Terrorism 2

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World Report: The Student Journal for International Affairs / September-December 2011 / Jacob Derr
The Next Arena: Options for U.S. Foreign Policy Towards North African Terror By Jacob Derr
On October 16, 2011, the Kenyan government announced it would send troops into Somalia to fight the terrorist group and insurgency al Shabaab. The United States has supported the Kenyan army with drone strikes, which have killed fighters in the region, but the group is believed to be working to blend back into the population to thwart Kenyan peacekeepers. This is expected to prolong a conflict for control over Somalia, and al Shabaabs insurgent tactics previously drove Ethiopian forces from the region. On November 5, the Nigerian group Boko Haram carried out coordinated strikes in the Borno and Yobe states in the north, killing at least 67 people and destroying government offices. The group, which advocates for the implementation of Sharia law throughout Nigeria, has shown increasing sophistication over the past several months.1 On November 9, Al Qaedas organization in the Islamic Maghreb announced that they had taken control of pieces of weaponry that had belonged to the arsenal of Muammar Qaddafi before he was deposed. A leader of the group, Moktar Belmoktar, claimed his groups members have been the main beneficiaries of the revolutions in the Arab world.2

1 Chick, K. (2011, November 06). Nigeria: Boko haram's deadly attacks show islamists' growing reach.
Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/World/terrorism- security/2011/1106/Nigeria-Boko-Haram-s-deadly-attacks-show-Islamists-growing-reach 2 AFP. (2011, November 10). Al-Qaedas north africa branch says got libya weapons. . Retrieved from http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iGyMzNZg5S3ikY0hF5iXhGG8x1Pg?docId=CNG.36 de6969dd783898e1327c54da605a42.01
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These three groups are relatively new to the international scene, with only Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, existing in its present form earlier than 18 months ago. However, all three groups are mightily concerning because of their ability to destabilize North Africa and engulf the region in Islamist insurgencies and safe havens for terrorist activity. An even greater threat is posed should these three groups link themselves with the common goal of overthrowing existing governments in North Africa in favor of implementing Sharia law. General Carter Ham, head of the U.S. militarys African Command, or AFRICOM, claims the three groups have expressed an interest in sharing training and operations and those kinds of activities. And that to me is very, very worrying. He stated further that those three organizations have very explicitly and publicly voiced an intent to target Westerners and the U.S. specifically. The intent of the groups is clear. The questions lie in their capacity.3 As the Middle East theater of the War on Terrorism draws to a close, the United States must settle on how to respond to these groups and their actions. The U.S. has classified all three groups as terrorist organizations, so diplomatic overtures will be difficult, but its experiences in various conflicts since 2001 give it multiple options from which to choose. This paper will address policy options in three dimensions. First, the United States must decide whether to fight a ground war or whether to embrace multilateral action and its support capacities. Second, the United States must choose whether to treat the groups as one contiguous enemy in the transnational Islamic front, or whether these groups are better handled by disaggregation and breaking the links between them, thus fighting local insurgencies. Finally, we must decide whether we are supporting the existing democratic regimes in these countries or treating the democratic aspirations of the insurgents as legitimate.
3 African Islamist groups seen as US threat: general. Reuters, September 15, 2011.
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I will begin my analysis by profiling the three groups, which have evolved in different ways but have also showed similarities. I then move to policy options for the U.S. to pursue, including both general dimensions for counterterrorism and specific policy dimensions related to these three groups. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb Algeria Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb traces its roots to the Islamic Salvation Front, which was likely to win elections in the early 1990s before the government of Algeria canceled the election. There were a number of different factions that arose because of the anger following this lack of representation in the government, and what would become AQIM began as the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, a group advocating Islamist governance. The group sought links with more global jihadists early in the decade, and contributed a great number of suicide bombers to efforts in Iraq.4 During this time, efforts by the Algerian government were successful at either killing members of the group or getting them to lay down their arms in exchange for amnesty. The group needed to rejuvenate its base, but it could not remain a purely Algerian organization. In the mid 2000s, while the group moved into African Sahel countries like Mali and Niger, it also worked to strengthen its ties to the Al Qaeda core via Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who integrated them. The global reach of the group has been somewhat lacking, and its dependence on the drug trade and other crimes has somewhat weakened the purity of its ideological statement. Yet it also has been going through something of a revival thanks to safe havens in ungoverned territory in the Sahel and the arms the group claims to have recently stolen
4 Thornberry, W., & Levy, J. (2011). Al qaeda in the islamic maghreb. Center for Strategic and International
Studies, Retrieved from http://csis.org/publication/al-qaeda-islamic-maghreb
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from Libya during the NATO and rebel fight against Muammar Qaddafi. The group is now fully an ideological hybrid, with a lack of distinction between the original regional insurgent elements and the global jihadist goals shared by the AQ corea pan-Islamic Caliphate and summary overthrow of regimes standing in the way. The United States must consider its stated opposition to placing troops inside foreign countries against the very real possibility that, with weak governance and safe havens to the south and now the north, AQIM has great expansion possibilities. Libya may be used as a lightning rod in much the same way as Iraq was.5 Furthermore, AQIMs attacks, while somewhat less frequent than those of our other two groups, are almost always more bloody. Al Shabaab Somalia Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen (HSM or Movement of Striving Youth), more colloquially known as al-Shabab or The Lads, began as a member of the Islamic Courts Union, and since 2006 has been engaged in an insurgency against the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia and foreign powers such as Ethiopia and Kenya, which have placed troops in the country to aid the TFG as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia, or AMISOM. The first stage of the group began when the generally more moderate ICU was driven from Somalia by the Ethiopian troops, and al Shabaab proceeded to stop the Southern drive of the Ethiopian troops as an insurgent group in South-Central Somalia. Without the moderating voice of the larger ICU leadership, Islamic extremist elements tightened their hold over al

5 Swami, P. (2011, March 25). Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-qaeda links . The
Telegraph. Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/8407047/Libyan-rebel- commander-admits-his-fighters-have-al-Qaeda-links.html
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Shabaab, which led to it becoming much more entrenched ideologically.6 An Islamist group advocating the overthrow of the TFG and the removal of foreign elements, it also looks much like a classical insurgency waging asymmetrical warfare against the TFG, and it provides muchneeded services in the South such as policing, judicial action, and welfare. By 2008, however, the group began a rapid transformation into a globalized group aligned with Al Qaeda against Western targets outside the nation itself. During this time, the group also began using suicide attacks against both military elements and civilians. The guerrilla element comprised of ethnic Somalis has not disappeared, but it appears to now coexist with those who would recast Al Shabaabs struggle not as a regional one but as a global struggle to connect the horn of Africa jihad to the one led by al Qaeda and its leader Sheikh Osama Bin Laden.7 Perhaps the greatest fear of some analysts is that al Shabaab will splinter into multiple segments. The insurgent elements will have to moderate themselves to have a chance at legitimate leadership of parts of Somalia, and have to deal day to day with issues regarding aid to central Somalians and famine. This belies the intellectual purity present in other elements. Whether they defeat the TFG and AMISOM is irrelevant; the elements that have led to its realignment and commitment to the pan-Islamic caliphate will very likely turn their attentions to other countries in East Africa.8
6 Hanson, S. (2011). Backgrounder: al shabaab. Council on Foreign Relations, Retrieved from
http://www.cfr.org/somalia/al-shabaab/p18650
7 Sarah Childress, Somalias Al Shabaab to Ally with Al Qaeda. Wall Street Journal, February 2, 2010,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204575038674123215854.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_ MIDDLENexttoWahtsNewsTop. 8 Wise, R. (2011). Al shabaab. AQAM Futures Project Case Study Series, 1(2), 11. Retrieved from http://csis.org/publication/al-shabaab.
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Boko Haram Northern Nigeria Boko Haram is a Northern Nigerian Islamic sect that seeks to implement Sharia law throughout Nigeria.9 The name Boko Haram was given to the group by Nigerians, and is used in a pejorative sense to mean Western education is sin or Westernism is forbidden. The group formed in 2002 in Maiduguri and moved to Yobe state in 2004 as a group advocating Islamic culture and launching attacks against local police. The stated aspiration of the group is to institute Sharia law in the Northern Nigerian statesa Sharia law they say was previously instituted in name only. In July of 2009, the Nigerian police began to investigate the group after receiving information that they sought to arm themselves. The group attacked a police station, and the ensuing violence with police in two northern cities led to the deaths of almost 700 people. The leader of the group, Ustaz Mohammed Yusuf, was then captured at the end of July and executed by the police several hours later. The group was relatively quiet for almost a year. In July 2010, Abubakar Shekau, a former deputy leader of the group, claimed leadership of the group and claimed that it would now attack western influences in Nigeria. It was at this point that the group went into its second stage, becoming more of a terrorist group than a gang or insurgency, and began attacks on markets, politicians and their families, public gatherings, and on August 26, 2011, claimed responsibility for an attack on the UN Headquarters in Abuja. This was the first recorded suicide attack in Nigerias history, and it represents a level of violence and technological sophistication the group had not previously displayed.10 Most recently, coordinated attacks in Borno and Yobe states killed close to 70 people at the beginning of November. Earlier in the year, experts
9 Olugbode, M. (2011, February 02). Nigeria: We are responsible for borno killings, says 6ook haram. All
Africa. Retrieved from http://allafrica.com/stories/201102030036.html. http://www.the-african.org/blog/?p=598
10 Ewi, M. (2011). A new phase for boko haram as un deplores attacks in abuja. ISS Today, Retrieved from
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speculated on reports that the group had made contact with elements from AQIM and alShabaab11, and on November 11th, a member of the Joint Military Task Force in Nigeria claimed that there were perfect links between the two groups: Boko Haram is al-Qaeda.12 U.S. Foreign Policy Options Although the Obama Administration had probably hoped to mop up the excesses and mistakes of the Bush Administrations global war on terror and return the focus to the economy, which has much more political valence, the situation in Africa cannot be ignored not only because of the changes being wrought by the Arab uprisings in other countries, but because these groups look like al Qaeda in the 1990s, when the United States blind eye to safe havens led to September 11th. Unfortunately, the way these groups started is quite different from the way they look now, which complicates U.S. options to engage and neutralize these elements. Below I consider three dimensions of policy the United States must consider in orchestrating its response. Policy A: Engage the groups with U.S. forces, or act in a support capacity and work with international coalitions? When President Bush declared a global War on Terrorism on September 20, 2001, there was a clear understanding among American citizens that we would be fighting a war, in the sense that military boots would hit the ground in search of our enemies. Our first actions after placing CIA in Afghanistan were to invade the country in October of that year. In late 2002, the Bush administration was already preparing its case for military intervention in Iraq.
12 Leigh, K. (2011, August 31). Nigeria's boko haram: Al-qaeda's new friend in africa? Time Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2091137,00.html 12 Reuters. (2011, November 10). Nigerias violent islamists boko haram joining with global jihadists: army. Reuters. Retrieved from http://blogs.reuters.com/faithworld/2011/11/10/nigerias-violent-islamists-boko- haram-joining-with-global-jihadists-army/
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Ultimately, invading a secular leaders country while ignoring evidence that he might not have weapons of mass destruction or have been involved in September 11th was a nearly unilateral decision that cost us the support and goodwill of much of the world. The ensuing conflict stymied the United States in a country it didnt fully understand, and meanwhile we played into Osama bin Ladens narrative with regards to our crusade in the Middle East. The United States Department of Defense is now abundantly aware of the military quagmire that is much of the Muslim world: In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined, as General MacArthur so delicately put it, were the words of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to a class of cadets at West Point. Gates cast serious doubts on the possibilities for regime change in any country where we invade in such a way.13 NATO actions in Libya seem to lend further credence to Gates assertions. Although we are likely just now seeing the tip of the iceberg with regards to effects, good or bad, of our actions, Muammar Qaddafi was routed from his leadership of the country with the efforts of Libyan rebels, supported by clandestine CIA elements on the ground, but mostly by a NATO policy of using targeted air strikes and multilateral action to make decisions about defending the country. We didnt put a single American soldier on the ground, we didnt lose a single American life, and we effectively withdrew our forces at the end of October. Given this information, it might seem a foregone conclusion that the United States would expend no significant military effort in the regionno boots on the ground as it were. Although the United States is suspected of helping to train Kenyan troops and also of pursuing
13 Shanker, T. (2011, February 25). Warning against wars like iraq and afghanistan. The New York Times.
Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/world/26gates.html
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drone strikes in the region, it is unclear their level of involvement, and analysts are debating whether they sanctioned the ingress of Kenyan troops into Somalia to engage al Shabaab.1415 It appears as of this writing that the United States has once again taken on a support and advisory capacity in the conflict. General Ham attested to the fact that the Obama Administration was looking for a hands-off, non-US-centric solution to issues arising in his region: we seek African solutions to African problems. And I think, for us at U.S. Africa Command, the corollary to that is that, in the long run, Africans are better able to address African security challenges.16 He emphasized that while some leaders need a little help, the United States has no interest in taking the lead in a ground war. At the same time, however, the United States could gain by using its own troops in African countries in certain situations, in a way that would be markedly more difficult without the use of U.S. troops. For one, while the United States has been working to augment and further train militaries and build up economies in the African Sahel, the chances for expansion of AQIM, coupled with the volatile nature of the weapons they now likely have taken from Libya, make it very important that the United States adapt if troops are needed to engage AQIM members. The group has a very destabilizing presence in the Sahel region, an area without much economic development, effective governance, or counterterrorism capabilities even approaching those of the Algerian government. Furthermore, the group may also be pushing further south to

14 Samora, M. (2011, November 13). America's role in continent's strife. Daily Nation/All-Africa. Retrieved
from http://allafrica.com/stories/201111130186.html
15 Azikiwe, A. (2011, November 11). French ships, u.s. drones attack somalia as kenyan troops invade. Centre
for Research on Globalisation. Retrieved from http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27597 16 General Carter F. Ham, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Military Strategy Forum, October 4, 2011.
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link with Boko Haram in Nigeria.17 We have already spoken about the mutability of this group in particular which, in response to successful counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts that were siphoning off fighters and sympathizers, simply moved and recast its operations. If the next stage of its development is truly in the Sahel, the stakes may be too high to work at training African troops to solve what is no longer an African problem. There are also, finally, some misgivings about the effectiveness of the United Nations and other international organizations in combating terrorism, as the organization has been unable to define terrorism in general, likely because the term has political implications for member countries which seek to protect their own interests.18 While the United Nations organizations that fall outside of the Secretariat, General Assembly or Security Council do excellent work to mitigate factors such as poverty, lack of opportunity, and disenfranchisement that are recognized as root causes of terrorism, it remains doubtful whether the timetable I am talking about would really make these effective neutralizing factors.19 The United States ultimately has to decide what type of war it wants to fight. If it wasnt made abundantly clear by the humbling experiences of asymmetric warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. will almost certainly be engaging these groups for a long period of time. The idea of engaging terror groups in another unfamiliar continent for an undetermined period of time not only has very little political play whatsoever but also goes against the advice of the former Secretary of Defense. However, one might say that the conflict gets more complex, and thus harder to neutralize, with each passing day. In a month, Boko Haram may not just be a 17 Thornberry, W., & Levy, J. (2011). Al qaeda in the islamic maghreb. Center for Strategic and International Studies, Retrieved from http://csis.org/publication/al-qaeda-islamic-maghreb
18 Shirkey, Z. Why the UN is ill-suited to help defeat terrorism. Pp. 277. Debating Terrorism and
Counterterrorism, ed. Stuart Gottlieb. Published by CQ Press, Washington DC, 2010.
19 Rosand, E. The UN is poised to assist against global terrorism. Pp 294. Debating Terrorism and
Counterterrorism, ed. Stuart Gottlieb. Published by CQ Press, Washington DC, 2010.
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Northern Nigerian organization, Al Shabaab may not just be a Somalian insurgency, and AQIM may be utilizing the weapons it claims to have stolen from Libya. All three groups have already become more complex as time has gone on, and it is possible the window for U.S. action is closing. Policy B: Treat the groups as contiguous, or disaggregate them and address conflicts individually? A robust debate is playing out about the importance of the links between the three groups: are they merely ideological sympathies, are they tenuous links, or do they constitute a continuity of aim and tactics? I argue that, for the scope of this paper, this is ultimately immaterial: it is difficult to know information as it is constantly changing and the groups, specifically Al Shabaab and Boko Haram, are engaging in a multitude of terrorist attacks on a daily basis. One can see how not only the terror groups themselves, but perhaps AFRICOM, which must fight for its portion of the decreasing U.S. budget, might stand to gain from aligning tenuously linked groups with the global Al Qaeda threat, which tends to get the money and support flowing. In either case, the U.S. has to decide how it will classify the groups, which will greatly affect its response. If the United States should link the three groups in determining a counterterrorism strategy, it will establish Northern Africa as the next theater in the global War on Terrorism. The United States will have designated regional enemies who, between them, are operating to terrorize civilians in at least three countries and fight peacekeepers and soldiers on a daily basis. The support the United States would likely be able to attain for these efforts will be much higher than that which it would get for fighting three separate conflicts within states. It will also further
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legitimize U.S. attempts at counterterrorism because diplomats will be able to make the argument that the threat is not contained within the sovereign borders of a single region but rather is festering in the ungoverned areas of Northern Africa. The United States will have enormous leverage to treat the African mission as one action, and the classification of insurgents as enemy combatants will likewise probably be easier. If the U.S. chooses to do so, it will also have the ability to build up these countries both militarily and monetarily, and will be able to demand certain results from them as part of a counterterrorism partnership. However, Dr. David Kilcullen writes that counterinsurgency strategists should primarily be concerned with disaggregating terrorist groups. In essence, he feels the United States got it wrong by declaring a global war against, essentially, a formless, mutable, adaptable, and ultimately differentiated threat, elements of which had never attacked the United States before and would always be unlikely to do so.20 Further, the manner in which the United States fought the enemy before adopting a hearts and minds approach in Iraq (a strategy it is trying to replicate, with variable degrees of success, in Afghanistan) actually sought to make it easier for the enemy to adapt and never really got at the heart of the group. The heart of the group is in the linkages between and among differentiated terrorist groups. Al Qaeda in particular has been very adept at creating the narrative of Western crusaders (a narrative that, admittedly, the United States has played into at times) to make previously local or even regional conflicts a part of the global jihad. The U.S. actions in Iraq served only to bolster Al Qaedas claims and to recruit Sunnis in that region as fighters against the United States, and, regardless of the fate of Al Shabaab and Boko Haram, we can already confirm with certainty that Ayman Al-Zawahiri took a group of
20 Kilcullen, D. (2004). Countering global insurgency. Small Wars Journal.
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Muslims who were outraged at being excluded from the electoral process and effectively rebranded them as global jihad fighters in creating AQIM. In this manner, our job might actually be made easier by disaggregating and delinking these groups from one another. For one, the differences between the groups are varied and have already been highlighted in the portion above. In addition, as irrational and politically and morally indefensible as terrorism is, the three groups have not only laid out specific and not unreasonable reasons for their original existence, but have also to some degree acted to distribute services that governments around them have failed to provide. Boko Haram might best be fought by emphasizing the inherently defensible right to selfgovernance. Observers in Nigeria have pointed out that the Sharia law instituted in the North of the country in the 1990s was really Sharia in name only. Furthermore, the wealth is more heavily concentrated in the South, so economic disenfranchisement has led to youth recruitment efforts. Finally, the extrajudicial actions of police in Nigeria against Boko Haram members have encouraged retaliation and perpetuated the cycle of violence.21 The U.S. might be better served by encouraging Nigerian authorities to hold police accountable. In addition, there is much to be gained by negotiating with the group. The group has shown a previous propensity towards economic inducements, and recent information indicates some splintering among the group. Kilcullen would argue that its not about destroying or converting every terrorist, but about convincing enough of the population that the terrorists have nothing to offer or that there is some other legitimate path to satisfaction that the actions lose their allure.

21 Kendhammer, Brandon and Scarcelli, Marc. Lecture in POLS 490A Terrorism, at Ohio University. October
12, 2011.
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AQIM, similarly, started as a group that had an election canceled from underneath them. The fear is that the organization has existed in its present form too long to be that easy to categorize anymore, but we have some reason to believe the United States and the African Union would be able to siphon off more fighters from the main force with amnesty and democratic overtures. The fighters in the Sahel, meanwhile, are lacking in basic provisions, and are hiding among civilians lacking in basic provisions. While there is a debate on whether Islamic fundamentalism itself is central to AQIMs terrorism, certainly the authority and legitimacy held by terrorists in poor areas comes from their ability to help people economically, as our experiences in Iraq have taught us.22 A hearts and minds approach specifically might be more effective than a counterterrorism strategy focusing on the area as a whole would be, particularly in routing hardened fighters from their bases in the Sahel. Al Shabaab, as mentioned above, is really two distinct entities. Ethnic Somalis were the first fighters in the group. Their efforts began as to expel foreign forces in their country, and what they do may be considered counterinsurgency against the TFG and these forein elements. They have provided for the people in their care to a certain extent, and those same people have held them responsible for inaction during the famine this year, which is the worst the Horn of Africa has experienced in 20 years.23 Whats more, they have been responsive to some of the requests of the peoplethey have mostly choked off foreign aid, but they have also distributed it among their people. This looks like the type of institution that, perhaps, has some legitimate claim to governance. At the same time, I have reported on the influx of foreign fundamentalist
22 Von Hippel, K., & Piazza, J. A. (2010). Does poverty serve as a root cause of terrorism?. Debating Terrorism 23 VOA News/AFP. (2011, September 22). Al-shabab returns somali refugees to famine zones. Voice of
and Counterterrorism, ed. Stuart Gottlieb., CQ Press, Washington.
America. Retrieved from http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/Al-Shabab-Returns-Somali- Refugees-to-Famine-Zones-130381593.html
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fighters into the group, who will almost certainly not be negotiated with. If anything, they pose the greatest threat of destabilizing the rest of the Horn, if not as a part of Al Shabaab, then as fighters making use of an ungoverned region. Therefore, it is also possible that disaggregating these groups and keeping them from becoming one global insurgency will make them less dangerous, and will also give us opportunities for peaceful solutions mixed with military tactics. However, disaggregation will also limit the resources of the United States, as they will be dealing with local conflicts in three different African countriesa balancing act its not clear we can handle. It remains to be seen whether the African solutions to African problems alluded to by General Ham are best served by linking or breaking apart the groups in our foreign policy. Policy C: Promote the democratic rights of the organizations, or reinforce the status of the governments in power? The United States, in public rhetoric, has always favored the support of democratically elected leaders and liberal democracy for peoples all over the globe. However, the federal government has often failed to live up to this promise, and events such as the Arab Spring have challenged our ways of dealing with the worldwe have chosen to support the revolutions, but doing so is a complete reversal from our support for leaders such as Hosni Mubarak, and our somewhat normalized relations with despots like Muammar Qaddafi. It may seem a foregone conclusion that lack of democracy is a factor tending to support terrorism, but the facts of the matter are very real in showing us that, especially in a country like Libya, Muammar Qaddafis secular despotism might have mitigated the ability of terrorists to operate in his country, and we have tough questions to ask about what type of government might take its place.
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There is reason to believe that, should the United States support democracy in countries like Algeria, Nigeria, and Somalia, its quite possible the governments that would come to power would be Islamist and unaligned with U.S. interests in the region. Some argue that, in supporting democracy, we really should be working on supporting secular liberal democratic institutions that can compete with Islamist institutions, not simply supporting the idea of determination by the people.24 In addition, the period of democratization is often when countries are waylaid by extremist elements, especially since the Islamist elements we are looking at here might be prone to subverting the majority to promote their aims of instituting Sharia law.25 Those arguing against the institution would say that, while we may hope, long-term, to moderate Islamist elements, in the short term we are the nation that has had dubious interactions with most of the Muslim world, and the country that played right into Osama bin Ladens narrative about invading an oil-rich country by our actions in Iraq. The United States, therefore, may decide it is not in its best interests to promote the rule of all the people, especially if those people are likely to stand against us. This would cause us to support Goodluck Jonathan and his government in Nigeria, which does indeed have the support of much of the Christian south, and we would work to moderate the northern elements. In Somalia, the United States would unabashedly support the transitional government and African Union troops from Kenya, as we are currently doing. In Algeria and other poor countries in the Sahel region, the United States would promote stronger democratic and military institutions to

24 F. Gregory Gause III, Democracy, Terrorism, and American Policy in the Arab World. Debating Terrorism 25 F. Gregory Gause III, Democracy, Terrorism, and American Policy in the Arab World. Debating Terrorism
and Counterterrorism, ed. Stuart Gottlieb. Pps 236-239. Published by CQ Press, Washington, 2010. and Counterterrorism, ed. Stuart Gottlieb. Pps 236-239. Published by CQ Press, Washington, 2010.
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combat Islamist militancy. We would be promoting the regimes currently in power, rather than giving credence to the aims of the insurgent groups. However, the argument can also be made that real political choice for the people, while potentially placing into power a government unfriendly to United States interests, is a vital component of the fight against terrorism. Much of the evidence about these three groups would tend to support this view. First there is a theoretical perspective. In his paper Countering Global Insurgency, Dr. Kilcullen establishes an operational concept for counterinsurgency: the aimis to return the parent society to a stable, peaceful mode of interactionon terms favourable to Security Forces.26 In using military forces to dominate the environment and take the insurgency off the boil in allowing other elements to affect the countrys politics, we must promote paths to constitutional resolution of legitimate Muslim aims, if not necessarily guaranteeing widespread democratic acceptance of those aims. In other words, we have to give the people the ability to resolve their legitimate grievances, but we do not have to guarantee to one side or the other the right to rule. There is some indication that this would actually be an effective strategy at reducing support for extreme ideals in these countries. The entire impetus that begat AQIM was that Salafist Muslims in Algeria were actually poised to win a national election, but the election was canceled before it could take place. Boko Haram started as a group advocating for the right to govern the north of Nigeria according to Sharia law. Al Shabaab governs wide swaths of territory in the southern part of the country, and part of their power has come in part because they have provided services to people in these areas that have not been provided by the transitional government based in Mogadishu. The TFG doesnt even control the entire city of Mogadishu,
26 Kilcullen, D. (2004). Countering global insurgency. Small Wars Journal.
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and yet they are supported by the United States government. If the organization governing the hinterland is providing services to their people at a much greater rate than the recognized international government, is the United States supporting the wrong elements in Somalia? Part of the reason for the success of Algerian counterterror efforts that have pushed AQIM into the Sahel is that the government has shown a propensity toward amnesty for former fighters. Boko Haram is currently split into several factions over willingness to negotiate for monetary settlements or democratic engagement with the government. It is also likely the extrajudicial killing of its members has perpetuated violence.27 Al Shabaab is, by some accounts, really two groups at this point: one is made up of mostly ethnic Somalis, who would be more likely to lay down arms if engaged democratically and allowed control of its territory. The other group is composed of international extremist elements, and there is good reason to believe these people would not be engaged, but would leave the organization for other opportunities in the region. In the wake of the United States reversals of support when choosing to support young people and even religious elements in the Arab Spring over their wholly undemocratic, American-friendly leaders, the United States indicated it might be willing to turn a page on the past way it has handled international support. If we should continue this line of thinking, we might not always get the results we desire from a realist perspective. The people in charge might represent the majority of the country, but that majority might be inhospitable to our interests. However, bringing those people to the table might be the most effective way to neutralize terrorist threats. The United States must consider strategic goals in Northern Africa when

27 Kendhammer, Brandon. Lecture in POLS 490A Terrorism, at Ohio University. October 12, 2011.
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deciding whether to promote the interests of the current leaders of the country or to allow liberal democracy of the insurgencies and terrorist groups. Conclusion In the 2002 National Security Strategy, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice for the first time established that weak and failed states would pose the greatest security threats to the United States in the 21st century. The failure of the states to address the democratic and living demands of their people has been a common denominator in the development and fostering of Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. The United States is faced with an African challenge that mirrors the situation that was allowed to exist throughout the 1990sthe situation that led to former mujahedeen fighters armed by the United States to plan and execute devastating attacks while operating under the auspices of despotic governments in safe haven countries. At the time of this writing, Boko Haram and Al Shabaab are in the news daily for police skirmishes and kidnappings of foreigners, and AQIMs modus operandi implies that, while they will attack less often, their attacks are very likely to be more deadly and shocking to our consciousnessand, if they are to be believed, theyve gotten their hands on Qaddafis weaponry. The possibility of these groups not only becoming more entrenched and more marginalized, but also linked, establishes the distinct possibility that the United States will face a threat that, while it already has the stated intent to target Westerners and Americans, will most certainly have the capabilities to do so. There are, of course, dozens of dimensions to U.S. foreign policy, and I cannot begin to expound upon them here. Likewise, infinitely more nuanced profiles of the three groups are needed to formulate policy, but I would exceed my scope to do so. Suffice it to say that the U.S.
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has a certain degree of choice in how to combat this enemy. Before this Spring, the United States had not effectively proven its ability to fight an asymmetric war without landing U.S. troops on the ground. We have now, however, proven our ability to partner with local rebels to use our technological advantages and fight a whole new type of war. The United States must decide whose side they are on, how they are going to fight the groups, and whether they are going to aggregate or de-link the conflicts. Their choices of policy will greatly affect the type of war we fight and our chances at success.

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