Indian Defence Review

The Sahel is a word derived from the Arabic word ‘Sahil’ meaning shore. The region, characterized as a semi-arid belt of barren, sandy and rock-strewn land, stretches approximately 3860 km across the breadth of the African continent. The Sahel includes parts of the Gambia, Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, Burkina Faso, southern Algeria, Niger, northern Nigeria, Cameroon, Central Chad, significant portions of Sudan and South Sudan and Eritrea.

The Sahel region has historically had to face a myriad of challenges. It is one of the most vulnerable regions of the world, as political turmoil, severe climatic conditions and fragile economies, have colluded to rend this region into a near catastrophic state. It is simultaneously facing the challenges of extreme poverty, the effects of climate change, frequent food crises, rapid population growth, fragile governance, corruption, unresolved internal tensions, violent extremism and radicalization, illicit arms and drug trafficking and terrorism. Mali has arguably been the country to have suffered the worst in the crisis of the Sahel. Although the crisis erupted in Mali, most countries in the region face the same threats to peace and security.

Hence, more coordinated and comprehensive efforts are needed to bring sustainable peace back to Mali and the region at large. Nigeria is a state that has been hit hard by the menace of terrorism. Boko Haram, a militant group espousing a radical form of Islam, that is intolerant of cultural practices associated with Western, non- Muslim lifestyles and education, poses a frightening threat to Nigeria and to the security of its people. However, the threat of terrorism is not confined to Nigeria alone. The terrorist organizations, Al-Qaeda in the

Lands of the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and Somalia’s Al- Shabaab have increasingly begun to carry out terror attacks in several states in the region with increasing ruthlessness and confidence. Militants and armed radical groups have expanded and entrenched their positions throughout the Sahel and the Sahara over the last decade under the umbrella of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM).

The Security Council will have to focus its energies on formulating a viable and effective holistic strategy, referring to and making use of the previous action taken by the UN, in order to deal with the crisis in the Sahel region and curb the spread of terrorism. The global community must continue its efforts to approach the Sahel and West Africa’s interconnected problems with a comprehensive regional and international collaboration and strive for a holistic solution during the conference. Such an effort must address the immediate security threat posed by violent extremists and transnational criminal networks, while at the same time building the institutional capacity needed to address the Sahel’s political, economic and humanitarian challenges.

History of the Topic

Militancy in the Sahel

In recent years, there have been indications that the Sahel region of Africa is emerging as a safe haven for Islamist militants. The seizure of more than half of Mali’s land area by Islamic militants, the growing violence of Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, and years of religiously inspired violence in Somalia seem to confirm this trend. Militants and armed radical groups have expanded and entrenched their positions throughout the Sahel and Sahara over the last decade under the umbrella of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM). They move from one country to another – a hard core of operatives working in an area that covers parts of southwest and south Libya, southern Algeria, northern Niger, northeast Mauritania and most of northern Mali. They also have connections to Boko Haram in northern Nigeria.

There are several reasons why these organisations chose the Sahel as their terrorist bases. Firstly, the countries of the region are predominantly Muslim, meaning that extremist militants can blend in easily and draw recruits. Secondly, the sheer size of the Sahel region and the lack of effective border controls mean that militants have vast areas in which to hide and train, and they can cross relatively easily between countries. Thirdly, the collapse of the Qaddafi regime in Libya in late 2011 and the subsequent chaos in that country have allowed weapons and militants to flow into neighbouring or nearby states such as Algeria and Mali.

State building in Somalia has been hindered by the ability of the militants to seize and control vast territories over long periods of time. In Mali, militants have been able to severe the North from the South of the country. Political instability as well as the dire humanitarian situation in the Sahara-Sahel has the potential to spread to the entire region. Islamic militancy is on the rise and tensions are escalating all over the African continent.

Islamic militancy in Somalia first surfaced in the mid-1980s with the formation of al Itihad al Islamia (“Islamic Unity”), which expanded its military operations in the early 1990s. Al Itihad disappeared from the scene after 1996, yet its ideas and main actors continued to play roles in the highly diverse United Islamic Courts (UIC) movement that emerged in the mid-2000s. In 2006, the UIC managed to secure control over Mogadishu for some months before being crushed by the Ethiopian intervention in December of that year. This subsequently gave rise to al Shabaab, which represented a new generation of Islamic militants ever more determined to use violent action to achieve their goals.

Causes of Extremism in the Sahel and West Africa

While local factors in West African and Sahel countries have contributed to extremist violence, the rise of global jihad in the wake of the US-led “war on terror” since 9/11 has also played a part in spreading radical militancy in the region. In the Sahel, combinations of bad governance, poverty, and insecurity as well as several internal and external factors have contributed to extremist violence.

The Sahel has, unfortunately, provided an ideal ground for extremist violence to take root and spread beyond national borders. Poor political and resource governance have often led to explosions of violence by disgruntled segments of society, and a number of studies have linked bad governance to insecurity in West Africa. For example, Mali’s Tuareg have been fighting perceived marginalization by the central government and demanded an autonomous homeland in the country’s north. Following the March 2012 coup in the capital Bamako, the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad seized towns from government troops in the north, but was soon driven out by militant Islamist groups. Nigeria’s increasingly violent Boko Haram militia, which wants an Islamic state, should be seen as a reaction to the government’s entrenched corruption, abusive security forces, strife between the disaffected Muslim north and Christian south, and widening regional economic disparity, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

While African Islamic militancy remains interlinked with broader ideological currents, it is clear that circumstances in local contexts have been important catalysts for its emergence and trajectory. These are largely home-grown phenomenon, wherein individual Islamic militant groups emerge and evolve from local concerns, are created and run by locally situated actors, and have an agenda that focuses on the immediate context. The Malian government’s failure to consistently invest and maintain a strong state presence in the north, for example, created an environment, that made it easy for Islamic militancy to expand and thus fostered the escalation of violence in this region. Notably, it was local militant Islamists, rather than AQIM, that were behind this escalation.

Additionally, poverty and underdevelopment and a sense of marginalization and exclusion that comes from lack of governance, particularly at the local level, are also seen as drivers associated with violent extremism. Therefore, it logically follows that supporting and propagating development is a long-term approach to undermine the spawning factors of extremism. Poverty, unemployment and socioeconomic deprivation partly explain the rise of extremist movements, both of a violent and nonviolent nature. It is easier for militant groups to recruit unemployed youth who see no future for themselves, than those who have a job and a perspective in life. African youth, moreover, are not only marginalized economically, but often alienated from their cultural contexts and burdened by questions of identity and belonging. Contacts with Salafi or Islamist groups and exposure to charismatic leaders, such as Boko Haram’s Mohammed Yusuf, frame this alienation in religious terms, in which Islam is presented as the all encompassing, powerful, and the only solution. Both local circumstances and global events are presented as evidence of a world threatening Islam and contradicting the will of God.

In addition to being the only option for salvation, membership in Salafi or Islamist movements—whether militant and non-militant also represents a source of empowerment. These groups may not bring an end to poverty or provide jobs, but they give disgruntled youth an alternative universal model for belonging and for social action in which disillusion is exchanged for dignity and marginalization with meaning. Moreover, the emphasis on purity and morality, coupled with the notion of an exclusive access to the truth, generates attitudes of superiority. This, in turn, fractures the society and builds rigid boundaries. “Others” are seen both as threats to religious purity and as targets for expansionist activities. When such thinking is cultivated in tight-knit groups with strong leaders, the road to militancy and violence can easily be a short one.

Other factors such as West Africa’s wide geographical area, weak public institutions and people’s and governments’ loyalty towards tribes and clans rather than the nation states are also contributors to crime and extremist violence in the region. In a bid to end insurgencies, Nigeria and Mali have attempted to negotiated settlements, but they have also resorted to the use of force, which is limited in resolving the fundamental causes of rebellion. Repression by governments or external forces can cause Islamist militants to fight for their very existence and at the same time deepen perceptions of state illegitimacy. The French-led intervention in Mali has dislodged the Islamist rebels from their strongholds, but triggered fears that the fleeing militants could destabilize countries in the region from where they hail, target foreign nationals in neighboring countries and even win the sympathy of other extremist militia. And the start of the withdrawal of French troops from Mali, four months after recapturing northern cities from Islamist insurgents, is being touted by the militants on internet forums as the beginning of their victory.

Stances of major players involved in the issue

The Dominant Militant Groups

AQIM: Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) was officially born in January 2007 when the Algerian Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC/Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat) merged into al- Qaeda as its North African wing. That was three years after Abu Mus’ab al- Zarqawi had pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden, thereby transforming his own organization, Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, into al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, better known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Al-Qaeda was therefore extending its operational network towards the West and explicitly threatening European countries such as France and Spain.

AQIM’s main target outside of Africa is France due to its colonial history and France’s on-going support for governments the group wants to overthrow. It was not long before AQIM struck at the very heart of the capital city of Algiers: on April 11, 2007, three simultaneous suicide at tacks hit the government palace and two security stations. In December they bombed the UN headquarters in Algeria as well as the Constitutional Court, killing 33. AQIM has been effectively on the offensive since the spring of 2007, alternating between “local” Algerian targets and “global” ones. AQIM operates primarily in the northern coastal areas of Algeria and in parts of the Sahel region, including parts of the desert regions of southern Algeria and northern Mali. Their goal is to free Northern Africa of Western influence and install regimes based on sharia. Members are drawn mostly from Algerian and Saharan communities such as the Tuareg, as well as from tribal clans of Mali. The organization mainly employs conventional terrorist tactics, including guerrilla-style ambushes and mortar, rocket, and IED attacks. Its principle sources of funding include extortion, kidnapping, smuggling and donations.

AQIM leader Abdelmalek Droukdal announced in May 2007 that suicide bombings would become the group’s main tactic. The group claimed responsibility for a suicide truck bomb attack that killed at least eight soldiers and injured more than 20 at a military barracks in Algeria on 11 July 2007. This was also the opening day of the All- Africa Games. In May 2009, AQIM announced it had killed a British hostage after months of failed negotiations. In June of the same year, the group publicly claimed responsibility for killing US citizen Christopher Leggett in Mauritania because of his missionary activities.

In 2011, a Mauritanian court sentenced a suspected AQIM member to death, and two others to prison for the American’s murder. In 2012, AQIM took advantage of political chaos in northern Mali to consolidate its control there and worked with the secular Azawad National Liberation Movement (MNLA) to secure independence in Kidal, Gao, and Timbuktu for ethnic Tuaregs. The Islamic militant group Ansar al-Din subsequently formed to support the creation of an Islamic state in Mali ruled by sharia, and a dissident group of AQIM members broke off to form Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) and support Ansar al-Din. Separately, AQIM has provided funding and training to members of the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram and has been known to have affiliations with Somalia’s Al-Shabaab.