Forskere peger på en farlig cocktail af dyb fattigdom, de barske forhold naturen byder indbyggerne, dårlige og korrupte myndigheder, nem adgang til at krydse grænserne og let antændelige islamiske kampråb mod Vesten – udvikling og økonomisk fremgang er nøglen.
DAKAR, 10 May 2013 (IRIN): Academics and government, military and civil society representatives gathered for a conference in the Senegalese capital this week to assess the interplay between development and violent extremism in West Africa.
Some participants suggested that underdevelopment, marginalization and weak governance create a breeding ground for militancy.
While local factors in West African and Sahel countries have contributed to extremist violence, the rise of global jihad in the wake of the US-led “war on terror” since the terrorist attack in New York, September 2001 has also played a part in spreading radical militancy in the region.
“In the Sahel, there is a combination of bad governance, poverty, insecurity as well as several internal and external factors that contribute to extremist violence,” said Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, head of the Centre for Security Strategy in the Sahel and the Sahara, at the opening of the 6-10 May Dakar conference.
“The Sahel has provided an ideal ground for extremist violence to take root and spread beyond national borders,” he said.
The region has a history of instability.
Since the first post-independence coup in West Africa that toppled Togo’s founding president in 1963, it has seen a string of coups, some of which have sparked civil wars.
West Africa is also one of the world’s most impoverished regions despite its natural resources. Seven West African countries occupy the bottom 10 places in the UN Human Development Index.
Poor political and resource governance have often led to explosions of violence by disgruntled segments of society, and a number of studies have linked bad governance to insecurity in West Africa.
Two examples: Mali and Boko Haram
For example, MALI’s Tuareg have been fighting perceived s north.
Following the March 2012 coup in the capital Bamako, the Tuareg National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad seized towns from government troops in the north, but was soon driven out by militant Islamist groups.
NIGERIA’s increasingly violent Boko Haram militia, which wants an Islamic state, should be seen as a reaction the government’s entrenched corruption, abusive security forces, strife between the disaffected Muslim north and Christian south, and widening regional economic disparity, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.
Some observers stress the local aspect.
Militant Islam in Africa, while linked to broader ideological currents, is mainly driven by the local context, with Islamist groups emerging, evolving and reacting to immediate local concerns, University of Florida’s Terje Ostebo, argued in a November 2012 paper published by the Africa Centre for Strategic Studies (ACSS).
“The Malian government’s failure to consistently invest in and maintain a strong state presence in the north. created an enabling environment for the expansion of Islamic militancy and the escalation of violence in this region,” said Ostebo, an assistant professor at the university’s Centre for African Studies (ACSS) and the Department of Religion.
Marginalization
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