African Security

ISSN: 1939-2206 (Print) 1939-2214 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uafs20

Combating Violent Extremism in Africa: Terrorism

and Piracy

Temitope B. Oriola & W. Andy Knight

To cite this article: Temitope B. Oriola & W. Andy Knight (2019): Combating Violent Extremism in
Africa: Terrorism and Piracy, African Security, DOI: 10.1080/19392206.2019.1678230

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206.2019.1678230

Published online: 14 Oct 2019.

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AFRICAN SECURITY
https://doi.org/10.1080/19392206.2019.1678230

EDITORIAL

Combating Violent Extremism in Africa: Terrorism and

Piracy

Terrorism and piratical acts continue to be major security challenges in Africa. This
combined issue of African Security (volume 12, issues 3/4) brings a critical focus on
attempts to combat these virulent forms of violent extremism on Africa’s West and East
Coasts: Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin and piracy in Djibouti and Kenya.
Combatting violent extremism in the first case has been an abysmal failure, whereas in
the second case there are signs of hope that security sector reforms (SSR), with the
assistance of external capacity-building partners, might be a way of improving govern-
ance to counter extremist actors.
The first paper provides a refreshing insight on the persistence and intractability of
Boko Haram. The paper “‘Weak state’, regional power, global player: Nigeria and the
response to Boko Haram” goes beyond prevailing orthodox understanding of the nature
of the Nigerian state and its failure to defeat Boko Haram. The authors, Mickler, Dan
Suleiman and Maiangwa, pose a fundamental question: Why was there no effective effort
by the Nigerian state or external actors to curb the excessive violence of Boko Haram
from July 2010 to January 2015? That period was marked by significant territorial
expansion of Boko Haram and an attendant exponential increase in mass civilian
casualties. Mickler et al. argue that the character of the international relations of
Nigeria is one critical area that has been neglected by scholars. The paper’s perspective
is a fascinating one with a rather unique conclusion: the patently contradictory trifecta of
state weakness, regional strength and global status immanent in Nigeria created the
conditions leading to the country’s ineffectual response to Boko Haram. State weakness
fostered an inept and corruption-ridden response while Nigeria’s regional and global
stature ensured that regional entities, such as the Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU) and global institutions were unable to
take the kind of combative steps that might have defeated Boko Haram were those
bodies dealing with a less prominent state. The article implies that ostensibly weak states
may in fact be able to deploy their regional and international status and diplomacy in
a way that prevents external intervention in their internal affairs.
In a thematically related piece, Edward Stoddard interrogates the tendency of obser-
vers and scholars to treat Boko Haram as a monolithic entity. In the second paper of this
issue, Stoddard draws on the concept of “revolutionary warfare” to juxtapose the two
factions of Boko Haram – the “Islamic State West Africa Province” (ISWAP) led by Abu
Musab al-Barnawi (until March 2019), and Jama’at Ahl as-Sunnah lid-Da’wah wa’l-Jihad
(“the People Committed to the Prophet’s Teaching and Jihad” or JASDJ) led by
Abubakar Shekau. The concept of revolutionary warfare includes, inter alia revolution-
ary ideology, garnering public support and guerrilla tactics ensconced within an overall
goal – establishing a new socio-political order. The analysis reveals the politico-military
characters of the two factions of Boko Haram and signals that the terrorist organization
is far from a unified movement. Stoddard’s analysis demonstrates that the texture of
ISWAP’s activities evinces a revolutionary warfare approach and an arguably

© 2019 Taylor & Francis

2 EDITORIAL

conscientious effort to gain support among the masses. However, while JASDJ has
revolutionary ambitions, its doctrinal positionality, for instance, in relation to treatment
of civilians (particularly Muslims), influences a mode of operation which contradicts
a revolutionary warfare approach.
These two papers signpost a noticeable growth in nuance, specificity, and sophistica-
tion of the burgeoning scholarship on Boko Haram and failed efforts by the Nigerian
government to combat this violent extremism in West Africa.
The third paper in this issue – “Policing the Seas: Building Constabulary Maritime
Governance in the Horn of Africa – the Case of Djibouti and Kenya”, by Robert McCabe
tackles an equally thorny security issue, this time on the East coast of Africa. The
resurgence of piracy in the Horn of Africa waters since 1995, and a significant spike in
maritime criminal activity, impacted not only Somalia – where most of the pirates
originated – but also presented a security challenge to the coastal states of Djibouti
and Kenya. While there has been a lull in maritime piracy in the Horn of Africa – due in
large part to the strengthening of international maritime processes and laws, the invoca-
tion of Chapter VII of the UN Charter by the UN Security Council, and the capacity
building projects by the European Union (EU), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
(NATO), the Contact group on Piracy off the Coast of Somalia (CGPCS), the United
States Combined Task Forces (CTF) and current and former British Naval missions1 –
the governments of Djibouti and Kenya appear to be in the process of reforming their
domestic maritime sectors and coastal governance architectures.
The author explains that these two East African government have capitalized on assis-
tance from external capacity building providers. His research adds conceptual rigor to the
fields of maritime security studies and Security Sector Reform (SSR) by zeroing in on the
ways in which these two key littoral East African states have proactively reformed their
domestic maritime sectors (with outside help) following a decline in acts of piracy in the
Horn of Africa. The questions McCabe raises in this article about the innovative practices
around maritime governance that both Djibouti and Kenya have adopted are significant. To
what extent can we extrapolate from the novel approach to maritime security governance
used by Djibouti and Kenya and apply it to other jurisdictions?
Given the intermestic nature of the security problems facing much of Africa, it is
becoming clear that these problems may not be solvable by individual African governments
acting on their own. The limitations and challenges facing the domestic maritime security
sectors in East Africa as well those facing governments like Nigeria in the Lake Chad Basin of
West Africa should alert us to the fact that new ways have to be found to combat violent
extremism, from terrorism to piracy. McCabe’s insightful exploration of the attempts to
improve and build maritime constabulary governance through international partnerships,
capacity development and embracing the blue economic agenda, as tried by Djibouti and
Kenya, might lead us to consider applying that East African SSR archetypal model to the
development of a strategy for combatting violent extremism in West Africa. We present this
idea as food for thought and hope that the articles in this combined issue of African Security
will generate fruitful discussions on the way forward with respect to combatting violent
extremism on the African continent.

Note
1. See W. Andy Knight and Afyare A. Elmi, “Combatting Piracy in the Horn of African Waters,”
in The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary International Political Economy, ed.
Timothy M. Shaw, Laura C. Mahrenbach, Renu Modi and Xu Yi-Chong (London:
Palgrave/Macmillan, 2019), 485–500.
 AFRICAN SECURITY 3

Temitope B. Oriola
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
oriola@ualberta.ca
W. Andy Knight
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada