by Alexander Thurston (political science, University of Cincinnati)
When I began my Ph.D. work at Northwestern in 2009, I was – and I remain – deeply interested in the Muslim scholarly networks of West Africa. But even as I have pursued that interest, from my dissertation through my first book through various ongoing projects, parts of West Africa have erupted into violent crisis. In these crises, jihadists are not the only perpetrators of violence. Far from it: state security forces’ violence against civilians has sometimes eclipsed jihadist violence, and vigilantes and militias are major purveyors of violence as well. But it is the jihadists who are most infamous: Boko Haram. ISWAP. AQIM. JNIM. ISGS.
My book, Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel, is an effort to explain how the latter three movements, and their antecedents, have operated. In the book I assemble various sources: jihadist propaganda and correspondence, local and international journalism, and my own interviews with politicians, NGO workers, civil society leaders, local analysts, and ex-jihadists in Mali, Mauritania, and Burkina Faso. I try to offer a three-dimensional account that takes jihadists’ stated ideological commitments seriously, but that also views jihadists as politicians who improvise, compromise, hesitate, blunder, and adapt.
Here I am most interested in the predicament of the jihadist field commander, the figure who has fighters under his direct command. What constraints does he (and it is always a he) face? What options does he have? When does he obey his superiors, and when does he disobey?
I try to get beyond the frequently lurid portrayals of such figures that one finds in much journalism and think tank analysis, and even in some Western government discourse. I also break with the kind of political science literature that offers one-size-fits-all frameworks that generate flat, ahistorical, empirically thin accounts of contemporary warfare. Instead, joining scholars such as Jacob Mundy and Wolfram Lacher, I try to capture how contingency, ambiguity, and accumulated histories all shape and reshape conflicts. The result, I hope, is a portrait of six northwest African countries that shows some shared themes across cases (such as jihadists’ recurring dilemmas about how far to go in compromising with local powerbrokers), but also significant variation (especially in terms of how state policies, or lack thereof, shape the playing field).
As the book was being written between 2016 and 2019, the situation in West Africa, and especially in the Sahel, was deteriorating. Since then, matters have only gotten worse in terms of violence, political instability, humanitarian crisis, and policy incoherence. The book closes with policy recommendations, and a warning that the ongoing logic of the “War on Terror” is fated to produce collective punishment and thus fuel more conflict. Yet I would be foolish and arrogant to pretend that I know how to solve the Sahel’s crises. The myriad tragedies unfolding in the region are cause for much mourning, and the light at the end of the tunnel is not yet in sight.
Alexander Thurston will speak at the ISITA Dialogues talk Wednesday, April 21, at 1pm: “Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel: Local Politics and Rebel Groups.” Register for the event. The events are free and open to everyone, but registration for each talk is required.