From January 2015 until now, more than a dozen African countries have suffered terror attacks and have accumulatively lost thousands of innocent lives to the violence propagated by extremist groups. Serial attacks on Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon and the recent debut in Burkina Faso show that terrorism is strong and spreading consistently across Africa and only a united African effort can effectively curb this growing threat. But despite the collective suffering in the tragedy, African countries are yet to band together against these ideologically similar and operationally-cooperative insurgent groups. Yet, it is only by standing together—in intelligence sharing, operational cooperation and moral support—that Africa stands a chance of defeating this scourge of terrorism.
After making 2015 a very bloody year for Africa, terror groups continued where they left off this past January. The past week was the bloodiest so far this year in Boko Haram’s campaign of violence with the militants launching back to back attacks on Cameroon and Nigeria killing nearly 200 people. First, the terrorist group hit a market on Sunday, in northern Cameroon with multiple suicide bombings killing about twenty-five persons and injuring over sixty others. Days later, the group struck again, this time in Chibok (where they abducted over 200 girls from in 2014) and then followed with attacks in Maiduguri, on Saturday, where not fewer than 85 people were confirmed dead in the outskirt village of Dalori. This wave of attacks follows another, earlier in the month, where the al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) invaded a hotel in Burkina Faso, killing about thirty people.
While there have been initiatives to create an African coalition against terrorism, most of those efforts have been limited, underfunded and lacking implementation. One of the most concrete steps taken in the African fight against terrorism is the re-organization of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) by the Lake Chad Basin countries, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad and (non-member) the Republic of Benin. The mandate of the coalition is to stamp out the Boko Haram extremist group which has waged a bloody insurgency in Nigeria and carried out several attacks on its Lake Chad neighbours. But the MNJTF is quite limited in its scope of operations; “It will not be deployed in Nigeria, but along Nigeria’s outside borders within neighbouring countries,” wrote Lori-Anne Théroux-Bénoni, the Office Head of the Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division of the Institute of Security Studies for Africa, at the institution of the Task Force. “For those who continue to worry about the kidnapped Chibok schoolgirls and other victims of terrorist acts perpetrated by Boko Haram, the details of the MNJTF deployment come as a major disappointment. The MNJTF appears largely out of sync with what would have been needed on the ground, in Nigeria, to eliminate the threat posed by Boko Haram.”
Théroux-Bénoni suggested that a more robust coalition, in the format of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), the AU Regional Cooperation Initiative for the elimination of the Lord’s Resistance Army (RCI-LRA), or the African-led international support mission to Mali (AFISMA) would have been a better alternative, and the current situation of the crisis buttresses her point. While the Nigerian military has made tremendous progress in recapturing virtually all territory previously seized by Boko Haram, it continues to struggle with stopping cross-border attacks from the group (the same with Cameroon and its other Lake Chad Neighbours) while the whereabouts of the over 250 kidnapped Chibok girls—rumoured to have been taken out of Nigeria—remain unknown. These challenges require more multinational cooperation than the MNJTF is currently offering. The Nigerian government recently announced plans to redeem its astounding funding pledge to the MNJTF, a recognition of the need to strengthen the Task Force. However, funding alone will not be enough for the coalition to achieve its objective, it also needs more intelligence sharing and security cooperation amongst the countries involved.
Apart from the MNJTF and other multinational coalitions fighting specific in-country insurgencies, such as AMISOM in Somalia and AFISMA in Mali, there are no other institutionalised coalition efforts against terrorism in Africa. The attack in Mali and then in Burkina Faso, by the same group—and without local roots—show just how international terrorism has become in Africa and that it can only be defeated by a similar international response. The recent meeting between Kenya and Nigeria’s presidents Uhuru Kenyatta and Muhammadu Buhari, in which they discussed combatting terrorism and radicalization, is a step in the right direction, but there are so many more steps that need to follow that.
Perhaps creating an African version of the Interpol or a NATO-style coalition; whatever form it may take, would help as African countries need a multinational continent-wide institution with a serious focus on terrorism. Continuing to treat terrorism solely as an internal problem underestimates the potential of international terrorism in Africa. These extremist groups largely see themselves as members of a global jihad against states and organised government, it is high time African states responded to such threats, not just as individual nations but also in the broad perspective of protecting Africa.
