Combating Violent Extremism in Africa: Terrorism and Piracy

Terrorism and piratical acts continue to be major security challenges in Africa. This combined issue of African Security (volume 12, issues 3/4) brings a critical focus on attempts to combat these virulent forms of violent extremism on Africa’s West and East Coasts: Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin and piracy in Djibouti and Kenya. Combatting violent extremism in the first case has been an abysmal failure, whereas in the second case there are signs of hope that security sector reforms (SSR), with the assistance of external capacity-building partners, might be a way of improving governance to counter extremist actors. The first paper provides a refreshing insight on the persistence and intractability of Boko Haram. The paper “‘Weak state’, regional power, global player: Nigeria and the response to Boko Haram” goes beyond prevailing orthodox understanding of the nature of the Nigerian state and its failure to defeat Boko Haram. The authors, Mickler, Dan Suleiman and Maiangwa, pose a fundamental question: Why was there no effective effort by the Nigerian state or external actors to curb the excessive violence of Boko Haram from July 2010 to January 2015? That period was marked by significant territorial expansion of Boko Haram and an attendant exponential increase in mass civilian casualties. Mickler et al. argue that the character of the international relations of Nigeria is one critical area that has been neglected by scholars. The paper’s perspective is a fascinating one with a rather unique conclusion: the patently contradictory trifecta of state weakness, regional strength and global status immanent in Nigeria created the conditions leading to the country’s ineffectual response to Boko Haram. State weakness fostered an inept and corruption-ridden response while Nigeria’s regional and global stature ensured that regional entities, such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) and global institutions were unable to take the kind of combative steps that might have defeated Boko Haram were those bodies dealing with a less prominent state. The article implies that ostensibly weak states may in fact be able to deploy their regional and international status and diplomacy in a way that prevents external intervention in their internal affairs. In a thematically related piece, Edward Stoddard interrogates the tendency of observers and scholars to treat Boko Haram as a monolithic entity. In the second paper of this issue, Stoddard draws on the concept of “revolutionary warfare” to juxtapose the two factions of Boko Haram – the “Islamic State West Africa Province” (ISWAP) led by Abu Musab al-Barnawi (until March 2019), and Jama’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihad (“the People Committed to the Prophet’s Teaching and Jihad” or JASDJ) led by Abubakar Shekau. The concept of revolutionary warfare includes, inter alia revolutionary ideology, garnering public support and guerrilla tactics ensconced within an overall goal – establishing a new socio-political order. The analysis reveals the politico-military characters of the two factions of Boko Haram and signals that the terrorist organization is far from a unified movement. Stoddard’s analysis demonstrates that the texture of ISWAP’s activities evinces a revolutionary warfare approach and an arguably AFRICAN SECURITY 2019, VOL. 12, NOS. 3–4, 269–271 https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206.2019.1678230