Countering Terrorism by Preventing Violent Extremism

Introduction

Even if there is no universally agreed definition of terrorism, according to “Our World in data”, Terrorism is usually understood as the use or threat of violence to further a political cause. Terrorism is not a 21st century phenomenon and has its roots in early resistance and political movements but the use of terrorism to further a political cause has accelerated in recent years. The University of Maryland, through the Global Terrorism Database, reported more than 170,000 attacks worldwide between 1970 and 2016. If we look more deeply in the terrorists attacks the last years we note that 10 countries are totalizing 75% of the acts of terrorism, Iraq being the most affected country with 3,356 attacks in 2016. Nigeria (531 attacks) and Somalia (590) are the most affected countries in Africa. Worldwide, 34,623 people died from terror attacks in 2016, but 71 percent of deaths were concentrated in just five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Nigeria and Somalia. According the 2017 GPI (Global Peace Index) report, 93 countries in the world became more peaceful while 68 became less peaceful and yet with the presence of international peacekeeping forces (South Soudan,). Mali is part of the top 5 national deteriorations in peace due to political instability, the difficulties in implementing the 2015 peace deal and a rise in number of deaths, from internal conflict and security forces including UN peacekeepers. Terrorism has a real impact on peace and the report shows that in 2017 the cost of the violence has been estimated to 12.6% of the world GDP.

Terrorists organizations are becoming more and more structured with new strategies to mobilize resources, new recruitments tools or communication strategies supported by Internet and social media. The internet’s influence is widespread touching every facet of human interaction all while remaining mysteriously shrouded, unencumbered, and largely unchecked. It should come as no surprise then that the internet, while a force for uniting across borders can also divide and destroy. It is this wide reach which highlights the innate usefulness of the internet and by extension, social media. But it is this very same grasp which points to a specific danger: the use of social media to reach distant group, dissident, and disenfranchised individuals with goals and aims contrary to the state. Al-Shabaab, for example, successfully utilized social media including chat rooms and YouTube to fundraise and recruit members arguably Al-Shabaab has been among the most successful terrorist groups to utilize social media as a tool.

While there are no statistical correlations between levels of poverty and the incidence of terrorist attacks in particular countries, failed development and poverty create inequalities that underpin many of the grievances that drive terrorism’ (Annan 2012, 234). According to Ted Robert Gurr, the concepts of ‘contagion’ and ‘diffusion’ can explain the dynamics of transnational threats. ‘Contagion’ describes the physical spill-over of conflicts across national borders, whereas ‘diffusion’ refers to a process by which conflicts incited by a group in one geographical region inspire similar groups living elsewhere to do likewise (cited in Fox 2001, 69). Direct communications of all sorts between terrorists, including financial transactions, can happen without physical movements. Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, and AQIM maintain active internet connection through such internet channels as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Nevertheless, the contagion effect is still noticeable in the operations of the West African jihadists. With the ease of global travel, jihadist groups within West and North Africa have occasionally collaborated, recruited young people across the borders, and conducted attacks outside their operational zones. Through this analysis I will review the terrorism context especially in the Western Africa/Sahel Region, analyzes the international and local legal environment and counter terrorism actions then finally assess the effectiveness of the PVE (Preventing Violent Extremism) strategies.

West Africa and Sahel Region

The notorious jihadist groups in West Africa such as Boko Haram, Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), the Signatories in Blood, Ansar al-Dine, and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are all united by their desire to establish an Islamic theocracy. These groups gain access to a global network of support through their affiliation or identification with other global terrorist organizations such as Al-Qaeda, and ISIS. By dint of their ideology, innovative and erratic tactics, the West African jihadist groups are changing the dynamics of conflicts and violence in the region. Considering the security threat the jihadist groups pose and their ambition to establish Islamic theocracy within their countries and beyond, I will assess the extent and nature of their activities in order to determine how to effectively counter them.

The emergence of militant Islamism in Nigeria has been influenced for decades by radical Islamic teachings from the Arabian Peninsula and by even longer tensions that have pitted different Islamic sects, as well as Muslims and Christians against each other in northern Nigeria. Following the late 1960s when Nigeria experienced a civil war (1967–1970), there was relative peace until the late 1970s when some militant Islamist groups began demanding the establishment of an Islamic theocracy and a return to the ‘true’ practice and teachings of Islam in Northern Nigeria. One such group was the ‘Maitatsine’ (the one who curses). The Maitatsine led a five-year (1980–1985) uprising in several states in northern Nigeria, until it was crushed in 1985 by the Nigerian military. Thereafter, northern Nigeria has continued to experience bouts of ethno-religious conflicts, which did not change, as many hoped, with the return to democratic rule in 1999 because shortly after this, some northern state governors made moves to implement Sharia law in their states. This was received with apprehension by non-Muslims. Eventually, it led to violent clashes between Christians and Muslims in some cities in the region, particularly in Kaduna state. The rise of Boko Haram is partly a symptom of these historical processes of religious radicalization, politicization, and sectarian violence in Nigeria. Other galvanizing factors that enable Boko Haram to recruit and indoctrinate foot soldiers in northern Nigeria include the widespread poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and infrastructural decay in the region.

Boko Haram’s preferred name is Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati Wal-Jihad, meaning ‘People Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s Teachings and Jihad’. It earned its colloquial name — Boko Haram (Western education is forbidden/sacrilegious) — from its anti-Western teachings and the beliefs of its initial leader, the late Mohammed Yusuf. Before his death, Yusuf espoused an anti-state and radical Salafist ideology which enjoins every Muslim to return to a life under ‘true’ Islamic law (Walker 2012, 3). Although scholars and security analysts differ on this issue, Boko Haram appears to be exhibiting certain characteristics that resonate with the religious objective of Al-Qaeda and its congenial groups in Africa and the Middle East. Among these similarities are the release of video messages claiming responsibility for attacks and alliance with Al-Qaeda, the use of suicide bombers, the kidnapping of foreigners, and attacks on symbolic targets such as the UN headquarters in Abuja (MacDougall 2012, 10). Despite Boko Haram’s purported links with Al-Qaeda, the latter has specifically rejected the current ultra-violent tactics of Boko Haram. Writing for the New York Times on 7 May 2014, Nossiter and Kirkpatrick report that Boko Haram’s kidnapping of the over 200 secondary school girls on 14 April 2014, and its reputation for the mass killing of civilians ‘is strikingly inconsistent with a current push by Al-Qaeda’s leaders to avoid such deaths for fear of alienating potential supporters’ (Nossiter & Kirkpatrick 2014).

Quite aside from its shared characteristics or potential affiliation to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq, Boko Haram stands to expand to neighboring countries due to factors such as the permeability of state borders, political inefficiency and corruption, transnational trading networks used by criminal gangs, the negative forces of globalization, and the general weakness of states in the West and Central African region. Since the beginning of 2014, Boko Haram has been waging atrocious attacks against innocent civilians in north-eastern Nigeria in spite of or even because of the intensified counterterrorism efforts of the Nigerian government and its foreign partners. The Boko Haram splinter group, Ansaru, has also kidnapped and killed foreign nationals. The activities of Boko Haram and Ansaru show striking similarities to those of the militant Islamists in Mali, as discussed below.

The jihadist threat in Mali and Burkina Faso

Political analysts have long feared that ‘Malians are vulnerable to the agendas of a range of armed factions across the region’ (Zyck & Muggah 2013, 2–3). Their fears were confirmed when the Tuaregs staged rebellions in 1963, 1990, and 2012. The 2012 rebellion was interspersed by violent activities of militant Islamist groups in northern Mali. The infiltration of the north of Mali by radical Islamists challenges the assertion of Ousman (2004, 88) that the ‘espousal of democratic ideals almost every time excludes the preconditions for rendering active Mali’s religious forces’. In March 2012, junior army officers led by one captain Amadou Sanogo (embarrassed by their defeat in the hands of the militant Islamist groups and angry at the way the Toure′government have been handling the Tuareg and Islamist infiltration of northern Mali) staged a coup and seized control of political power in Bamako (Haysom 2014, 3).

The security situation in the country degenerated after the coup as the religious fighters and Tuareg MNLA (the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad) jostled for control of the northern region. While the Tuareg group has a national territorial orientation, the Islamist fighters are sub-types of typical Al-Qaeda-inspired groups, linked with other criminal networks in the Sahel. The Islamist groups in Mali comprise the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO), Ansar al-Dine (Defenders of the faith), and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The ammunitions used by the Malian Islamist groups to stage the 2012 uprising were largely the vestiges of the 2011 Libyan revolution (International Crisis Group 2012, 8). In the wake of the French military intervention in Mali, many of the jihadist groups fled to the desert while others blended easily into the local population in the north (Onuoha and Ezirim 2013, 5). There are already indications that some of the displaced jihadist groups in the Sahel are waging attacks in neighbouring countries. For instance, on 14 October 2012, MUJAO attacked an NGO in Dakoro, Niger Republic, killing one person (Global Terrorism Database [GTD] 2014). On 23 May 2013, MUJAO and the Signatories in Blood (a splinter group of Ansar al-Dine) claimed responsibility for twin suicide attacks in Niger on a French nuclear company and in the city of Agadez, which killed about 20 people (Koepf 2013, 1; Maiangwa 2013, 9). On 16 January 2013, the Signatories in Blood attacked a gas facility in Algeria killing about 39 foreigners and taking over 800 people hostage. The group leader, Mokhtar Belmokhtar, claimed that the attack was in response to the Algerian government granting air space access to France to intervene against their associates in Mali (Aronson 2014, 8). Given the ease with which terrorists operate across regions and territories, it seems important to examine to what extent the West African region could be infested by jihadist groups.

Recently the crisis reached the Center of Mali with the rise of a new group known as Macina Liberation Movement. According to a Human Rights Watch Report, Macina Liberation Movement is an Islamic Extremist group that was formed in January 2015. MLM strength is estimated at approximately hundred fighters, previously associated with self-defence units from the Mali Fulani community and the Movement for Unity and Justice in West Africa (MUJWA). The MLM Macina Liberation Movement is accused of attacks in the central and northern regions of Mali. According to witnesses that were interviewed by the Human Rights Watchdog, the group is: "ethnic Peul [Fulani] from an Islamist armed group allied to either the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) or Ansar Dine. Macina Liberation Movement is active in the central and northern regions of Mali. Recently in 2016 in Burkina Faso a new extremist group is discovered in the Soum province of Burkina Faso, which has close ties to Ansar Dine in Mali. The group propagates the implementation of an extremist religious ideology whereby the Fulani Macina Kingdom (formed by Cheikoo Amadou in the early 19th century) can be revived. Malaam Ibrahim Dicko is the commander of Ansarour Islam, with statements released as signed by him, referring to Burkina Faso soldiers as "crusaders" and that the "battle will continue until our lands are ruled by the law of Allah. Their activities are concentrated on the gold-mining zone almost confined along a linear axis in Burkina Faso. Ansarour Islam's strength is not known but according to Burkina Faso officials does not exceed a few hundred fighters.

Securitization initiatives in the Sahara - Sahel Region

Africa’s Sahara-Sahel region includes part of nations stretching from Algeria to Chad. This Sahara-Sahel zone deserves to be considered as an integrated region for a variety of reasons, including historical, climatic, economic, cultural, and religious factors. I will argue that two particular subregions, the Malian Sahara and southern Libya, continue to be the linchpins of the Sahara-Sahel region and the source of many of the security problems with which these international initiatives have been concerned. Both of these regions are chronically underpoliced and have porous borders. These debilities allow Islamist terrorists as well as secular-nationalist insurgents to take shelter and establish bases to mount raids on their own and neighboring countries. Economic factors also have linked the Sahara and Sahel from medieval to contemporary times. Since medieval times nomadic and transhumant herdsmen from the Sahara had to bring their herds south to the Niger River and beyond for pasturage in the dry season. After establishing a basis for considering this zone as a distinct and integrated region, in this chapter I will examine recent international securitization initiatives that have attempted to contain and minimize violence in the region, especially political and sectarian violence. We will see that these securitization initiatives have themselves become an additional factor linking the Sahara-Sahel zone and defining it as a region.

U.S Securitization Initiative

America’s interest in the securitization of the Sahara-Sahel region of West Africa began in the wake of 9/11 and eventually became part of what was then known as the Global War on Terror. The first of the U.S.-led securitization initiatives aimed at countering the influence of radical Islamist groups, the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI), was an outgrowth of this agreement. The PSI was funded by the U.S. Congress in late 2002 and began operations in early 2003. It targeted the four countries of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, and Chad. Its real area of concern was the Saharan zones of those countries where the GSPC was becoming active. The GSPC had begun to move into the central Sahara, especially Mali’s Kidal region, because it was being harried from its original base of operations in northeastern Algeria by national security forces. The goals of the PSI focused on providing training and equipment for the security forces of the four Sahelian countries, especially Mali, in order to increase their capacity for border security, contraband interdiction, and fighting Islamist insurgents. The apparent success of the PSI led Congress to support additional funding and the expansion of the initiative, creating the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP). The TSCTP, budgeted at $100 million per year over five years, ultimately embraced some ten African countries. Besides the four PSI countries, these included Algeria, Morocco, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, and Tunisia. The TSCTP also promised to bring diplomatic and developmental resources to bear in the fight against Saharan terrorism by engaging the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). These nonmilitary agencies were added to the blueprint for the TSCTP because of a growing realization that the root causes of terrorism and lawlessness in the Sahara were not really military but social and economic.

French Securitization Initiative

French securitization initiatives in the region, of course, go back to the early colonial period, given that France was the colonial power in most of the countries discussed in this study. For our purposes we will consider only the recent initiatives undertaken by France in the wake of the Mali Crisis of 2012–2013. These include Operation Serval and Operation Barkhane. Operation Serval (“wildcat”) began suddenly in mid-January of 2013, though considerable thought and planning must have gone into it prior to its launch. It was intended to prevent the collapse of the Malian government and forestall a possible attack on Bamako by the Islamists militias then occupying the northern half of Mali. Beginning in early 2012, Mali had been shaken by the fourth in a series of ethnic-based secular-nationalist succession movements. Tuareg rebels of the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), supported by Malian Arab fighters affiliated with other rebel groups, began attacking Malian army posts in the remote desert north. In this effort, they were aided by then little-known and recently formed Islamist militias affiliated with the Algeria-based AQIM, including Ansar Dine (“helpers of the faith”) and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO). The result was the rapid occupation of Mali’s three northern regional capitals, Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal, by the MNLA. The situation intensified in June 2012, when Ansar Dine and MUJAO, who had supported the MNLA in the occupation of the northern capitals, turned on their avowedly secular allies and expelled their fighters. This turn of events left the Malian north under the occupation of the two Islamist militias, both of which were under the supervision of AQIM. Operation Serval, relying on 4,000 French rapid deployment troops and 2,000 Chadian troops supported by elements of the Malian army, was hailed by the interim government, by most Malians, and by Mali’s regional neighbors and the international community at large. President Hollande announced the rollout of Operation Barkhane (named after a crescent-shaped dune in the Sahara Desert) July 19, 2014, at a military base in Niamey. Intended to supersede Operation Serval, Operation Barkhane was undertaken for two main reasons: France’s frustration with the Malian military as a partner in the fight against the Islamist militias and the fact that France’s concerns in the region went beyond Mali. 

Algeria’s motives for security

Algeria’s posture with outside powers as regards the Sahara-Sahel region has evolved since the early 2000s. As mentioned, Algeria welcomed involvement with the U.S.-led securitization initiatives in the region, especially the PSI and the TSCTP, for two reasons. One reason was to bring Algeria out of its period of international isolation after the civil war of the 1990s, and the other was to garner support and legitimacy for its military in its ongoing fight against recalcitrant Islamist groups, especially GSPC/AQIM. Beyond its recent relations with the United States, Algeria has maintained a rivalry with France over French interest in the Sahara. Algeria strongly resisted France’s schemes to retain economic, if not political, control over the Sahara.Still more recently, since the collapse of the Qaddafi regime in Libya, Algerian concern over AQIM and its allies’ use of Mali as a safe haven has given way to concerns over their use of southern Libya as a safe haven, especially since the Islamists in northern Mali have been on the run in the wake of Operation Serval in early 2013. As such, Algeria’s motives for seeking security in the Sahara-Sahel region have shifted over time. On one hand, Algeria has been eager to help Mali forestall true independence for Azawad out of fear that its own Tuareg population may want to become part of the new state. On the other hand, Algeria wants to maintain good relations with Malian and Nigerian Tuareg because it favors them as labor in its sensitive Saharan petroleum sector. At the same time, Algeria’s concerns have shifted from support, feigned or otherwise, for U.S.-led securitization initiatives to rivalry with France over possible Malian hydrocarbon reserves to genuine concern over southern Libya as a new safe haven for Algerian Islamists and their regional allies.

U.S. efforts concentrated on training national security forces, while France’s are largely combat operations. U.S. training failed to prevent Mali from being overrun by terrorists. France’s combat operations have scattered but not eliminated the Islamists. These securitization initiatives have not worked, I argue, because they do not address the root causes of terrorism, which are not military but social and economic.

The UN Counter Terrorism Operation

UN peacekeeping operations are part of the international community’s peace and security toolbox. They have developed relatively rapidly over the past 30 years, from being observer missions in inter-state conflicts (such as UNDOF) to being given a range of tasks ranging from protection of civilians and supporting early peacebuilding, to the support of cultural preservation (such as MINUSMA). With MINUSMA as the main focus, but also with regard to the role of the UN in Somalia and Libya today, and possibly Syria and Yemen tomorrow, member states are debating what role UN peacekeeping operations narrowly, and UN peace operations more generally, should have in countering and preventing violent extremism and terrorism. A high-level debate arranged by the President of the UN General Assembly on peace and security in 2016 concluded that there was a need to “further reflect on tools and means for UN peace operations to respond to terrorism and violent extremism”.

The UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy was adopted by the General Assembly and reconfirmed in the fifth biannual review of the strategy in 2016. The strategy has four pillars:

• Tackling conditions conducive to terrorism;
• Preventing and combating terrorism;
• Building countries’ capacity to combat terrorism and to strengthen the role of the United Nations system in that regard; and
• Ensuring respect for human rights for all and the rule of law while countering terrorism.

MINUSMA is today operating “in a complex security environment that includes asymmetric threats” which includes identified terrorist organisations such as ‘Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Al Mourabitoune, Ansar Eddine, and their affiliates such as the Front de Libération du Macina (FLM). For this reason, MINUSMA is a relevant peacekeeping operation to examine when assessing how far the UN and the Security Council have moved towards developing a UN counter-terrorism operation, in terms of mandate and practice. MINUSMA was given a proactive mandate to use force to support the government in regaining control of northern Mali. The first mandate, S/RES/2100 issued on 25 April 2013, authorized the mission “to support the transitional authorities of Mali, to stabilize the key population centers, especially in the north of Mali and, in this context, to deter threats and take active steps to prevent the return of armed elements to those areas”.

As the security situation deteriorated, MINUSMA was targeted by increasing numbers of attacks in 2014 and 2015, and the mandate was significantly sharpened on 29 June 2016 with S/RES/2295:

“… to stabilize the key population centres and other areas where civilians are at risk, notably in the North and Centre of Mali, and, in this regard, to enhance early warning, to anticipate, deter and counter threats, including asymmetric threats, and to take robust and active steps to protect civilians, including through active and effective patrolling in areas where civilians are at risk, and to prevent the return of armed elements to those areas, engaging in direct operations pursuant only to serious and credible threats. The mandate also specified a range of activities that fall under the various pillars of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, and can be considered PCVE-relevant. MINUSMA’s tasks and activities include all of the four pillars set out earlier as possible pillars of a UN counter-terrorism operation, except that MINUSMA not has yet acted directly on its mandate to take direct action against threats. Experience from MINUSMA shows that UN peacekeeping operations operating in asymmetric threat environments require a radically different set of legal and administrative frameworks, as well as capabilities for logistical support, engineering, intelligence, casualty and medical evacuation (CASEVAC/MEDEVAC) and special forces operations. The 2015 Report of the UN High-level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (‘HIPPO Report’) held that UN peace operations ‘lack the specific equipment, intelligence, logistics, capabilities and specialized military preparation required, among other aspects’. However, this could also be read as a list of reform areas to be addressed if UN peace operations should be given counter-terrorism tasks.

Regional initiatives: G5 Sahel

The G5 Sahel Security Cooperation Platform is a regional security coordination and information exchange mechanism aimed at strengthening capacities to combat terrorism and transnational organized crime. The legal framework of this platform, has adopted in November 2015 by the Heads of State of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. The main objective of the G5 Sahel (security component) is to control the border areas between the country members, to isolate the armed groups and to limit their action. The discussions are currently ongoing between stakeholders to more define the concept of operations, the interactions with the United Nations and support from the international community.

Legal environment for countering terrorism

Counter-terrorism law encompasses the body of laws adopted by inter-governmental bodies and states to deter and punish terrorist acts, and to prevent terrorist groups from accessing resources that support their terrorist acts. While counter-terrorism laws existed in many countries prior to 2001, the attacks of 9/11 and the immediate response by the international community served as a catalyst for states to develop new measures and strengthen existing law. At least 19 international legal instruments have been developed since 1963, the first one was the Convention on Offences and Certain Other Acts Committed On Board Aircraft and this applies to act affecting in-flight safety. In the context of the terrorism the three last international conventions are about: 

• Convention for the Suppression of Terrorist Bombings
• Convention Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism
• Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism

The United Nations has adopted several counter-terrorism measures to punish individuals and groups engaging in terrorism. UN Security Council Resolution 1267 and subsequent related resolutions require UN member states to freeze funds and other financial resources of the Taliban, al-Qaeda and affiliated individuals and groups, and designate specific individuals and groups as sanctioned. Additionally, Resolution 1373 and subsequent related resolutions require states to implement laws and measures to improve their ability to prevent terrorist acts. These measures include criminalizing the financing of terrorism; freezing the funds of individuals involved in acts of terrorism; denying financial support to terrorist groups; cooperating with other governments to share information; and investigating, detecting, arresting, and prosecuting individuals and entities involved in terrorist acts.

Security Council resolutions establish a baseline of counter-terrorism measures that UN member states must implement, while allowing states to enact additional or stronger measures if desired. Many states, including most major humanitarian donor states, have adopted at least some form of counter-terrorism measures, although the precise scope of these laws may vary widely from state to state. While there is variation among states, certain trends have emerged.

Local laws and security dilemma

At least 15 countries in Sahara-Sahel region revised their counter terrorism laws the reinforce their robustness. More than 10 countries are referring to death penalty. The main change in the laws refers to the introduction of the new concept of the apology for terrorism, the maximum sentence or the duration of the police custody. Chad and Tunisia have reintroduced the death penalty in the new law even if there are no death sentences but according to an analysis conducted by Jeune Afrique, Egypt, Nigeria and Libya are the most repressive states when it comes to the fight against terrorism. Like many other countries in Sahel, Mali in 2016 enacted a new law against Money Laundering and financing terrorism. One of the most serious problems facing political leaders is how to maintain public support for counterterrorism measures. On numerous occasions, the public has refused to allow their government to pursue counterterrorism policies that it considers necessary to fight terrorism. The security dilemma offers a useful way of understanding domestic political resistance to counterterrorism measures. When the government enhances its ability to protect citizens from terrorist threats, it often has the unintended consequence of making people more worried about government oppression. This represents a clear security dilemma, because there is seemingly no acceptable government response to terrorist threats. If the government takes a weak stance on counterterrorism, then citizens live with the risk of terrorist attacks.

Countering terrorism

The defence strategy

The use of military force to manage conflicts in West Africa dates back to the early 1990s when ECOWAS first deployed the ECOWAS Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) to Liberia and subsequently to Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Cote d’Ivoire. While ECOWAS has not been militarily involved in addressing Nigeria’s terrorist crisis, according to Solomon (2012, 8), the Nigerian government’s hard-line military strategy against the Boko Haram group is supported by ECOWAS. Even so, the Nigerian security forces have recorded very little success against the group. Moving further, the nature of the jihadist challenge and the countries in which they operate in West Africa have given rise to external military intervention in the region. France has been militarily most active in West Africa since the 1960s. During the outbreak of the Malian crisis in 2012, France intervened militarily from January to April 2013 before handing over to the ECOWAS-led African International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA). The UN Multidimensional Peacekeeping Mission to Mali (MINUSMA) took over responsibility from AFISMA in July 2013. In the text of its 2013 decision to deploy troops in support of AFISMA, ECOWAS had urged the UN Security Council to ‘authorize without delay, the provision of voluntary and UN-funded logistics support packages to AFISMA, including equipment and services for an initial period of one year’ (ECOWAS 2013b, 4). But this request was not heeded. Nickels (2013, 4) claims that the ‘UN and some Western governments declined to back and finance the AU and ECOWAS’ intervention proposals due to concerns about planning and a keenness for non-military options’. In its diagnosis of the situation, the ECOWAS Peace and Security Report (ECOWAS 2013a, 6) states that the UN refusal to support ECOWAS and its subsequent takeover mission through MINUSMA demonstrated a lack of acknowledgement of ongoing regional counterterrorism efforts in Mali.

Given the above, two observations regarding the use of military force against terrorists in West Africa could be made. The first observation is that while tougher security approaches to terrorism are important and, indeed, indispensable to rendering the jihadist groups in West Africa incapable of staging coordinated attacks, ECOWAS needs to take a range of measures to ensure that human rights are respected by the military forces of its member states. These measures should entail scrutinizing and prosecuting the security forces of member states who are found guilty of human rights abuses while countering terrorism, and at the same time, member states must strengthen their legal constitutional mechanisms on the prevention and prosecution of terrorism related offences. Secondly, in accordance with the provisions of Article 59(f) of the Conflict Prevention Framework (ECOWAS 2008), Article 30 of the 1999 Mechanism (ECOWAS 1999), and Article 23 of the 2001 Protocol (ECOWAS 2001), ECOWAS should introduce human rights courses and counterterrorism training for the West African police, the ECOWAS Standby Force (ESF), lawyers, judges, prison service officials, and other security personnel in the region.

Countering the recruitment

Communication is a key driving force of the modern war. In the last decade, the extremist and terrorist organizations have used technologically modern forms of communication, including the Internet and social media, to recruit and radicalize new members. The modern jihadist insurgencies have strategic and political goals. In order to achieve them, the terrorist organizations use propagandist messages on the internet. These online messages involve certain indicators that influence the subconscious psyche of a culture. The semiotic gestures and themes like images, films with radical fighters and videos of executions convey their intents and trigger feelings of panic to the public. Violent videos uploaded by the terrorist organizations help them in recruitment and the radicalization of the sympathizers. As social media opened up the borders of the world, the users today don't think twice about communicating with or having "friends" in other countries. The terrorist groups use it as an important mean of communication where they can establish personal relationships and release messages with uncensored content. Due to one of the basic characteristics of virtual communities, the fluidity of the virtual identity, their actions can appear at numerous points simultaneously, helping terroristic and criminal activity to be synchronized. Hence, it is difficult to establish the geographic-political and cultural determination, religious and ethnic background, and even personal identity.

The cyber terrorism threatens the international peace and security. Internet governance need to be re-conceptualized in order to secure the cyber space. The increasing intensity spread of the global terrorism activities on the online environment have physical, psychological and financial consequences. Large and unexpected acts of cyber recruitment and mass violence can be counter acted only by understanding the key risk factors studying the pattern of terrorist activity and its socioeconomic drivers and developing effective combative and policing strategies focused on disrupting up and even ending the life activity of terrorist groups on Internet. Despite the efforts made by the international organizations to develop counterterrorism and policing strategies for preventing the large and unexpected acts of mass violence, they must keep in mind that “Our world faces an assault by terrorists with ruthless ambition. The motive is not faith; it is power; power pursued by ripping countries and communities apart in sectarian conflicts, and inflicting suffering across the world, the danger of extremism must be seen for what it is: global. As for the cyber security challenges, finding solutions to counteract the terrorist cyber recruitment activities requires collaboration between technical communities, the private sector, governments, and intergovernmental structures The international organizations like the United Nations (UN) Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Interpol, Europol, and the European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) develop strategic partnerships to fight against cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism. counter efforts, terrorism. But despite all the counter efforts terrorism remains as one of the biggest threats to our communities. Cyber defence, included into NATO’s operational planning, is one of the main tasks of its collective defence. NATO aim to develop cyber defence capabilities and it is improving its cooperation with industry in order to prevent, mitigate and recover from cyber-attacks. In March 2013, five NATO countries, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Romania agreed to collaborate on the “Multinational Cyber Defence Capability Development Project". They will improve the sharing of technical information and develop advanced cyber defense sensors.

The international organizations must promote a better understanding of the cultural, economic and political factors that create peace, as a positive, achievable and tangible measure of human well-being and progress. It might be interesting to investigate the relationship between the terrorist groups and the new media, their online tools for persuasion and recruit new members. It is necessary to promote programs designed to control the huge amounts of information generated by the social media. The use of automated analysis for language texts, as one of the most important tools for knowledge discovery can help in finding hidden patterns for terrorist recruitment activities. New techniques can mitigate the threat of terrorist cyber recruitment and they must be used in the context of international authorities and multidisciplinary teams. Preventing the violent extremism

Addressing radicalization and recruitment of youth in violent extremism has become a principal aim of the policy and programs of what is known as countering violent extremism (CVE). Yet, much of the CVE programs have taken a curative approach with a main focus on addressing consequences of radicalization and extremism once extremist violence is erupted. A preventive approach, which could be cost effective and function as a “threat minimizer,” has received less attention by academics and practitioners alike. By understanding the process of radicalization and recruitment of youth into violent extremism as an evolutionary process, preventive mechanisms could be developed and implemented such as community-based early warning and early response systems by engaging local people who bear the brunt of radicalization and extremism in the first place. Because armed conflict and VE share common impetuses of violence such as inequality, socioeconomic exclusion, unemployment, poverty, and lack of security, armed conflicts and VE are increasingly overlapped and at times interconnected.

The PREVENT strategy

The PREVENT strategy was first introduced by the UK government post the 2007 attacks in London. Presented as a ‘hearts and minds’ approach, the ambition for PREVENT was that it would enable engagement with Muslim communities in particular (see Department for Communities and Local Government, 2007; Martin, 2014). The strategy is constituted by three overarching objectives:

·      To respond to the ideological challenge of terrorism and the threat from those who promote it;

·      To prevent people from being drawn into terrorism;

·      To work with sectors and institutions where there are risks of radicalisation which need to be addressed (HM Government, 2011: 7)

As social policy scholars have noted, the implementation of the PREVENT strategy was plagued by internal contests and conflicts. The allocation of funding across different government departments with competing organisational logics and different interpretations of PREVENT produced problems from the outset, with the tension between community cohesion aspirations and preventative counter-terrorism interventions generating cleavages (see Ratcliffe, 2012; Thomas, 2010). Furthermore, research into the external effects of particular counter-terrorism initiatives housed under the PREVENT umbrella raised serious concerns about the surveillant aspects of the strategy, particularly those directed squarely at Muslim communities (see Awan, 2013; Mythen et al., 2009). As Kundnani’s (2009) systematic evaluation of PREVENT demonstrates, policies pursued under the PREVENT strategy have discriminated against Muslim Minority Groups, reproduced divisions between the police and targeted communities and damaged community relations. As Dalgaard- Nielsen (2010) has posited, what is striking is not so much how much we know about radicalisation, but how little. While the state cannot be criticized for attempting to assemble the available evidence to understand what motivates people to commit violent acts in the name of politics or religion, the persistence of large knowledge gaps is perplexing given the high prioritization of radicalisation in politics and policy over the course of the last two decades. Despite significant resources being ploughed into studying radicalisation and the panoply of security industries which have congregated around this work, there is a distinct lack of reliable evidence which upholds the central premise that religious ideology is the key ‘driver’ of terrorism (see Gunning and Jackson, 2012; Kundnani, 2015: 19).

While we are not in a position to know how important the ‘drivers’ of radicalisation presented in PREVENT are in cases of individuals that turn to political and religiously motivated violence, as critical social scientists it is our duty to question whether the evidence that is coalesced to justify far-reaching security strategies is credible and comprehensive and to examine the efficacy of such policy making. Based on this analysis a reassessment of the root causes of violent extremism is required. This reassessment would be best served by dispensing with the idea of radicalisation as a multi-purpose, catchall concept. The corollary of this is that it may be useful for policy makers to focus more sharply on the systemic and structural factors that shape human motivations and influence (anti)social behaviors. 

Early Warning and Early Response

While the nexus between conflict and extremism is a major challenge for practitioners on the ground, preventing violent extremism can, nonetheless, benefit from rich experiences and lessons learned in the field of conflict prevention and peacebuilding vis-à-vis community-based early warning and early response (EWER) systems. Violent extremism refers to the willingness or choice to use violence, or to support the use of violence, to advance particular political, religious, ideological, and social beliefs. Radicalization is only one of the instruments of VE because not all forms of radicalization processes lead to violent extremism, while violent extremism does not always involve radical elements. Radicalization also facilitates the conditions for violent recruitment. Thus, radicalization and recruitment are the processes to achieve end goals such as VE. In literature, however, radicalization is either equated to, or confounded with, VE. This conceptual ambiguity is one of the sources of dilemmas that impact the responses for addressing VE.

There are ample examples of how promoting local agencies in monitoring the indicators of radicalization has prevented young people from being recruited into VE. In Germany, for instance, the “Mothers for Life” network, which was formed by the German Institute for Radicalization and Deradicalization, provides a platform for mothers who have experienced violent jihadist radicalization in their own families. The mothers, who are invaluable resources for preventing radicalization and VE, have played commendable roles to identify early warning indicators of radicalization in their social and cultural contexts, and have, in turned, contributed to preventing youth from being engaged in extremist violence. The other example comes from Yogyakarta in Indonesia, where the Gusdurian network has created a secure platform for dialogue that brings youth together to discuss and debate religious identity and respect and celebrate the diversity of young Muslims. This platform is seen as a positive contribution by youth to demystify religious identity and foster social solidarity among Muslim youth so as to mobilize local resources to prevent radicalization and recruitment of youth into VE. In several other places, the EWER system has functioned as a mechanism for vertical and horizontal networks and linkages that, in turn, facilitate social trust and social cohesion—the elements that are crucially important for preventing radicalization and VE. In the Philippines, the Nonviolent Peace Force supported the establishment of a citizen-led EWER mechanism in line with the concept of the third generation EWER system, as part of its civilian peacekeeping program. The EWER mechanism did not only collect and analyze information for early warning, but it also facilitated inter-group collaboration, which eventually culminated in the formation of the Bantay Ceasefire monitoring group.

Despite the advantages and benefits as discussed above, there are also risks and challenges associated with EWER and CVE. These are mostly related to political, systemic, and attitudinal issues. The nature of CVE programs is often determined by politics and political interpretation of the dynamics of radicalization and VE. Whether dealing with VE requires a soft security approach to CVE or a hard security approach embedded in the principles and practices of counterterrorism, is often subject to political interpretation if not manipulation, rather than based on empirical evidence from the field. Such political interpretation undermines the local agency of people directly affected by VE, and also discredits and demotivates local people from engaging with outsiders. Early warning monitors themselves require formal recognition that ensures their protection. Thus, political willingness to work with local people including youth, and turning the will into relevant policies is important, not only to enhance local agency, but also for formal recognition of local EWER mechanisms.

In other places where the EWER system is linked to wider network and formal response mechanisms, it has produced tangible impacts. In October 2014, the West Africa Network for Peacebuilding (WANEP) developed a set of indicators for monitoring violent extremism and religious fundamentalism inWest Africa and the Sahel in collaboration with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Despite some limitations, this EWER system has produced some results in terms of lobbying and policy advocacy at the regional level regarding preventive action against violent extremism.

Addressing the drivers of the VE – The development approach

According to UNESCO (PVE through education – A guide for policymakers) the roots of violent extremism and the causes of radicalization that lead to violence are diverse and multi-layered. The guide differenced the drivers in two categories: the “push” and “pull” factors. Push factors refer to the conditions that are conducive to violent extremism. They are the broader processes that can push individuals towards violent extremist groups. Pull factors are understood as individual motivations that attract potential recruits and the rationales that may be used to legitimize violence.

Source : UNESCO

These drivers were also found among the key factors driving youth to join extremist groups in Africa, according to a forthcoming UNDP study drawing on more than 500 interviews detailing the journey from childhood through recruitment of former Boko Haram and al-Shabaab members from Cameroon, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Sudan, and Somalia. Human rights abuses by security actors, especially in their responses to violent extremism and terrorism, cut across all contexts as a key driver. Experiencing mistreatment by police officers and soldiers can be traced as a tipping point in the radicalisation process of many individuals. Based on these drivers many international organizations started working of development projects focused on countries or a group of countries like the UNDP multi country Project: Preventing and responding to Violent Extremism in Africa. This four-year regional development project is designed to strengthen the development responses to mitigate the growth of violent extremism in Africa; this is a long-term process and this project should be seen as the first phase of a long-term engagement. This focus is motivated by the ever-increasing presence of violent extremist groups on African soil causing, in the words of UN Security-General Ban Ki-moon, an “arc of upheaval and distress”. Violent extremism is having a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of populations across the continent - particularly the most vulnerable, and including youth, women and children. The project will be implemented at the regional and country level. At the regional level the project will support the capacity of the African Union Commission (AUC) and Regional Economic Communities to prevent and respond to violent extremism. 

At the country level the project will be implemented in three categories’ of countries: ‘epicentre countries’ – Mali, Nigeria and Somalia; ‘spill-over countries’- Cameroon, Chad, Kenya, Mauritania and Niger; and, in ‘at-risk’ countries - the Central African Republic, Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The project focuses on interventions in six key areas: socio-economic; rule of law and security; disengagement and reintegration; media and technology; community resilience and gender-specific initiatives. Programming in these areas is supported by two cross-cutting initiatives: research, policy and advocacy; and, capacity-building for regional and sub-regional organizations. It should be noted that the project is designed to focus on the immediate and underlying causes of violent extremism which is aligned to UNDP’s ‘core’ programming, including areas which address weak State capacity, poor service delivery, endemic marginalization and poverty, and the lack of coordination at the national and regional level.

Conclusion

The fields of peacebuilding and development are increasingly contending with both the phenomenon of violent extremism and the question of how to engage with the practical and policy implications of efforts to prevent it. The 2017 Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development took on this question with a session devoted to ‘Preventing Violent Extremism through Peacebuilding’ to consider perspectives from the field on what works, and what doesn’t. Among the array of responses to the phenomenon of violent extremism, development and peacebuilding actors have tended to stress interventions that focus on mitigating the root causes, over the traditional focus of countering violent extremism (CVE) measures focused on interrupting the process of radicalisation and recruitment and engaging communities in the facilitation of state-led security efforts. With the movement of the international community toward prevention of violent extremism, from countering, interest has shifted toward earlier intervention in the cycle of radicalisation to violence. With little conclusive evidence regarding the root causes of violent extremism, policies and programmes to date are based largely on assumptions about what drives radicalisation. Emerging good practice in research on violent extremism focuses on learning about individuals who have been convicted of terrorism-related offences.

According to The Global Terrorism Index in 2016, 90% of incidences of terrorism occur in states engaged in violent conflict so efforts to prevent violent extremism should be locally contextualised and take into consideration conflict dynamics. Peacebuilding approaches are poised to make substantial contributions towards achieving this in practice given the long experience located within the field as compared to the relatively recent area of work defined as P/CVE. Sharing the lessons learned from peacebuilding with PVE practitioners is seen as key to avoiding harm and improving impact. More focus on peacebuilding and development is vital to achieving this; however, policy-maker and donor awareness of the drivers and dynamics of violent extremism, and their political will to adopt the structural and often politically challenging solutions advocated by these fields, remains a challenge.

“Violent extremism is going viral, but our response to it is moving at bureaucratic, sluggish speed”, Mike McCaul

References

Abbas T (2005) Muslim Britain: Communities Under Pressure. London: Zed Books.

Abbas T and Siddique A (2012) ‘Perceptions of the processes of radicalisation and de-radicalisation among British South Asian Muslims in a post-industrial city’, Social Identities 18(1): 119–134.

African Union, Report of the Commission; and Institute for Security Studies. “New African Force for Mali?”

Ahmed S (2015) ‘The emotionalization of the War on Terror: Counter-terrorism, fear, rsk, insecurity and helplessness’, Criminology and Criminal Justice 15(5): 545–560

Antony Field (2017) The Dynamics of Terrorism and Counterterrorism: Understanding the Domestic Security Dilemma, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 40:6, 470-483

Association of India SAGE Publications 2014

Ben-Porat, Guy. “Policing Multicultural States: Lessons from the Canadian Model.” Policing and Society 18 (4) (December 2008): 411-425.

Benjamin Maiangwa (2014) Jihadism in West Africa: Adopting a Three- Dimensional Approach to Counterterrorism, Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, 9:3, 17-32,

Cockayne and O’Neil, UN DDR in an Era of Violent Extremism.

Community Oriented Policing Services, U.S. Department of Justice. Community Policing Defined. Washington, D.C, 2014.

C. DOWD, C. RALEIGH, the myth of global Islamic terrorism and local conflict in Mali and Sahel African Affairs, 112/448, 498–509

Davis, Robert C. Perceptions of the Police among Members of Six Ethnic Communities in Central Queens, NY. New York, Safe Horizon, 2000.

DB Subedi (2017) Early Warning and Response for Preventing Radicalization and Violent Extremism, Peace Review, 29:2, 135-143,

E. Lynton J., G. Gullion and James L. Williams, (2016) Countering Terrorist Recruitment: Social Media, Cyber Terror, and Peaceful Platforms, IOS Press

Engelbrecht, Georgi and Vidushi Kaushik. 2015. “Community-Based Protection Mechanisms.” Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice 27(1): 43–51.

Gill, Charlotte, Weisburd, David, Telep, Cody W., Vitter, Zoe, and Bennett, Trevor. “Community-Oriented Policing to Reduce Crime, Disorder, and Fear and Increase Satisfaction and Legitimacy among Citizens: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Experimental Criminology 10 (4) (August 2014): 399-428.

Hadji, Ahmed and Ndugwa Hassan. 2014. The Role of CSOs in Countering Violent Extremism (CVE): A Case of Actors in East African Region. UMYDFWorking Paper Series 1. Kampala: Uganda Muslim Youth Development Forum (UMYDF).

Holmer, Georgia. 2013. Countering Violent Extremism: A Peacebuilding Perspective, Special Report 336. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Available at <https://www.usip.org/publications/2013/08/countering-violent-extremismpeacebuilding- perspective>, last accessed November 7, 2016.

Institute for Economics and Peace. 2015. Global Terrorism Index 2015. Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP). Available at <https://economicsandpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2015/11/Global-Terrorism-Index-2015.pdf>, last accessed December 3, 2016.

John Karlsrud (2017) Towards UN counter-terrorism operations? Third World Quarterly, 38:6, 1215-1231

Khalil, “Peacekeeping Missions as Parties to Conflicts.”, UN Office of Legal Affairs

Kundnani A (2009) Spooked! How not to Prevent Violent Extremism. London: Institute of Race Relations.

Kundnani A (2015) A Decade Lost: Rethinking Radicalisation and Extremism. London: Claystone Publications

Lindekilde L (2012) ‘Neo-liberal governing of ‘radicals’: Danish radicalisation prevention policies and potential iatrogenic effects’, International Journal of Conflict and Violence 6(1): 109–125.

Martin T (2014) ‘Governing an unknowable future: The politics of Britain’s Prevent policy’, Critical Studies on Terrorism 7(1): 62–78.

Mastrofski, Stephen D. “Varieties of Community Policing”. American Journal of Police, 12 (3) (1993): 65-77. [6] See Gill and others at note 4.

Matveeva, Anna. 2006. Early Warning and Early Response: Conceptual and Em Empirical Dilemmas. The Hague, Netherlands: European Centre for Conflict Prevention.

Ministère de la Défense, “Opération Barkhane.”

NATO, “Fact Sheet.”

Petrie S (2015) ‘The Channel programme: helping vulnerable people or nudging them towards radicalisation?’ The Conversation, 17 March.

Ratcliffe P (2012) ‘Community cohesion: Reflections on a flawed paradigm’, Critical Social Policy 32(2), 262–281.

Rights Watch UK (2016) Preventing Education? Human Rights and UK Counter-terrorism Policy in Schools. London: Rights Watch UK.

United Nations, “(4a) Fatalities by Mission.” The UN mission in Congo (ONUC) suffered 250 fatalities from 1960 to 1964. James, “Congo Controversies.”

UNDP, Preventing and Responding to Violent Extremism in Africa

UNESCO, Preventing Violent Extremism through Education

United Nations, S/RES/2085, 4.

United Nations, S/RES/2100, 7.

United Nations, S/RES/2098 and S/RES/2304.

United Nations, S/RES/2034, 8.

UN General Assembly, Conclusions and Observations, cited in Boutellis and Fink, Waging Peace, Including ‘preventive, nonkinetic components of counterterrorism, including P/CVE programs’; Millar and Fink, Blue Sky III, 7.

United Nations, Contribution of United Nations Peacekeeping. United Nations, A/70/674, 3.

See eg para. 19 and 20 of United Nations, A/RES/70/291, 7.

Stephen Emerson, Back to the Future: The Evolution of US Counterterrorism Policy in Africa. African Studies

Stephen Harmon, Securitization Initiatives in the Sahara-Sahel Region in the Twenty-first Century. African Security, 8:227–248, 2015

United Nations, S/RES/2295, 5, 2.

United Nations Mine Action Service, “Background.”

United Nations, “(4a) Fatalities by Mission.”

United Nations, S/RES/2100, 7.

Mandate from United Nations, S/RES/2295, 9.

Ibid., 2–3, emphasis in original.

PCVE-relevant’ activities may be preventive, while PCVE-specific ones should be targeted interventions. Most of these align with regular tasks of UN peacekeeping operations. For an overview, see Boutellis and Fink, Waging Peace, 7.

Vera Institute of Justice. Building Strong Police-Immigrant Community Relations: Lessons from a New York City Project.: New York: Vera Institute of Justice , 2005.

Ward D and Mullender A (1991) Empowerment and oppression: An indissoluble pairing for contemporary social work. Critical Social Policy 11(32): 21–30.

Williams F (1989) Social policy: A critical introduction; issues of race, gender, and class. Cambridge, UK; Oxford, UK; New York, NY: Polity; Blackwell.

Worley C (2005) ‘It’s not about race. It’s about the community’: New Labour and ‘community cohesion’. Critical Social Policy 25(4): 483–496.

Waldmann PK (2010) Radicalisation in the diaspora: Why Muslims in the West attack their host countries (WP). Madrid: Elcano Royal Institute.