Paper short abstract:

It is debated whether the insurgency in Mozambique is the fruit of a transnational threat or a local phenomenon that internationalised. Trying to move beyond this debate, I explore the local, regional & global dimensions of the insurgency to identify its specific form

Paper long abstract:

The insurgency that began in the province of Cabo Delgado in 2017 is a topic of much debate. Among others, authors disagree over the issue of its externality. The government and some authors have claimed the insurgency is the result of a transnational threat spreading into Mozambique, while others have argued that it is a local phenomenon that internationalised. Trying to move beyond this debate, this presentation explores the local, regional and global dimensions of the insurgency and tries to identify the specific forms of this articulation. It looks at the issue of origins and trajectory of the insurgency, its regional and international connections, and the ideological underpinnings of its public discourse. It makes the argument that it is a "glocal" phenomenon which developed in a border area and mixes local Mwani, regional Swahili and international jihadi ideas and tropes.

Paper short abstract:

How have global Salafi networks shaped African jihadist landscapes? The paper addresses this question based on a case study of (coastal) Kenya. It identifies and explains the absence of foreign-educated clerics from Kenya’s jihadist scene.

Paper long abstract:

The emergence and expansion of jihadist activity in contemporary Africa is inextricably linked with the Saudi-promoted rise of global Salafism. In several countries, growing Salafi milieus have bred influential jihadist clerics. At the same time, there is a broad scholarly consensus that it is highly inaccurate to equate Salafism with militancy. How, then, have global Salafi networks shaped African jihadist landscapes? Addressing this question based on a case study of (coastal) Kenya that draws on field research carried out in March 2022 and April 2018, this paper identifies a paradox. While the overall rejectionist tendencies of Salafi thought represent a non-trivial enabling condition for jihadist mobilization in Africa, at the individual level the emergence of jihadist clerics rests on a lack of integration into Saudi-dominated transnational Salafi circles. Examining the personal trajectories of Kenya’s leading jihadist preachers, the paper finds that while all of them had been influenced by Salafi ideas and actors to different degrees prior to openly embracing jihadism, none had gone to study abroad at a Saudi or any other Arab university. I contend that the absence of foreign-educated clerics from Kenya’s jihadist scene is not a coincidence but the result of both ideological and material factors predisposing Salafi “returnee” scholars to not turn into jihadists. By advancing this hypothesis, I intend to contribute to nascent research on the micro-dynamics of jihadist preaching.

Paper short abstract:

Jihadist universal objectives are not conjured up in a ‘global’ sphere. Rather, they are shaped by complex and situated dynamics. I look at Mali’s Sikasso region to study the ‘friction’ caused by universals and contend that local socio-political conflict dynamics steer the trajectory of Jihad.

Paper long abstract:

The Global War on Terror constructs Islam as a ‘master cleavage’ in Mali and conflicts around the world. This article proposes that, to understand the ‘universal’ (Li, 2020) imaginary of Jihad, we should look at the way it is enacted in the local. How does Jihadist expansion and implantation play out in Sikasso, Mali?

The universal Jihadi imaginary refers to the violent implementation of Islamic governance. It is a ‘package’ that travels and transforms between areas of contention such as Egypt, Afghanistan, or Iraq. In each area, several universal imaginaries interact. The ‘local’ is not a passive arena, it reshapes these universal imaginaries. I use Anna Tsing’s (2005) concept of ‘friction’ to understand how global and local processes mutually constitute each other.

The paper focusses on the southern “periphery” of the Malian conflict(s), namely the Sikasso region. Sikasso remains a blind spot in the study of the conflict and of Jihad in general. Mostly considered a ‘zone de passage’, it increasingly becomes a zone of expansion, where Jihadists embed themselves.

Sikasso is not a tabula rasa. It is a space of intimate global connections, where several universalizing imaginaries clash and cause frictions. Based on fieldwork and key informant interviews with stakeholders from the region, I argue that complex socio-political dynamics can serve or counter Jihadist implantation. By understanding these, we can gain critical insights into how universalizing ‘global’ goals interact with local realities. This paper thus offers tools to study Jihadist interactions with local realities across Africa and beyond.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on individual interviews and focus group discussions, this paper analyses the dynamics of Al-Shabaab in Northern Mozambique. It argues that the spread of the insurgency benefited from contextual and institutional factors, linked to local dynamics and trans-national connexions.

Paper long abstract:

In October 2017, Mozambique entered a new cycle of armed violence moved by a jihadist group locally known as Al-Shabaab. Starting with an attack on state institutions and local populations in Mocímboa da Praia, the armed violence quickly spread to other districts of Cabo Delgado, and few years later to neighbouring provinces of Nampula and Niassa. The state response to the insurgency has prioritised the military dimension. However, from 2017 – 2021, the jihadist group intensified its military actions beyond villages, capturing small towns, resulting in a massive internal displacement of local populations. What factors explain the spread of Al-Shabaab in Northern Mozambique? How and why was the insurgency able to go beyond Mocímboa da Praia? Drawing on individual interviews and focus group discussions conducted during various stints of fieldwork in Cabo Delgado, Nampula and Niassa from 2020 – 2022, this paper analyses the expansion of military actions of Al-Shabbab beyond Mocímboa da Praia. It investigates explanatory factors of such an expansion and argues that the spread of the insurgency in Northern Mozambique benefited from contextual and institutional factors. The contextual factors relate, on the one hand, to precarious relations between state and citizens made visible by weak policies in different sectors, which leverage recruitment to the ranks of Al-Shabaab, and on the other hand, to the regional dynamics of jihadist movements in Central and Eastern Africa. The institutional factors are linked to how public institutions work and shape the outcomes of state response to the insurgency.

Paper short abstract:

This article analyses how the Katiba Macina, a local affiliate of JNIM sought to build Islamic rule from the grassroots in Central Mali, drawing on more than 200 interviews conducted between 2017 - 2022, including with citizens living in jihadist controlled areas.

Paper long abstract:

The literature on rebel governance emphasises a distinct type of governance, one that pre-supposes territorial control, political institutions, and public service provision. Scholars often focus on established institutions, drawing insights from the most emblematic success cases. These tend to be informed by a Western, secular, state-building lens. Less researched, is how rebel rule emerges in the first place, particularly among jihadists, who advance a distinct Salafist-inspired form of Islamic rule. This article aims to address this lacuna, by analysing how the Katiba Macina, a local, Al Qaeda affiliated insurgency, sought to build Islamic rule from the grassroots in Central Mali. The article draws on unique data from 268 interviews conducted between 2017 and 2022, including with citizens who have lived in jihadist-controlled areas. We argue that the insurgency sought to build rule through progressively harnessing moral and social resources to foster legitimacy, while developing pragmatic alliances to induce collaboration in highly divided contexts, marked by cleavages. To extend and consolidate control, the insurgency leveraged several salient practices, including (1) the use of coercion to carve out space for an alternative authority, (2) religious proselytisation to sensitise rural citizens (3) alliances with social groups in divided social settings (4) the provision of justice, through local courts and (5) the application of a local version of sharia. These findings contribute to the growing literature on jihadist governance as a distinct category of rebel governance and more broadly to the literature on African politics and insurgency in the Sahel.

Paper short abstract:

Debates about the global or local constitution of African jihadi groups hinge on the question of financing. Contra sensationalist accounts, this paper highlights more commonplace sources of jihadi group funding in the central Sahel, but still demonstrates the centrality of regionalized connectivity.

Paper long abstract:

One of the central questions informing contemporary debates about jihadi groups operating in Africa and their purported global connections relates to how they finance their organizations and networks. For several years, governments, international organizations, NGOs and think tanks, and diverse security experts have advanced the existence of a crime-terror nexus that facilitates jihadi group operations across international borders. This paper critiques the more sensationalist tendencies of this discourse by focusing on the nature of illicit practices implemented by jihadi groups in the Mali-Niger borderlands. While the imaginary of the crime-terror nexus focuses on trans-continental drug-trafficking (cocaine), enrichment from natural resources (gold), or kidnapping for ransom (Western expatriates), the central Sahel's war economies entail far more routine and commonplace resources and practices. The paper examines the three most important illicit practices that inform the central Sahel's war economies: the violent extraction of livelihood resources (especially cattle); racketeering (targeting regional businessmen); and fines for non-observance of jihadi group rules. While these practices constitute the most significant sources of income for groups like the Islamic State in the Sahel Province (ISSP), given their tenuous and inconsistent nature of their terroritorial control, jihadi groups in the central Sahel must still regionalize their financing operations by leveraging connections across West African borders. In this sense, the paper cuts a middle road between more grandiose and global-oriented discourses of connections linking criminal and terrorist behaviour, and micro-level discourses and epistemological positions that have eschewed more transnational explanations.

Paper short abstract:

This research paper aims to contribute to the debate on global connections of jihadists in Africa by analysing a particular form of violence, namely terrorist attacks on Christian places of worship through the lens of ideology, global connection, and local motivation.

Paper long abstract:

While churches have been the target of desecration by jihadists for decades, there were surprisingly few actual jihadist terrorist attacks that singled out churches through bombings or shootings. This changed on 31 October 2010 when the Islamic State of Iraq attacked a church in Iraq’s capital Baghdad and thereby set a precedent that was followed by church bombings in Nigeria on Christmas Eve 2010 and in Egypt on the first day of 2011.

Since, first the Nigerian group Jamaʿat Ahl al-Sunnah li-d-Daʿwah wa-l-Jihad and later the Islamic State as a global actor have made terrorist attacks on churches a constant part of their terrorist campaigns. The Islamic State’s rival al-Qaʿida on the other hand has objected to terrorist attacks on churches in 2013 and more strongly in 2017. Accordingly, this form of violence has become an ideological marker in the climate of global jihadist infighting that local actors from Algeria to Mozambique operate in.

This paper argues that terrorist attacks on churches are grounded in a particularly sectarian version of jihadist ideology. Terrorist attacks on churches serve as performative acts that are meant to communicate righteousness to the perceived eligible in-group of Muslims. A comparison of local and global trends in this form of violence points to connections between the local and the global – in recent years even hinting at global control. Still, some instances reveal distinct local motives of African jihadists who by now mostly operate as part of the global Islamic State, being in essence glocal actors.