“In a few days the sun would shine only upon the lifeless bodies and afterwards would dry them up into a semblance of those mummies which slumber in an eternal sleep in the museums in Egypt”

 

— Henryk Sienkiewicz, In Desert and Wilderness

 

Despite being ensconced in a tortuous and complicated domestic political situation, the West African country of Nigeria has been able to tenaciously maintain its national sovereignty and territorial integrity since it attained independence from Britain in 1960. Miraculously the nation, Africa’s most populous, has held together through thick and thin.

Nigeria’s colonial legacy may have mitigated the rigidity of its dysfunctional status quo. There are those who argue that rather than denying the sad realities of contemporary Nigeria, Nigerians would be better off trying to find ways of living with its deep-rooted problems. Others believe otherwise. They have taken refuge in the bush, brandishing religion as a ruse to direct murderous and marauding operations from the country’s arid northern wastelands.

Across Muslim Africa, militant Islamist militias have turned geography and an inhospitable topography to their advantage, and the northeastern corner of Nigeria is no exception. The weakness of central governments in the region, including in Mali and Nigeria, have led to the proliferation of militant Islamist takfiri and jihadist movements that pay little respect to national borders.

Moreover, Sufi Islam, the predominant form of spiritual expression and religious propagation in Africa, is regarded as heretical by the militant Islamist militias. The loosening of the grip of the Sufi Orders, coupled with the lack of mechanisms to ensure that state funds and the charities of religious groups are doled out transparently, has hastened the spiralling rise of the militant movements. 

Intermittent military rule and a dysfunctional political culture have failed to tear Nigeria apart. The Muslims of the northern part of the country and the predominantly Christian southern part, which is far more prosperous, co-existed uncomfortably for decades after the disastrous Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970) where oil-rich and Christian Biafra attempted to secede from the rest of the multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic and multi-religious country.

The Jamaat Ahl Al-Sunna Lil-Daawa wal-Jihad (Society for the Prophet’s Teachings for Propagation and Jihad), popularly known as Boko Haram (Western Education is Forbidden), is as much about the psychology of denial as it is about religious fundamentalism. Under the unifying banner of Islam, Boko Haram, like other African militant Islamist movements, is affiliated to Al-Qaeda. It has been determined to cross swords with the Nigerian authorities, yet the political and military response of the Nigerian government has been at best indecisive.

Boko Haram’s terrorist attacks claimed the lives of more than 5,000 mainly Muslim civilians from July 2009 to June 2014, including at least 2,000 in the first half of 2014. Indeed, this year has proved to be the worst in terms of Islamist militancy in Nigeria and across the Muslim world. The atrocities of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Syria (ISIS), now the self-styled Islamic State (IS) in the Fertile Crescent, Mesopotamia and the Levant, comprising the states of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine, are telling.

Abducting people they regard as adversaries, beheading them in order to instil a climate of fear and terror, and resorting to a scorched-earth policy and the genocide of religious minorities are common procedures. What ISIS, Boko Haram and other such ideologically oriented groups have in common is a total disregard for the territorial integrity of the colonially created states in which they operate.

Nigeria is an artificial creation, like so many others in Africa, and it is an improbable political entity whose boundaries were determined by a colonial power, in Nigeria’s case, Britain. London paid scant regard for the existing social realities in Nigeria, lumping Christian southerners with northern Muslims to make the new creation.

The mosaic make-up of the countries that comprise Africa south of the Sahara was deliberately designed to create dysfunctional governments beset by poor governance. The fragmentation of the governing elite in Nigeria and other African countries due to ethnic, tribal and religious specificities and the upsurge of identity politics have led to the proliferation of militant Islamist movements in the predominantly Muslim nation-states on the continent. Hostility to the central government is coupled with a sense of an independent identity, where loyalty is ascribed to religion, and not to the nation-state.

External intervention, invariably by the West, has bolstered the socially conservative elements within what has passed as the political establishment, and installed weak neo-colonial governments that have lacked historical experience in presiding over democratic processes, let alone enforcing good governance.

Islam spread to Africa south of the Sahara from North Africa across the desert into the Sahel Belt, stretching from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east. In East Africa, its spread took place from the Arabian Peninsula, virtually a stone’s throw away from the continent with the Horn of Africa separated by the Red Sea, and along the Indian Ocean coast.

Islam was geographically concentrated in countries that are barren and parched. While Muslim merchants and slave-traders did penetrate deep into the equatorial forest regions of Africa, few Africans in Central Africa converted to Islam, and European colonialism, particularly by the British and French, halted the dissemination of Islam into the densely forested areas of the continent.

The French fought a series of wars to counter and contain the jihads of West Africa, these being primarily spearheaded by ethnic Fulani emirs, or rulers, against non-Muslim Africans. Collectively known as the “Fula Jihads”, they included the Futa Djallon emirate created in 1735 when Fulani Muslims rose up against the non-Muslim Fulani and Djalonke rulers in the rugged mountainous region of contemporary Guinea. The Futa Djallon emirate was overrun by the French in 1898.

In much the same vein, Muslim Fulani warriors routed the non-Muslim Denianke kingdom of Futa Toro in 1776. Under the leadership of Al-Hajj Omar Tall, the Muslim Fulani fighters later offered stiff resistance to the French colonialists.

The British had to contend with Uthman dan Fodio, another ethnic Fulani emir in northern Nigeria, who in the first decade of the nineteenth century launched a state-founding jihad that was eerily similar in outlook to some contemporary jihadists, whose fundamental objective today is to establish an Islamic state and to change the political map of Muslim Africa.

Today, the nations of Africa’s Saharan and Sahel Belt lack efficient taxation frameworks and their fiscal systems are in a shambles. The Sahel and Saharan regions of Africa stretch over a vast territory straddling countries in North Africa and those south of the Sahara, from Mauritania to Senegal in the west and Chad and Sudan in the east. The latter are among the poorest and least-developed parts of the continent.

Culturally, as the 2014 film Timbuktu, a French-Mauritanian drama directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, graphically depicted, the occupation of the ancient Islamic city of Timbuktu, now largely reduced to rubble by the militant Islamist terrorist group Ansar Al-Din, has had catastrophic repercussions for the entire region.

Harakat Ansar Al-Din, the “Movement of the Defenders of the Faith,” as well as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Al-Qaeda franchise, says that its aim is to spread Islamic law, as well as to liberate Malians from the French colonial legacy. The 2012 stoning to death of adulterers in Timbuktu by Ansar Al-Din partly inspired certain scenes in the film Timbuktu. The film also demonstrates the cultural differences, in spite of the inextricably intertwined cultural similarities, between North Africa and this particular part of Africa. It sought to bring order to the complex history of political and religious relations between North Africa and the Sahel lands south of the Sahara.

The fiscal arrangements of Algeria and Morocco, key countries in the war against militant Islamist terrorism, are relatively advanced. The fiscal framework of Libya, perhaps the most strategically located country in the region, first began to break down in the aftermath of the killing of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at the hands of militant Islamist militias, disintegrating altogether barely a year later. Islamist militias in the city of Derna in Cyrenaica in eastern Libya have now declared Derna to be part of the Islamic State caliphate and have paid allegiance to its leader Abu-Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

Mali is the quintessential failed state of the Sahel. Rich in mineral resources and agricultural potential, this impoverished, mainly Muslim nation was one of the first West African countries to experiment with western-style democracy, but successive civilian governments have failed to contain the Islamist threat in the north of the sparsely populated country.

The country, twice the size of its former colonial master, France, straddles the sprawling Sahel and Sahara regions of West Africa. Its porous borders mean that it is prone to incursions by militant Islamist militias infiltrating the country from Algeria and Libya to the north, Niger to the east and Mauritania to the west. The UN peacekeeping troops in Mali, MINUSMA, have proved incapable of containing the militant Islamist threat.

The challenge the militant Islamist militias pose has drawn in the Western powers to the region, and in particular France. About 3,000 French troops are now operating out of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. In all, more than 30 peacekeepers have now been killed, and 91 injured, since the mission was established in July 2013, according to UN peacekeeping chief Hervé Ladsous.

The militant Islamist militias are partly funded by the narcotics and illicit arms trades. They, therefore, have a vested interest in securing drug-trafficking routes. The Malian authorities have also found it expedient to adopt a policy of reconciliation and settlement with the militant Islamist organisations. And the Nigerian government has made overtures to Boko Haram, even though the latter has consistently rejected any compromise with the Nigerian government.

A host of social and economic challenges plague the nations of the African Sahel region. Under the auspices of the Algerian government, the Malian government is negotiating a peace settlement with certain militias, including the Tuareg separatist groups. A policy of pacification has outsourced the arduous task of negotiating with the insurrectionists and terrorists. But a political stalemate has been the result, with Islamist fundamentalists in Mali and across huge swathes of the African Sahel still feeling relatively secure.

Social problems: The ongoing plight of women in the underdeveloped countries of the African Sahel has been exacerbated by the influx of new ideas of the Islamist ethos and moral code, primarily resulting from the exodus of professionals from the Sahel Belt to the oil-rich Arabian Gulf nations, and in particular Saudi Arabia. The conservative ideology of Saudi Wahabism has had a remarkable impact on the predominantly Muslim peoples of the West African Sahel and the Muslims of the Horn of Africa in particular.

Gender segregation, for instance, was not stipulated by the traditional mores of the indigenous peoples of the African Sahel, even though the vast majority of the population was nominally Muslim. Women were given a niche in public life, as exemplified by the ethnic Fulani Wodaabe people of the Niger Republic and neighbouring states. The ethnic Tuareg tribal groups of Algeria, Libya, Mali and Niger also enjoyed a great deal of personal freedom. Women from the Tuareg and Wodaabe peoples, like many of their co-religionists among other overwhelmingly Muslim ethnic groups such as the Mandinka and the Hausa, did not traditionally wear the Islamic veil.

Al-Qaeda’s North African wing, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), including a splinter group formed by veteran Islamist commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar, is now operating in southern Libya, a key point on the narcotics and arms smuggling and trafficking routes across the region. AQIM has focused on kidnapping foreign oil workers for ransom as a means of raising funds and is estimated to have raised more than $50 million in the last decade.

AQIM and other West African militant Islamist militias are closely connected with their North African counterparts. The Salafi Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) was founded by Hassan Hattab, a former Armed Islamic Group (GIA) regional commander, for example, and the late Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was his mentor. The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (known by its French acronym of MNLA) in Mali has also had an Islamist component, and Gaddafi was instrumental in fomenting a sense of cultural distinction among the indigenous Tuareg tribes of the Sahara and the Sahel. The Malian Tuareg joined his army, but returned to Mali after the demise of Gaddafi.

Today, Mali’s Interim President Dioncounda Traore, a mathematician turned politician, has sought to project a semblance of control. A former speaker of Mali’s National Assembly, Traore was sworn in as president in April 2012, but since then the bad news has mounted and more northern territories, such as the northernmost province of Kidal, are now beyond the Malian military’s reach. Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop told the UN Security Council recently that urgent measures were needed to quell the Islamist insurrection in the north of the country.

Just as Iraqi army units initially fled from the battlefields in the face of the Islamic State onslaught in their country, so Malian troops abandoned most positions in the north earlier this year after clashes with the militant Islamist forces. The Nigerian military also deserted their posts when Boko Haram approached. The mysterious case of the 270 abducted schoolgirls in Chibok, north-eastern Nigeria, in April, coupled with the failure of the Nigerian army to locate the girls and ensure their release, was an indication of the failure of efforts to bring Boko Haram to book.

Once again, borders were crisscrossed, and many suspect that the schoolgirls have been forcibly dispatched to neighbouring Cameroon and Chad.

The porous borders between Nigeria and Cameroon, and the rugged terrain of predominantly Muslim northern Cameroon, encouraged the escalation of Boko Haram operations in 2014. The traditional rulers in the sultanates of the north of the country were targeted. Boko Haram also consolidated its presence in northern Cameroon, where 10 Chinese expatriates were abducted in May. There is a large expatriate Chinese community in Cameroon, numbering around 20,000, though the economic climate is becoming less friendly for the Chinese in Cameroon.

East Africa: Despite the high rate of violence afflicting civilians in East African countries such as Somalia, perhaps the latter country is the only example on the continent where the militant Islamists are in retreat.

In August 2014, the Somali government-led Operation Indian Ocean was launched to wind up the pacification of the remaining insurgent-held pockets of the militant Al-Shabab group in Somalia. The United States has also been instrumental in the relative success of the Somali government in containing the Islamist threat to the overwhelmingly Muslim and strategically-located Horn of Africa country. Troops from other East African nations are likewise being deployed against Al-Shabab.

Al-Shabab, like Boko Haram, has been accused of deliberate environmental degradation and the decimation of wildlife. Both jihadist groups are suspected of being responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of elephants every year for their ivory and for killing the rangers hired to protect them. The proceeds from the ivory trade allegedly supply Al-Shabab with funds with which to execute its operations.

For Somalia, its East African neighbours and the West, putting the Al-Shabab question behind them is a top priority. On 1 September 2014, a US drone strike carried out as part of the broader strategy of containing the militant Islamist threat in Somalia and neighbouring Kenya, supposedly killed Al-Shabab leader Mokhtar Ali Zubayr. Moreover, the Somali government offered a 45-day amnesty to all “moderate” members of Al-Shabab. Political analysts suggested that the insurgent commander’s death would likely lead to Al-Shabab’s fragmentation and eventual dissolution. Like Boko Haram and AQIM in West Africa, Al-Shabab’s composition is multinational and multi-ethnic even though it is principally Somali.

Nevertheless, Somali politicians continue to pay extortion money to warlords, and the true picture of the internal leadership of Al-Shabab is not clear. Ahmed Abdi Godane was named emir of Al-Shabab in December 2007, and Al-Shabab co-founder Hassan Dahir Aweys was subsequently sidelined. Al-Shabab was effectively split up into a “foreign legion,” led by Godane, and a coalition of factions forming a “national legion” under Aweys. If it does not face the challenge of Al-Shabab, Somalia’s future appears to be destined to be as bleak as the war-torn country’s past.

The greater the disarray in the predominantly neo-colonial states of Africa south of the Sahara, the more the militant Islamist organisations and their sympathisers have felt encouraged to maintain their resistance to the central governments. Against this grim backdrop, Islamist militancy has emerged as the main politically destabilising factor in Muslim Africa.