Extremisms in Africa Volume 2

INTRODUCTION

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 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.

In developing this anthology, Extremisms in Africa Volume 2, we wanted to look forward and give 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, to the implications of such human movement for modern-day trafficking and slavery, and the roles of women and youth. While these last two groups are often viewed passively, we show how women demonstrate an active and powerful role in the promotion of extremist groups and how youth gravitate towards ‘alternative realities’ when they feel disenfranchised and excluded from the possibility of realising future aspirations.

Radicalised trajectories can start early on with indoctrination in religious schools followed by the uptake of a cause around which youth rally as a test of coming of age. We learn of the dangers of online recruitment and interactive social media for those at risk or in vulnerable circumstances. Ethical dilemmas abound. How does one approach the notion of humanitarian aid to those involved with extremist operations? At which point, if any, does one surrender one’s access to human rights? Post-conflict, challenges arise that are associated with the reintegration of returning combatants.

State responses to extremisms on the African continent are not uniform. With increasing extremist threat detection comes increasing securitisation, to the extent that in certain countries migrants and foreigners are treated with suspicion. That said, the capacity of individual states to detect and identify, police, investigate and prosecute is highly variable. Issues arise with respect to the conceptualised understanding of non-conventional threats to national security, multi-factor risk assessments, targeted interventions and inter-state cooperation. The murky world of financing for extremists is met with a technocratic (albeit necessarily-so) response, which has significant consequences for NGOs and civil society groups.

At the most fundamental level, extremisms are ripe to arise in contexts where governments are failing, especially when democracy is on the wane. The reverse of this arises from the perspectives of local communities, who, when not in receipt of services, development or adequate coverage and infrastructure with concomitant livelihood generation, are prey for predatory opportunists to take root. South Africa provides a pressing current context in which extremist activities are on the rise in relation to movements in neighbouring countries, within a volatile ‘eastern seaboard’ region.

As such, this anthology identifies some of the most pressing contemporary and emergent challenges in addressing extremisms today and provides chapters that could offer actionable policy insights to governments and civil society, accordingly. Given the nature of Africa’s geopolitical landscape, the state and its 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 to develop context-­specific strategies in response. Our hope is that this next anthology in our national security series continues to 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 attentive to African politics and societies.

Alain Tschudin

CHAPTER 1

Democracy and Violence in Africa: How Lack of Democracy Fuels Violent Extremism

William Gumede

¹

Introduction

Violent extremism by non-state actors, whether by lone individuals or organised groups, or occurring as spontaneous communal violence, has increased to alarming new levels across the African continent. The recent explosion of incidents of non-state violence, ranges from religious ones – whether Islam or Christian – to communal and political militia violence.

Religious violence takes various forms: lone extremists meting out violence against others, organised religious groups using violence against others, or communal violence in which a community of one religious group attacks another community of a different religion.

Political militia violence ranges from politically-organised groups to individual gangs using the cover of politics to unleash violence, as they seek to control resources or territories. Communal violence could be unorganised groups, whether political, ethnic or religious, unleashing violence against communities perceived to be different from them. Violent extremism can ultimately lead to genocide, civil war and the break-up of countries.

Since the end of colonialism after the Second World War, the focus has generally been on African states unleashing violence against citizens, which has set back development, started civil wars and caused the break-up of countries.² However, these new sources of violence represent new threats to peace, development and nationhood in Africa. These new waves of violence happen in failed or authoritarian African states and those with limited democracy. But it also happens in states where democracy appears relatively consolidated: formal elections take place, there are institutional rules of the game, and where the state is reasonably capacitated.

Michael Ignatieff argues that democracies, ‘thanks to rights they entrench, the due process rules they observe, the separation of powers they seek to enforce, and the requirement of democratic consent’, are ‘guided by a constitutional commitment to minimise the use of dubious means – violence, force, coercion, and deception – in the government of citizens’.³

Lack of, or poor-quality democracy, which causes widespread marginalisation, resentment and anger, is at the heart of almost all rising non-state violence of all forms in Africa. Violence, in its turn, undermines the quality of democracy, as it prevents citizens from participating equally in public decisions, freely associating with others or freely voicing their opinions. Because of the lack of, or poor-quality democracy, conflicts in many African countries have not been channelled from violent confrontation to contestation within democratic institutions and rules.⁴

Trends in the Literature on Violence in Africa

A number of research surveys have shown that the presence of democracy decreases violence.⁵ For the purpose of this chapter, violence will include both the incidents where it is used purposefully to secure objectives, and those where it is a response to an injustice or a defence mechanism.⁶

A large proportion of the research on violence in Africa argues that it is mainly due to a weak state that has lost control over its territory, people and institutions.⁷ When the state lacks legitimacy it is likely that violence as a solution to solve problems will become acceptable.⁸ Most African states are generally weak, underdeveloped and lack capacity.⁹ In some countries, for example Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), there is a total breakdown of the state.¹⁰ Many African states struggle to prevent violence because they are undeveloped.¹¹

Other examples have shown how deep poverty increases the likelihood of violence in a country. Some surveys have revealed that countries with low levels of GDP have higher levels of violence.¹²

Research has also shown how the ethnicisation of politics naturally increases violence across societies, particularly in cases where one ethnic group is in power and the ruling party and leader are solely drawn from that group, excluding ethnic communities not in power.¹³ Mass group grievances based on the exclusion from receiving public goods, participation in politics and the economy, often lead to violence.¹⁴

Arend Lijphart argues that in deeply divided societies majority rule runs the risk of ‘majority dictatorship and civil strife’.¹⁵ ‘What such societies need is a democratic regime that emphasises consensus instead of opposition, that includes rather than excludes, and that tries to maximise the size of the ruling majority instead of being satisfied with a bare majority: consensus democracy.’¹⁶

African Country and Regional and International Responses to Violence

The current African, regional and continental strategy to deal with fighting non-state violence has been to create special multi-country military task forces to fight these groups with might. Developed countries often provide the funding, on occasion troops, especially the US and France, and equipment, military advice and capacity. Some African governments, such as Chad, have encouraged communities under attack to establish self-defence units.

The countries in the Lake Chad region in central Africa – Chad, Niger, Benin, Cameroon and Nigeria – where Boko Haram and the Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP) are active and have joined to form a Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF), a 10 500 person regional military force to combat Boko Haram. The MNJTF was initially established in 1998 by the Lake Chad Basin Commission to fight cross-border banditry, but was reformed in 2014, supported by the African Union (AU). It became operational in 2015. The G5 Sahel military task force was formed in 2014 in Mauritania to fight militia, jihadists and criminal gangs in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. It was endorsed by the AU and the UN Security Council in 2017.

The African Union Regional Taskforce, supported by the UN Security Council, and consisting of troops from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Central African Republic (CAR) and Uganda, was formed in September 2012, dedicated to tracking down the Christian fundamentalist group, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) hiding out in the CAR.

In 2013, the AU created the International Support Mission to the Central African Republic (MISCA) to tackle the communal, ethnic and religious violence/extremism the country had spiralled into, under a mandate from the UN Security Council. In September 2014, it was enlarged to include forces from more countries, and was renamed the United Nations Multi­dimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA).

The AU created the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) in 2007, with UN approval, initially to operate for six months to intervene in the civil war in Somalia and to support local efforts to organise a national reconciliation congress. Its mandate was extended to 2017, after which its responsibilities were transferred to the Somali security forces, based on their readiness.

Following mass violence many African countries have established special tribunals to investigate the causes of violence. For example, the Central African Republic has set up a Special Criminal Court that will have jurisdiction to prosecute human rights violations committed since 2003. In some cases, perpetrators have been tried at the ICC. In 2003, Uganda referred the most senior leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army – including Joseph Kony, Raska Lukwiya, Dominic Ongwen and Okot Odhiambo – to the ICC.

The current African continental strategy to deal with fighting religious terrorism by creating special multi-country military task forces is at best a part-solution to exploding violence. Bringing inclusive democracy, development ethnicity, and religious, ethnic and regional inclusivity to all citizens in an African country is certainly the most effective antidote to violence.

Rising Religious Violence in Africa

Religious fundamentalist violence in the Sahel region

Violence caused by Islamist religious fundamentalists has proliferated in the Sahel region, the area between the Sahara Desert in the north and the Sudan savanna in the south, including countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon, the CAR, Niger, Sudan, South Sudan, Mali, Chad, Mauritania, Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, with its foothold in East Africa, is another of Africa’s deadly Islamic religious fundamentalist groups, carrying out suicide bombings against governments and civilians. Al-Shabaab joined Al-Qaeda in 2012. It started off as a group fighting the Somali government, and it has caused mayhem in East African countries such as Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and Somalia, Djibouti, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa.

Boko Haram, which launched in 2002, has been fighting for a decade to establish an Islamist caliphate in north-east Nigeria. At its formation, Boko Haram was aligned to Al-Qaeda, but in 2015 the group began to support the Islamic State and changed its name to Islamic State West African Province (ISWAP).

Boko Haram split into two factions in 2016 in an ideological dispute over whether to target civilians. One group, led by Abu Mus’ab al-Barnawi, appears to focus on attacking military and government targets. The other splinter group, led by Abubakar Shekau, has been launching suicide bombings against civilians. Islamic State supports the al-Barnawi faction.

Islamist groups, such as Boko Haram, make use of porous borders to move between neighbouring countries. The borders between these countries were arbitrarily drawn by former colonial powers – France, Britain and Germany – often dividing people of the same community. In post-colonial times, these new borders were largely artificial as people moved between them as they had done for ages.

All the countries in the Lake Chad region in central Africa – Chad, Niger, Benin, Cameroon and Nigeria – where Boko Haram is increasingly gaining a foothold, are appallingly poorly governed, pushing excluded communities into religious fundamentalism.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram has killed more than 27 000 people, displaced millions and caused a humanitarian crisis. The 2018 Global Terrorism Index ranked Nigeria as the ‘third most-terrorised country’. The battle against Boko Haram dominated campaigning ahead of the 23 February 2019 presidential elections, with the Islamist group continuing to ambush security forces, launch attacks on civilians, and stage kidnappings. In some parts of northern Nigeria, many voters did not participate in the elections for fear they would be attacked by Boko Haram insurgents.

On election day Boko Haram attacked several towns in Nigeria. Both leading presidential candidates – President Muhammadu Buhari, who was elected in 2015, and Atiku Abubakar, a fellow northern Muslim and former vice-president – promised to tackle Islamist violence.

In its bid to tackle Boko Haram, the Nigerian government has often resorted to autocratic measures. In 2018, it suspended the humanitarian activities of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for allegedly training ‘spies’ supporting Boko Haram.¹⁷ After an international outcry, the ban was reversed.

The Boko Haram insurgency has spread from Nigeria to neighbouring Chad, Niger and Cameroon. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Benin have joined up to form a MNJTF, a 10 500-person regional military force to combat Boko Haram. The establishment of the MNJTF is seen by its supporters as an African solution to an African problem.

When Chad joined the MNJTF force in 2015, pursuing jihadists in neighbouring countries, Boko Haram attacks on its citizens increased. In 2015, Boko Haram raided villages in the Lake Chad region, staging suicide attacks in N’Djamena and Baga Sola and multiple abductions. By the end of 2015, Boko Haram had captured numerous islands on Lake Chad, many of which the government only recaptured in late 2016.

The Chadian government has, controversially, encouraged villages to establish volunteer armed self-defence groups to fight suspected Boko Haram insurgents, which has militarised society. Since 2015 the government has also introduced several states of emergency, giving the government powers to suspend laws of due process to prosecute Boko Haram insurgents. This has also led to the inevitable militarisation of the government.

Freedom of expression, association, and the movement of ordinary citizens have been restricted. The restriction of movement has undermined the economy, as many communities in Chad earn their income through cross-border trade.

Just when the threat of Boko Haram appeared to have been contained, the group killed at least 23 Chadian soldiers on 22 March 2019 in the insurgents’ deadliest attack yet inside Chad. Boko Haram attacks in Chad have displaced more than 100 000 people since 2017. The violence has also re-opened old ethnic differences; the Buduma ethnic community has, for example, been increasingly stigmatised for allegedly aiding Boko Haram.

Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, declared in September 2018, during the country’s presidential election campaign, that the jihadist group was now ‘defeated’ in the country.¹⁸ Boko Haram had launched deadly suicide bombings and attacks in Cameroon’s far north province, which borders Nigeria, forcing more than 250 000 to flee the region.

Cameroon also hosts more than 370 000 refugees from neighbouring countries who have fled Boko Haram, the majority from Nigeria. Violence has halted economic activity in the far north of Cameroon, with agriculture disrupted and food shortages, making thousands dependent on humanitarian aid. Boko Haram’s attacks in Niger are increasingly similar to its attacks in Nigeria. In November 2018, for example, Boko Haram kidnapped 18 girls from two villages in Niger.

Christian fundamentalist violence

Africa has also seen the rise of violent Christian fundamentalist groups, on similar levels to the Islamist groups. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is Africa’s oldest Christian fundamentalist group, and was started in 1987 in northern Uganda by Joseph Kony to fight the autocratic Yoweri Museveni. The LRA was supported by the Sudanese government in revenge for Uganda’s backing of the opposition Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).

In 2000, Uganda passed an amnesty law to allow LRA combatants to give up arms in return for amnesty from prosecution. The law expired in May 2012, but was reinstated a year later following mobilisation by civil society organisations. Attempts to strike a peace deal in 2008 between the LRA and the Ugandan government collapsed, and the conflict has now spilled into the DRC, CAR and South Sudan.

According to UNICEF, the LRA has abducted more than 30 000 children in Uganda, CAR, DRC and South Sudan to use as soldiers, sex slaves and servants.¹⁹ The violence unleashed by the LRA has displaced over three million people. The US Treasury Department has accused the LRA of ‘illicit diamond trade, elephant poaching and ivory trafficking’.²⁰

In 2005, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Kony for crimes against humanity. Kony wants to establish a strict Christian fundamentalist government in Uganda. An AU regional task force, consisting of troops from South Sudan, the DRC, the CAR and Uganda, is dedicated to tracking down the LRA.

More recently, new localised Christian militia groups have also sprung up in many African countries. In the CAR, a Christian militia group, calling themselves the Defence Group for Christians, has launched attacks against Muslims. The CAR, which is 80% Christian and 20% Muslim, has been trapped in a civil war since 2013 between the Christian majority and the Muslim minority, which has left thousands dead and displaced 20% of the population.

In March 2013, the CAR President François Bozizé, a Christian, was overthrown by a Muslim militia coalition known as Seleka, whose leader, Michel Djotodia, then became the first Muslim prime minister. Although Djotodia disbanded Seleka, many armed militants refused to go and they continued as a fighting group. In response to the overthrow of Bozizé, Christians formed their own armed militia, called the ‘anti-balaka’ or the ‘anti-machete’, plunging the country into a cycle of violence.

The CAR violence did not initially start as a dispute between different religious groups, but rather as political opposition to the marginalisation of communities, which later turned into full-scale religious violence. By 2014, the CAR had been divided between the anti-balaka controlling the south and west of the country and the Seleka groups controlling the north and east. More than 1.5 million people have been displaced in a country of five million people. The UN has repeatedly warned that the CAR is on the verge of genocide. Typical of the kinds of attacks perpetrated was an incident on 2 May 2018, when a group armed with hand grenades attacked a Roman Catholic church, Notre Dame de Fatima, killing 15 people and injuring dozens more.

The UN Security Council’s international commission of inquiry on the CAR stated in its December 2014 report that there had been a ‘pattern of ethnic cleansing committed by the anti-balaka in the areas in which Muslims had been living’ following the communal violence in January of that same year.²¹ Most of Bangui’s Muslim population had been displaced because of the violence. Close to 80% of the CAR’s Muslim population fled to neighbouring countries such as Cameroon, Chad and Nigeria, with many of those who stayed forced to convert.

Rising Communal Violence in Africa

Herders and farmers battle over resources in Nigeria

Communal violence, whether political, ethnic or based on religious differences, has increased across Africa. Apart from the appalling violence committed by Boko Haram, communal violence between different communities in Nigeria, whether over religious or ethnic differences, or over public resources such as access to land or grazing, has become a common occurrence, particularly in the country’s central and northern states. The International Crisis Group has estimated that 2 500 Nigerians died in communal violence in 2016.

A case in point was when more than 80 people were killed in June 2018 when armed Fulani Muslim herders opened fire on Christian villages in Plateau State, burning homes and crops and shooting people. The massacre set off a tit-for-tat bloody fight between Fulani Muslims and Christians. Most of this communal violence in Nigeria involves land disputes between settled farmers and cattle herders, who in the past followed nomadic routes to graze and water their livestock.

Changing weather patterns caused by climate change, overgrazing, and a population explosion have unleashed violent battles between the two groups over the shrinking availability of usable land.²² Nomadic herders are often forced to graze and water their animals on already cultivated land, causing farmers to push back. Many of these nomadic herders have formed militia to fight against the farmers, and some of the conflicts that started over land have been manipulated for political or religious regions.

Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, from the Nigerian branch of Transparency International, said: ‘The only solution is that people talk to each other.’ The reason these conflicts have escalated, he said, is a lack of leadership from government and also rising poverty and unemployment in the area. ‘Young people from both sides are victims of the state. They have no jobs, they have no proper orientation or understanding on how to live amicably or in harmony with one another.’²³

Competition in Mali over land morphs into violent religious conflicts

In March 2019, Mali’s prime minister, Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga, fired his senior military officers, including Armed Forces Chief of General Staff M’Bemba Moussa Keita, and the heads of the army and air force, after communal violence claimed the lives of more than 130 Muslim Fulani herders in the village of Ogossagou in central Mali. Maïga also dissolved a militia, called Dan Nan Ambassagou, composed of Dogon farmers, which was accused of being responsible for the violence.

Human Rights Watch has said that 202 people died in communal violence in Mali’s Mopti region in 2018.²⁴ The United Nations Children’s Fund said: ‘Growing insecurity since 2017 has led to an increase in murders, mutilations and the recruitment of children.’²⁵ Over the years, there has been regular violence between the Dogon people, who are farmers, and the Fulani people, who are herders, over grazing territory and water. The Dogon community had established Dan Nan Ambassagou in self-defence.

Hard-line Muslims aligned to Al-Qaeda rose up in the north of the country against the government in 2012. A year later, five countries – Mali, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad – launched the G5 Sahel military task force that was supported by the AU, to dislodge the jihadists. After delays caused by logistical problems, lack of funding and jihadi attacks on infrastructure, the force became operational in 2017.

Although the Mali government signed a peace treaty with key militia in June 2015, non-signatories continue to use violence to secure control of the region. In recent times, jihadis have also exploited local differences over grazing, water and land access between the Muslim Fulani and the Dogon communities. For example, the Islamist Amadou Koufa has been particularly active in recruiting members from the Fulani Muslim community.

Kenyan political competition turns into ethnic violence

In Kenya, the National Rainbow Coalition led by Mwai Kibaki came to power in 2002, and promised a democratic constitution, an end to corruption and the restoration of basic human rights. Once in power, however, the Kibaki government abandoned promises of democratic reform, against a backdrop of rising corruption, a stalling economy and rights abuses.

Then, ahead of elections in December 2007, Kibaki created a new party with a Kikuyu support base, the Party of National Unity, and ran for the presidency. Kibaki won against rival Raila Odinga of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement by 230 000 votes. Riots erupted as the opposition accused Kibaki of vote-rigging. He, meanwhile, had himself sworn in as president, banned public gatherings and the airing of protests by the public broadcaster.

Kenya’s colonial rulers, the British, had favoured the majority Kikuyu ethnic group.²⁶ Jomo Kenyatta, the first post-colonial leader, also privileged the Kikuyu community and marginalised other groups such as the Luo, Luhya and Kisii.²⁷ Outsider groups felt excluded from land, government positions and development opportunities. This began the ethnicisation of politics, as other groups, aggrieved by their exclusion, also began to mobilise along ethnic groups.²⁸ Elections in Kenya – in 1992, 1997 and 2002 – began to be won by cobbling together ethnic political coalitions.

Daniel arap Moi, who was vice-president under Kenyatta, became president when Kenyatta died in 1978. Moi, who was from the minority Kalenjin ethnic group, had in 1960 founded the Kenya African Democratic Union (KADU), to compete against the Kenyan African National Union (KANU) ahead of the country’s independence in 1963. KADU pushed for a federal post-colonial country, while KANU called for a centralised country. In 1964, Kenyatta persuaded Moi to join forces, to merge KADU with KANU, under a centralised government system. Kenyatta would appoint Moi vice-president in 1967. In 1966, the left-wing of KANU, headed by Oginga Odinga, formed the Kenya People’s Union (KAPU). The party was banned in 1969 and its leadership imprisoned.

Moi built a coalition of minority ethnic groups against the Kikuyu favoured by Kenyatta. In the 2002 elections Moi chose Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor. The 2002 election was the first time that the leading presidential candidates were Kikuyu, leading multi-ethnic coalitions; Kibaki, the former vice-president, as the head of the National Alliance of Kenya and Kenyatta leading KANU.

Kibaki’s backslide after he won the 2002 elections on an anti-corruption platform was a devastating disappointment. Following the rigged elections in December 2007, opposition supporters in the Nairobi slums attacked Kikuyu, reckoning that they voted for Kibaki. The communal violence that broke out in January 2008 left more than 1 000 people dead and almost 500 000 displaced and homeless. In December 2012, dozens of people were killed in Kenya’s coastal region in a revenge attack between Pokomo farmers and semi-nomadic Orma people. Robert Kitur, the region’s deputy police chief said: ‘About 150 Pokomo raiders attacked Kipao village, which is inhabited by the Ormas, early on Friday. The Ormas appeared to have been aware and were prepared.’²⁹ The Ormas and the Pokomo people have been in conflict over grazing and water access for years as overgrazing, drought and over-population have shrunk resources.

Violence by armed organised groups in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo

Human Rights Watch has recorded more than 140 armed groups which regularly attack civilians in the DRC’s North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.³⁰ Ethnic massacres, rapes and the forced recruitment of children into armed militia are routine. Ethnic violence regularly erupts, and hundreds died in the December 2018 ethnic clashes in the country’s western Mai-Ndombe province, an area often regarded as more peaceful than others.

The country was engaged in a civil war between 1997 and 2003 that killed five million people. Central government authority has essentially collapsed and militia groups control large parts of the country, running their own ‘governments’, whose despotic rule holds sway in their fiefdoms. They control public resources, are in alliance with mining companies, and have authority over life and death.

More than 4.5 million people have been displaced in recent violence instigated by a plethora of armed groups across the country. More than 13 million people need humanitarian assistance, 7.7 million are starving, and there are regular outbreaks of diseases such as cholera. The country’s public service has almost collapsed. Salaries are intermittent and inflation is out of control. The police, army and security forces are under-resourced, lack proper training and are generally corrupt.

Julien Paluku, the governor of North Kivu said: ‘This is a country where anyone can establish a militia.’³¹ A government official was quoted in The Guardian, saying: ‘Where there is no police, army or justice system, it’s the law of the jungle. We have to do better. We have had some difficult times but we’ve made a lot of progress, too.’³²

Informal miners dig for gold, coltan (columbite-tantalite) and diamonds next to the major global mining companies.³³ Surprisingly, given the large surface of the country, there are fierce battles over land. Mining companies, rogue government officials and militia are keen to get their hands on mineral-rich, fertile land and surplus water, leading some local communities to set up their own self-defence units to protect themselves from the militia.

The violence has become increasingly ethnicised and religious; many groups are setting up militia to defend themselves or to plunder based along ethnic lines. A UN report on militia violence in the central region of Kasai warned that the cannibalism, mass rape and killings documented in the region could be the harbinger of genocide. The DRC army, allied with the Bana Mura militia, fought the Kamuina Nsapu militia in Kasai from late 2016 until the end of 2017. Sporadic skirmishes continue and the Kasai conflict, specifically, has become ethnicised.

The UN report accused all sides of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.³⁴ Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture worldwide says, however: ‘My greatest concern is that what we are witnessing today may be only the prelude of what is still to come. In my view, Kasai today already bears the signature of Rwanda and Bosnia in the early 1990s.’³⁵ In the Kasai militia conflict alone, more than 5 000 people have been killed in the past two years and more than 1.4 million people displaced, according to Human Rights Watch.

In 2016, former mathematics teacher Faustin-Archange Touadéra, who was prime minister under former President François Bozizé, won a presidential election, with over 60% of the vote. However, violence persists. In the CAR, 14 armed militia groups essentially control around 80% of the country. The armed groups all profess to be defending either an ethnic or religious community under siege.

As mentioned earlier, the country plunged into violent chaos after Bozizé was ousted by a coalition of Muslim-majority armed groups, the Seleka. In most cases, these armed groups, under the guise of defending religious or ethnic communities under attack, control access to minerals, land and public resources. Armed groups extract ‘taxes’ from local mines, businesses and citizens. Around 70% of the five million strong population lives in poverty.

On 6 February 2019, following negotiations in Sudan and under the auspices of the AU, the CAR government of Prime Minister Firmin Ngrebada signed a peace deal with 11 of the 14 militia. Two of the three major ex-Seleka groups, the Patriotic Movement for Central Africa (MPC) and the Unity for Peace in Central Africa (UPC) signed. The third, the Popular Front for the Rebirth of Central Africa (FPRC), led by Noureddine Adam, refused to sign.

The peace deal included ending hostilities, forming an ‘inclusive government’, which would include the militias, joint patrols between the militia, and the establishment of a truth and justice commission. A special court, the Special Criminal Court, set up to prosecute atrocities committed by militia groups, started its investigations in late 2018. Following the conclusion of the agreement, however, the government only appointed representatives of six of the armed militias to government, which led to five groups pulling out or rejecting the deal.

Niger’s explosive combination of armed militia, jihadists and criminal gangs

The United Nations refugee agency has said that more than 52 000 people were displaced in western Niger, bordering Mali and Burkina Faso, in 2018, following attacks by armed groups.³⁶ In 2017, according to the UN, more than 42 000 people were displaced by ‘the activities of non-state armed groups’ in Niger’s border regions.³⁷

These areas include the regions of Tahoua and Tillaber, where the Niger government declared a state of emergency in 2017. The state of emergency gives security agencies extra-judicial powers, including the right to stop-and-search, make arrests without warrants and the summary seizure of assets. The G5 Sahel military task force patrols the area against militia, jihadists and criminal gangs, and communities displaced by armed groups attacking villages and killing civilians report that community leaders have been abducted, schools burned and homes, businesses and livestock looted.

In 2018, the UN established humanitarian corridors in the most affected areas, where the G5 Sahel force provides additional protection to refugees.

Niger is situated in a dangerous corridor, with infiltrating jihadist groups such as Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa (ISIS-WA) from Nigeria, ISIS activity from Libya, and armed criminal militia operating in the Sahel region spilling over into the country.

Niger is landlocked, and at 187 out of 188 countries on the United Nations Human Development Index, it is one of the poorest countries in the world.³⁸ It exports uranium, although subsistence farming is its largest economic activity. Niger has a population of 22 million people and has one of the fastest growth rates in the world – at just under 4% annually. Half of the country is poor with just under 70% of the population being youths.

Niger secured independence from France in 1960, and for most of its post-independence history the country was under military or one-party rule or endured sham elections. Coups in 1996 and 1999 against corruption, and autocratic and uncaring government destabilised the country. Civilian rule was restored in 1999, with retired Lieutenant Colonel Mamadou Tandja, of the National Movement for a Developing Society (MNSD), elected president. Tandja was re-elected in 2004, promising to step down at the end of his second presidential term.

Subsequently, however, he tried to force through a constitutional referendum to postpone the 2009 elections until 2012, eliminate term limits and expand presidential power. The National Assembly opposed this, so Tandja dissolved it. The country’s Constitutional Court ruled against a referendum and Tandja duly dissolved the court and assumed emergency powers.

In 2009, Tandja called for a referendum – which most neutral observers dismissed as rigged – to approve his constitutional amendments. His proposals were approved by 92.5% of the voters. This allowed him to stay in power another three years and run perpetually for president. After the referendum results, Tandja announced legislative elections to replace the dissolved National Assembly, which opposition parties boycotted and his MNSD party won. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) suspended Niger.

In 2010, a military junta led by Major Salou Djibo, going under the name of the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy (CSRD), placed Tandja under house arrest, dissolved parliament and suspended the Constitutional Court. The military junta set up a transitional government, with Djibo at the head, and established a National Consultative Council to draft a new constitution and electoral code. It replaced the Constitutional Court with a National Constitutional Council.

A referendum was held in October 2010, which approved the new constitution. Presidential, legislative and municipal elections were held in January 2011. Long-time opposition leader, Mahamadou Issoufou, and his Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS) won in the run-off.

Chad’s deadly communal violence

Since 2003, Chad has experienced deadly communal clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in the southeast part of the country that borders the CAR and Sudan’s west Darfur region. Arabs and non-Arabs reside on both sides of the eastern Chad border and western Sudan. A typical incident was when 100 people were killed in clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in 2006. The fight between the Arab Darsalim community and the non-Arab Kibede community left 139 dead, many more injured and homes, crops and cattle destroyed.

Chad has been in violent conflict for 37 of the 59 years since independence. In June 2016, Chad’s former dictator, Hissène Habré, was sentenced by a special court in Senegal to life imprisonment for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Habré, who was Chad’s president between 1982 and 1990, was sentenced by the Extraordinary African Chambers, a special court set up by the AU under an arrangement with Senegal.

The 76-year-old Habré was the first African leader to be prosecuted under the auspices of the AU. Human rights organisations accused him of causing the deaths of 40 000 people during his brutal reign. He was also convicted for having personally raped a woman.

In Chad’s 2016 presidential election, Idriss Déby won a fifth term as president. In 2018, he changed the country’s constitution to give himself unlimited power. He has extraordinary powers as president to single-handedly dissolve the country’s parliament without legislators voting on it.

Although Déby reduced presidential terms to two in 2018, he increased the presidential term from five to six years. Furthermore, he amended the constitution in such a way that the two-term limit only comes into effect in 2021, when his term expires, and when his past years as president do not disqualify him from standing for another two terms. This means he can stand for presidential elections in 2021 and serve another two terms. This could keep Déby in power until 2033, when he would have been in