the Somali population for over 11 years right now. This has partly to do with the strong tribal structure in Somali, but also with the fact that people believe in the Al-Shabaab cause.

One comment coined by my fellow classmate is that he found the term terrorism to be generic. He mentioned that by not referring to any specific activity, the term who is a terrorist is a subjective issue. He further stated that it is difficult to link it with a religious ideology and that it is difficult to call those who feel marginalized by the government and can, and have no other way then to turn to terrorist groups, really terrorists. It seemed my colleague meant that because people cannot rely on government to solve their problems, they have to turn to terrorism.

My thoughts on this are the following: first of all I would like to state that although there is not an official definition on terrorism, many researchers and even U.N. reports come up with roughly the same definition: terrorism is an act intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants with the purpose of intimidating a population or compelling a government or an international organization to do or abstain from doing any act. When one applies this broadly accepted definition, it makes it easy for us to label who is a terrorist, or who is not. I think with this definition the term is not generic at all, and allows us to not be subjective about it. Someone in the class mentioned that it is important for ‘marked’ terrorists that it is for them important to control the narrative, for example, Nelson Mandela turned from terrorist, to a worldly statesman. However, the tactics that his Umkhonto we Sizwe used were and would still be labelled as terrorism.

In the case of Nelson Mandela he fought for anti-apartheid, a goal that over time gained a lot of international support and followers, hence he came so popular and the previous actions he had allowed were, I guess, forgotten about or seen as legitimate? But what we see nowadays, and especially with the Muslim terrorists, is that they are fighting for something that is globally not accepted, namely an Islamic state where strict sharia law is implemented. I think that due to the fact that this is not globally supported, people who join these groups, for whatever reason, will for always be labelled as terrorist because they support a, internationally seen, wrong cause. Furthermore, as long as they use indiscriminate violence against civilians and commit crimes against humanity, they condemned and labelled terrorist, in order for the international community to fight them.

Another point we discussed during the class is the responses of the different governments and the international community. There will always remain the discussion whether governments should engage in diplomatic talks with terrorists groups, or engage them military. I think this topic was really well described in the article of Lind, Mutahi and Oosterom. They showed the example of Kenya’s military approach towards the increasing threat of the Al-Shabaab in northern parts of Kenya and argued how this basically was not directly the effect of external influences, but had mostly to do with internal influences, namely previous state violence against marginalized groups. By securitizing the Al-Shabaab threat the government had been able to adopt new laws and institutions that would further marginalize the Somalis living in Kenya. What is interesting to note in this case, is that, again, the state was securitizing the Al-Shabaab threat in order to mobilize more military personnel in the so called opposition and swing states in the lead up to the 2017 August elections. During the weeks before the elections, an operation was launched to bomb the Boni forest in Garissa county, a state that has been a opposition stronghold.

In Kenya’s case we see that a military approach towards terrorism can be used to strengthen the grip of the incumbent government instead of actually dealing with the problem. Data has shown that Kenya’s military approach has not been able to tackle Al-Shabaab in Kenya and that Al-Shabaab keeps attacking targets in northern Kenya. I think that Kenya’s upcoming government, whoever that will lead in the future, has to come up with a solution for Al-Shabaab, either an effective military one, or a diplomatic one.