Islamist Extremists Wreak Havoc in Africa

Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

On April 2, gunmen from the Somali group al-Shabaab attacked Garrisa University College in Garissa, Kenya, killing 148 people. They warned that new attacks would be coming, and that Kenyan cities “will run red with blood.”

The alleged mastermind of the attack is a Kenyan national, Mohamed Mohamud aka Dulyadeyn, a close friend of al-Shabaab’s leader, Ahmed Omar Abu Ubeyd. Another gunman was Abdirahim Mohammed Abdullahi, a law graduate and the son of a government chief.

The most notorious Islamist terrorist groups in Africa are found in two very different countries, at opposite ends of the continent.

In Somalia, al-Shabaab is a product of the very collapse of the state, while in Nigeria, Boko Haram wishes to impose an extreme version of Islam in the Muslim north of a country torn by corruption, and ethnic and religious conflict.

Somalia is that rarity in Africa, an ethnically and religiously homogenous country; virtually all Somalis are Sunnis and speak Somali. Yet Somalia itself has been without an effective government since 1991, when the last dictator, Mohamed Siad Barre, fled the country.

The reason: fierce rivalry among the major clans into which Somalis are divided. Into that political vacuum, a militant Islamist group known as al-Shabaab emerged after 2006, following an incursion by Ethiopian troops. Kenyan forces also sent its forces into Somalia.

In return, al-Shabaab has carried out attacks against both countries. They wreaked havoc on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi in September 2013, which resulted in at least 67 deaths; claimed responsibility for two attacks on the Kenyan coast which killed more than 60 in June 2014; and now with the bloody massacre in Garissa.

The militants tried to justify the latest attack by saying that this part of Kenya was “a Muslim land” – it is populated mostly by ethnic Somalis and was in the past claimed by Somali governments.

Al-Shabaab has been recruiting among poor young Muslims in north-eastern Kenya, warning them that the school was part of Kenya’s “plan to spread their Christianity and infidelity.”

Boko Haram has been a reaction to the extreme corruption and religious volatility found in Africa’s most populous country. While fabulously wealthy, Nigeria’s elite shares very little with the masses, especially those in the Muslim north-east, traditionally the poorest and least influential part of the country.

Since the country’s independence in 1960, about $600 billion in oil revenue has flowed into the government’s coffers, yet an estimated $400 billion has been diverted, misspent or simply stolen.

During President Goodluck Jonathan’s tenure, 2010-2015, the corruption scandals of government ministers were quietly ignored. Parliamentary reports detailing these scandals were hushed up. High civil servants who exposed them were fired. In 2013, central bank governor Lamido Sanusi identified $20 billion in “leakages” from government oil accounts.

Boko Haram regards the Nigerian state as being run by non-believers, even when the country has had a Muslim president.

Since its formation in 2002, the extremist group has killed some 16,000 people and taken over swathes of the north-eastern states of Adamawa, Borno, and Yobe. It has lately even extended its military campaign by targeting neighbouring countries Cameroon and Chad.

In August 2014, Abubakar Muhammad Shekau, its leader, declared a caliphate in areas under Boko Haram’s control, and praised Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

President Jonathan, a southern Christian, seemed impassive in the face of this growing threat -- perhaps the reason he lost the recent presidential election to a former dictator, Muhammadu Buhari, the military ruler of Nigeria between 1983 and 1985.

Buhari waged a “war against indiscipline” that prescribed humiliating punishment for tardy civil servants. He is seen as selfless, disciplined and incorruptible. Perhaps Nigerians feel that only someone like Buhari, himself a Muslim from the north, can “fight fire with fire.”