Al-Qaeda in Africa (merged thread)

[KingJaja]

US Congress heard from experts on Boko Haram. Yet to see the full transcript, but the experts don't see Boko Haram as an immediate threat to the United States.

A congressional panel has held a hearing on the threat to the U.S. homeland from the militant Islamist sect Boko Haram, based in northern Nigeria. Boko Haram has attracted more scrutiny after bombing the United Nations headquarters in the Nigerina capital Abuja, killing more than 20 people on August 26, 2011.

One of the Africa experts that testified at the House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing on the threat from the radical Islamist group to the United States is Peter Pham of the Atlantic Council of the United States. He told the panel that the name "Boko Haram" is made up of Hausa and Arabic words and translates roughly as "Western eductation is a sin."

"Thus Boko Haram is not only a name, but a slogan, to the effect that Western education and such products that arise from it are sacrilege," said Pham.

The Boko Haram militants say they are fighting for the creation of a Sharia-led nation in the north of Nigeria, and they do not recognize the authority of Nigeria's constitution or President Goodluck Jonathan.

Ricardo Laremont is a Professor of Political Science at Binghamton University in the state of New York. He explained the group's traditional operating methods.

Link:http://www.voanews.com/english/news/...134782893.html

[Chowing]

US Congress heard from experts on Boko Haram. Yet to see the full transcript, but the experts don't see Boko Haram as an immediate threat to the United States.



Link:http://www.voanews.com/english/news/...134782893.html

I would not see Boko Haram as a threat to the USA either, at this time. Currently it is the most active terrorist group in the world in terms of violent events and deaths. All has been located in Nigeria, yet most were surprised to see them strike in Abuja and and military and UN installations.

The article that started this thread sees more and more dialogue and training, if not coordination, between AQIM, al-Shabaab and Boko Haram. The first two have declare linkage to Al-Qaeda.

[KingJaja]

I understand that. But let's take a step back.

You have a region, the Sahel, extending from the Atlantic to Indian Oceans. You have ancient trade routes between the Sudan (black Africa) and the Maghreb and you also have religious ties.

That area is a continuum, so there will be coordination between Islamist groups with common aims.

My main point is that these groups are a product of real local grievances that are yet to be addressed. AQIM is a product of the 1991 election in Algeria. Boko Haram is a product of fifty years of appalling governance in Northern Nigeria.

I am not terribly concerned about whether Boko Haram is a threat to Nigeria or the United States. What concerns me is the ability of the entire Global community to deal with the conditions that led to the rise of organisations like Boko Haram. (We've lost over 13,000 people to communal violence since 1998, so Boko Haram won't significantly change the situation in Nigeria).

It is a bit like labelling Al Shabab as Somalia's greatest threat. No, Al Shabab is merely a symptom of catastrophic state failure.

[davidbfpo]

KingJaja and others,

I am sceptical that AQ has been reborn in Africa and in other places. The original linked, Canadian article does not raise any new points, although it does emphasise the dangers facing Canada from AQ-inspired terrorism.

Some of the discussion on AQ in Africa reminds me of the thread discussing David Killcullen's book 'The Accidental Guerilla' and the association of local insurgency to the AQ 'brand'. There are several threads on Killcullen's work, this one is appropriate:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=7224

There are also the three threads debating the impact of Osama Bin Laden's removal, for a wider perspective, although I have m' doubts Africa figured much.

For the moment let us leave aside the impact in Africa.

Are the AQ insurgencies based in Africa, currently mainly in the "badlands", amidst small isolated populations, with very limited access to capabilities which can target the 'Far Enemy', a 'clear & present danger' to the core interests of countries like Canada, France and the USA?

No IMHO.

Yes they can be an occasional danger, like the 'Underpants Bomber', although he is not a good example as his capability appears to be from the Yemen. Nor are the Somali pirates more than a painful nuisance to world shipping and I remain unconvinced Al-Shabab is "pulling the strings" of the pirates.

As the 'Far Enemy' currently faces far more significant threats to national and collective interests, which are notably economic and fiscal, their attention span and focus is nearer to home.

[Dayuhan]

What concerns me is the ability of the entire Global community to deal with the conditions that led to the rise of organisations like Boko Haram.

I don't think there's anything at all "the global community" can do about these conditions. In the case of Boko Haram, the conditions that produce the organization are for the Nigerian Government to deal with, or to not deal with and suffer the consequences. There's no problem with resources: the Nigerian Government has plenty of money. The problem is will and capacity, and if the government in place lacks the will and capacity to act there is nothing "the global community" can do.

[Chowing]

I don't think there's anything at all "the global community" can do about these conditions. In the case of Boko Haram, the conditions that produce the organization are for the Nigerian Government to deal with, or to not deal with and suffer the consequences. There's no problem with resources: the Nigerian Government has plenty of money. The problem is will and capacity, and if the government in place lacks the will and capacity to act there is nothing "the global community" can do.

Sure this is first and foremost a Nigerian problem, to be solved by Nigerians. Or in the cases of AQIM and al-Shabaab they are Sahelian and East Africa problems. HOWEVER, AQ has most of its members hidden away in desert hills of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen (to name a few) yet they have inflicted global damage while being protected by the locals.

In a Associated Press article out today we can see that AQIM has recognized the need to aid the poor locals to gain their hearts and minds.
"With almost no resistance, al-Qaida has implanted itself in Africa's soft tissue, choosing as its host one of the poorest nations on earth. The terrorist group has create a refuge in this remote land through a strategy of winning hearts and minds, described in rare detail by seven locals in regular contact with the cell. The villagers agreed to speak for the first time to an Associated Press team in the "red zone," deemed by most embassies to be too dangerous for foreigners to visit." see entire article at http://www.newser.com/article/d9rdg0...in-africa.html

The world's poor are a easy target for terrorists to recruit and gain their confidence. The world, not necessarily governments only, must reach out to help, listen to and walk along side the poor or there will be much unrest ahead.

I remember Robert Kaplan of the Atlantic Monthly predicting anarchy in West Africa back in 1994...see article http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-anarchy/4670/ What we may be seeing is a second wave of the anarchy with the same, unsolved poverty issues driving it.

[tequila]

I remember Robert Kaplan of the Atlantic Monthly predicting anarchy in West Africa back in 1994...see article http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-anarchy/4670/ What we may be seeing is a second wave of the anarchy with the same, unsolved poverty issues driving it.

I like how Kaplan also foresees the coming breakup of Canada in the cited article as well, complete with the absorption by the U.S. of its English-speaking portions.

Kaplan's hobbyhorse has always been the artificial nature of the nation-state in comparison to supposedly bedrock culture or religion - failing to note that cultures and religions are also artificial, malleable human constructs.

[KingJaja]

Thanks for this great article. I agree with what he wrote because I lived through it. In 1994, we were recovering from the aftermath of violence precipitated by the annulment of the 1993 presidential election. The Yoruba ethnic group took to the streets and rose in opposition to the dominant Hausa-Fulani. That era led to the rise of ethnic militias like the Odua People's Congress - (you might hear about them in future).

In 1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged and the Niger Delta militancy really took off. I remember quite vividly a conversation in a taxi from Port Harcourt to Enugu in 1998. The anger was palpable and the consensus was that Nigeria was finished as a nation.

I was in Lagos in the late nineties and I witnessed a breakdown of law and order on an almost daily basis. I woke up to see the mangled remains of lynched robbery suspects and I also saw actual lynching taking place many times. The state began to break down and ethnic militia like the Odua People's Congress in the South West and the Bakassi Boys in the South East were called in to maintain law and order. Their methods were less than orthodox, but they had widespread support in the slums of Lagos, Onitsha and Aba.

All across West Africa and the Sahel, the state is being desperately weakened. West Africans structure their lives in such a way as to be independent of the state. For example, a study by the University of Newcastle showed that a whopping 75% of all children attending schools in Lagos, attend private schools. Nothing illustrates state failure as starkly as that statistic.

If the government cannot provide public goods, someone else will. And Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and Salafists are well placed to exploit these gaps.

Aid money from the West usually pours into government establishments, but governments are increasingly weak and incompetent. So the money is usually wasted.

I particularly like this, it illustrates the difficulty of dealing with groups like AQIM.

The fiction that the impoverished city of Algiers, on the Mediterranean, controls Tamanrasset, deep in the Algerian Sahara, cannot obtain forever. Whatever the outcome of the peace process, Israel is destined to be a Jewish ethnic fortress amid a vast and volatile realm of Islam. In that realm, the violent youth culture of the Gaza shantytowns may be indicative of the coming era.

[Dayuhan]

The world's poor are a easy target for terrorists to recruit and gain their confidence. The world, not necessarily governments only, must reach out to help, listen to and walk along side the poor or there will be much unrest ahead.

I remember Robert Kaplan of the Atlantic Monthly predicting anarchy in West Africa back in 1994...see article http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/...-anarchy/4670/ What we may be seeing is a second wave of the anarchy with the same, unsolved poverty issues driving it.

Odd how the terrorists who plan and do the damage never seem to be poor.

Poverty is of course a huge problem and a huge issue, but any proposed causative link between poverty and terrorism is strained at best. And while it's easy to point to poverty as a problem, it's a good deal harder to do anything about it. Development aid simply doesn't work. It doesn't win hearts and minds, it doesn't have much impact on poverty, and it certainly doesn't do anything about terrorism. It allows donors to feel good about themselves and say nice things about themselves, and it keeps the aid industry afloat, so you can say it's doing what it's intended to do... but let's not pretend that it's doing anything abut poverty.

There is certainly a good deal of unrest ahead, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. For poverty to be effectively addressed parasitic governments have to be displaced, and that requires unrest: the parasites aren't just going to walk away.

[Bill Moore]

Most terrorists that I have read about were middle or upper middle class and had a college degree. I don't know why this poverty causes terrorism myth refuses to die despite the facts.

I'm all for development and helping the poor, that isn't my point, but rather that we're going to waste a lot of money looking for terrorists in the wrong places. Want to pre-empt the next terrorist, visit a university.