Al Qaeda in Africa: The Creeping Menace to Sub-Sahara's 500 Million Muslims
ABSTRACT Since 2005, Al Qaeda has co-opted as franchises three armed and violent African Islamist movements that had established footholds in both East and West Africa. These movements have been able to exploit anarchy, instability, hopeless poverty, corruption, and ethnic exclusion to impose medieval Islamic governance that sub-Saharan Africans reject but cannot defeat without outside help. The countries currently directly affected are Somalia, Mali, and Nigeria. African governments understand the dangers to their sovereignty presented by Al Qaeda affiliates and have demonstrated determination to do whatever is necessary to stamp them out. All African governments welcome American assistance in their resistance to Islamist extremism, but the United States needs to be careful about keeping its military footprint in Africa as small as possible.
The Making of a Mobile Caliphate State in the African Sahel
The goal of this chapter is to thoroughly understand the context of the dominant jihadist narratives and the nature of their appeal in the Sahelian region. All these jihadist ideologies are based on a peculiar Salafi Radicalism that aimed to transform the state and society by methods of preaching and violence. Therefore, studying and analyzing the principles of the Salafist discourse as a political project helps us to understand its points of strengths and weaknesses. In addition, we can be better look at the future trends and prospects of violent jihadist groups in the African Sahel. The roots of this Islamic discourse as a political project may be attributed to what Lunay and Suarez call the “Islamic domain.” The rise of violent radical Islamism represents drive from the internal political and socioeconomic dynamics evolving in each Sahelian state. However, the struggle and H. Hassan (*) College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Zayed University, Dubai, UAE e-mail: Hhamdy21@yahoo.com; Hamdy.Hassan@zu.ac.ae © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019 S. Ratuva (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_158 755 rivalry of jihadist ideologies after the military defeat of Daesh in Mosul is important at a time when thousands of fighters who have survived the civil wars in Iraq, Syria, and Libya are looking for new jihadist fields.
From GSPC to AQIM: The evolution of an Algerian islamist terrorist group into an Al-Qa'ida Affiliate and its implications for the Sahara-Sahel region
Al-Qa‘ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Algeria’s largest and most active Islamist terrorist organization, was formerly known as the Groupe salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat, and usually referred to by its French acronym (GSPC, Salafist Group for Call/ Preaching and Combat). It began in the late 990s as a splinter faction of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), then fighting a bloody insurgency against the Algerian military government with the goal of establishing an Islamic state. GSPC/AQIM eclipsed its predecessor and remains active not only in Algeria but also in the neighboring Sahelian states. Best known for its raids and bombings against Algerian military bases and convoys, the group has also perpetrated kidnappings of European tourists and terrorist attacks in Mauritania and Mali. It has likewise been linked to planned strikes in Europe, as well as to smuggling and human trafficking across the vast Sahara. This article will ex-