On March 15, 2011 the influence of the Arab Uprising that started with the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, materialized in the Syrian city of Deraa and the image of Hezbollah as a supporter of opposition movements in the region faced a challenge. The organization suddenly contradicted its previous posture by backing the Al-Assad regime. Hezbollah publicly endorsed the regime in 2011, and later in 2013, they started a joint military intervention alongside the Syrian forces in Al-Qusayr, like reported by eeradicalization.com.

The same social movements that had served as a symbol of resistance began targeting Al-Assad’s regime, a strategic ally. Syria’s importance is not measured just in access to military and financial assistance, but it is also defined by the transferring of weapons, equipment, and money from Iran. The situation pushed Hezbollah to develop a response that would not fully compromise their legitimacy.

The process of self-redefinition through the change of ideals is not unique to Hezbollah. Ideologies provide mental frameworks by which diverse actors regulate their identity and make sense of the world. The link between ideology and radicalization can be found in the force of the discourse and its capacity of enhancing the approval of violence in certain contexts. The escalation to violence demands a new definition of the current context and reality in order to incite action or active support, a mechanism that has been largely used by Hezbollah to recruit followers and to manage their armed and political wing.

Hezbollah created symbols in their discourse to justify their actions to distinct target audiences. Their strategy is mainly based on the appropriation of rhetorical devices that connect to the existing ideology of the target audience.

Ideology, Power, and Media

Hezbollah’s raison d’être, as both a political and an armed organization, has been continuously justified in public speeches and written declarations that contribute to their identity project. Hezbollah’s ideology is not a static guideline of values and beliefs, but has acted as a dynamic concept that adapts to contextual changes to justify the organization’s relevance.

The fact that these narratives have remained dynamic is integral to the legitimization process. The image building platform is currently centralized and controlled through their mass media system, which includes the newspaper Al-Ahd, the radio station Al-Nour and the Al-Manar TV channel and website. The Hezbollah-affiliated think-tank Consultative Centre for Studies and Documentation (CCSD) is also central in the distribution of information.

Maynard and Benesch explain the relationship between discourse, ideology, and extremism by proposing a model that bases radicalization on the context (speaker, audience, socio-historical environment, audience, and means of dissemination) and content justificatory mechanisms (dehumanization, guilt attribution, threat construction, destruction of alternatives, “virtuetalk”, and a future bias that claims the generation of future goods). These characteristics can be observed in Hezbollah’s strategy to justify their military involvement in Syria.

Justification to National Allies: Hezbollah as a National Political Actor

In the 2009 Manifesto, Hezbollah abandons the idea of an Islamic state and embraces national unity beyond sectarian politics with the recurrent use of the term “citizen”. The non-sectarian approach presents Hezbollah as a national actor that is concerned for the integrity of the state and the wellbeing of its citizens. The justification was particularly needed after their clear violation of the 2012 Baabda Declaration.

At a national level, Hezbollah adopted some of their known narratives to fit the Syrian scenario. Some content justificatory mechanisms adopted included a level of dehumanization and guilt attribution of the target of the attacks. The dichotomy “oppressed versus oppressors” was highly suitable during the “Arab uprisings”, however, it could no longer be sustained after the Qusayr offensive in favor of the Assad regime. A new justification was defined in the more encompassing terms of morality in a Manichean worldview.

Hezbollah mixed the frequent list of enemies (the U.S and Israel) with the new takfiri threat to create an updated axis of enemies. The connection was clarified by the organization during the Liberation Day speech: “[…] they only served the CIA, the Pentagon, and other intelligence agencies…what can the Western states tell their people and the public opinion after having armed such groups? […] those states are facilitating the armed groups’ movement to Syria”.

The “evil” nature of the new enemy was based on statements during the same speech, such as “Do you know what the problem with the Takfiri mentality is? It regards others as “disbelievers” for the silliest reasons. […] it’s actually political […] this is what danger is: a mentality that you can never communicate with through dialogue. They know nothing as “being flexible,” “setting priorities,” or “finding common things”.

In a conflicting perspective, this justification plays along the guidelines of sectarianism. Hezbollah decided to portray itself as a protector of a unified Lebanon and a condemner of the “fabricated rivalry” between the Sunni and the Shiite community. The notion of takfiri is embedded in the meaning of apostasy, which is useful to delimit the perception of an “us” (good practitioners of real Islam) and the “other” (evil transgressors of religion) and alienates one group from another.

The guilt attribution and the threat construction overlap in Hezbollah’s justifications. In an analogical fallacy, they compared the events with Palestine. Framing the situation in Syria and comparing it with the Palestinian experience creates a questionable analogy in which the similarities surrounding the events are highlighted in order to create presumption of the possible outcome of the conflict. The possible expansion of the conflict to Lebanon is part of a justification based on protecting the Lebanese national security.

The analogy with Palestine was also adopted to ease the annexation of the takfiri to the existing axis of enemies. “[…] If Syria falls in the hands of the US, ‘Israel’, takfiris, […] ‘Israel’ will invade Lebanon […] if Syria falls, then Palestine, the Palestinian Resistance, Gaza, the West Bank, and the Holy al- Quds will be lost”. The defense of Palestine has been historically supported by the group, and by comparing the two events; Hezbollah is using an analogy with a justificatory role to support their conclusion.

Other radicalizing elements can be identified in these justifications for violence. The “virtuetalk” justification is entwined with the Manichean presentation of the group and their enemies. Here, Hezbollah is defending the Syrian institutions and sovereignty, alongside Lebanon. Nasrallah declared, “we’re among the people who care most about Lebanon’s security, stability, civil peace, unity, state, and sovereignty”.

Moreover, Hezbollah uses the destruction of other alternatives and the future bias as radicalizing elements. In the speeches there is a constant reminder of the threat of an imminent expansion of the conflict to Lebanon. This possibility simultaneously discards the option to avoid conflict and presents violence as the confident anticipation of future goods as a content justificatory mechanism.

Hezbollah justifies their decision to escalate violence with discursive strategies that attempt to radicalize the response of their followers by using correlations between the current events and issues that were previously highlighted by the organization. In the messages, Hezbollah’s stance and actions are based on an “our might is right” rationale, where a military intervention and violence are presented as the only solution to avoid a crisis.

Justification to the International Community: Contesting the Role of the State

Hezbollah has carried out state-related activities focused on security and welfare, using institutionalization as a tool to expand the impact of their actions. Calculli proposes a mimetic strategy that can be used to observe the imitation and camouflage of the organization in regards to the Lebanese state, including the appropriation of hegemonic language of the state to adopt a sovereignist and internationalist speech.

Hezbollah has shared state sovereignty with the Lebanese government by defending its territorial integrity by force, then uses this mimetic strategy in two complementary ways; first as a political actor that is able to contest the sovereignty of the state de facto in Lebanon, and in a second approach, to use its state-related qualities to endorse a discourse that depicts the organization as an international actor.

One of the main components of Hezbollah’s discourse is the defense of the state institutions in Syria, a justification related to virtue talk and the construction of a threat. The rephrasing of a more morally accepted justification became a priority to avoid any major repercussions from international actors. The fear of eventually having the takfiri groups in power was also employed to argue that these groups would not maintain state institutions.

An aspect defended by Hezbollah on several occasions was the participation in elections. During a speech, Nasrallah accentuated the dangers of the takfiri groups by mentioning their rejection of elections and comparing this situation with the attacks of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan in 2013. He declared “those takfiri believe that whoever takes part in the parliamentary elections is a “disbeliever” who should be killed and disgraced”.

He resumed this argument in 2014, when he denounced the Islamic State (ISIS) for their general rejection of popular participation in elections. This aspect was essential, since the 2014 Syrian presidential election was taking place soon after the speech. Nasrallah made the connection: “This civilized alternative which was presented by the ‘friends of Syria’ is saying that should I go to the ballots […] I will be sentenced to a death penalty”.

The Manichean approach was widely used at an international level. The public campaigns and attacks launched by ISIS created the ideal scenario to frame the intervention as part of the global “War on Terror”. In this discourse, the representation of the enemy is one of the main tools for amoral justification due to its function in the binary definition of good and evil. Hezbollah is not contesting state security institutions; rather it is presenting itself as an auxiliary in this global campaign.

For Hezbollah, the danger of the takfiri lies on their inability to engage in dialogue. The gruesomeness of these groups’ actions accentuated the moral division between the “two” axes in the conflict: “[…] those Takfiris behead people and cut their chests, dig up graves […] (Hezbollah) can never choose to be on the side of the US, “Israel,” or ones digging up people’s graves and cutting their chests or beheading them!”

Hezbollah used similar justificatory mechanisms. The international and regional scenario were redefined by the organization with the adoption of the threat construction, the destruction of alternatives, and the use of “virtuetalk” in speeches. Internationally, Hezbollah mimicked discourses to justify the increase in violence; this tactic simultaneously contributed to the radicalization process of their members and prospective followers, which started at a national level. The meticulously produced discourses contribute to radicalization through the promotion of biased ideas that generate acceptance and support from the general public, creating a restored sense of normalcy of the new violent context.

Conclusion

Hezbollah’s discourse works on the cognitive level as they are based on the reinterpretation of their activities; in this case, ideology provides the structure for judgment that leads to legitimation. They attempt to diminish any constraints by adopting semantic macrostructures related to social or group memory. This approach goes from cognition to discourse, and then from discourse to persuasion and legitimation of their actions.

Speech, the ideology that underpins it, and the diffusion channels play a relevant role in radicalization. The level of violence that results from this process varies, however, producing ideological notions allows individuals to see some violent actions as justified. Furthermore, the ideological restructuring in a volatile context such as the Syrian conflict appeals to new audiences, facilitating recruitment and public support.

The strategy in Syria displays a coordinated interaction between the political and the armed wing, where the contradiction in their ideology and actions does not represent a point of conflict in their internal organization. The use of ideological discourse is not the only factor that influences the legitimization of an organization, yet in the case of Hezbollah, it is evident that it represents a major instrument in this process due to the amount of resources and centralization of the media apparatus that work to reproduce the narratives.

Right after news broke of the peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel came reports that a similar deal with two other Gulf states, Oman and Bahrain, might be in the works. Israel’s intelligence minister told an interviewer he expects diplomatic ties to be established with Sudan before the year is out. There was even talk of forthcoming deals with Morocco, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, like reported by bostonglobe.com.

For the first time ever, a Muslim state on the Arabian Gulf has embraced peace with Israel. But what is most noteworthy is what was not required to make it happen.

Conventional wisdom has long held that no Arab government would normalize relations with Jerusalem without significant Israeli concessions — especially the surrender of territory (“land for peace”) and recognition of Palestinian sovereignty (“two-state solution”). Without those capitulations, Middle East experts routinely asserted, Israel would remain a pariah in the region.

The experts were wrong.

To win UAE recognition, Israel offered no such concessions: no territorial withdrawal, no deal with the Palestinians, no division of Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed merely to “suspend” his plan to annex part of the West Bank. Annexation was looking increasingly doubtful in any case, so Israel in effect traded a diplomatic headache for a diplomatic triumph.

The deal with Abu Dhabi, declared Netanyahu on Sunday, is based not on “land for peace,” but on the more durable foundation of “peace through strength.” Israel’s economic, military, and technological prowess makes it a force to contend with, and in deploying that force unswervingly to impede Iran’s aggression, it has made itself an invaluable partner to the Gulf’s Sunni leaders.

“Strength attracts and weakness repels,” Netanyahu said. “And with strength, one makes peace.”

Coincidentally, the UAE-Israel peace agreement was announced exactly 15 years from the one of the greatest blunders in Israeli history — Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. That experience was a textbook example of the folly that results from expecting peace to result from weakness.

In the Gaza withdrawal, Israel deployed 50,000 troops to expel some 9,000 Jewish residents of Gaza and raze 21 communities in which they had lived for decades.

The name given to this expulsion by Israel’s government, then headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was “disengagement.” That label implied that by unilaterally handing over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, Israelis would be freed from their dysfunctional relationship with the territory’s hostile Arabs. Sharon’s government offered a sweeping vision of the blessings Israelis could expect from their retreat.

“It will be good for us and will be good for the Palestinians,” exulted then-Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. “It will bring more security, greater safety, much more prosperity, and a lot of joy.” With disengagement, he forecast, “a new morning of great hope will emerge,” and Israelis and Palestinians would make the Middle East “a paradise for all the world.”

It was all wishful thinking. Israel reaped no diplomatic benefits from disengagement beyond some polite one-time gestures at the UN. Contrary to Olmert’s expectation that Israel would achieve “more security, greater safety … and a lot of joy,” the actual payoff was less security and more terrorism. Israel’s departure from the Gaza Strip was soon followed by a Hamas takeover and waves of rocket attacks into Israel proper.

What was supposed to be the ultimate demonstration of the potential of land-for-peace proved the opposite. Far from encouraging peacemakers, disengagement energized Gaza’s most extreme irredentists. The fruit of disengagement was not the promised “new morning of great hope.” It was an erosion of respect for Israeli deterrence. It was the war launched by Hezbollah the following year. It was the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and his captivity in Gaza for more than five years. It was the harming of Israel’s reputation. And it was the immiseration of Gaza’s Palestinians under a Palestinian dictatorship.

Whatever else Netanyahu has gotten wrong, he learned the right lesson from the Gaza debacle: For Israel, the key to peace lies in strength, not weakness.

As last week’s announcement confirms, serious Arab leaders today accept Israel as a permanent fact of life in the Middle East and a solid ally against a common Iranian enemy. In a year when so much has gone wrong, the appearance of a great crack in the once solid Arab wall of anti-Israel rejectionism is a piece of unalloyed good news.

Africa’s Sahel, the semi-arid region that borders on the Sahara desert, is the poorest region of the world. It is also in crisis. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies reports that the Sahel has experienced a near seven-fold increase in terrorist attacks over the past three years. Threatened also by COVID-19 and severe climatic changes, the region desperately needs improved governance and the world’s help, like reported by thehill.com.

Terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso have now uprooted more than 900,000 people, and COVID-19 has forced the closure of 20,000 schools. Next door, in strife-torn Mali, a disputed election and protests in Bamako, the capital city, are threatening to unseat Mali’s president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. The jihadist insurgency is even creeping southward into Côte d’Ivoire, where 14 military personnel were recently killed in a border assault.

Oxfam and other international aid organizations are warning of a “hunger pandemic” in the Sahel, while human rights groups are expressing alarm about the extra-judicial executions being committed by government forces in the region.

Emergency aid may be on the way, but what the Sahel desperately needs is improved governance and sustainable development. For that to occur, the U.S. and the broader international community must do its part. The scope of the problem is daunting, but the consequences of inaction are staggering.

Terrorist attacks are on the rise and contributing to Africa’s displacement crisis. The Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS), and al Qaeda’s affiliate, Jamaat Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) are struggling for dominance in the region. Their feud is getting deadlier, and civilian populations are caught in the crossfire. Last year, more than 4,000 people were killed in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, compared to 770 deaths in 2016. In response to that threat, France, as part of Operation Barkhane, has boosted its troop level in the region to 5,100.

The tide of battle, however, has not turned. There are now 3.1 million refugees, internally displaced persons (IDPs), returnees and people at risk of statelessness in the Sahel, and the numbers are increasing rapidly. The number of IDPs in Burkina Faso alone has more than quadrupled from 193,000 in June 2019 to 848,000 at the end of April.

Terrorism and the COVID-19 pandemic are far from the only challenges. With a population that will more than double in the next 30 years and the anticipated climatic changes, the Sahel faces an uncertain future. Niger’s population could easily triple in the next 35-40 years. Climatic changes and the resulting crop failures in the Sahel are already forcing some people to move to coastal areas.

With high fertility and the youngest age structure in the world, the region has a large and persistent ‘youth bulge’ that could prove politically destabilizing, a weakness that terrorist groups will continue to exploit. If fertility rates fall fast enough and the necessary investments are made in health, education, and gender equality, the region could get an economic boost, what economists and demographers describe as the ‘demographic dividend.’

Food insecurity is increasing. The UN estimates that 5.5 million people will be food insecure in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso during this year’s lean season, 2.5 times the average for the last five years. In May, the UN warned that the crisis in Nigeria’s Lake Chad region could fuel a humanitarian challenge for 24 million people, half of them children. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic and other threats this summer, including drought and locust infestations, will imperil the food security of 50 million people in West Africa. Migration within West Africa might mitigate the crisis, but not if national borders remain closed.

Responding to these concerns, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has launched a $186 million appeal aimed at providing life-saving assistance to refugees, IDPs, and returnees in the Sahel. Also, the UN’s International Organization for Migration is asking for $37.8 million to scale-up its life-saving support to 460,000 individuals in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. The European Union’s Emergency Trust Fund for Africa recently pledged an additional €52.5 million to support new and ongoing programs in the Sahel and Lake Chad region. The programs, which add to the €2.08 billion already committed, will focus on increasing employment and stability, while also fighting the pandemic.

However, such emergency assistance is only palliative. What’s needed is a longer-term strategy for security and development. In mid-June, the International Coalition for the Sahel held a ministerial meeting, via videoconference, to address the terrorist threat. Convened by France and five Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Chad) known as the G5, the conference attracted 60 representatives from countries and international institutions. The participants reaffirmed their commitment to a strategy with four pillars: counter-terrorism, military aid and training to the G5, better security and governance in vulnerable regions, and development assistance.

The first two pillars are crucial to the fight against terrorism, but experience has amply demonstrated that the war on terror is a holding action, nothing more. Without the other two pillars, any defeat of the terrorists will be short-lived.

If terrorism embeds itself in the Sahel, it will threaten the coastal regions of West Africa and add to the conflict and violence in Nigeria. In doing so, it will exacerbate Africa’s growing displacement crisis. The Africa Center for Strategic Studies warns that there are now 29 million people in Africa who have been forcibly displaced from their homes, 4 million more than last year at this time.

Without better governance, major investments in health and education, and an end to gender inequality, terrorism will thrive no matter how much military assistance is channeled to the region. The U.S. and other nations must boost their support for programs that address the root causes of instability in the Sahel, not just the threat posed by terrorists.

A dispute between Fulani herders and their nomadic Tuareg neighbours over stolen cattle and motorbikes threatened to turn violent in the village of Amataltal when one man grabbed his rifle and fired skywards, like reported by reuters.com.

It was a rare outburst in the quiet commune of a few hundred people in north Niger, residents said, and sent a warning: disputes like this have opened a door for jihadists expert at exploiting conflict to boost recruitment and spread chaos.

Wary of escalation, Amataltal’s leaders called in a regional peacekeeping committee to mediate in June last year. Within days, rivals sat opposite each other at tables in a eucalyptus grove. They aired concerns and agreed to keep peace, according to a video of the event and two witnesses.

Islamist violence has overrun large parts of West Africa’s Sahel, the arid region south of the Sahara desert, since 2017 when militants linked to Islamic State ambushed and killed four U.S. soldiers in Niger.

On Sunday, six French aid workers and two locals were shot dead in a giraffe reserve 65 km (40 miles) from Niger’s capital Niamey, in a zone previously considered safe.

But a few hundred miles north, the Agadez region where Amataltal is located – an area the size of France that borders Algeria, Libya and Chad – has remained largely peaceful.

Local leaders say a network of influential ex-rebels, clerics and peace committees – formed in response to an armed uprising seeking greater political autonomy for Tuaregs in the 1990s – has stopped jihadists gaining a foothold by monitoring grievances and people with extreme ideas.

With thousands of French troops struggling to contain the bloodshed elsewhere, and the United States mulling a drawdown of forces, Agadez leaders say their methods offer a possible blueprint for defeating militants – without weapons.

“Agadez shows that it can be done. With the right leadership and the right relationships, you can have stability,” agreed Hannah Armstrong, analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank.

Agadez’s fortunes stand in stark contrast to the Tillaberi region in southwest Niger, which borders Mali and Burkina Faso.

Last year, attacks by militants with links to Islamic State and al Qaeda killed at least 367 people, nearly all in that border zone – four times the number in 2018, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a U.S.-based research organization. In the first half of 2020, 482 died.

Agadez is not invulnerable: militants exploded a car bomb outside a military base in 2013, killing at least 20 soldiers. In 2010, a local al Qaeda affiliate kidnapped seven foreigners in the region’s uranium mining zone around the town of Arlit.

Similar peacekeeping efforts elsewhere in the Sahel – including Mali before Tuareg rebels took over the north and began advancing on the capital in 2012 – have shown signs of promise before falling apart. A French-led intervention pushed the rebels back the following year, but Islamist militants have since regained a foothold in the north and centre, tapping into rivalries between Tuaregs and Fulanis.

A TALE OF TWO REGIONS

For now, though, Agadez leaders are confident.

“The jihadists are far from here. They are not here because we are paying attention,” said Silymane Hiyan Hiyar, an ex-rebel who spent years living in mountain caves fighting government forces during the 1990s uprising.

He is now a member of the peace committee that visited Amataltal and lives in a compound with his family in the regional capital Agadez, where he spoke to Reuters.

A peace agreement reached in 1995 gave communities in northern Niger a voice by integrating Tuareg rebels into the army and promoting Tuareg politicians.

Ex-rebels are members of peace committees and keep the government informed of disputes. Religious leaders travel in caravans, preaching peace on the government’s behalf.

The changes have not brought continuous peace to Agadez – another Tuareg uprising broke out in the north from 2007-2009 – but experts say the region learned from past struggles.

“The people have seen atrocities in Agadez. Now, as soon as there is conflict, the people come together to discuss the problem,” said Issouf Sibi-Moussa, assistant coordinator at HED Tamat, a local aid group.

In the Tillaberi region, a lack of local leadership, peace mechanisms or strong ties with Niamey have allowed ethnic rivalries to fester and attacks to continue, security experts said. Jihadist groups have won recruits among disaffected locals who believe the state has abandoned them.

“It is dangerous for local officials in Tillaberi to liaise with the state because the jihadists’ intelligence networks are very sophisticated. Their calls and meetings are listened to,” said Armstrong.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the border commune of Inates, where militants killed over 70 soldiers in an attack on a camp in December. Much of the surrounding area is in the hands of jihadists. Many residents fled.

Algateig Mohamed was driving with the local chief to a neighbouring town in July last year when gunmen on motorcycles encircled their car and opened fire, he said.

The assailants tied his hands behind his back and knocked him unconscious with a rifle butt, he said. He woke alone and walked all night to get home. When he arrived, he found out the chief was dead.

Mohamed fled the next day with his wife and six children.

“There is death there,” said Mohamed, who sleeps on the unswept floor of a friend’s house in Niamey. “I cannot go back.”

…and the world will allow it

“Iranians” Hezbollah still runs Lebanon – Fatima was the prophet Muhammad’s daughter from his first wife, Khadija. Muhammad married Fatima off to his cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, the founder and first imam of the Shiite branch of Islam. One of their sons was Hussein, who was decapitated by the Umayyad Caliph Yazid’s army in Karbala in 680 CE. To this day, some Shiites gather annually to perform rituals involving self-flagellation and self-harm to commemorate Hussein’s martyrdom. Fatima, Hussein’s mother, has a status among Shiites similar to that of Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Christianity, like reported by algemeiner.com.

Shiites name important things in their lives after Fatima. One of them is the “Fatima Gate” — not the one between Israel and Lebanon near Metulla, but the one at the Beirut port. This gate has been operated and controlled by Hezbollah for many years. The organization uses it to import and export whatever it wants without going through customs or inspection.

The usual cargo imported through the Fatima Gate are missiles, missile parts, explosives, and raw materials for the group’s military industry. The Fatima Gate is also used by Hezbollah to export drugs, with which it finances some of its operations. This past April, Lebanese authorities seized a shipment of 25 tons of cannabis that was about to be exported from the port.

Now that the Fatima Gate has been destroyed along with the rest of the port, Hezbollah will likely transfer its smuggling operations to the airport in southern Beirut, and probably also to the small ports of Sidon and Tyre. Intelligence agencies all over the world need to focus on these sites, but also on Syria’s airports and the third “Fatima Gate”: the one between Syria and Lebanon, which is also (to no one’s surprise) controlled by Hezbollah and not by the Lebanese authorities.

The Hezbollah’s capacity to replace Beirut with the above-mentioned locations is the reason why it remains the most powerful force in Lebanon despite the damage it just suffered. It is able to remain in control despite Lebanon’s economic and political crisis. After all, the agony of the Lebanese people makes it easier for Hezbollah to take advantage of the conscience of the world and dip into its pockets, particularly those of Saudi Arabia.

This, then, is the situation in Lebanon: Hezbollah still runs Lebanon, destroys the country, killing and injuring its citizens, and the world pays it to rehabilitate the ruins.

France stated yesterday that “enough objective elements” indicated that the double explosion, which ravaged the port of Beirut on Tuesday was of accidental origin. Many questions remain nonetheless over Tuesday’s massive blast, killing at least 158 people and wounding 6,000 others, like reported by alarabiya.net.

Here, six sources – a former spy, a Lebanese military official, a freight forwarder in the shipping industry, a lawyer, a source close to Hezbollah commanders and a former high security source share their analysis on the tragic incident.

Two sources told Al Arabiya English that the ammonium nitrate was being slowly siphoned off by Hezbollah for military purposes. The Lebanese party has widely upgraded its missile collection after 2006 and equipped them with smart guided heads, with ranges varying from 10km to 500 km.

1 – Why was the ammonium nitrate kept in the port?

A Lebanese army source underlined that an important question was why Lebanese officials had ignored port authorities repeated warnings about the presence of the deadly material. According to documents obtained by Al Arabiya English, at least two Directors of Lebanese Customs – Badri Daher and Chafic Merhi – warned repeatedly for years of the “extreme danger” of leaving the ammonium nitrate at the port.

“Urgent Matters Judges and governments officials all heeded the warnings for over seven years. Who benefited from keeping a highly explosive device remaining into Lebanese custody?” said the military source.

According to a list presented to Al Arabiya English, at least four judges overviewing urgent matters from 2014 to 2020 were requested to transfer the dangerous shipment to a local company.

Judge Zalfa Hassan, Jad Maalouf and Hala Naja, are among the names of Urgent Matters Judges who presided between 2014 and 2020, according a legal source who spoke on condition of anonymity with Al Arabiya English. Over twenty people have been so far arrested in the course of the investigation.

Additionally both President Aoun and PM Hassan Diab also admitted having knowledge of the deadly nitrate.

2 – Was Hezbollah involved in storing the ammonium nitrate?

A former high security source who spoke to Al Arabiya English on condition of anonymity said that the ammonium nitrate remained for so long at the port “as it was being siphoned off for military purposes by a third party.”

A statement that was also later confirmed by a source close to Hezbollah commanders who specified that the product was being used for missiles and rockets war heads, which were sent by Iran to Lebanon and assembled locally in the Hermel Region by Hezbollah. Back in 2017, the French Intelligence Online magazine had already reported that Hezbollah was constructing two underground facilities in Lebanon for manufacturing missiles.

“Lebanese security services also received American warnings from US envoy David Satterfield about the existence of two missile assembly plants, in South Lebanon and the Bekaa,” added the high security source, who explained that weapon shipments were transferred on regular basis into Lebanon via the port as well as over thhe country’s land borders.

Israel has systematically targeted Tehran’s shipments to Hezbollah transferred into Lebanon via Syria, striking the Lebanese party hundreds of times across the border.

3 – Where did the ammonium nitrate come from?

Prime Minister Hassan Diab said that about 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive material had been stored at the port for the past six years and exploded.

The ammonium nitrate came to Beirut on a Georgian ship in 2013, and was originally destined to an explosives maker, Fabrica de Explosivos in Mozambique, before facing technical and legal problems.

An online Mozambican website reported nonetheless that the Beira port had never been notified of the ship existence or its cargo, estimated at around $1.5 million.

4 – Was the blast ignited by fireworks?

The explosion that wreaked havoc across Beirut on Tuesday was triggered by an initial explosion dovetailed by a fire, followed by a series of smaller blasts. The Lebanese army reported at the time that fireworks were set alight by a welding job on the warehouse’s door.

Former CIA officer Robert Baer told Al Arabiya English that from the footage he had seen so far, it made no sense that fireworks had caused the disaster and that the orange ball of fire that shot through the explosion, indicated there had been use of some sort of propellant that triggered the ammonium nitrate detonation.

A forwarder – an agent who facilitates the movement of goods to their destination who spoke to Al Arabiya English on condition of anonymity – said it was unlikely that fireworks could have caused the blast, as they were not generally stored at the port, for obvious security reasons.

“The procedure for firework importation is that merchandise is processed before the ship unloads, due to the danger it poses,” he said.

A military official who also spoke to Al Arabiya English on condition of anonymity confirmed this that fireworks are processed out of the port upon arrival.

According to the forwarder, Hangar 12, where the ammonium nitrate was stored, was not accessible to most of the port’s employees.

5 – Did something else ignite the ammonium nitrate?

According to Baer, accidents involving ammonium nitrate are rare, as the ingredient is its pure form is generally quite stable.

“There’s never been an incident of ammonium nitrate stored in the open spontaneously detonating. It will burn vigorously but not detonate,” he said.

Because ammonium nitrate is hydroscopic and can be used with water, it would take an extraordinary set of circumstances to cork it off, added Baer.

“The bags of ammonium nitrate would have had to be exactly arranged to contain enough pressure to detonate,” he explained.

6 – Which security apparatus had oversight of the port?

The former high security source explains that varying security forces currently control the Beirut port namely Customs, the General Security, the army’s intelligence services and more recently the State security. The US Treasury has nonetheless accused Hezbollah of controlling many of Beirut’s port facilities.

“Certain sections of the Port and the airport are used for smuggling military shipments to Hezbollah,” a source close to Hezbollah fighters told Al Arabiya English on condition of anonymity. The former security source pointing out that terminal 5 was a transit point for the party in the Beirut port. The port remains also a lucrative business for all of Lebanon’s corrupt elite.

Yet, many continue to speculate about the incident given its murky circumstances.

For Bauer, if the port was being used to store weapons, military ammunition in the vicinity of the ammonium nitrate could explain the explosion, as it would have acted as a booster to the blast.

With no trust in their officials, Lebanese are asking for an international investigation that could answer all their questions, but the outbreak of bloody protests in the days that followed suggests that the Lebanese will not be satisfied with less than the truth this time.

Two years after a pan-European military initiative was first proposed to help tackle the Sahel’s Islamist insurgency, the Takuba task force is finally becoming reality, as its first troops arrive amid the coronavirus pandemic, political turmoil and spreading unrest, likwe reported by voanews.com.

A group of roughly 100 Estonian and French special forces are the first on the ground to comprise Takuba, the Tuareg name for a sabre. Some 60 Czech troops are to join them in October, and another 150 Swedish ones by early next year. Estonia, Belgium and more recently Italy count among others to announce troops for the mission intended to help Mali and Niger forces fight extremist groups in the region.

But for now, and likely in the future, the main foreign troop contributor in the region is France, analysts say, whose own 5,100-troop Barkhane counterinsurgency operation enters its seventh year.

And despite recent military victories, they say, chances of eradicating the conflict are remote, unless the Europeans and Africans offer more holistic, long-term solutions.

“If you have a gushing wound on your neck, you don’t put a plaster on it,” said Andrew Yaw Tchie, a senior Africa security expert at the London-based Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, or RUSI.

Victory possible?

France thinks differently. At a June Sahel summit in Nouakchott, Mauritania, French President Emmanuel Macron urged regional and international governments to intensify their military campaign against the Islamists.

“We are all convinced that victory is possible in the Sahel,” Macron said, citing progress in recent months.

Emboldening his stance was the early June killing of a key Islamist leader by French forces with the reported aid of a U.S. drone. Abdelmalek Droukdel, headed al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, one of the main groups operating in the region.

But other prominent jihadist leaders, including two linked to al-Qaida, remain at large, in a tangled conflict in which Islamist and local extremist groups have fueled and profited from inter-communal violence as well.

Overall, the United Nations estimates terrorist attacks against civilian and military targets in three of the most vulnerable Sahel countries — Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger — has increased fivefold since 2016.

In a recent interview with VOA, J. Peter Pham, the top U.S. envoy to the Sahel region, noted extremist attacks in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger had increased 40 percent in the first quarter of this year alone.

Asked whether counter-insurgency efforts were winning, Pham added, “It depends on what time horizon you use and what definition you use for winning.”

While Droukdel’s death might be considered a “specific” success, he noted insecurity was expanding in Burkina Faso and central Mali, which “certainly cannot be counted a success.”

Spreading threat

Extremist groups are also spreading southward, deeper into sub-Saharan Africa — profiting from north-south ethnic and religious divides within countries, and more recently, analysts say, the coronavirus pandemic.

Against this backdrop, there is no unified international military response, says Bakary Sambe, director of the Timbuktu Institute in Dakar.

“Today, there are 19 different international strategies in the Sahel and no coordination,” Sambe said. “At a time when terrorist groups are beginning to coordinate, international partners are diverging.”

The Takuba task force is intended to facilitate regional coordination, as well as to provide equipment and training to Malian and other G-5 Sahel forces, which also hail from Niger, Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Chad.

Some observers see it as a test case for Macron’s broader goal of a more unified European Union defense, which a number of other EU member states are lukewarm about.

It’s also unclear how many European countries will ultimately commit to the Sahel initiative. Some, including Norway and Germany, have already bowed out for a mix of reasons. Britain, which formally exited the EU last year, plans instead to dispatch 250 forces to beef up the U.N.’s MINUSMA peacekeeping mission in Mali.

RUSI’s Tchie, who describes Britain as joining an “unwinnable fight in the Sahel” with its U.N. commitment, has similar reservations about the Takuba troops.

“In essence, all you’re doing is saying, ‘Let’s deal with counterterrorism, and at some point, we’ll deal with the other stuff,’” he said, summarizing what he considers the European thinking.

Yet such thinking, he added, fails to address interlinking problems, including climate change, corruption, poverty and underdevelopment that are fueling the conflict.

Parallels with Somalia

Adding to the challenges is the current political turmoil in Mali, where West African leaders are trying to find an exit plan to a crisis in which protesters are calling for President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita to quit.

Some regional forces have been accused of civilian abuses. For their part, extremist groups have capitalized on the coronavirus pandemic to further their interests, including staging attacks and recruiting new members, analysts say.

France faces its own set of challenges. Its Barkhane force has lost 43 men in its Sahel operations since 2013. It also faces a negative image in some countries, where memories of its colonial presence linger.

Takuba is partly intended to send the message that “France is not alone in the Sahel,” the country’s newspaper Le Monde wrote.

The Timbuktu Institute’s Sambe sees it another way.

“I think that wanting to realize Takuba is in itself an admittance that Barkhane and other foreign interventions have been a failure,” he said. “It’s been years that a purely security and military approach hasn’t functioned to eradicate terrorism.”

In London, RUSI’s Tchie draws parallels between the Islamist groups in the Sahel and Somalia, where the al-Shabab terrorist group has grown and spread despite years of U.S. and other military efforts. In both regions, he says, extremist groups have scored points in local communities, he says, in ways national and foreign intervention has not.

“It delivers justice, it delivers humanitarian relief to communities, and people feel more secure,” he said of al-Shabab. “It’s not that people want to go to al-Shabab. But when they need security, justice and things to work for them, al-Shabab delivers.”

In their high-profile summit on the Black Sea resort of Sochi back in 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed — among other things — to task Turkey with cleansing the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib from all terrorist groups. This, of course, was in reference to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusra — the official al-Qaeda-affiliate in Syria, like reported by eeradicalization.com.

HTS was the only formidable opposition force still standing in Idlib, after ISIS strongholds had been dismantled in the province and throughout the rest of the country. Unlike ISIS, however, HTS was composed almost exclusively of Syrian fighters who were fighting in their own towns and villages, which made their eradication extremely difficult.

Erdogan accepted the task and, in exchange, was given a series of assurances that he could keep his safe zone on the Syrian-Turkish border and that none of his checkpoints in Idlib would be targeted. He was given a deadline of October 15, 2018 to defeat HTS, which he missed, along with every subsequent extension. Finally in March of this year, he met again with Putin to discuss Syria and was tasked with the exact same mission, yet, this time, with no deadline.

Arab Skepticism

Arab states like Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia were not happy about the arrangement and cried foul play, arguing that it was Erdogan who supported the rise of jihadist groups in northern Syria in the first place. They did not trust Erdogan to actually turn against the very same militias that he had founded and backed since 2012. In fact, Erdogan shipped off some of these mercenaries to Libya in late 2019 to fight against forces supporting Prime Minister of the Government of National Accord, Fayez al-Sarraj, who the UAE and Saudi Arabia believe to be an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Turkish Stalling Tactics

Turkey had originally tried to negotiate a safe exit for HTS from Idlib without engaging in an actual armed confrontation. In October 2017, HTS militias escorted a Turkish reconnaissance unit into Idlib, where three meetings took place between the jihadist group and Turkish officials. The Turks tried — with little luck — to convince HTS to exit Idlib, the northwestern province that stretches from the village of Atmeh (north of Idlib, east of the Turkish border) to Darat Izzat (northwest of Aleppo), all the way to the Aleppo-Gaziantep Highway. When that failed, Ankara adopted a new approach: encouraging defections within HTS, sowing seeds of discord within its ranks and nudging fighters to defect and join other jihadist groups. Syrian ex­pert Charles Lister said the end objective was to create a “man­ageable competitor (out of HTS) rather than an adversary.”

In reality, Ankara wanted somebody else to do its dirty work. Should the mission succeed, Erdogan would swoop in to claim credit; should it fail, he would blame someone else. He also did not want to run the risk of a bloodbath where he would lose soldiers of the National Liberation Army or the Free Syrian Army. He needed these bodies in future operations against Syrian Kurds. Over the course of the Syrian conflict, HTS had been the most capable adversary to the Syrian armed opposition, giving Erdogan all the more reason to avoid sending his proxies into a suicidal battle against them.

A Formidable Force

Finding recruits was always relatively easy for Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani. Young men came knocking on his door, wanting to join al-Nusra first, and then HTS. In fact, many begged to join. The media attention the West was giving al-Golani was the greatest advertisement he could ever hope for — and it was free.

People came to HTS for different reasons and Erdogan picked up on this phenomenon early into the Syrian war. Some saw real promise in its jihadist program, while others wanted arms to protect their homes and neighborhoods. Many simply needed the protection of a local militia, since all manifestations of statehood had collapsed throughout northern Syria. With no police and no official army, people had to run their own affairs and protect their own lives and belongings. People needed arms and HTS had plenty to distribute.

Its army was organized along semi-conventional military lines and given great autonomy on the battlefield. Platoon commanders were allowed to take on-the-spot decisions without awaiting instructions from higher command. They had the liberty of firing at will, invading villages, taking captives and shooting anybody they perceived as an enemy.

The Emergence of Hurras al-Din

Turkey’s divisive tactics began to bear fruit with the formation of Hurras al-Din in February 2018 — a coalition of jihadist groups who defected from HTS after its public distancing from al-Qaeda in July 2016. They quickly became a formidable player in Idlib, briefly challenging HTS within its own fiefdom. The fact that they were tearing Idlib apart and causing civilians to flee in large numbers did not phase Erdogan. What mattered to him was that the HTS-Hurras al-Din divide continued to empower him at the negotiating table — making his proxies stand out as moderates, while giving the Russians all the more reason to maintain Turkish military presence in the area.

In June, HTS — in direct coordination with Turkey — carried out a series of impressive operations aimed at rebranding itself as an ally in the war on terror. For starters, HTS members arrested Saraj al-Din Mukhtarov (aka Abu Salah al-Uzbaki) — a top jihadist wanted by Interpol. Mukhtarov is, reportedly, to be transferred into Turkish custody where Ankara plans to use him as a bargaining chip in future talks with the US and EU.

HTS militants also killed Khaled al-Arouri (aka Abu Qassim al-Urduni)— a ranking jihadist commander of Hurras al-Din, but, more importantly, it arrested the notorious terrorist Jamail Zeinah (aka Abu Malek al-Talli) — a close friend and comrade of al-Golani who had defected from HTS in April. Al-Talli hails from the Qalamoon area in Syria and is a former founder of Jabhat al-Nusra. He is the man who kidnapped the nuns of Maaloula and Lebanese soldiers in Arsal back in 2014. In June, he had single-handedly orchestrated a merger of five jihadist groups who were opposed to Turkish-Russian agreements in Idlib, creating a group called “Fa Ithbato” (Hold Your Positions). The five groups under his command are Tansikiyat al-Jihad (Jihadi Coordination Committee), Liwa al-Muqatileen al-Ansar (all foreigners), Ansar al-Din (headed by Abu Abdullah al-Shami), Hurras al-Din and Ansar al-Islam. HTS declared all of them outlaws, saying no military group could be established in the Syrian north without its permission. By mid-July, most of their bases had been stormed by HTS and their top commanders were either killed or arrested.

An Effort to Normalize HTS

Erdogan will use these victories against Hurras al-Din to show the world — and the Russians — that he is moving ahead with the tasked job of cleansing Idlib from hardliners and radical jihadists. In exchange for that, he will demand greater concessions vis-à-vis obtaining permanent status for his troops and more joint action against the Kurds of Syria. He has already received the green light to increase the number of Turkish checkpoints in Syria from 12 to 47 — three of which are deep within Russia’s fiefdom in the countryside of Hama and Latakia. He hopes that this “success” might eventually lead to removal of HTS from everyone’s blacklist — except perhaps the Syrian government.

While the Syrian government continues to designate HTS as a terrorist group — no different from al-Qaeda or ISIS— the Russians are more cautious, realizing that they are too difficult to eradicate because they know the terrain inside and out and are deeply embedded within their communities. Moscow prefers a negotiated settlement with HTS commanders, which leads to the surrender of their arms and agreeing to reconciliation terms spelled out by their base in Hmeimeem on the Syrian coast.

“It seems like Turkey is trying to present HTS as a group capable of— at least for now — eradicating radical groups like Hurras al-Din,” said Ibrahim Hamidi, a Syrian journalist from Idlib who is a senior editor at the London-based Asharq Alawsat. Speaking to EER, he explained: “HTS wants to be the single player in Idlib, and, it is noteworthy that in the last Putin-Erdogan summit, there was no condemnation of HTS like what happened during their summit in September 2019.” HTS is an “important card in the hands of the Turks,” he added, “which it will not surrender for free”.

Conclusion

Despite Erdogan’s efforts to stack the cards in his favor, he has very little to show for himself. “Turkey achieved the opposite of what it aimed for,” said Nikolaos van Dam — a celebrated Syria expert and former Dutch ambassador to the Middle East. Speaking to EER, he explained: “It wanted to topple the regime in Damascus, but failed to do so. It allowed billions of dollars in arms shipments across its borders into Syria, parts of which ended up in the hands of radical Islamist groups. It wanted to neutralize the Kurdish PYD/YPG linked to the PKK, but the PYD/YPG became stronger than ever.” It decided to stay away from any direct confrontation in Idlib, allowing these groups to “weaken themselves and their rivals by fighting amongst each other.” He added: “The Syrian regime would not mind if the Turks would eliminate these groups for them, but will, one day, march against those who are backed by Turkey, in an effort to recover all Syrian territory, including parts occupied by Turkey itself.”

After months of upheaval and more than half a million deaths, the world is anxiously awaiting the development of a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine. While there is still uncertainty regarding when, or even if, such a vaccine will arrive, most hope one of several promising vaccine candidates will succeed soon, like reported by nationalinterest.org.

But there are also dissenters, some violent.

In addition to familiar false claims from “anti-vaxxers” that vaccines cause childhood illness, the still unrealized coronavirus vaccine has also spawned an outlandish set of alarmingly popular conspiracy theories, some involving microchips and Bill Gates. Yet to receive serious attention, however, are a set of dangerous actors capable of disrupting the arrival of a coronavirus vaccine: jihadi terrorists.

Jihadi terrorist organizations have both the motivation and means to undermine future coronavirus vaccination efforts. Perhaps most motivated is the Islamic State, an organization that celebrates the pandemic as punishment sent by God against their “disbelieving” enemies. Already, the group has seized on the “perfect storm” of social and political upheaval created by the virus as an opportunity to validate its hateful worldview, attract new recruits and achieve gains on the ground.

The longer the pandemic lasts and the more attendant political and economic strife it generates, the more the organization stands to benefit. This raises the possibility that the group will attempt to disrupt future vaccination efforts to prolong, what is for them, a useful crisis.

In our hyper-connected world, interrupted or reduced access to vaccines can prevent eradication and lead to the resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, as has occurred with cholera, polio, and measles in recent years. Alarmingly, the Islamic State and other jihadi extremists have acted to disrupt vaccinations in the past, including with brutal attacks on vaccination centers and personnel.

Similar interruptions to coronavirus vaccination drives remain well within the capabilities of the Islamic State organization, which still controls an estimated 12,000 fighters in Iraq alone and has retained the ability to coordinate shocking global attacks.

Unfortunately, beyond physical attacks, the group also has at its disposal powerful arguments to instill fear and distrust around the vaccine—a tactic that could prove even more damaging. Most notably, the group can point to the CIA’s misuse of a hepatitis B vaccination drive as cover for intelligence collection in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. This misuse gave credence to existing suspicions the West was using vaccination campaigns to identify targets for drone strikes, or even to sterilize children. As a result, vaccinators were assassinated at the hands of extremists and many tens of thousands of children went unvaccinated.

Despite its absolutist proclamations that infection is a matter of God’s judgement alone, the Islamic State is also capable of a more pragmatic approach to the biological realities of the virus. At times, for example, the Islamic State has advocated hygienic and social distancing precautions for its followers.

Similar pragmatic considerations have played a role in determining the Islamic State’s response to outbreaks of infectious disease in the past as well as vaccination campaigns.

In 2015, for example, the Islamic State surprised many observers when it granted polio vaccination teams access to areas under its control in Iraq and Syria. Later that same year, however, the group was actively preventing vaccinations in Afghanistan. The difference between these two behaviors was political. In Iraq and Syria, the organization was at the height of its power and intent on demonstrating competence as a government. It recognized that a polio outbreak among its subjects constituted a serious and avoidable political lability. In Afghanistan, by contrast, the group was struggling to establish a foothold and found more advantage in using brutal suppression to bolster its ideological bona fides than in cultivating popular consent through the provision of public health.

The Islamic State of today is not likely to see the same benefit to cooperation that it did in Iraq and Syria years ago. Reduced to a guerilla force in most of its former territory and freed from the responsibilities of governance, the group stands to benefit most from perpetuating the disarray caused by the pandemic.

The threat of jihadi spoilers should be taken seriously. Leaders should prepare to protect vaccination teams and work to inoculate vulnerable populations against both the virus and misinformation surrounding it. But beyond these immediate concerns, the international community can seize upon a global coronavirus vaccination campaign to land a lasting blow against the Islamic State and other jihadist actors.

Already, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention is working to create a “ranking system” that would move more at-risk Americans to the front of the line for initial vaccine doses. A similar system should be devised to ensure an equitable global rollout.

Ensuring low-income, conflict-ridden countries—those susceptible to both the virus and extremism—receive timely and equitable access to early vaccine supplies is the most humanitarian and logical approach to ending the pandemic. It is also a rare opportunity to prominently refute the negative caricatures of the international community, especially the West, that jihadi terrorist use to sustain their cause.

To capitalize on this opportunity, governments must resist the temptation to hoard what will be limited early supplies of the vaccine for their own populations. Nations, especially the United States, must embrace a multilateral solution, not withdraw from vital international organizations.

If the international community can uphold commitments to equitable access and prevent disruption by jihadi spoilers, a coronavirus vaccine could surprise the world by being both a global health and counter-terror success story.

Africa is a complex continent, and one that is deserving of greater analysis and threat assessments. Consisting of 54 countries, Africa continues to grapple with the lingering aftermath of sudden decolonization: a lack of infrastructure and artificial borders that distort historical ethnic and tribal lands and boundaries, like reported by eurasiareview.com. As government corruption, resource mismanagement, and the significance of tribal loyalty remain rampant, these conditions contribute to the strengthening and longevity of coordinated violence and terrorism against government and soft targets, such as civilian populations, hospitals, churches, schools, and markets.

The lack of education, healthcare, employment, and socioeconomic opportunities are four main factors that grow the attraction of terrorism in Sub-Sahara Africa, especially the Sub-Sahara G5 countries: Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger. As great power politics return to the forefront of foreign and national security policies, the proliferation of terrorism, primarily by Al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliate organizations, and instability in the next global epicenter of economic and population growth will engender a grim future if poverty, climate change, government corruption, and weak security networks are not resolved.

The exacerbation of terrorism in Africa is directly linked to high percentages of unemployment/underemployment, and a deteriorating or lack of transportation, healthcare, and education infrastructure. Moreover, tribal and ethnic identity occupies a higher standard of legitimacy and authority than state institutions, which is a byproduct of colonial-era borders.

Despite these issues, the growing importance of Africa cannot be dismissed. Africa is expected to possess the largest population growth over the next 80 years: 1.3 billion to 4.3 billion people by 2100. By 2100, four African countries are projected to more than double their populations: The Democratic People’s Republic of the Congo’s population will increase 304% to 362 million people, Ethiopia will grow by 156% to 244 million people, Tanzania will grow by 378% to 286 million people, and Egypt will grow by 120% to 225 million people. Unlike other parts of the world, African countries possess young populations and high fertility rates (4.6 for Sub-Sahara Africa), therefore signaling a trend that by the year 2100, 50% of global births are projected to originate in Africa.

As the median age for the continent of Africa is just 19.7 years, rapid population growth will cause major disruptions to economic progress and government attempts to combat malnutrition and starvation, poverty, along with deficient healthcare, electricity, and education networks. These social ails over the past 20 years have significantly contributed to the growth of terrorism along the geopolitical zone called the Sahel Line, which is the cultural identity boundary delineating Muslim North Africa from the Roman Catholic/Christian/Animist Sub-Sahara Africa. It is in this specific location that a concentrated campaign of terrorism and instability can be evaluated and assessed.

Terrorism in Africa, although directly connected to Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, is vastly different in nature than in the Middle East and elsewhere. Unlike terrorists in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and elsewhere, 70% of Sahel jihadists are hired from local communities to conduct particular operations against government targets, military facilities, and/or rival organizations. The impact of terrorism within the Sahel region of Africa has fostered an environment of immense suffering, displacement, and violence.

As of June 2020, approximately 920,000 people have been forced to flee Burkina Faso – a 92% rise over 2019 figures. Just as Burkina Faso continues to experience alarming percentages of internally displaced people from terrorism, so too does Mali, where 240,000 people are displaced (54% being women). Elsewhere, 489,000 are displaced in Niger, and 7.7 million Nigerians currently require emergency assistance.

Similar to Middle East terrorism, Sahel terrorism expands and strengthens due to pervasive instability, poor and corrupt governance, vast territory falling outside the scope of governance, and porous borders that allow for unchecked flows of weapons and personnel between countries. As the United States begins the process of focusing on China in great power politics, a decrease in US forces performing counter-terrorism operations in the region portends a serious security dilemma for failing and weak states, elevating West Africa to become the next safe haven for jihadist radicalization, recruitment, and funding in global and local terrorist operations.

Sahel jihadism is connected to sectarianism on the local level, which divides countries and provides opportunities for the implementation of radical Sharia law. As West Africa is significantly blessed with natural resources – yet possesses little to none of the infrastructure needed to convert these resources into economic growth – terrorist organizations compete to assert dominance over and occupy resource deposits as a means to fund operations and secure the loyalty of local communities.

The influx of terrorism across the G5 Sahel countries is largely due to coordination between the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). In 2015, ISGS was formed after senior commander of Al-Mourabitoun, Abu Walid al-Sahrawi, pledged his allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. JNIM was formed in 2017 after the merger of Al-Qaeda groups AQIM Sahara Emirate, al-Mourabitoun, Ansar Dine, and Katiba Macina.

The complexity of directly combatting terrorism in Sub-Sahara West Africa is represented in the dichotomy between the operations of ISGS and JNIM. ISGS heavily depends on the usage of motorbikes and preemptive communication sabotage prior to targeting military targets and facilities. Although limited in their firepower, utilizing motorbikes allows for ISGS to demonstrate swift adaptability toward shock-and-awe tactics. On the other hand, JNIM has portrayed itself to be more methodical, long-term and covert in its operations.

JNIM becomes integrated into local communities to further understand and exploit local grievances. By becoming integrated into illicit trading and the black market, JNIM uses its war chest to help local communities fund hospitals, communal land usage, and even cellphones. The money also goes into providing physical security against government security forces, rival jihadist groups, and neighboring gangs. There are instances of JNIM marrying into local communities while providing vehicles, money, ammunition, and weapons; moreover, JNIM jihadists cooperate and negotiate with marabouts, who are local religious leaders, to ensure their interpretation of Sharia is implemented within communities in exchange for protection, money, and other resources.

The common initiative between ISGS and JNIM is to maximize exploitation of criminal activity and illicit trading in order to enhance inter-ethnic violence while seizing large swaths of territory, with the ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic state.

The nuance of operations conducted by Sahel jihadists such as JNIM and ISGS makes it exceptionally more difficult to stem the expansion of terrorism across the region, which has contributed to approximately 1.7 million people fleeing their homes. For the G5 Sahel countries to properly manage the fight against terrorism, the peripheral areas of these countries must be prioritized not solely by security forces but also economic development and political reforms.

Terrorism within the region is primarily funded by stolen livestock from Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, which are then sold below market prices in Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ghana. The money accumulated from illicit trading is used to acquire more weaponry, fuel, food, and motorbikes, which are much preferred due to ample supply and easy mobility across the Sahel terrain.

The source of these motorbikes tends to be Nigeria and Togo while explosive material needed for improvised explosive devices (IEDs) come from Ghana before being smuggled into Burkina Faso. Overall, the workings of the black market is indicative of Sahel countries’ lack of a proper security capacity and necessary technology to protect borders and monitor cross-border trade and transactions.

Sahel terrorism cannot be addressed on an individual country basis; rather, it has to be a regional initiative, supported by a combination of foreign and continental assistance. The alliance between Sahel jihadists and criminal organizations, compounded by climate change which is fueling chronic poverty and violent land disputes, makes terrorism an attractive employment opportunity, which in turn contributes to the spread of violence across the region’s ill-defined and porous borders.

A significant difficulty for efficient economic growth and infrastructure development stems from the Sahel G5 countries spending between 15-30% of their respective GDP on defense. Although the European Union has contributed 238 million euros toward armored vehicles, improvised explosive device (IED) protection materials, and communication equipment, the socioeconomic factors fueling the growth of Sahel jihadism remain ignored and unattended as political corruption not only provokes ethnic and tribal tensions but also constructs a bureaucratic gridlock that thwarts crucial reforms.

With large percentages of gross domestic product allocated to defense, other industries are neglected due to a lack of investments and constant disruptions from instability. As these countries are cursed with a plethora of natural resources, such as gold and diamonds, all of which are exploited by local warlords and jihadists and smuggled into global markets, it becomes exceptionally more difficult for the state to combat local militancy and negotiate favorable amnesty and development programs.

Yet the Sahel G5 countries, and Africa as a whole, should remain optimistic and continue to seek out innovative initiatives and economic reforms to address the deep-rooted socioeconomic issues that sustain terrorism. In 2019, the Economic Community of Western Sahara African States (ECOWAS) announced an agreement to implement a 2020-2024 plan to directly combat terrorism in the region.

As part of the plan, it was projected that it will cost $2.3 billion to effectively win the fight against terrorism. This $2.3 billion would be utilized to acquire military equipment, training, and intelligence-sharing capabilities to address the lack of border security and jihadist supply chains. It has to be understood that terrorists seek to exploit the lack of roads, health facilities, education institutions, and basic socioeconomic opportunities and services that are vital for the production of an integrated, prosperous society.

On the continental level, a viable solution to address the socioeconomic contributions to terrorism is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA), which is seeking to bring all 55 members of the African Union (AU) into a single market of 1.2 billion people and a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion. As of this moment, 47, including the G5 Sahel countries, out of 55 AU members have signed the proper legal documents.

If the AfCTA is accepted by all 55 countries, Africa would become the world’s largest free trade zone since the formation of the World Trade Organization in 1995. Some of the major benefits include increasing intra-Africa trade 52.3% by eliminating import duties as well as creating avenues toward an African Customs Union.

In the larger geopolitical assessment, ongoing terrorism and the possibility of the AfCTA does not bode well for the United States nor the European Union, as Turkey, Russia, and China have increased their footprints in Sub-Sahara Africa. Between 2006-2016, Sub-Saharan African trade to the US decreased by 66% and the EU by 5% while increasing to Russia 168%, Turkey 61%, and China 53%. At the same time, the United States increased imports by 7%, the EU by 22%, China by 233%, Turkey by 192%, and Russia by 142%.

Via trade and increased integration into the global economy, Sub-Sahara Africa has the potential to address its socioeconomic disparities which contribute to the growth and consistency of terrorism. With new economic policies and government reform, relationships between the government and local tribes and leaders can be reconstructed to diminish the influences of Sahel jihadism.

Combatting terrorism is a holistic operation that demands the participation of all echelons of society, and the mobilization of all available resources. As the globally-recognized borders of African countries do not reflect the true realities of historical ethnic and tribal lands prior to colonialism, African governments must increase cooperation and coordination as a means to address social disparities and instabilities, including border security and infrastructure.

No one African country can do it alone and as global development begins to shift to Africa, with its rising population growth and nascent markets, internal stability and human rights advocacy must be enhanced.