WINNER OF THE 2018 PEN OPEN BOOK AWARD "A rich and urgently necessary book" (New York Times Book Review), A Moonless, Starless Sky is a masterful, humane work of journalism by Alexis Okeowo--a vivid narrative of Africans who are courageously resisting their continent's wave of fundamentalism. In A Moonless, Starless Sky Okeowo weaves together four narratives that form a powerful tapestry of modern Africa: a young couple, kidnap victims of Joseph Kony's LRA; a Mauritanian waging a lonely campaign against modern-day slavery; a women's basketball team flourishing amid war-torn Somalia; and a vigilante who takes up arms against the extremist group Boko Haram. This debut book by one of America's most acclaimed young journalists illuminates the inner lives of ordinary people doing the extraordinary--lives that are too often hidden, underreported, or ignored by the rest of the world.
The study, Terrorism in Africa: The Evolving Front in the War on Terrorism, represents a research endeavor aimed at increasing scholarly discourse on the ever-expanding threat of terrorism and terrorist-related violence in the region. It offers the most wide-ranging analysis of the sub-national and transnational terrorists groups that have made Africa the second most violent region in the world. Additionally, the study expands the coverage of the multiple dynamics that indicate why terrorist-related violence continues to increase in the region and closes with regional solutions to the threat of terrorism. This collection of essays offers a comprehensive analysis of the states, terrorist groups, and critical issues that have increased the specter of terrorism in Africa. The study is divided into three themes: (1) the diversity of the terrorist threat among states in the region, (2) the regional dynamics and the local response to terrorism, and (3) regional solutions to the threat of terrorism in Africa.
This volume provides a systematic and cross-regional analysis of radicalisation, militancy and violence in West Africa. Concern about terrorism in, or from, West Africa, has been recognised in academic research, and the adoption of militarised approaches to addressing it questioned. However, the basis for that questioning – the need to investigate factors such as the historical and socio-economic roots of militancy – is not developed, nor is it substantiated in existing studies. The significant impact of religiously motivated radicalisation and violence in West Africa upon international security makes it essential to understand the issues of militancy and violence in the region. In this volume, the authors draw upon empirical research in West Africa to develop understanding in these areas. Over the course of several chapters written by leading experts in the field, the book successfully blends historical and conceptual analysis with new empirical research gathered from focus group discussions and research interviews. Each of these core studies is structured around five interrelated issues: tracing the antecedents of radicalisation; monitoring trends; identifying actors; anticipating possibilities; and analysing the strength of existing preventive mechanisms. This book will be of much interest to students of African security, African politics, radicalisation, political Islam, war and conflict studies and security studies in general.
Over the past two decades, the rapid emergence and spread of both local and transnational extremist organisations has become a primary source of insecurity in Africa. Extremist organisations represent the fluid and variable nature of conflict systems today and are at the heart of some of Africa's most enduring conflicts. Moreover, the inability of African states to contain the threat of extremism, or of heavy-handed security responses, has led to the loss of thousands of lives, displaced millions, and deeply impacted the continent's democratisation and development goals. This is the second anthology published by Good Governance Africa (GGA) on the topic of extremism and political violence in Africa. Extremisms in Africa, one of the first anthologies of its kind on this topic to be authored - and published - on the African continent, provided an account of how extremist groups arose in Africa and the various ways in which they have harnessed their global agendas to local conflict dynamics and structural challenges, enabling them to exploit the grievances of individuals and communities for their cause. This anthology, Extremisms in Africa Volume 2, looks forward, giving special attention to the ways in which emergent trends, global geopolitics and conflict dynamics merge to impact upon the African continent. To this end, we have sought to engage diverse topics ranging from ecological concerns surrounding climate change and migration, the implications of such human movement for modern-day trafficking and slavery, and the roles of women and youth. State responses to extremisms on the African continent are not uniform; the capacity of individual states to detect/identify, police, investigate and prosecute is highly variable. At the most fundamental level, extremisms are ripe to arise in contexts where governments are failing, especially when democracy is on the wane. This anthology identifies some of the most pressing challenges in addressing extremisms today and provides chapters that could offer actionable policy insights to governments and civil society. Given the nature of Africa's geopolitical landscape, state and security services alone cannot prevent extremism. It will take a 'whole-of-society' approach, where government, civil society, academia, communities, families, and individuals collaborate to better understand the local dynamics of recruitment and radicalisation and develop context-specific strategies in response. This anthology will hopefully provide practitioners with improved insight into some of the key challenges and potential solutions in preventing extremism, while also being of interest to the general reader.
The topics of extremism, violent extremism, and radicalization leading to terrorism have constituted an increasingly prominent area of policy interest and donor support in recent years, globally and in the western Balkans. Counterterrorism initiatives, as well as efforts to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE), often reveal the need for broader reform, peacebuilding, and democratization strategies. While foreign donors and domestic authorities tend to focus on ISIS-inspired violent jihadism, in many countries in the region, and particularly in the case of Serbia, there are other forms of extremism—namely far-right nationalism, violent hooliganism, and neo-Nazi movements—that are often considered to be more of an imminent threat, particularly as they are often viewed as examples of “normalized” political expression. The dynamics of reciprocal radicalization, in which competing extremisms feed off of, reinforce, and even need one another, can create seemingly intractable conflict spirals of escalation and violence. This volume explores these dynamics in Serbia through original research, taking fresh perspectives that demonstrate that Serbia is vulnerable to many types of extremism, which can best be prevented by achieving the liberal, democratic, rights-based reforms that have remained elusive for more than two decades. This broad and holistic approach is important for Serbia and its neighbors as the security lens through which most research has been focused to date has done little to explain the deep and structural dynamics of radicalization and extremism in the region.
Violent Islamic extremism is affecting a growing number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some, jihadi Salafi organizations have established home bases and turned into permanent security challengers. However, other countries have managed to prevent the formation or curb the spread of homegrown jihadi Salafi organizations. In this book, Sebastian Elischer provides a comparative analysis of how different West and East African states have engaged with fundamentalist Muslim groups between the 1950s and today. In doing so, he establishes a causal link between state-imposed organizational gatekeepers in the Islamic sphere and the absence of homegrown jihadi Salafism. Illustrating that the contemporary manifestation of violent Islamic extremism in sub-Saharan Africa is an outcome of strategic political decisions that are deeply embedded in countries' autocratic pasts, he challenges conventional notions of statehood on the African continent, and provides new insight into the evolving relationships between secular and religious authority.
The Islamist Challenge and Africa explores Islamist militancy in Africa south of the Sahara, one of the most dangerous regions in the world. More people have died from political conflict in Africa than in any other place on earth. Between 1999 and 2008, Africa experienced thirteen major armed conflicts, the highest of any region. Between 1993 and 2014 Africa witnessed no less than 50 per cent of the world’s genocides and politicides. The Islamist Challenge examines, (1) al-Shabab, an al-Qaeda ally, (2) al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, (3) Boko Haram, an ISIS ally and (4) other Islamist insurgencies among Africans. Boko Haram alone may have killed as many as 31, 000 mostly African civilians since 2009, a figure that ranks among the highest in the world. Boko Haram’s leader has threatened the West, the US and its President, making his challenge both African and international despite the fact that most Americans have never heard of him. But the Paris attacks of 2015 with roots in France’s 2005 “riots” by mostly brown and black militants with links to North and West Africa suggests the danger is no less real. Africa has never been a priority among policy makers and is the only world region whose top military command center, AFRICOM is located a continent away in Stuttgart, Germany. But a 6,000-page classified report released in 2018 after the ambush and killing of four US soldiers in Niger in 2017 suggests that this may be about to change. The Islamist Challenge examines Islamist militancy’s longstanding presence among Africans, Islamist militancy’s distinct ideological features among Africans and ways to minimize if not eliminate its violence. One critic describes the challenge as one that presents a choice not between war and peace but between war and endless war! Whether this is true or not, a change in Africa’s status among policy makers is long overdue. The adage: let not the important be the enemy of the urgent may be a warning to policy makers to abandon the error of marginalizing Africa and Africans before it is too late. The Islamist Challenge underscores this warning.
Over the last fifteen years, Pakistan has come to be defined exclusively in terms of its struggle with terror. But are ordinary Pakistanis extremists? And what explains how Pakistanis think? Much of the current work on extremism in Pakistan tends to study extremist trends in the country from a detached position—a top-down security perspective, that renders a one-dimensional picture of what is at its heart a complex, richly textured country of 200 million people. In this book, using rigorous analysis of survey data, in-depth interviews in schools and universities in Pakistan, historical narrative reporting, and her own intuitive understanding of the country, Madiha Afzal gives the full picture of Pakistan’s relationship with extremism. The author lays out Pakistanis’ own views on terrorist groups, on jihad, on religious minorities and non-Muslims, on America, and on their place in the world. The views are not radical at first glance, but are riddled with conspiracy theories. Afzal explains how the two pillars that define the Pakistani state—Islam and a paranoia about India—have led to a regressive form of Islamization in Pakistan’s narratives, laws, and curricula. These, in turn, have shaped its citizens’ attitudes. Afzal traces this outlook to Pakistan’s unique and tortured birth. She examines the rhetoric and the strategic actions of three actors in Pakistani politics—the military, the civilian governments, and the Islamist parties—and their relationships with militant groups. She shows how regressive Pakistani laws instituted in the 1980s worsened citizen attitudes and led to vigilante and mob violence. The author also explains that the educational regime has become a vital element in shaping citizens’ thinking. How many years one attends school, whether the school is public, private, or a madrassa, and what curricula is followed all affect Pakistanis’ attitudes about terrorism and the rest of the world. In the end, Afzal suggests how this beleaguered nation—one with seemingly insurmountable problems in governance and education—can change course.
