Biographies of Radicalization: Hidden Messages of Social Change 9783110623628, 9783110620092

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Biographies of Radicalization

Biographies of Radicalization Hidden Messages of Social Change Edited by Mirjam de Bruijn

The French version of this book was published by Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group (RPCIG).

ISBN 978-3-11-062009-2 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-062362-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-062021-4 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018963886 Bibliografic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliografic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Fulani youth, members of Ganda Izo, a self-defence group, at their base in LéléHoye in the Gourma near the border with Burkina Faso and Niger. © Boukary Sangare, 2014. Title image of Part I: Dakar, Senegal, Youth centre; art of remembering. © Sjoerd Sijsma, 2017. Title image of Part II: Douentza, Central Mali, Jihadist occupation, 2012. © Boukary Sangare, 2013. Title image of Part III: V4T-Rencontre@Dakar, Senegal. © Sjoerd Sijsma, 2017. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Table of Contents List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements

VII IX

Mirjam de Bruijn 1 Introduction: Biographies of radicalization—hidden messages of 3 social change Croquemort 2 ‘The heavens have already burned’: Reflections on radicalism

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Part I History and Reflection Bart Schuurman 3 Pathways to home-grown jihadism in the Netherlands: The 25 Hofstadgroup, 2002 – 2005 Dorrit van Dalen 4 How Muhammad al-Wali developed a radical definition of the unbeliever 39 Hoinathy Remadji & Sali Bakari 5 The jihad of Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara in Kouno: An example of an outbreak of extremism based on religion 51 Walter Gam Nkwi 6 Ruben Um Nyobe: Camerounian maquis, radical, and liberator, ca 65 1948 – 1958 Souleymane Abdoulaye Adoum, Jonna Both, Mirjam de Bruijn & Sjoerd Sijsma 7 ‘It’s the way we are moulded’ 85

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Part II Present-day processes of radicalization Djimet Seli 8 Radicalization processes and trajectories in western Chad

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David Ehrhardt 9 Radicalization in northern Nigeria: Stories from Boko Haram

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Inge Ligtvoet & Loes Oudenhuijsen 10 A rebel youth? Social media, charismatic leadership, and ‘radicalized’ youth in the 2015 Biafra protests 135 Modibo Galy Cissé 11 Hamadoun Koufa: Spearhead of radicalism in central Mali Boukary Sangaré 12 Central Mali: Toward a Fulani question?

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Adamou Amadou 13 Central African refugee Mbororo nomads in Cameroon: Cultural 195 hostages?

Part III Pathways out of radicalization Selly Ba 14 Islam and radicalization in Senegal: A response in female preaching 217 Meike J. de Goede 15 Legacies of political resistance in Congo-Brazzaville

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V4T, G Hip Hop, Africulturban 16 ‘Give the Youth a Voice’: A reflection on the Rencontres V4T@Dakar, 15 – 18 November 2017 245 List of Authors

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List of Abbreviations AEF AFP AISSR AIVD

French Equatorial Africa Agence France-Presse Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst (Dutch Intelligence and Security Service) AJEMBO Association des Jeunes Mbororo de l’Est du Cameroun ANSIRPJ Alliance Nationale pour la Sauvegarde de l’Identité Peule et la Restauration de la Justice AQIM Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb BIJ Brigade d’Investigation Judiciaire CAR Central African Republic CCFD Comité Catholique contre la Faim et pour le Développement-Terre Solidaire CRASH Center for Research in Anthropology and Human Sciences CSAI Conseil Supérieur des Affaires Islamiques CTD Connecting in Times of Duress DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo EC European Commission FAMa Forces Armées Maliennes (the armed forces of Mali) FAP Forces Armées Populaires FINES Festival International N’Djam s’enflamme en Slam FLM Front de Libération du Macina ICCT International Centre for Counter-Terrorism ICG International Crisis Group ICT Information and communication technologies IISH International Institute of Social History ILRM International League for the Rights of Man IPOB Indigenous People of Biafra ISGA Institute of Security and Global Affairs ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Syria ISS Institute for Security Studies JAS Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (Boko Haram) JNIM Jamaat Nustrat Al Islam wal Muslimin KNDP Kamerun National Democratic Party MASSOB Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign State of Biafra MBOSCUDA Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association MDP Mouvement pour la Défense de la Patrie MINUSMA UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali MNLA Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad MOINAM Mouvement d’Investissement et d’Assistance Mutuelle MPS Mouvement Patriotique du Salut MUJAO Mouvement pour l’Unicité et le Jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest (Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa)

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List of Abbreviations

NCE NWO

National Certificate of Education De Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research) Office de Développement de l’Elévage de Mopti Rassemblement Camerounaise Rassemblement Islamique du Sénégal Société de Développement d’Elevage et du Commerce United Nations Development Programme Union des Population du Camerounais Union des Syndicats Confédérés du Cameroun

ODEM RACAM RIS SODELCO UNDP UPC USCC

Acknowledgements This book is the product of the combined efforts of several individuals and entities. First of all, it would not have seen the light of day without the help of Voice4Thought (V4T). Indeed, this organization tries to give voice to all those who, in one way or another, usually go unheard. I am also very indebted to Vincent Roza, representative of the Netherlands in the Sahel, who found in the activities of V4T an alternative to the conference models so well known in the academic world and among decision makers. The V4T meetings in Dakar, described in Chapter 16 of this book, were quite an experience for us and for the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This book is part of that experience. We would like to show an alternative to the debates around radicalization in the Sahel by presenting various cases from Central Africa, West Africa, and the Netherlands. This book presents not only the voices of many young people, but also those of alternative interpretations. Radicalization is not just destructive; indeed, the actors of radicalization are often young people who want, above all, to be listened to. This is therefore the place to thank all the authors who joined us in the realization of this book. Thank you for your willingness to share your ideas and research. My special thanks also go to Eefje Gilbert from V4T, Sjoerd Sijsma for the beautiful photographs, our partners in Africa—including G Hip Hop, CRASH (Centre for Research in Anthropology and Human Sciences)—and certainly also to the NWO (De Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek), who funded part of the research through the ‘Connecting in Times of Duress’ research programme (www.connecting-in-times-of-duress.nl). This programme formed the basis for some of the chapters of the book. I also wish to thank the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which financed the book project as well as the project of the rencontres in Dakar. Moussa Fofana and Ruadhan Hayes provided the translations. They also helped me in interpreting the texts and searching for good titles. Thank you, all! Together we will contribute to a better understanding of our world. Mirjam

Utrecht 10 April 2018

Mirjam de Bruijn

1 Introduction: Biographies of radicalization—hidden messages of social change The radical individual Mélanie se sent aimée. Elle se sent utile. Elle cherchait un sens à sa vie: elle l’a trouvé. ¹

This is the concluding remark of the preface to a book based on an intimate and personal story of young people who join the Islamic State. These kinds of books, often based on journalistic encounters, are an increasing genre. Their goal is to arrive at a better understanding of the motivation of these youth. It has become an important question in our modern world, where no region is exempt from terrorist attacks by radicalized groups. The opening quotation refers to a key element that is difficult to capture with scientific research: it hints at the search for identity. Apparently the environments in which the youth have to carve out a living push them into this search/quest. What is this environment, and how does it impact the lives of these youth? Is the search for identity really religious? Or can we find another cause? Is their search also violent only, or can we discover other elements? Sub-Saharan Africa has seen a significant rise in terrorist acts and radicalized youth since the appearance of Boko Haram in 2009 and the fall of Libya in 2012. In this book we search for the deeper layers of radicalization in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is situated in a larger global tendency. We have adopted the style of books such as those noted above, the biographic form, because this will indeed bring us closer to the motivations, the feelings, and the hopes of these often young people. In the media, policy discourses, and casual conversations in bars, a link is almost immediately made between radicalization and religion, or between radicalization and violence. However, radicalization is not, per se, violent or religious (Schmid 2013; Dzhekova et al. 2016). It can be related to ideologies that

 Tr. ‘Melanie feels loved. She feels useful. She was looking for meaning in her life; she found it.’ Anna Erelle, Dans la peau d’une djihadiste: Enquête au coeur des filières de recrutement de l’Etat islamique. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-001

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are pacific or, for instance, to something as innocuous as vegetarianism. The various chapters of this book look at radicalization as a dynamic process, a process in which an individual is both pushed and pulled into new ideas and often a new social group.² This may lead to political violence, or it may not. What these processes have in common is that radicalization is related to a wish for social change.³ To understand the motivation to radicalize and subsequently to embrace a violent act is multi-directional. What we see in the opening quotation is a moment of despair and a search for identity. Such a search for identity is the most complex one to understand and the outcome of many other factors. In a report on radicalization in Africa from 2016, Institute for Security Studies (ISS) researchers concluded that the ways to radicalization are complex; they are related to so many factors that it is impossible to delineate a straightjacket formula to understand these choices. These ways can be a mixture of poverty, deprivation, feelings of marginalization, loss of faith in and deception by governance structures, critique of a country’s leaders, being victims of oppression. There can also be a search for ‘being’ and ‘belonging’. Specific interpretations of religion can offer justification in some of these matters, where few other belief systems can. If such elements lead to radicalization, this is often related to external factors such as the presence of radical groups—and of course to the personality of the persons who are subjected to these factors. Why do people, often youth, subscribe to radical ideas and the groups that proclaim them, and why are they ready even to resort to violence? Is it only a flight from a situation they feel trapped in? Or do they deliberately join an alternative ideology? Is it for them a flight away or a flight toward? And how do these reasons differ in different socio-political and economic contexts? Does the Sahelian context, the Central African context determine different ways? In a recent exchange with a friend from central Mali (January 2018),⁴ one of the main arguments he made was that the young people in his area were searching for social change. They are fed up with what is in fact a feudal system that still rules their society. That is what leads them to join radical groups, because these groups carry a message of change. This message of change may be shared with youth

 ‘… an understanding of radicalisation as a complex and dynamic process, which implies the identification of its transformative stages and drivers, and how it may or may not lead to political violence and acts of terrorism’ (Dzhekova et al. 2016: 8).  In the Oxford Dictionary, we find the following definition of ‘radicalization’: ‘The action or process of causing someone to adopt radical positions on political or social issues’ (https:// en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/radicalization).  Security in the Sahel; a research project funded by NWO: reference number 383000.004.

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in other countries, even as far away as the Netherlands, but at the same time the content of the change they are longing for varies by context—and hence the dynamics of radicalization may differ strongly. The interesting question that keeps returning to mind is how decisions are made to move into these directions. Are these the result of agency and free will? Or are they part of what we can label constrained agency, where the circumstances lead to choice-less choices (Coultner 2008; De Bruijn & Both 2018).

Social change The perspective of social change and necessity as felt by radicalized youth brings us to the analysis of the circumstances and historical facts that make these youth long for change. This also may change our interpretation of radicalization. Radicalization today is related to negative forces, to violence, terrorism, and war. But radicalization is also a force in society that can produce positive results. The contested author Abou Jahjah Dyab (2016), who was criticized for his radical stance (in a negative sense), makes a plea for the more positive way of interpreting radicalization. He reviews former moments in which radicals took the lead and sees that these were in the end moments of social reform for the better—social reform that was necessary for the creation of a more democratic and sound society, although often the outcome was not exactly what the radicals had wished for. That these moments of radicalization can also usher in negative changes—changes that are unappreciated in Western styles of governance, at least—is clear. And calling for radical change usually includes criticizing the establishment, thereby provoking a counter-reaction from this establishment. Violence can quickly be born out of this reaction if not recognized in time.

(His‐)Stories: Biographies and life stories In this book we try to understand why people radicalize for a cause that can be religious, ideological, economic, or otherwise. The cases united in this book are drawn from different areas in Central and West Africa and the Netherlands, and they are situated in different historical periods. The contexts in which individuals become radical differ. How do individuals develop such ideas? With the biographical method, we aim to situate these ideas in the geographical and historical contexts in which they develop. Apitzsch and Siouti (2007: 5, 6, 7), for instance, offered these observations around the biographical method: Biographies have

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[…] proven to be an excellent way of making theoretical sense of social phenomena. […] Biographical research is interested in the process-related and constructive nature of life histories, and it distances itself from identity models which regard identity as something static and rigid. […] It is particularly suited to the analysis of social phenomena as identifiable processes […]

and therefore biographies are very much a tool to understand how identity changes in relation to contextual changes. And, they continue: The focus of biographical analysis is not only the reconstruction of intentionality, which is represented as an individual’s life course, but the embedding of the biographical account in social macro structures.

The case studies in this book have all adopted the biography or life story as a central ‘tool’ both in methodology and in facilitating understanding. In choosing this approach, we have automatically given attention to stories and the people whose stories are told—their pondering, their frustrations, their emotions that feed into their search for a position in society and the world (Buitelaar 2014). The opening quotation from the young woman who went to Syria relates radicalization to such emotions. There is no cause for social change in which emotion, subjectivity, and a search for appreciation do not play a role. It is part of being a radical. This permeates very clearly the stories we present in this book.

Get to know the ‘radicals’ After reading the different stories of the main figures in the various case studies, we may then have a better understanding of who these ‘radicals’ are, and we may also understand how these stories are embedded in the socio-political context in which they are lived. Another aim of the book is to search for the similarities between the regions and forms of radicalization. How does the world around these people apparently force radical choices upon them, or how do these people choose to make these radical choices? The choice to present various cases, differing in time and in geographical space, is based on a wish to learn from the comparison and to understand how confrontation between societal forms and radicals leads to different forms of radicalization. Often in the general discourse that is adopted in the media and policy circles, forms of radicalization are conflated and the nuances are lost. This is where we find ourselves today in the discourse on violent radicalization, where nuance is often lacking, and simplistic notions inform many policies regarding young people. Their violent and terrorist acts and the consequences should never be denied, but probably even

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these heinous acts are in some ways a cry for attention, au fond a search for social and political change. Perhaps they are indeed part of the third wave of protest movements in West and Central Africa, as Branch and Mampilly (2015) have suggested.

Connected world A word on connectivity. It is undeniable that we have to consider the influence, both for the better and for the worse, of social media in our world today (Ekine 2010). The specificity of this third wave, as it is called by Branch and Mampilly (2015), is this connectedness among each other and to the world and world developments.⁵ The young intelligent boy or girl in a small village in the middle of the Sahara is now able to access instant news and interpret his or her world in new ways. In an article elsewhere on Mali, we tried to provide insight into this new information landscape and concluded that although there is much connectivity across social, ethnic, and regional borders/frontiers, there still exist strict circles of information in which specific interpretations of a situation and discourses circulate, and these circles inform action (De Bruijn et al. 2015). Such ‘compartmentalized’ connectivity is, for instance, the connected world of international and regional policy actors. Present-day policy as it is applied in the Sahel is an example of such dynamics: the G5 (five Sahelian states who join forces to combat terrorism) is a fostered connection between five states, where external funding (and influence) of international organizations such as the EU, UN, and numerous NGOs is present. In these circles, exchanges about a situation create shared discourses and steer decisions made for policing the area. Today the focus is on military intervention, because ‘we’ agree that we are facing terrorists and violent radicals who want to destroy our world and ‘our values’. Images from Syria, The Hague, and various governments in Africa are conflated, and the fear of radicalized and violent youth is globally shared. With the chapters in this book, which add important nuances to the debate and offer various related interpretations of what radicalization is, we hope to contribute to diversifying the debate, opening views into the lived contexts behind the labels, and changing the one-dimensional image of so-called radical youth.

 See also Dzhekova, Rositsa et al. (2016).

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A region turned radical I wish to recall how my own research project, which started in 2012, became part of such a dynamic.⁶ During the period of the project (2012– 2018), the team of researchers have been observing changes in the ways people with whom we conducted research adapted their language and, in some cases, indeed joined radical groups. The research was situated in West and Central Africa and experienced the increasingly wider conflicts and violence that have developed in the region. Our research coincided with the start of the Mali conflict in 2012, with the refugee crisis issuing from the conflict in Central African Republic after 2013, and with the Boko Haram intensification since 2009. Other crises also developed, such as in Nigeria around Biafra (2015), in anglophone Cameroon (2016), in Burkina Faso (2015), and in Congo-Brazzaville (2016). These developments came after and partly overlapped with terrorist attacks in Europe and with the war in Syria. The implantation of the discourse of radicalization from 2005 onwards⁷ became part of our observations and influenced the final analysis of our work. It also raised many questions. The people with whom we were working, and also the researchers themselves, shared an interest in changing their environments and creating new ways to live their lives (see the contribution of Both and Souleymane, and the film Hope-less ⁸). On the one hand, the violence of the radical groups touched them in negative ways; on the other hand, these manifestations of radicalization influenced their own thinking. The cases of Biafra and the refugees in Cameroon show parallel developments of radicalization that are not always violent (or at least not yet). These are differences that are overlooked in the larger discourse—a discourse that developed also on the international level and that has led to a fear for these regions and their populations and enormous difficulties for NGOs and the like to get permission to work. And, indeed, in the meantime the situation seems to have got out of hand in some instances. But would that have been necessary if we could have interpreted the message in early 2013 for Mali and in 2009 for Nigeria’s Boko Haram as, in some ways, cries for social change?  See www.connecting-in-times-of-duress.nl (NWO funded: W 01.70.600.001).  Alex Schmid (2013) recalls: the concept of ‘radicalisation … was brought into the academic discussion after the bomb attacks in Madrid 2004 and London 2005 by policy makers who coined the term “violent radicalisation”’; it became part of the discourse on the Sahel a few years later with the advent of Boko Haram and al-Qaeda-like groups in the Sahel.  http://www.voice4thought.org/hope-less/; Hope-less, biographies of radicalization in the Sahel; a film made by Sjoerd Sijsma and Mirjam de Bruijn, 2018; Produced by Voice4Thought (English subtitling)

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It is important to note here that this book concentrates on those youth and persons who become radicals. Why do they turn to these ideas? We do not analyse the context of the international criminal networks, illegal trade, and the non-governed areas that are the macro-logics behind these developments. But in many cases, for the radical or radicalizing people we meet in this book, these international factors are outside their orbit. Theirs is a local experience, and often theirs are actions informed by frustration and a search for a different life.

The methodology of the book The different authors of the chapters in this book are not united in one research group. They are all researchers who during their research experience have come across the phenomenon of radicalization and an increasing tendency toward violence. Some of the chapters are based on research that was conducted in the framework of research on radicalization. Djimet Seli (Chapter 8) and Remadji Honaithy and Sali Bakari (5) were invited to collaborate in the UNDP study on radicalization in the region;⁹ Bart Schuurman (3) and David Ehrhardt (9) also framed their work from the beginning as research on radical youth. Modibo Cissé (11) stepped into researching the Sahelian problematic after the radicalization discourse was well established. For Boukary Sangaré (12), Amadou Adamou (13), Meike de Goede (15), Selly Ba (14), Inge Ligtvoet and Loes Oudenhuijsen (10), Dorrit van Dalen (4), Souleymane Adoum and Jonna Both (7), and Walter Nkwi (6), the radicalization discourse was born while they were doing research. I (Mirjam de Bruijn) invited the researchers to reflect on their research in relation to the discourse of radicalization, particularly if they were able to find biographies of radicalization. I also asked them to search for dynamics and processes and to search for an alternative model to understand the relationship between radicalization and forces for social change, radicalization that is not automatically violent or linked to terrorist acts. The methodologies to access these stories vary from personal contact with radicalized individuals, to gathering stories from families of the radicalized, to ethnographical encounters with the radicalized. Here, of course, was the danger that the discourse would take over from the analysis, and it is for the reader to judge if we have been able to step outside this limiting discourse.

 UNDP 2016

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The researchers come from different disciplines, but all have adopted a strongly empirical approach: from that of the historian (among archives and oral history), to the anthropologist (ethnographic work), to the political science / security studies people (interviews and statistics). Some stories are more in the nature of essays, while others have opted for a more analytical form of writing. We also added other than academic authors to the book, in the form of alternative modes for presenting the ‘results’ of understanding what radicalization means. These modes, a song, interviews, narrative, provide space for emotion: the explanation of a slam text on radicalization and terrorism by an artist (Croquemort, 2); a reflection by a researcher on his own process of radicalization while living with radicalization during his field work (Souleymane & Both, 7); and a narrative report (V4T, 16) about a social event organized in Dakar where a ‘positive’ interpretation of radicalization was the leading guide. The latter report refers to alternative approaches or solutions to the issues of radicalization. There are also two chapters devoted to ‘after’ radicalization, or ‘solutions’: a historical chapter on Congo-Brazzaville (15), and a story from Senegal (14) where religious radicalization seems to be less of a tendency in the relatively liberal form of Islam and the democratic tendencies of the country. Following this introductory chapter, the book begins with the reflection of a Chadian artist, Didier Lalaye, a.k.a. Croquemort: first of all, one of his song texts, written in 2001, but so relevant for the interpretation of the present situation. He is probably himself a radical but in a different way from those youth who turn into terrorists to fight for ‘Allah’. In a reflective interview about the slam text, we meet with the feelings of anger and injustice that are at the core of many radicalization itineraries. The interview refers to the historical roots of the phenomenon of radicalization and to the present-day emotions that are part of becoming a radical, emotions based on interpretations of history (in memory) and on confrontations with daily realities. In the interview, we also find reference to historical examples of radicalization and a reference to possible alternatives to approach the situation now. Another important point we can learn from the song text is that it is mostly young people who instigate radical tendencies. This is true for all chapters in the book. We should also not forget that in most countries that feature in this book, youth below the age of 25 years comprise at least 60 per cent of the population. These elements in the song text and the interview are also a guide to the book’s three parts: ‘History and reflection’; ‘Present-day processes of radicalization’; and ‘Pathways out of radicalization’. The first part, ‘History and reflection’, creates room for theoretical reflection on the concept of radicalization and on historical examples. Both lead us to relativize the urgency that is usually given to the topic in present-day analyses and experiences in the world. Bart Schuurman’s

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chapter (3) is an interesting opening chapter positioning us directly in a comparative geographical perspective, as it relates a case of radicalization in The Hague, the Netherlands. The European angle pushes us to understand radicalization not as something ‘African’ only, but rather as a dynamic that can occur in one of the richest and most secular countries of the world: the Netherlands. In addition to this opening attention to geography, the chapter is also positioned ahead of the other chapters as it is foremost a reflection and attempt to understand how the concept of radicalization is born and what it has contributed to understanding the world better. For Bart, in the end, the concept is best avoided, because it fails to clarify anything. There are too many differences and too many itineraries gathered under the same label. So what then does it explain? Nevertheless, as the following chapters show, radicalization means much in the present-day experiences of people who radicalize or who take part in acts of radicalization. It has become a real phenomenon that we need to understand, as David Ehrhardt notes in Chapter 9; and we need to understand it because it occurs in reality and can have significant consequences. The chapters that follow, which examine historical cases that have ‘ended’, illustrate the use of the concept in a certain mode. It has helped these historians to analyse in a different way the social phenomena captured in biographies. The concept also makes these historical studies relevant for the understanding and the relativization of the current discussion about radicalization. The first historical case goes back to the 17th century, presenting the itinerary of Muhamad al-Wali in 17th century Chad (4). This is followed by the more recent history of Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara (5), who radicalized violently in 21st century Chad, and the itinerary of the protest leader Ruben Um Nyobe in Cameroon (6) around the time of independence. Radicalization seems to be a phenomenon of all times. And what these more historical chapters show is that it can indeed be a force for social change. The move into violence in these stories is not always present and seems to be an effect of the presence of violent reactions from outside first. These are all stories from history about the youth of those days. Already from these stories we see a number of themes that are also present in today’s discussions of radicalization and that feature in this introduction: the importance of the context in which the ideas are formed—from an Islamizing society (4), to a striving for independence (6), and a protest against the experience of difficult and marginal living conditions (5). It is also clear that all three of these cases are in fact hidden messages of social change. The second part of the book, ‘Present-day processes of radicalization’, unites chapters that relate to more current and often mediatized moments/processes of radicalization. This part contains two chapters on the situation in Chad, two on Nigeria, two on Mali, and one on Cameroon. These are on-going cases that we are

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living with—for those who follow the news—and they are examples for discussions about the Sahelian ‘arc of insecurity’ in policy circles. The chapters here search for itineraries of radicalization, references to historical moments, and individual decisions in context. How are these itineraries related to specific contexts of mobility and communication? And how are they related to the specific socio-political and economic circumstances in which the radical itineraries develop? Factors that guide these itineraries are related to the experience and reliving of historical periods. Souleymane’s reflections (7) highlight that memories of past periods of conflict and violence inform such itineraries of radicalization. This dynamic can be recognized in almost all subsequent chapters: in the case of the Biafra war in the late 1960s that still echoes in today’s protests in Nigeria (10); in the case of Mali, where the Muslim preachers relate to the 19th century past in their discourse (11); and in the case of the refugees from CAR in Cameroon who refer to the history of violence in CAR (13). In all these cases, oppositions and assumed differences feed into the sentiment to take a radical view on society and to take decisions toward joining radical ideas and groups. These oppositions are based on new conditions in which people find themselves, as is very clear in the case of refugees in Cameroon (13) and the people who join Boko Haram (9); but they are also based on the refusal to accept or continue to accept economic and political differences, as is the case of youth in Chad (8), nomads in Mali (11 and 12), and youth in northern Nigeria (9). The role of leading figures, be they real or in the imagination of people, is also an important factor. They have the ability to unite and galvanize people under a specific discourse. The role of social media and mediating through, for instance, recorded sermons and YouTube films are important weapons in the recruitment of youth. In the end, after all, we are facing many groups in the Sahel who are in fact commenting on the state, on a situation they experience as difficult and unjust; hence, theirs is a demand for a better life and for justice. The new connectivity is also a tool for the population to be better informed, to organize, and to link to others with similar ideas. Let us not forget that in past cases, communication played a crucial role, as is certainly illustrated by the writing of the scholar in 17th century Central Africa, Muhammad alWali (4), and of Um Nyobe in French Cameroun (6). The biographies presented in parts one and two show different forms of radicalization, different ways of violence, and how they developed in different contexts. The common denominator is the search for social change and the problems that most young people, both in the past and in the present, have in finding responses from those who govern them. In some cases, they feel that violent acts are inevitable. All these stories read as stories about intelligent people who reach out for change. And in the song text there is an understanding about their

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choice. Perhaps the slam artist himself would not be surprised if he takes a similar turn in his life. In the general public and media discourse, a link is made between radicalization and violence, and religion. In the chapters in this book, also, we can read about the role of religion in the choices of these youth. However, the itineraries and stories show that there are many layers to their biographies. It is these layers that consist in feelings of neglect by governing bodies, absence of a clear future, and crushing poverty, contrasted with the presence of these religious groups offering money, respect, a feeling of shared purpose, and a certain future—or offering an ideology of nationalism and resistance against the state, as in the case of Biafra in Nigeria. How the link between violence and radicalization turns out certainly has much to do with the context in which it develops. The book ends with part three, ‘Pathways out of radicalization’, which consists of three chapters in which there is a search for ways to come to a different interpretation of radical discourse and its effects. The chapter of Meike de Goede (15) on the Matsouaniste movement and its aftermath in Congo-Brazzaville helps us to think through radical histories in a positive way, aiming at a discourse of social change but without violence. In fact, a re-interpretation of a radical movement becomes a positive message. Here again memory is important— but it is memory re-worked, a subjective interpretation of the past in the present. In the chapter of Selly Ba (14) the role of female preachers is central, as possible negotiators and reconcilers. This is one of the core debates around the return of radicalized youth: how can we reconcile them, and how can they be reintegrated into society? Finally, the book ends with a reflection on the ‘Rencontres V4T@Dakar’, a series of events that Voice4Thought organized on 15 – 18 Novemmber 2017 around the theme of society’s responsibility for (de)radicalization. The rencontres were an attempt to listen to potentially radicalizing youth, instead of talking about them in conference rooms, academic fora, etc. This closing chapter can be seen as a plea for a different approach, one that counters the military approach. The latter approach is thought by some to be inevitable, but it really will not lead to a solution—as so many commentators have noted. A logical consequence of this book and the Rencontres V4T@Dakar is a plea for more rencontres across the Sahel region. If we are to take seriously the sometimes hidden messages of radicals about social and political change, we need first of all to listen to what these ideas are, to reflect on and respond to them, and to develop policies together with input from the youth. The chapters of this book and the outcome of the V4T@Dakar festival lead us to conclude that the agency of youth, constrained or free, does indeed matter. It is to our own benefit as much as to theirs to understand their reasoning and their search for a future, to assist them to be able to find alternatives to radical and violent acts, and to assist our-

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selves to move beyond neglect or repression of these ‘voices from below’. Young people need support from those of us in power and with decision-making capability. They need, like the young woman in the opening quotation, to feel useful and to find meaning in their lives—not by feeling driven to violent alternatives, but by being given space to contribute to and change society from within.

References Apitzsch, Ursula & Siouti, Irini (2007). Biographical Analysis as an Interdisciplinary Research Perspective in the Field of Migration Studies. Frankfurt am main: Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat. pp. 3, 5, 7. http://www.york.ac.uk/res/researchintegration/Integrative_Research_Methods/Apitzsch% 20Biographical%20Analysis%20April%202007.pdf Buitelaar, Marjo (2014). Discovering a different me. Discursive positioning in life story telling over time. Women’s Studies International Forum 43(3): 30 – 37. Branch, A. & Mampilly, Z. (2015). Africa Uprising: Political Protest and Political Change. African Arguments. London: Zed Books. Coulter, C. (2008). Female fighters in the Sierra Leone war: Challenging the assumptions? Feminist Review 88: 54 – 73. De Bruijn, M. & Both, J. (2018). Realities of duress: Understanding experiences and decisions in situations of enduring hardship in middle Africa. Conflict and Society – Advances in Research, 4 (1): 186 – 198. De Bruijn, M., Sangaré, B. & Pelckmans, L. (2015). Communicating war. JAMS 72(2): 109 – 128. Dyab Abou Jahjah (2016). Pleidooi voor radicalisering. Amsterdam: Bezige Bij. Dzhekova, Rositsa et al. (2016). Understanding radicalization: Review of literature. Centre for the Study of Democracy. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/309732865_Understanding_Radicalisation_Review_of_Literature [accessed 7 February 2018]. Ekine, S. (ed.) (2010). SMS Uprising: Mobile Activism in Africa. Pambazuka Press. Erelle, Anna (2015). Dans la peau d’une djihadiste, enquête au coeur des filières de recrutement de l’Etat islamique. Paris: Robert Laffont. ISS report (2016). Les dynamiques de la radicalisation des jeunes en Afrique: Revue des faits. November, ISS. Schmid, Alex P. (2013). Radicalisation, de-radicalisation, counter-radicalisation: A conceptual discussion and literature review. ICCT Research Paper (International Centre for Counter-Terrorism), The Hague. Sijsma, S. & M. de Bruijn (2018) Hope-less, biographies of radicalization in the Sahel. A documentary produced by Voice4Thought, French spoken, English subtitle, French title ’Sans-Espoir’. UNDP (2016). Preventing and responding to violent extremism in Africa: A development approach. United Nations Development Programme Regional and Multi-Country Project Document. http://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/Democratic%20Governance/ Local%20Governance/UNDP_RBA_Preventing_and_Responding_to_Violent_Extremism_201619.pdf

Croquemort

2 ‘The heavens have already burned’: Reflections on radicalism [excerpts from an interview in May 2017]

The heavens have already burned¹ The earth revolves around itself And around the Sun. How many blasphemies have there been Between my sleep and awakening? A paedophile priest bleats, bleats; He spun perfect love with his faithful. The imam preaches politics, talks of cash And the atomic bomb. Protests in Paris, In California. Solidarity displayed everywhere With depraved clans. But where is this foul world going? Who floods the waves with slings? When I see all this, I say the heavens have already burned. Angels, the heavens have already burned; And I’m afraid for your wings, I’m afraid for your halos. Angels, the heavens have already burned. When politics screws the nation, Religions fornicate with our confessions. Bindings, conjunctures, shoddy readings of sacred writings Are the covers of dictatorship. And the antidote it provides to wipe out the chatter Is Jesus, Mohamed, the stick and the carrot. My soul has been sold but none of my problems solved; And my faith is gone; everyone is disappointed.

Interview by Mirjam de Bruijn with Didier Lalaye aka Croquemort  Also performed as “The skies set fire”. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-002

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From the marabout to the big boubou Reciting the surah with the blues at the end, To the little beggar begging, Praying to little Jesus that it will work. Satan is in the city, The rather unorthodox church and all the sexuality, Sex and text, the Bible is badly explained. In Rwanda, I saw clerics Preaching genocide and hideous crimes. Don’t forget Jakarta, the Taliban of the Mullah, The al-Qaeda network, the guerrilla of Bogota. In the name of Allah, it is the kill; God is in flames in Bali, in Russia, In Burundi, passing through Indonesia; God is in the flames, he is in the blades, He is in the dope, he drives Boko Haram. When I see all this, I say the heavens have already burned. Angels, the heavens have already burned; And I’m afraid for your wings, I’m afraid for your halos. Angels, the heavens have already burned. They first of all prayed, Those who went to war— The young kamikaze, a bomb under the jacket, He asked forgiveness from God. My mother told me that the evil was over— That Hitler was gone and Mussolini too. Baghdad and Basra, theatres of fighting; The solution is not there; Maman, I’m refuting your thesis today. Because from hypotheses to antitheses We are on burning coals. The chained monster of the apocalypse is unleashed. See how he runs wild, Grabs hold of ballistic missiles And launches attacks on the Atlantic. The powerful have decided That the dominated weak Will all be destroyed.

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When I see all this, I say the heavens have already burned. Angels, the heavens have already burned; And I’m afraid for your wings, I’m afraid for your halos. Angels, the heavens have already burned.

In the name of God I wrote this text in 2004. Back in 1998, there had been attacks in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that brought Osama bin Laden to international attention. We were already told by adults about terrorism when we were kids. What started with bin Laden is not a new phenomenon: the most famous was the Palestinian, Abu Nidal. And it was later that terrorism was linked in my mind to religion. In fact, to say that attacks and terrorism are not linked to religion is a refusal to face reality. There are those who use religion to cause harm. It was this which triggered the writing of this text, which was originally a rap text that did not include all these words. The term ‘Boko Haram’, for example, has been added. In writing it, I told myself that terrorism is one of the greatest problems of these times. Since it has changed our lives, we cannot say that terrorism is not part of our environment. It has changed the way we live. It is necessary to talk about it; there is no one in this world who says to himself: terrorism has nothing to do with me. For example, the controls when travelling show how terrorism is part of our thinking; in addition, the whole circus around terrorism has created new jobs. In fact, terrorism has invented a new element to world culture. The phenomenon is not new! I wrote that it was at the time when there were many problems in the Middle East. It must be said that this violence has existed since the Middle Ages—and it continues to exist. There were many crimes committed in the name of God. This text has never been published, and it first appeared in 2011 on my first album, Dieu Bénisse Idéfix.

The causes The powerful have decided That the dominated weak Will all be destroyed. But absolutely […]

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The powerful You will find that most former terrorists worked for the Western secret services and then converted. In addition, you should know that a bomb is expensive. When we take the example of the Bataclan attack in Paris, there was a terrorist who carried on his own a weapon worth 15,000 euro. And the question that should be asked is this: Who makes the weapons? Who makes the technologies that destroy? These are the powerful ones. And they also make the technologies that protect against weapons of destruction. And we are unprotected—like newborn babies. We poor people are the ones who do not have the technology but who buy or use these weapons to slaughter other poor people. So, there is a very clear complicity in war between rich and poor. Our governments today are using weapons to shoot people and torture; this comes from the powerful. And those who have the weapons are powerful. With a weapon one becomes powerful. So it is clear, as Bernard Werber said (despite his being mistaken for a madman): the powerful eliminate the weak and then write the story. The powerful kill first and then invent their version of the story. The story is told by the winners, who are the strongest. Today, people have the choice between arming themselves or being dominated.

The lies The risk of attack is permanent in Europe; here in Europe we cannot even breathe any more … And it’s worse than in some parts of the Sahel. There is a global malaise. Unfortunately, the powerful choose who should be marked red on the alert map, and these are often weak countries that the finger is pointed at. I call it moral castration. And a castrated man is nobody—and therefore destroyed. It has to be said that the press has also destroyed us by creating stereotypes. People are catalogued in relation to their first name. When someone is called Mohamed, he is in their eyes a potential terrorist—while I am Didier with a Christian name. I can afford things that will be blamed on a psychiatric event. It’s much more who you are geopolitically that makes you a terrorist, and not the things you do. A youth in Tunisia, in 2015, took a gun and shot tourists on the beach and fled. While we had no information about his identity, it was already circulating in the press that he was a terrorist. This is ridiculous. And all this just because the shooting took place in Tunisia. If it took place in Spain or somewhere in Eu-

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rope, we would not immediately talk about terrorism without having verified the facts. Look how stupid the international press is. It is this press that sets people against each other. The press created terrorism. So with that the strong are going to destroy the weak—and all this in the name of God! A moral funeral. And this is what I am trying to draw attention to.

Are you a radical? It is not for me to answer that question; I do not know. It means nothing. The word is invented for business. It comes from the powerful: they invent words and force others to follow. A radical being is one who forges opinions in situations of injustice. I have forged an idea and I am looking for those responsible. And I think this is radicalization. Today, for example, the way of fighting radicalization is also radicalization. Nothing happens without a cause. So the leitmotif of the fight against terrorism should be how we will eliminate the causes of terrorism and not how we will eliminate terrorists.

Youth Everyone today thinks that radicalization unites people who are indoctrinated, that this is a danger, and that antidotes are needed. Radicalization is subjectively defined. For example, an idea of youth is created, and the youth is turned into a useless being. This tells you there is a problem, and that the people who make these kinds of speeches are at the origin of the label ‘radicalist’ that one applies wrongly and to anyone and everyone. We know why they are there … they have a single common denominator: exclusion. When a young person is not taken seriously by his country, it is dangerous— and especially if the person is intelligent. What does Abubakar Shekau [leader Boko Haram] say? ‘We attack them and give you some of their wealth.’ So he is a kind of Robin Hood in his way. And that kind of talk is always successful. And it was also the case with Hitler. I do not support terrorism and violence. In violence there is no winner; everyone loses. It’s sad.

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Solutions? But where is this foul world going? Who floods the waves with slings?

What I ask myself is this: where is this world going? More and more we are looking for solutions, and more and more terrorism is advancing. We meet in Berlin, Amsterdam … but everything has failed … Where is the world going? … Nothing works. The EU has provided a huge budget […]. The one who stands up today saying that he has found solutions: he lies! The solution: I think today the short-term solution will not be easy, but we must make a start for future generations. The UN, military forces, and arrests seem the only way to respond: violence against violence. I hate the occupiers and the occupation. At Bamako airport the only normal aeroplane is the one in which you are seated and ready to land; the others are all stamped ‘UN’. And, as Valsero said: ‘When you have the UN in your house, you’re in the shit.’ There is no life left. And this is a humanitarian occupation. But that also implies a machinery; and those who receive a salary do not really come to save! How can one make the happiness of a people against their will? That’s what England, France, and the United States have done and continue to do. As a doctor, I compare it with the human organism, which in the case of disease develops a defence system—even without any treatment—because the body does not support an extrinsic invasion: this is resistance. We must look for the solution perhaps in other areas. Art creates jobs and awareness. But ‘a hungry belly has no ears’. Art can explain … but an empty stomach blocks the ears. Among us there are many divisions; but when I give my concerts in Chad, all these divisions attend. And everyone comes to take selfies with me, because art brings them together. We can save this country² by art … It is a certainty … art unites. The human being is what he is; we must eliminate prejudices, differences, racism, inequality. To save the world, you need balance. This slam piece is addressed to the terrorists—not only to those who finance them but also to those who fight against them.

 He refers to Chad, his country.

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The heavens have already burned You know, today it means people who have mastered the Bible and the Quran well; they are the ones who do these things and put them on the backs of religion. It’s a metaphor; the jihadists think they will be in paradise and that they will have 70 virgins. And if that is really it … it means the heavens have already burned. The people who claim to be believers and who kill in the name of their religion: it is that the heavens have burned. And if the heavens burn with all the angels, it is these poor angels who will burn.

Voila! Already you imagine that the house is on fire and an angel is threatened—this means that there is a big problem.

Part I History and Reflection

Bart Schuurman

3 Pathways to home-grown jihadism in the Netherlands: The Hofstadgroup, 2002 – 2005 Abstract: Terrorist violence continues to be a prime security concern for nations across the globe. Underpinning the many different attempts to detect, prevent, and respond to this threat are assumptions about what drives individuals to become involved in terrorism. In a field beset by a long-standing scarcity of firsthand information on terrorists, gaining a detailed understanding of such motives continues to prove difficult. This chapter makes its own modest contribution to greater clarity on this issue. It does so by using a variety of primary sources to reconstruct how and why involvement in the home-grown jihadist ‘Hofstadgroup’ occurred. This group was active in the Netherlands between 2002 and 2005 and gained notoriety after one of its participants murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in November 2004. Although an older case, its similarities to many contemporary jihadist groups and individuals allow useful insights to be drawn from it. Principally, the author argues for moving beyond the ‘radicalization’ concept and its problematic emphasis on linking radical beliefs to violent behaviour.

Introduction How and why do people become involved in home-grown jihadism? What binds them to such groups, and what drives some to actually plan and execute acts of terrorist violence? The purpose of this chapter is to shed light on these questions through a reconstruction of such involvement pathways, based in part on unique first-hand insights. Presenting the stories of three former participants in the Dutch Hofstadgroup, a home-grown jihadist group active between 2002 and 2005, will demonstrate the variety of motivating and enabling factors at play and how the ‘driving force’ of such involvement processes changes over time. Although this chapter breaks thematically with the focus on Africa, the mechanisms described are not uniquely Dutch or European but in essence universally applicable to understanding involvement in this form of political violence. For well over a decade, academics, policy makers, and the general public have been debating involvement in terrorism as a process characterized by ‘radicalization’—an ambiguously defined and inherently subjective concept that https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-003

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has attracted considerable criticism on theoretical and empirical grounds (Schmid 2013). This chapter will close with a brief reflection on the suitability of ‘radicalization’ as a means for understanding involvement in European home-grown jihadism. Using the three examples of involvement in the Hofstadgroup, several conclusions will be drawn that underline the problematic nature of radicalization as an explanatory concept, and suggestions for alternative ways of understanding involvement in home-grown jihadism will be made.

Rise of the European home-grown jihadist The attacks of 11 September 2001 were the early 21st century’s defining geopolitical event. Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organization dramatically demonstrated that terrorist violence motivated and justified in large part by an extremist interpretation of Islam was no longer a phenomenon largely confined to the Muslim parts of the globe. Forged in the Afghan–Russian conflict, al-Qaeda managed to internationalize the violent jihad (Turner 2010). The ‘war on terror’ that was launched in the aftermath of the attacks ensured that bin Laden and his organization became household names, and these interventions galvanized a minority of young Muslims in Western states to take up arms in defence of what they perceived to be the victimization of their co-religionists in places such as Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine (King & Taylor 2011). Some of these individuals sought to join al-Qaeda and related groups by travelling to those warzones, much like the current exodus of Western ‘foreign fighters’ to Syria and Iraq. But in 2003 and 2004, the practical difficulties involved in reaching places like the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan often made such travel infeasible. Furthermore, the US-led military campaigns and increased domestic counter-terrorism efforts made it very difficult for al-Qaeda and likeminded groups to organize further international terrorist attacks of their own. With limited opportunities for becoming foreign fighters and with little to no operational ties to al-Qaeda and its affiliates, jihadists in Europe were increasingly forced to rely on their own initiatives and capabilities (Sageman 2008; Nesser 2015). The 2004 terrorist attack in Madrid and the 2005 bombings of London’s public transportation system dramatically highlighted the resultant rise of homegrown jihadism. These were acts of terrorism carried out by groups characterized by a large degree of belonging to the countries they attacked and complete or considerable operational autonomy from internationally operating terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda (Crone & Harrow 2011). The Hofstadgroup was thus not an isolated entity unique to the Netherlands but representative of a much broader trend that included numerous similar groups operating in Europe rough-

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ly from 2004 onwards (Nesser 2008, 2014). Although the findings presented here cannot simply be seen as applicable to European home-grown jihadism in general, these similarities do underline our ability to learn about the broader phenomenon from this single case study.

Introducing the Hofstadgroup The Hofstadgroup was an amorphous group of young Dutch Muslims with radical and extremist views that was active between 2002 and 2005 and which was spread over several cities. The name is a colloquial reference to The Hague, where some of the group’s participants held meetings, and was bestowed by the Dutch general intelligence and security agency, the AIVD. Roughly 40 participants can be identified, centred on a smaller but outspokenly extremist (that is, pro-violence) hard core. Although the group lacked clear leaders to bestow it with strict operational or ideological guidance, it did contain several authority figures who, owing to their relatively greater knowledge of Islam, command of Arabic, or attempts to reach foreign conflict zones, served as figures of influence (Schuurman et al. 2014, 2015). The group became infamous for bringing forth the murderer of the controversial Dutch filmmaker and publicist Theo van Gogh, who was shot and stabbed to death in November 2004. However, much like the current foreign fighter phenomenon, the Hofstadgroup’s inner circle was initially interested in joining jihadist insurgents in Palestine, Chechnya, and Pakistan/Afghanistan. Only when these attempts failed did some begin to consider acts of terrorism in the Netherlands. Following the Van Gogh murder, most of the group was arrested. In 2005, its remnants attempted a comeback of sorts, which ended in another round of arrests in October. These marked the group’s definitive demise. Currently, only Van Gogh’s murderer remains in jail (Schuurman et al. 2014, 2015). Most other participants remain in the Netherlands, although some were extradited to Morocco as illegal immigrants, and several appear to have made their way to Syria, where at least one has died.

Using primary sources to study home-grown jihadism Students of terrorism are well aware of the difficulties involved with defining this term. Here, it is seen as a

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conspiratorial practice of calculated, demonstrative, direct violent action without legal or moral restraints, targeting mainly civilians and non-combatants, performed for its propagandistic and psychological effects on various audiences and conflict parties. (Schmid 2011: 86 – 87

However, no less detrimental to the study of terrorism has been the long-standing overreliance on secondary sources, principally newspaper articles, as the main type of empirical data used to develop and assess theories. Interviews with extremists and access to government archives or other types of primary sources are still used too infrequently (Silke 2009). As a result, while several dozen potential explanations for terrorism exist, their validity has been insufficiently empirically assessed—if at all (McAllister & Schmid 2011). Moving terrorism research forward will require a redoubling of effort to overcome the lack of primary sources (Schuurman & Eijkman 2013). At the same time, such first-hand data must still be critically assessed. This chapter utilizes data taken from the Dutch police files on the Hofstadgroup and semi-structured interviews that the author conducted with former participants. The interviews in particular afford unique perspectives on life in this group. Yet their utility is hampered by drawbacks such as the imperfect recollection of events and emotions that occurred many years previously, the potential desire to paint oneself in a more favourable light, and their inherent subjectivity. Similarly, while the police files contain a wealth of information, they are not a neutral source of information, and their emphasis on criminal prosecution means they frequently leave topics relevant to understanding involvement dynamics unaddressed. These qualifications emphasize that while such primary sources are of considerable value, their effective use requires a critical and vigilant attitude. A final note on the privacy and security of the interviewees is in order. Finding and convincing former Hofstadgroup participants to speak with the author was a difficult process that frequently ended in failure. Those who were willing to share their experiences often did so only after months of back and forth communication. All of them expressed a desire to remain anonymous, sometimes citing fear of potential backlash from erstwhile comrades. To ensure the safety and privacy of the interviewees, no names or personally identifying information will be used, and some references based on privileged autobiographical materials are anonymized.

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Pathways to involvement in the Hofstadgroup The following three pathways to involvement in the Hofstadgroup have been selected for their ability to illustrate the diversity and fluidity of the driving forces that pave the road to participation in European home-grown jihadism.

Pathway 1: The power of the group¹ Asked how and why his involvement in the Hofstadgroup came about, one interviewee recalled that it began with his inability to attain the internship he needed to complete his education. This experience in itself did not appear to have ‘radicalized’ him; instead, its importance lay in the fact that without an internship to go to, he suddenly had a lot of time on his hands. Some of that time he spent by more frequently attending a mosque and socializing with other visitors for longer periods of time. On one such occasion he struck up a conversation with an older Syrian man; and as the two got talking, the subject of the internship came up. The interviewee felt that discrimination related to his being of Moroccan background was to blame. The Syrian man, however, told him that the answer lay in a specific verse in the Quran. For the interviewee, the meaning of this particular verse was not immediately clear. He apparently went online to look for explication but found a variety of conflicting interpretations. Neither could his parents nor the imam at the mosque he frequented provide him with a satisfying answer. Mystified, he returned to the Syrian man, who told him that the verse implied that unbelievers (i. e. nonMuslims) would never grant believers anything until the latter had abandoned their faith. In this reading, the interviewee’s inability to secure an internship had nothing to do with his Moroccan heritage, but everything to do with his being a Muslim. This ‘revelation’ did not, of course, suddenly turn the interviewee into a radical Muslim; but it had succeeded in piquing his interest in such matters. Noticing this, the Syrian man furnished him with the phone number of another individual who, he assured the interviewee, would be a good person to talk further with about these matters. It is at this point that the ‘driving force’ of the involvement process shifted (Della Porta 1995). Whereas the interviewee was arguably set upon the pathway to involvement by his experience with discrimination and his chance meeting with a radical Muslim that highlighted the role of authority figures, his becoming  This section is based entirely on three interviews that the author conducted in 2012.

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a participant in the Hofstadgroup was predicated primarily on small-group dynamics (McCauley & Segal 2009). Although he had friends, the degree of warmth and comradeship he experienced the very first time he joined a group gathering surprised him. It was this strong sense of friendship and belonging that initially motivated him to keep coming back to the informal gatherings that were held in participants’ homes, primarily in Amsterdam. Although these so-called ‘living room meetings’ have been described as focused solely on the promulgation of radical and extremist narratives, they also—and perhaps at times primarily—served a social function (Vidino 2007; Schuurman et al. 2015). Hofstadgroup participants gathered for a cup of tea, to play soccer, or simply to spend time chatting with friends. But such gatherings were undoubtedly also used to present and discuss fundamentalist, radical, and extremist interpretations of Islam, to talk about well-known jihadists such as Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and even to watch grisly execution videos produced in warzones where jihadist groups operated. Over time, this emphasis on radical and extremist Islam also began to be internalized by the interviewee. However, what is striking here is that his ideological radicalization followed rather than preceded his involvement in the group. Group-level factors centred on friendship and belonging motivated the interviewee to remain a part of the Hofstadgroup. Yet they do not fully explain what ultimately led him to consider undertaking an act of terrorism himself. To do so, another shift in the factors driving his involvement process must be considered. This draws attention to three elements of particular importance. The first was a propaganda video that the interviewee watched in which Israeli soldiers were seen mistreating a Palestinian woman. He had seen such images before, but the power of this particular video lay in the Palestinian woman triggering an identification with his own mother. This made the perceived injustice more personal than it had been thus far, underlining a need to do something in response. The second factor of importance was the murder of Van Gogh, which for the interviewee was a very inspirational event. Here was a close friend of his, someone he respected for his knowledge of Islam, who put into practice what many in the group’s extremist inner circle had been debating and perhaps advocating for months. Through the grisly murder of Van Gogh, the perpetrator had become a role model that the interviewee wanted to emulate (Akers & Silverman 2004). A third element underlying the interviewee’s shift toward considering terrorist violence was the subtle peer pressure he appeared to experience (McCauley & Segal 2009). As someone who had also spouted extremist rhetoric at group gatherings, the interviewee felt some pressure to show himself equally able to violently demonstrate his adherence to shared beliefs in the wake of Van Gogh’s slaying.

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This case demonstrates several aspects crucial for a nuanced understanding of how and why involvement in European home-grown jihadism can occur. First, the process was predicated on multiple factors found at different levels of analysis, including the structural or environmental one, the group itself, and the idiosyncratic qualities of the individual in question. Second, the ‘driving force’ of the involvement process changed over time, meaning that the reasons for becoming and staying involved in the group were distinct, as were those underpinning the move toward terrorist violence. Finally, the example demonstrates the limited explanatory power of ideological convictions. Had this process been viewed solely through a lens defined by ‘radicalization’ and its implied emphasis on beliefs, most of the above nuances would have been missed.

Pathway 2: Terrorism inspired by fanaticism The pathway to involvement and eventually terrorism looked markedly different for the individual who in November 2004 would murder Van Gogh. Described as intelligent, enrolled in higher education, and involved in community service, this individual appeared to be leading a normal life prior to adopting extremist views. Yet personal setbacks and the self-reflection they engendered radically altered his life’s trajectory (Chorus & Olgun 2005). Although this person closely fits the stereotype of a jihadist terrorist as someone primarily motivated by extremist beliefs, the following paragraphs will illustrate that group dynamics in particular had an important influence in his case as well, underlining the need for a broad analytical focus on involvement in home-grown jihadism. Although seemingly well adjusted, this young man had a short temper and proved ready to use considerable violence—personality traits that culminated in his stabbing police officers in an Amsterdam park in 2001, for which he was imprisoned for several months. That same year his mother passed away. Her death and his time in prison set him on a self-described ‘search to uncover the truth’, which had two intertwined consequences. The first was a reorientation on his faith, which led him—through vigorous self-study and the teachings of radicalized authority figures—to adopt fundamentalist, then radical, and ultimately clearly extremist views in which murder came to be seen as a necessary and justified course of action to defend Islam and Muslims. The second consequence of his search for answers was a self-imposed withdrawal from Dutch society. He quit his studies, moved from his parental home to an apartment of his own, and left his work at a community centre (Chorus & Olgun 2005; Dienst Nationale Recherche 2005).

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These twin developments were to have profound consequences. One of the questions that the Hofstadgroup and entities like it pose is why, out of numerous individuals with apparently extremist beliefs, only some will actually plan or execute acts of terrorism (Nesser 2010; Gill & Horgan 2013). That the individual under consideration here was to become the murderer of Van Gogh lay partly in the degree to which his life came to revolve around the study, translation, and dissemination of increasingly extremist religious texts (Peters 2011). Although many of his compatriots shared his views, none devoted their lives to them with the same dedication. Secondly, although the Hofstadgroup became the primary source of social contacts for the group’s inner circle in particular, almost everyone except Van Gogh’s murderer-to-be was exposed to countervailing attitudes and points of view through continued contact with families, non-radical friends, colleagues, or students (Dienst Nationale Recherche 2005). The high degree of isolation experienced by Van Gogh’s future assailant enabled his fanaticism of both thought and behaviour (Taylor 1991). Through his adoption of increasingly extremist views and his commission of a terrorist act based on those convictions, Van Gogh’s assailant epitomizes the ‘radicalization’ model of understanding involvement in terrorism. Yet, as important as his ideological convictions are to understanding the violence he engaged in, these convictions were adopted within and in part because of the Hofstadgroup itself. The most important aspect with regard to group dynamics was likely the religious instruction he received from a middle-aged Syrian man who frequently gave lectures at gatherings. Moreover, by constantly discussing and advocating the justness of pro-violence interpretations of Islam, other participants in the group helped strengthen and sustain the future murderer’s convictions. Finally, another factor of importance alongside his ideological views was his proven ability to use violence, which appears to have been a personality trait that may have made it easier for him to go from words to deeds (Dienst Nationale Recherche 2005). Although the murderer’s involvement process was predicated primarily on his ideological radicalization, beliefs alone are insufficient to explain even his recourse to terrorism. To do so, the influence of group dynamics and his particular personality characteristics must be taken into account also. In short, radicalization was a necessary but not sufficient explanation for this particular individual’s involvement in the Hofstadgroup and his decision to commit murder.

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Pathway 3: Terrorism inspired by geopolitics and personal grievance The third and final pathway to involvement in the Hofstadgroup described here is interesting because it illustrates the difficulty of discerning motive from justification and for underlining the role of geopolitics. Similar to many other future Hofstadgroup participants, this third individual initially became interested in extremist Islam through the 9/11 attacks and the search for answers about his religion and world affairs that it sparked. Spending so many hours online that he allegedly lost weight, this young man became increasingly convinced by the radical narratives pushed by groups like Hamas and al-Qaeda. He adopted the view of an Islamic world beset by enemies both external (the US, Israel, NATO) and internal (‘apostate’ regimes, Shiites). But, perhaps above all, images of co-religionists’ suffering in warzones across the globe greatly affected him and engendered a desire to help those in need by committing himself to armed struggle against perceived wrongdoers (A[.] 2004; Dienst Nationale Recherche 2005). In 2002 and 2003, this desire led him to attempt to join Islamist insurgents in overseas conflict zones. But a trip to Chechnya failed, resulting in his detainment by Russian authorities and his extradition back to the Netherlands where he was interrogated anew. Here lay the genesis of his reorientation from joining the jihad abroad to bringing it to the Netherlands. This development was partly practical; reaching Islamist insurgents had proven very difficult. But it was also fed by a growing antipathy toward the Dutch authorities, fuelled by the country’s participation in the ‘war on terror’ and its support for Israel. Interestingly, this animosity was also distinctly personal, based on a growing hatred toward the justice system and the AIVD in particular. This latter aspect was strengthened by his 2004 arrest on terrorism charges and his subsequent alleged poor treatment at the hands of the Dutch authorities (A[.] 2004; Dienst Nationale Recherche 2005). In 2005, this individual was released from detention and appeared to resume preparations for one or more terrorist attacks. Intelligence information revealed that he was driven to rectify the ‘1– 0’ that the ‘unbelievers’ had scored against him, underlining the degree to which his violent intentions were driven by a personal desire for revenge. Just prior to his arrest, he made a videotaped message in which he appeared to refer to an impending terrorist attack. Copying jihadist role models such as bin Laden in rhetoric and presentation, the Hofstadgroup participant delivered a speech filled with citations from the Quran and imbued with religious rhetoric. Yet his underlying concerns still primarily appeared to be geopolitical—that is, focused on what he saw as a war being waged against

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Islam by a coalition of countries, including the Netherlands (Dienst Nationale Recherche 2005; NOVA 2006). The point that this example raises is the difficulty of distinguishing between motive and justification. At first glance, the extremist religious overtones of his videotaped message made this individual appear to be driven just as much by his beliefs as Van Gogh’s murderer was. However, on closer inspection it becomes apparent that his beliefs may have functioned just as much as a justification for violence motivated primarily by geopolitical concerns and a personal desire for vengeance. Being able to rely on a religious mandate for violence can help overcome innate psychological barriers to the use of force by displacing, at least partly, personal responsibility for harming and killing others to an ultimate outside authority (Bandura 1990). In all likelihood, this Hofstadgroup participant was also strongly influenced by his extremist beliefs, but his involvement pathway illustrates that those beliefs alone provided only part of the picture and thereby formed only one element of the larger answer to how and why his involvement came about.

Conclusion: Moving beyond radicalization These three examples provide a glimpse of the diverse pathways through which involvement in the Hofstadgroup materialized. They are by no means a comprehensive overview, but they underline several key points. The first is that involvement in home-grown jihadist groups such as the Hofstadgroup is predicated on a multitude of factors. Second, these factors can be found on three levels of analysis; structural, group, and individual. Taken together, these points argue for seeing involvement processes as inherently multi-causal and advocate using a broad analytical perspective if these complex pathways are to be understood fully (Bjørgo 2005). Singular theoretical perspectives on involvement in European home-grown jihadism or terrorism more broadly are thus of limited analytical power, especially given the ongoing lack of empirical validation for many of the currently prevalent hypotheses (McAllister & Schmid 2011). Perhaps the most important point to draw from these examples is that they illustrate the fluid nature of involvement processes. Echoing findings first presented by Della Porta (1995) in her work on left-wing terrorism in Germany and Italy, the driving force of involvement in the Hofstadgroup was liable to change over time. The reasons why participants initially became involved, why they remained involved, and why some planned or perpetrated acts of terrorism were frequently distinct from one another. Studying these processes therefore ap-

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pears to require analytical and theoretical flexibility as well as the use of a multicausal and multi-level analytical framework. These findings also add to the critical debate about the utility of ‘radicalization’ as a way for understanding involvement in terrorism and jihadist terrorism. In vogue since approximately 2004, radicalization has become a household term. Yet despite its ubiquitous use in media, policy circles, and academia, radicalization as a concept suffers from several important shortcomings. Not only is what is seen as radical behaviour or attitudes inherently subjective, but there is little agreement on how to define radicalization. Some concepts are so broad as to encompass the entire process leading up to a terrorist attack. Others are more limited and cognitive in nature, emphasizing the adoption of increasingly radical religious or political views. Definitional debates are nothing particularly problematic in and of themselves, but the largest issue with radicalization is the frequently implied link between beliefs and actions (McCauley & Moskalenko 2008; Bartlett & Miller 2012). Most people never act in complete accordance with their stated beliefs. Thus, for the millions of people who could be said to hold ‘radical’ views, only an extremely small minority will ever consider becoming involved in terrorist violence. Vice versa, research has shown that not all terrorists are primarily motivated by their convictions. This disconnect between ideas and behaviour is at the heart of the trouble with radicalization (Abrahms 2008; Horgan 2014). None of which is to argue that ideas are not important to understanding involvement in European home-grown jihadism or terrorism in general. Radical and extremist beliefs, whether political or religious in origin, are crucial to the formation of terrorist organizations’ motivations and justifications for violence. As was the case with the Hofstadgroup, such shared beliefs also form the foundation upon which such groups are built. Yet, they are one important factor among many. Arguably, through the ill-founded popularity of the term radicalization, researchers, policy makers, and the general public have looked at involvement in terrorism from a limited and one-sided perspective, underemphasizing other explanatory factors of considerable importance—particularly so at the group-level of analysis. Coming to a better understanding of the processes that lead to involvement in home-grown jihadism, as well as the different forms that such involvement can take, has seldom been as important as it is today. If future research is to add substantial new insights to the existing body of knowledge, it is crucial to prioritize the empirical validation of existing hypotheses. No less acute is the need to move beyond the empirically and conceptually dubious concept of radicalization and instead utilize analytical perspectives on involvement processes that do not emphasize any one particular explanatory variable.

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References A[.], S. (2004). Deurwaarders. Abrahms, M. (2008). What terrorists really want: Terrorist motives and counterterrorism strategy. International Security 32(4): 78 – 105. doi: 10.1162/isec.2008.32.4.78 Akers, R. L. & Silverman, A. L. (2004). Toward a social learning model of violence and terrorism. In M. A. Zahn, H. H. Brownstein, & S. L. Jackson (eds), Violence: From Theory to Research (pp. 19 – 36). Newark: LexisNexis Anderson. Bandura, A. (1990). Mechanisms of moral disengagement in terrorism. In W. Reich (ed.), Origins of Terrorism: Psychologies, Ideologies, Theologies, States of Mind (pp. 161 – 191). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bartlett, J. & Miller, C. (2012). The edge of violence: Towards telling the difference between violent and non-violent radicalization. Terrorism and Political Violence 24(1): 1 – 21. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2011.594923 Bjørgo, T. (2005). Conclusions. In T. Bjørgo (ed.), Root Causes of Terrorism: Myths, Reality and Ways Forward (pp. 256 – 264). London/ New York: Routledge. Chorus, J. & Olgun, A. (2005). In godsnaam: het jaar van Theo van Gogh. Amsterdam: Contact. Crone, M. & Harrow, M. (2011). Homegrown terrorism in the West. Terrorism and Political Violence 23(4): 521 – 536. doi: 10.1080/09546553.2011.571556 Della Porta, D. (1995). Social Movements, Political Violence, and the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dienst Nationale Recherche (2005). RL8026. Korps Landelijke Politiediensten. Gill, P. & Horgan, J. (2013). Who were the Volunteers? The shifting sociological and operational profile of 1240 Provisional Irish Republican Army members. Terrorism and Political Violence 25(3): 435 – 456. doi: 10.1080/09546553.2012.664587 Horgan, J. (2014). The Psychology of Terrorism. London/New York: Routledge. King, M. & Taylor, D. M. (2011). The radicalization of homegrown jihadists: A review of theoretical models and social psychological evidence. Terrorism and Political Violence 23(4): 602 – 622. doi: 10.1080/09546553.2011.587064 McAllister, B. & Schmid, A. P. (2011). Theories of terrorism. In A. P. Schmid (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research (pp. 201 – 262). Abingdon/New York: Routledge. McCauley, C. & Moskalenko, S. (2008). Mechanisms of political radicalization: Pathways toward terrorism. Terrorism and Political Violence 20(3): 415 – 433. doi: 10.1080/09546550802073367 McCauley, C. & Segal, M. E. (2009). Social psychology of terrorist groups. In J. Victoroff & A. W. Kruglanski (eds), Psychology of Terrorism: Classic and Contemporary Insights (pp. 331 – 346). New York/Hove: Psychology Press. Nesser, P. (2008). Chronology of jihadism in Western Europe 1994 – 2007: Planned, prepared, and executed terrorist attacks. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 31(10): 924 – 946. doi: 10.1080/10576100802339185 Nesser, P. (2010). Joining jihadi terrorist cells in Europe: Exploring motivational aspects of recruitment and radicalization. In M. Ranstorp (ed.), Understanding Violent Radicalisation: Terrorist and Jihadist Movements in Europe (pp. 87 – 114). London/New York: Routledge.

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Nesser, P. (2014). Toward an increasingly heterogeneous threat: A chronology of jihadist terrorism in Europe 2008 – 2013. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 37(5): 440 – 456. doi: 10.1080/1057610X.2014.893405 Nesser, P. (2015). Islamist Terrorism in Europe: A History. London: Hurst. NOVA. (2006). Videotestament Samir A. – vertaling NOVA. 14 September. Retrieved 4 April, 2013, from http://www.novatv.nl/page/detail/nieuws/8887/Videotestament+Samir +A.+-+vertaling+NOVA Peters, R. (2011). Dutch extremist Islamism: Van Gogh’s murderer and his ideas. In R. Coolsaet (ed.), Jihadi Terrorism and the Radicalisation Challenge: European and American Experiences (pp. 145 – 159). Farnham/Burlington: Ashgate. Sageman, M. (2008). Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schmid, A. P. (2011). The definition of terrorism. In A. P. Schmid (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Terrorism Research (pp. 39 – 98). London/New York: Routledge. Schmid, A. P. (2013). Radicalisation, de-radicalisation, counter-radicalisation: A conceptual discussion and literature review. ICCT Research Paper (pp. 1 – 91). The Hague: International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. Schuurman, B. & Eijkman, Q. (2013). Moving terrorism research forward: The crucial role of primary sources. ICCT Background Note (pp. 1 – 13). The Hague: International Centre for Counter-Terrorism. Schuurman, B., Eijkman, Q. & Bakker, E. (2014). A history of the Hofstadgroup. Perspectives on Terrorism 8(3): 65 – 81. Schuurman, B., Eijkman, Q. & Bakker, E. (2015). The Hofstadgroup revisited: Questioning its status as a ‘quintessential’ homegrown jihadist network. Terrorism and Political Violence 27(5): 906 – 925. doi: 10.1080/09546553.2013.873719 Silke, A. (2009). Contemporary terrorism studies: Issues in research. In R. Jackson, M. B. Smyth, & J. Gunning (eds), Critical terrorism studies: a new research agenda (pp. 34 – 48). New York/Abingdon: Routledge. Taylor, M. (1991). The fanatics: A behavioural approach to political violence. London: Brassey’s. Turner, J. (2010). From cottage industry to international organisation: The evolution of Salafi-Jihadism and the emergence of the Al Qaeda ideology. Terrorism and Political Violence 22(4): 541 – 558. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2010.485534 Vidino, L. (2007). The Hofstad group: The new face terrorist networks in Europe. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 30(7): 579 – 592. doi: 10.1080/10576100701385933

Dorrit van Dalen

4 How Muhammad al-Wali developed a radical definition of the unbeliever

Abstract: Muhammad b. Sulayman al-Wali was a renowned scholar in the region of today’s Baghirmi and Bornu, in the last decades of the 17th century. He developed a radical definition of the unbeliever, which deviated from mainstream ideas but became influential in his own time and later. Historical facts about al-Wali’s life are scarce, but they allow us to trace the development of his most important ideas. On the one hand, these ideas reflect an excellent education in the Muslim sciences; on the other, they respond to concerns of the population of his home environment with regard to a ‘real’ or ‘fake’ Muslim identity. Among the inhabitants of the Chadian village of Abgar, the memory of Muhammad al-Wali is still alive. According to oral history, this is where he was born, had a family and a son (at least), and was buried. Today, Abgar—or Abgar Alim Wali (‘Abgar of the learned man al-Wali’) in full—is some distance away from any main route in Chad, 135 km south-east of the capital N’Djaména.¹ It is a village of about 60 houses and one small mosque. Its chief, Saleh Ahmat, one of the few here who can read, is an out-reach health-worker; but when I visited him in 2012, his motorcycle had broken down, so he had time for a story. Surrounded by half a dozen men who shared his mat under a large neem-tree, he confirmed that in the old days Ahmat Silé Fullata al-Wali and his son Silé and many other fuqara (lit.‘poor’, the word for religious men in Chad) lived here. The name Ahmat is an alternative form of Muhammad. Silé is short for Sulayman. Ahmat Silé Fullata is Muhammad b. Sulayman al-Fulati al-Wali. Tea arrived and five or six small glasses, to be used in turn. While the older men nodded at Saleh Ahmat’s words, more and more young boys silently joined the group. The chief narrated: There were once two friends, two sheikhs. One was an Arab called Ahmat Badawi; the other was Ahmat Silé Fullata. Together they set off on a journey to Egypt. When they arrived there, they alighted at a mosque where they found an inscription on stone or earthenware, saying alif mishilak: ‘There are a thousand like you.’ They broke it and kept the shards. But some people had seen them doing it and warned the Sultan of Egypt that there were travellers with their muhajirin [emigrants for the sake of Islamic knowledge] who had shattered that

 I am grateful to Djimet Seli for introducing me to the chief of Abgar and for his company, advice, and clarifications during this part of my research. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-004

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text. The two friends understood that they were in danger, and they threw the shards into the river. But these did not sink—they floated, and the Egyptians who saw it said: ‘These people have hidden powers.’ Now the Sultan wanted to know who they were and how strong their powers and their knowledge were. So he sent for them and asked them: ‘Who are you? Tell me who your ancestors are up to twelve generations back.’ The Arab and the Fulani both did so, but the Sultan himself could not name more than four of his ancestors. Then the Sultan decided to organize a test. He ordered a white cow and a white calf to be put in a shed that was entirely closed and then asked Sheikh Badawi: ‘Sheikh Badawi, you know many things. Tell us the colour of the cow and the calf that are in that shed.’ And Badawi answered: ‘The cow is white and the calf is white.’ The Sultan asked Ahmat Fullata the same question, and he answered: ‘The cow is grey and the calf is grey.’ Then the shed was opened and the cow and the calf were grey. The Sultan understood that both sheikhs were right, because the cow and the calf had first been white and now they were grey. He became frightened, for the knowledge of these sheikhs was very powerful and they might be a threat to him. He decided they had to leave. He told them that his soldiers would accompany them on their journey back. Meanwhile, he instructed the soldiers to kill the sheikhs and their muhajirin on the way. They all set off, and after a while the soldiers tried to grab the sheikhs. But they escaped; and when the soldiers came after them, they never succeeded in catching up with them. Finally, the soldiers gave up and returned to Egypt.

The two friends eventually returned to Baghirmi and founded the two communities that still constitute the village of Abgar. Closer to historical truth, however, is that the grandfather of Ahmat Silé Fullata alias al-Wali was one of the founders of the village. The fact that grandfather and grandson have merged into one underlines the mythical character of the story. What stands out in the story is the image of the Fulani Sheikh Ahmat Silé and his Arab friend as travelled men whose knowledge astonished even the learned elite of Egypt. That is the core of their legacy today. Secondly, their knowledge, in this story, is mostly mystical knowledge: they could see things that were hidden from the eye. But myth and history are not the same. The story told in Abgar today has been influenced by the history of Sufism (Islamic mysticism) and the importance it gained all over West Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2013, most of the inhabitants of Abgar are illiterate in Arabic and French. They cannot read the Quranic verses on the wooden slates that lean against the neem-tree as relics of the village’s unique Islamic past, let alone the works their illustrious ancestor has left. Their idea of an outstanding Muslim is what it has been in the region for the past two centuries: that of an outstanding Sufi. When we look at al-Wali’s own works, however, we see that he is nowhere particularly interested in mysticism but rather emphasizes the opposite, the rational approach to religious knowledge. He saw himself in the first place as a logical theologian. If not as a mystic, let us try to retrace why al-Wali was important to his contemporaries. As far as we know, he wrote ten or eleven treatises and versifications

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and one original didactic poem.² As a whole, his oeuvre covers the fundamental fields of Muslim learning: theology, the Arabic language, and jurisprudence, with an emphasis on theology (tawhid). That his works were highly appreciated is testified to by the fact that they were often copied. Dozens of these manuscript copies can still be found today in libraries in Niger, Ghana, Timbuktu, and Algiers. A work by al-Wali on the theological meaning of the creation of the world (Urjuza fi huduth al- ͑ alam) was still commented upon in the 20th century, and his poem urging young men ‘to pursue the path of the Prophet and not hang around with hoodlums’ (Awsikum ya ma ͑ shar al-ikhwan) was even printed in Kano. Another indication of his influence and his reputation is the fact that early in the 19th century Muhammad Bello, the son of the founder of the Sokoto sultanate Usman dan Fodio, noted that al-Wali was an excellent Bornu scholar ‘whose works indicate the abundance of his knowledge and intelligence and his skill in the sciences’.³ This is remarkable praise, if one considers that Bello was writing about the shortcomings of Islam as it was practised in Bornu, because Sokoto was looking for reasons to conquer that state. The facts we have about al-Wali’s life are scarce. One of his students wrote a biography of him, but unfortunately it is lost. For data regarding his birth and death, we depend largely on oral history and its reflection in a work on scholars from the region by the modern Nigerian historian Sheikh Ibrahim Saleh.⁴ They tell us that Muhammad al-Wali b. Sulayman b. Abi Muhammad al-Wali al-Fulani al-Baghirmawi al-Barnawi was born in Abgar in Baghirmi. His name indicates that he was a Fulani whose father was Sulayman and that his home was in Baghirmi, while abroad he was also identified as one of the scholars of the powerful state of Bornu, under which Baghirmi was a vassal kingdom. Like the majority of Muslim scholars in Africa, al-Wali adhered to the Ash‘ari religious doctrine and the Maliki school of law. I gather, from information about his travels and from the fact that one of his works was written in 1688, that al-Wali was born somewhere between 1635 and 1645. But before we follow his career, we will take a closer look at the environment into which he was born. From any distance in time or space, the most visi-

 For details about al-Wali and his intellectual and social environment, see D. van Dalen, Doubt, Scholarship and Society in Seventeenth-Century Central Sudanic Africa. Leiden: Brill, 2015. For a list of titles by al-Wali, also see J. O. Hunwick & R. Abubakre, The Arabic Literature of Africa. Volume II: The Writings of Central Sudanic Africa. Leiden: Brill, 1995.  M. Bello, Infaq al-maysur fi ta’rikh bilad al-Takrur. Manuscript Or. 14.063, folio 3recto. Leiden University Libraries.  Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ Yūnus al-Ḥusayni, Kitāb al-istidhkār l-‘ulamā’ Kānim Burnū min al-akhbār wa-l-athār. Manuscript Hunwick 209, Northwestern University. 433.

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ble state in the region was that of Bornu. In the 17th century it was at the zenith of its power. The market of its capital city, Birni Gazargamu, was a final destination for caravans from Tunis, Tripoli, and Cairo in the north, from Timbuktu, Awdaghust, Agades, and Gao in the west, and from Kordofan and the Nile regions in the east. There, labourers unloaded silk, carpets, weapons, and books from the Middle East, paper and glass beads from Venice, leather products, copperware, and tobacco from the Maghreb and beyond, and gold and kola nuts from Asante in the south. Although travel was not easy and distances were great, Bornu was well linked to the trans-Saharan routes to North Africa and the world beyond. The country and the beautiful Qurans that were produced there were well known in cities such as Tripoli and Cairo. However, Bornu was beginning to feel the impact of political shifts to the west, and frequent attacks from neighbouring peoples caused many to live in insecurity. The kingdom of Baghirmi had always been rather isolated from its surroundings, owing to its impermeable soil and yearly inundations; and except for the occasional slave-raider or preacher, not many travellers ventured there. In alWali’s time, Baghirmi had only recently become a Muslim country, nominally at least. The oral traditions about its origins as a Muslim state speak of Fulani ulema (scholars) who came to the region in the second half of the 16th century to preach and teach Islam and supported the first Muslim ruler, Sultan ͑ Abdallah (r. 1568 – 1608). Very gradually, Baghirmi too set out to become part of the Muslim network of trade, travelling scholars, new products and ideas, and a sense of belonging to the culture of a world religion. Ulema of Torodbe Fulani background, to which al-Wali also belonged, have played an important role in the Islamic history of large parts of West Africa. Through the centuries they travelled eastward from their original homeland in present-day Senegal as missionaries of Islam. They are reported to have brought knowledge of all branches of Islamic learning, from jurisprudence and traditions (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad) to theology, grammar, and mysticism. Part of this knowledge was carried in manuscript books, but the Fulani also developed remarkable methods of oral teaching in their own language, Fulfulde, and in the local languages of the populations among whom they settled. A critical development that took place in the period of al-Wali’s lifetime was the spread of Islam to the rural areas of West Africa. This was a development that influenced al-Wali’s work, while he was an agent of it at the same time. Ever since the introduction of Islam in Sudanic Africa between the 9th and the 11th century, the rulers of some of the strongest states had invited scholars and religious men to settle near their courts, to add prestige and baraka (blessing) to their kingship. Others were offered land rights in rural regions, where they were instrumental in the rulers’ strategy to attract new settlers to underexploited

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land and to control remote areas. For a long time, however, the influence of the ulema on the religion of the local populations in towns or rural areas throughout the region had been limited. In general, rulers did not expect commoners to convert. Although sometimes common people may have witnessed rituals of prayer, consecration, or healing, and may have sought to be involved in them for their own interest, they usually remained pagan.And, in fact, even the devotion to Islam of kings and vassal kings who employed literate Muslims and controlled Muslim trading activities was most often partial. Because their authority over their own people remained firmly rooted in traditional religions and in their relations—directly or via priests—with territorial spirits, they did not renounce their original religion when they accepted support from Islam. However, profound political shifts in the southern Sahara from the end of the 16th century gave way to the articulation of new ideologies of social organization, and for many rulers Islam now became the only source of legitimacy. Consequently, growing numbers of commoners far from the political centres realized that an interest in the culture of Islam was the way to identify with the socio-political system and its values, and they therefore converted, partly as a way of emancipation. It even led to a series of social revolutions (sometimes called jihads) under the aegis of ulema throughout West Africa, approximately between 1675 and 1850. New converts sought information about Islam wherever they could find it—not only from ulema with a thorough education in the classical Islamic sciences, but also from more popular teachers (mallams), storytellers, healers, diviners, and writers of charms. This, and the fact that the attraction of traditional religions remained strong, caused the religious beliefs and practices of Muslims to be somewhat different from place to place. This is the larger social context into which al-Wali was born. His cradle stood (or his biric was spread) in one of the houses of a Fulani community with a strong tradition of classical learning and preaching. His mother-tongue was Fulfulde. His father Sulayman was a scholar himself (none of whose works have survived) and may very well have been Muhammad’s first teacher, around the age of seven. Primary schooling was devoted to learning to recite the Quran and hadiths, in classical or fusha Arabic. Around the age of ten or twelve boys would be sent to another teacher, preferably in another town. Young Muhammad was sent to Birni Gazargamu, where Islamic learning was much more advanced than in Baghirmi, to continue his studies with two famous sheikhs, Booro Bindi and Buba Njibima. The second cycle of learning typically comprised the basics of jurisprudence according to the Maliki doctrine, theology (literally the science of God’s being one, tawhid), grammar, and more hadiths. According to oral tradition, al-Wali was an excellent student and one of the ‘twelve stars’ of Buba Njibima. For some time, he also studied in Katsina.

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Then, in the 1660s, he was ready for the highest level of academic pursuit, at the al-Azhar institute in Cairo. As many pilgrims from Africa did, al-Wali stopped over in Cairo on his way to, or back from, the holy cities of Mecca and Medina and spent some months there, or perhaps years, to follow studies of his choice. He not only chose Maliki scholars but also studied with Muhammad b. Ala alDin al-Babili (d. 1666), a Shafi‘i scholar of hadiths in whose courtyard students from all four schools of law and from all regions of the Muslim world would gather and discuss. But here too, the books and ideas all belonged to mainstream learning. We do not know whether al-Wali also travelled farther west, as scholars from generations before him often did, to cities such as Agades, Timbuktu, or Gao. In any case, when he returned to Baghirmi and to the small village of Abgar (where he had at least one son and is said to be buried), he had travelled enough to observe and experience the culture of Islam in cosmopolitan places such as Cairo and Mecca and to formulate his views alongside those of scholars in the heartlands of Islam. This added to his self-confidence and to a style of writing that was outspoken and sometimes quite idiosyncratic. Most vehement was his treatise against the smoking of tobacco, a commodity that had reached Central Africa only years after it was first imported (from America) into Europe, as a tangible sign of globalization. The text shows alWali’s engagement with what was actually going on in the world around him and, at the same time, his ambitions in the field of more theoretical theology. In one of the first lines he refers to himself as al-mutakallim—that is, the theologian who follows the method of speculative or philosophical theology (kalam), the theology which seeks to defend the Muslim faith with ‘proof’ derived from logical reasoning.⁵ In his fight against tobacco, this combination of theory with a practical social problem was hardly effective. The text was almost lost and smoking was there to stay. But the recipe does perhaps explain the success of another work. Al-Wali’s most popular and most copied work is a prose piece on God’s attributes, entitled The Peerless Method to Understand the Science of Theology (Al-manhaj al-farid fi ma ͑rifat ͑ ilm al-tawhid). It is a commentary on a very famous creed by the North African Yusuf al-Sanusi (d. ca 1490), called The Small Creed (al- ͑aqida al-ṣughra) or The Mother of Proof (Umm al-barahin). At least 32 copies of The Peerless Method are extant in public and private collections, mostly in or from Nigeria. In al-Wali’s lifetime, al-Sanusi’s Ṣughra had been a canonical text in North and West Africa for quite a while. Very soon after it was written, scholars com-

 Valid Proofs, folio 2v.

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mented on it and made versifications, and the text itself was copied over and over again. It came to play an essential role in teaching Islam in North and West Africa—and later also as far as Asia. The text is about a doctrine that is central to Ash ͑ ari theology about God’s being and presents logical ‘proof’ of His twenty ‘ideal’ and ‘substantive’ attributes—that is, that He is eternal, omnipotent, willing, hearing, seeing, and so on, and that He has eternal life, omnipotence, will, hearing, vision, and so on. Subdividing all these categories into what is necessary, impossible, and possible, the doctrine is permeated with terms and concepts of Aristotelian logic. But in al-Sanusi’s rendering it became popular, because its short excerpts present in simple wording ‘what every adult Muslim must know about God and His prophet’. Moreover, it ends with the remark that this entire theology is contained in the shahada, the testimony that there is no other god than God and that Muhammad is His prophet. Al-Sanusi wrote that the shahada embodies knowledge that can be internalized by repeating the words often, suggesting that every believer, even if he does not grasp all the philosophical niceties, can nevertheless be a vessel and a custodian of such knowledge, and thus a respectable member of the community of Muslims. In the 16th century, Fulani had translated this text into Fulfulde, together with a ‘commentary’ (in fact a didactic explanation). This used examples from everyday life and organized the extra information in a way that made it easy to memorize. This was important because it was taught as an oral text to illiterate people, recent converts, or common Muslims who wanted to learn more about the basics of their religion. Now al-Wali translated this entire Fulfulde text back into Arabic, so that it could be written down. (At the time Fulfulde was not or hardly ever written; later, when it was, the Arabic alphabet was used.) In turning the very successful text into written text, al-Wali claimed it as the property of those who possessed a monopoly on the technique of writing—that is, ulema with a classical, literate education and orientation. And while doing so, he added something crucial. He introduced the theme of ‘imitation’ (or ‘blind acceptance’ of theological knowledge, taqlid) and of the person who is guilty of it, the ‘imitator’ (muqallid). In al-Wali’s version, anyone who could not reproduce the right answers when questioned about God’s attributes was not a real Muslim but an imitator—and therefore an unbeliever. Very cleverly, al-Wali used the authority of al-Sanusi’s Ṣughra and the Fulani commentary together to make a point that was the opposite of that of the original. The Peerless Method says that religious knowledge is essential to faith, and any mainstream theologian would agree with that—but not with the specification that ‘if people do not know, it does not matter whether this is from simple ignorance or complex ignorance, or whether they are doubting or mistrusting, or

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mislead or blindly accepting [imitating]’.⁶ Al-Sanusi had distinguished two categories of ignorance, one of which could pose a problem. Simple ignorance (aljahal al-basit) was that of the person who, when asked about God’s being, admitted ‘I don’t know,’ which meant that he was willing to learn. There was nothing wrong with that. Complex ignorance (al-jahal al-murakkab) was the ignorance of people who do not recognize that they do not know the truth, and this was a source from which unbelief could develop. For al-Wali, however, there were four types of ignorance, and he condemned all four as unbelief. First, there were those who neither had nor asked for knowledge, because their ignorance was ‘flat like the grass’; second, there were people whose ignorance was complex—that is, who were ignorant without knowing it; third, there was the doubter (‘he who is equal to both sides shifting all the time and equally between truthfulness and lying’); and fourth, there was the imitator, ‘who pledges the twenty attributes without proof. It is said that the imitator is he who accepts the words of the ulema without proof and [then] falls back to blind acceptance.’ About each of them al-Wali writes that ‘there is agreement that he is an unbeliever’.⁷ There are two problems with these assertions. First of all, there was no such agreement whatsoever, at least not among Muslim scholars. Al-Sanusi himself had never suggested that the verdict regarding ‘imitation’ was a matter that had been decided. Yes, the believer must have knowledge about God, based on proof. In his own commentary on the Ṣughra, however, he qualified this: But there are various interpretations regarding the obligation of knowing. Some say that the imitator is a believer—although a disobedient one—because he neglects the knowledge which is produced by true understanding. Others say he is a believer and is not disobedient, except when he is capable of understanding the right meaning [and yet neglects it]. Some say the imitator is fundamentally not a believer, but others criticize that.⁸

Then he mentioned famous scholars—al-Qushayri, Ibn al ͑ Arabi, and al-Ghazali among others—who believed that knowledge of God could also come from faith or inspiration and that one could be a good Muslim without independent intellectual reflection, by ‘blindly accepting’ the knowledge of religious experts. In fact, in keeping with Ash ͑ arism, al-Sanusi had been quite careful when it came to defining what unbelief (kufr) is at all. In one of his books, he mentioned only two unambiguous forms of unbelief: consciously adoring divinities other

 Manuscript Hunwick 178, f. 14, Northwestern University, Evanston.  Ms Hunwick 178, f. 14.  Sharḥ, 1932, 14, 15.

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than God, and denying that Christians and Jews are heathens. It was very difficult, he added, to define any other categories of unbelievers. Even the greatest theologians—and he gives examples of qadi Iyad, Malik, and al-Baqillani— could not say anything definitive about it. Moreover, the exclusion of anyone who professes Islam must be avoided at all cost, for ‘it is better to forgive a thousand unbelievers than to spill one drop of blood of a believer’.⁹ It is true that in the 17th century there were a few other ulama in the Maghreb who shared al-Wali’s disparagement of imitation and based their opinion on al-Sanusi’s Ṣughra. ¹⁰ But later commentators such as Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Dasuqi (d. 1815) remarked that saying that the imitator is not a believer should be regarded as legally dubious, because it would amount to anathematizing (takfir) the majority of the Muslim community. In spite of all this, The Peerless Method depicts the imitator, the fake Muslim, as the most rejectable figure imaginable and emphasizes time and again: ‘If you are asked about logical proof of [x], then say [y], so that you are not an imitator.’ The second problem here is that, at times, the logical proof that the believer is supposed to be able to reproduce is quite complex, such as the following example about the creation of the world. (The original text of the Ṣughra is in roman type, the additions of The Peerless Method are in italics.) And if you are asked about proof for the world’s creation, then say: the proof of the creation of the world, that is of this earthly world, is its being inseparable from properties that are accidental in time, like movement and rest and such things, for instance uniting and dividing; and that which is inseparable from properties that exist in time, is itself temporal. If you are asked about the creation of the accidental, then say: the proof of the creation of the accidental is the observation of its transformation from non-being to being and from being to non-being. If the accidental properties were eternal, then they could not be non-existent. But their non-existence has been observed in numerous bodies, just like their opposite, existence. So the observation of the transformation of occasional things is proof of their creation, and the link to temporal occasional things is proof of their creation, and their creation is proof of their existence in time, and their existence in time is what is pursued. Praise God who guides us when we desire this proof of [His] existence according to reason. ¹¹

The reasoning in this paragraph reflects a standard argumentation for the existence of Islam. But we know, from the lists of manuscripts that have survived in West Africa and from references to authors and titles in the works of West Afri-

 Luciani, J-D. Les prolégomènes théologiques de Senoussi. Texte Arabe et traduction Francaise par J.D. Luciani. Alger: Imprimerie Orientale Pierre Fontana, 1908. 102, 103.  Yahya al-Shawi (d. 1685) and ͑ Isa al-Saktani (d. 1652).  Hunwick 178, 33.

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can scholars, that not many of them can have been familiar with this philosophy. And even if they had been, the reasoning seems hardly fit for testing the basic religious knowledge of the common believer. The answer to this seeming contradiction is that al-Wali’s aim was not to include anyone with basic knowledge of Islam as a believer. It was, rather, to draw a line between ‘imitators’ and believers, and to draw it as sharply as he could. The Peerless Method maintains that the person who presented himself as a Muslim but, when interrogated, could not reproduce the required proof of God’s existence, was to be considered an imitator and therefore an unbeliever, an outsider to the community of Muslims. How did al-Wali arrive at his radical position, and where did his intransigence come from? In part, his inspiration may have originated in the period he spent in the Middle East, when he participated in theological discussions in circles of religious revivalists. The members of a group around Muḥammad b. ͑ Ala al-Din al-Babili, the Shafi ͑ i scholar with whom al-Wali studied in Cairo, were critical of ‘imitation’ and propagated ijtihad—that is, the effort of learned Muslims to return to the sources of the divine revelation, independent of the thick volumes and long traditions of exegesis that separated believers from them. It was part of a trend that developed in global Islam in the 17th century and favoured logic, rational sciences, and the verification of received scholarly opinions. In revivalist circles, ijtihad and taqlid were considered like communicating vessels: as the first was advanced, the second was suppressed. But al-Wali’s primary motivation lay in circumstances in his home environment, in an era that was marked by political trouble, social change, new forms of loyalty, and even globalization. On the markets one would find products and information from countries as far away as England (and America, in the case of tobacco), Spain, or Italy, where Islam was not the only monotheistic religion. While old certainties were shaken, possibilities of new orientations presented themselves. It all led to uncertainty and doubt, especially among Muslims in rural areas in Baghirmi and Bornu who had only recently converted. Al-Wali understood that very well and addressed their concerns in a way that responded to their needs. The fact that The Peerless Method was so often copied tells us that its rigorous demarcation of the identity of the believer as opposed to that of the ‘imitator’ struck a chord with a large audience. By and by, the notion of the imitator, together with the information about God’s attributes, turned into an instrument in the hands of bands of ‘fundamentalists’ who went from village to village, questioning people who presented themselves as Muslim. This was not unique to central Sudanic Africa. In the west Saharan town of Sijilmasa, and in the same period, a group of ulema also indulged in what an author there called ‘inquisitory practices’, testing the theological knowledge of common believers and judging as unbelievers those

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who failed.¹² Apparently, the idea of the ‘imitator’ as an outsider circulated in West Africa on a wider scale. Al-Wali’s contribution to it was that he framed it in the highly respected context of a written, Arabic, scholarly version of a popular text. In central Sudanic Africa the practice of testing theological knowledge ran so much out of hand that Usman dan Fodio, more than a hundred years later, very often preached against it, and he wrote dozens of sermons to refute it. The problem of the Muslim identity was in itself not new. New converts had always felt the attraction of their traditional religion, which was so interconnected with social life, values, the fertility of land, and other resources that it was hard to give it up. What was new in the 17th century was the scale of conversion and ‘lapsing back’, as Islam was popularizing. Then the instability of the Muslim identity—which in West Africa was a collective identity—became a social problem. And in Bornu this problem was more poignant than anywhere else. Bornu’s economy was based on slaves (as a commodity) and slave labour. The state was very active in raiding villages in or near its territory to capture people. A Muslim identity gave some protection to communities, because Islam prohibits the enslavement of Muslims. On the one hand, this meant that Bornu’s elite had an interest in depicting some of their neighbours as unbelievers, if slavery as a social institution was to remain a legal affair. On the other hand, communities that wanted to avoid being robbed of their strongest people had a serious interest in presenting a firm Muslim identity and in not letting it be contaminated by doubt, of their own inhabitants or of others. There is an interesting remark with regard to Islam as protection against slavery in the first part of The Peerless Method, a kind of preface added to the text of al-Sanusi’s Ṣughra. It is about the shahada, the Muslim testimony of faith. First it states, in line with the conventional Ash‘ari view, that as long as the words are pronounced by someone who firmly believes in God and complies with the sunnah and acts as a Muslim, the shahada is the key to paradise. But for the audience of The Peerless Method, more than paradise was at stake. For the relatively new Muslims in central Sudanic Africa, paradise or a hereafter were new and abstract concepts that hardly roused their concern. They wanted to know what was in it, here on Earth, for the person who pronounces that there is no god except God and that Muhammad is His prophet. The answer of The Peerless Method was that he who pronounces the shahada would not be murdered or enslaved and that others would not consume what is his. Murder, en-

 Al-Ḥasan b. Mas‘ūd al-Yūsī (d. 1691). His (untitled) text can be found in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fond Arabe 1273.

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slavement, and theft were the real-life terrors in a society suffering from unrest, especially among those who were considered non-Muslims.

Conclusion In conclusion, I would like to add three remarks with regard to the two foci of this book, the study of biography and radicalization—or in this case, anathematizing in al-Wali’s time. The textual sources from pre-modern central Sudanic Africa are scarce, and those that have been preserved are one-sided: they were written by Muslims only (for the simple reason that non-Muslims had no script) and almost exclusively by learned men. All the same, these learned men, who were often also religious leaders of their communities, worked not in isolation but in a social context that is reflected in their work. The study of the work and life of one of them informs us of the developments, conflicts, and values of his environment. The 17th century was important in the history of Islam around Lake Chad. As the religion spread to rural areas, the forms of social life within Muslim communities and relations between Muslim and non-Muslim communities changed. Al-Wali’s development as a scholar makes us aware of how such changes led to shifting identities and new moral and political concepts. This is important for us, because these concepts sometimes still prevail and justify, for example, the right to political authority, cultural domination, or land. At the same time, they may determine whose claims to the same goods are considered immoral and a threat to the social and religious order. Muhammad al-Wali was successful as a scholar because he took up a central concern of common believers: the identity of the ‘real’ Muslim versus that of the ‘fake’ Muslim. This shows us the need among his audience for ‘othering’ in a time of globalization and significant social change. Religion, and in this case the prestige of a well-known theological text, was a powerful instrument for the demarcation of social categories. But the need for this demarcation emerged from practical social and economic interests, not from religion itself. When times changed, the value of al-Wali’s work for later generations changed and so did the interpretation of his life. For Usman dan Fodio, who fought with conviction against the notion of the ‘imitator’, al-Wali was a grammarian and one of the greatest scholars of his time. Later commentators, up until the 20th century, were interested in al-Wali’s very theoretical work on the creation of the Earth. And for the inhabitants of Abgar, their ancestor was first of all a great mystic. Their story is no less true than the one presented above.

Hoinathy Remadji & Sali Bakari

5 The jihad of Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara in Kouno: An example of an outbreak of extremism based on religion Abstract: Chad is a multi-cultural and multi-religious secular country. Islam coexists with other religions, including Christianity and the so-called African religions. However, events have disrupted or shaken this coexistence on several occasions. Of these events, the most significant in the last decade remains the ‘jihad’ attempt launched by Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara in the city of Kouno (Baguirmi) on 29 June 2008. The State’s military response to this religious uprising, which was beginning to overflow, resulted in more than 70 deaths. This chapter reviews this attempt at jihad, which to date is a subject of investigation for those interested in religious issues in Chad. How did a sheikh of apparently Sufi religious practices find himself involved in the open violence of Salafism? What impact can such an event have on the future of people living together in Chad? This chapter is essentially factual and attempts to answer these questions specifically on the basis of the sheikh’s trajectory. To begin, we provide a brief overview of the theatre of events in the city of Kouno. This is the fruit of empirical field research conducted in August 2015 in the Kouno and Sarh region of southern Chad.

Introduction What I know is that he is a child who grew up here. He sold shoes that he went to buy in Sarh or N’Djaména. I know his father and his mother. Nobody imagined he was capable of doing such a thing. ¹

Several religions coexist in Chad, the most important of which are Islam and Christianity. According to the 2009 census, Islam is the most practised religion, with more than half of Chadians as adherents (58.4 %), followed by Christianity (34.6 %); therefore, unlike most other countries in the Sahel, there is a relative balance between the religions. This balance would fully justify the secular orienta-

 Interview with M.A., a male of 60 years, in the sub-prefecture of Kouno, on 24 August 2015. We use only the initials of our interlocutors to respect their anonymity, as agreed with them during the interviews. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-005

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tion of the state. Islam² was introduced to Chad in the early 11th century with the Islamization of the empire of Kanem under Mai Dunama I (Coudray 1992: 6; Magnant 1992: 10 – 11).³ Researchers who have published on Islam in Chad recognize the fact that Chadian Islam is characterized by the Tijanite current (Coudray 1992; Magnant 1992; Ladiba 2011), even if for some time now other trends (Wahhabi in particular) are slowly gaining ground. Islam in Chad therefore generally coexists with other religious denominations. However, events have repeatedly arisen to disrupt this idea. Following the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed by a Danish newspaper, protests were organized in N’Djaména, with excesses having led to vandalized Christian churches and schools (N’DjaménaHebdo 2005). However, the most striking event remains the attempt at ‘jihad’⁴ launched by Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara in the town of Kouno (in Baguirmi) on 29 June 2008, which left more than 70 dead. This chapter reviews this attempt at jihad, which to this day is a subject of investigation for those interested in the religious question in Chad. Indeed, one wonders how a sheikh of apparently Sufi religious practices ended up in the open violence of Salafism? What impact can such an event have for the future of Chadians living together? This chapter is essentially factual and attempts to answer these questions precisely on the basis of the sheikh’s trajectory. Initially, a brief overview of the theatre of events in the town of Kouno is provided. This is the fruit of empirical field research conducted in August 2015 in the area of Kouno and Sarh. The study consisted of qualitative interviews with contemporary eyewitnesses of the sheikh and his work and with the traditional, religious, and administrative authorities of the area. The interviews were conducted by participant observation, in particular by a visit to the site that housed the Madina founded by the sheikh and the churches burned in his path. A document study was also conducted prior to this field mission.

Kouno, on the borders of Baguirmi Kouno is a small town situated north of Moyen Chari, about 100 km from Sarh and about 300 km south of N’Djaména. It is the capital of the sub-prefecture of the same name, a dependent of the department of Baguirmi in the Chari Baguirmi

 For a deeper understanding of Islam in Chad see, among others, Coudray 1992, Magnant 1992, and Ladiba 2011.  Some minority sources consider his predecessor Mai Oummé to have been the first Islamized prince of Kanem.  Understood here in its martial sense.

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region. The population of Kouno is 29,439,⁵ with inhabitants including Dik, Ndam, Bua, Niellim, Laal, Gouley, Sar, Ngambaye fishermen, and Arabs. It is thus a rather cosmopolitan environment where a diversity of populations from the local areas and surrounding regions are mixed together with the Ndam, considered to be the original natives. The population is predominantly Muslim, but an important community of Catholic and Protestant Christians also live in Kouno. In the history of Chad, the town of Kouno is known to have been one of the seats of Rabah (Rabih az-Zubayr ibn Fadl Allah), known as one of the resisters to the colonial conquest in Chad but also as a raider and as a propagator of Islam in the region. In October 1899, the French columns, under the orders of Emile Gentil, attempted in vain to re-take this city from Rabah. The remains of these battles and of the passage of Rabah are still visible in Kouno (Magnant 1992: 214). It was in this peaceful town that Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara was born (around 1980) and grew up, later going on to launch a jihad in July 2008. The present chapter returns to these bloody events but first retraces the trajectory of the sheikh.

A sinuous trajectory Born to parents originating in central Chad in the Guera region and settled in Kouno, Ahmet Ismael Bichara peacefully spent all his childhood and part of his youth in this town. Following the example of the other Muslim children of his age, the young Ahmet Ismael Bichara was enrolled in a Quranic school in order to learn the Quran and become familiar with his religion. The flexibility and especially the non-formal character of the route to acquisition of Arab-Islamic knowledge, which does not lead to employment, compelled Ahmet Ismael Bichara to interrupt his education and to seek a remunerative activity to make a living. He chose commerce. To do this, Ahmet Ismael Bichara regularly travelled to N’Djaména, Sarh, and Koumra to stock up with goods. As his business expanded, he went to Nigeria to buy merchandise. The actors we met on the spot in Kouno were unable to give us specific details on the nature of his trade. Some spoke of general trade in small goods (shoes, clothes, various merchandise) or counterfeit medicines from Nigeria or India. All along, Ahmet Ismael Bichara used his business treks to perfect his Quranic training in northern Nigeria. He had meetings there particularly in religious

 According to the last census (2009) in Chad.

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circles. In the course of his travels and meetings, Ahmet Ismael Bichara gradually switched into occultism, as evidenced by words collected during our field investigation: Overnight, he became a marabout. In fact, he wrote Quranic verses that produced results, and the news gradually spread. Many people came to see him for treatment—from Sarh, Koumra, and of course from the village here.⁶

This change of direction, far from indicating the passage to a new destination, expresses rather a return to the point of departure, that of the use of Arab-Islamic knowledge for mercantilist purposes. The influence of Islam, its Tijanite Sufi version more specifically, promotes both the establishment of the foothold and the development of occultism. Indeed, Tijanite Sufism in Chad is a vision of Islam that is based on esotericism, on the worship and exaltation of individual prayers provided by the sheikh or muqaddim (guide or representative of the brotherhood). In most cases, these sheikhs use numerology (the science of numbers) to create mystical formulae to resolve the problems of the faithful. The Arab-Islamic Sufi scholar is often a multi-functional actor. A propagator of Islam and of knowledge, he is also a therapist, a magician, and a possessor of mystical power that makes him apt to perform miracles. Ahmet Ismael Bichara, in his function as a marabout, followed in the wake of his predecessors and his contemporaries—who, by means of an extension of the reading of texts, have not only permitted the recourse to ancestral practices but have also erased all barriers between Islam and traditions. Physical and mental disabilities, politicians in disgrace, potential candidates for high office, bankrupt entrepreneurs, and others having met with misfortune in business or love constitute the pool that provides the marabout with customers and/or faithful.

A growing reputation This posture as a mystic gradually garnered a reputation. The town of Kouno became an attraction site for people from thousands of kilometres away. People came from Cameroon, Nigeria, and many parts of Chad to meet the marabout, who now bore the title of ‘sheikh’. This renown grew to such an extent that the sheikh was more and more perceived as a great scholar—and better, a holy man performing miracles and  Interview with M.A. in the sub-prefecture of Kouno, 24 August 2015.

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healings—in the eyes of those who followed him and came sometimes from far away to consult him. Even some administrative and political officials courted the sheikh, bringing him gifts or even money. He enjoyed a meteoric rise simultaneously as a healer, imam, faki, and sheikh. To customers, followers, and other supporters were joined muhadjirines, children and young people in search of knowledge. As the days went by, the sheikh’s court grew and diversified. Although open, as evidenced by the growing adherence and allegiance, the court also remained closed because it was aloof from Kouno’s society, which it did not consider as a model. The sheikh, his court, and his model grew so much in demographic terms that they could no longer maintain themselves within the perimeter of the town of Kouno. They needed a new location. Bichara therefore undertook steps in this direction. ‘His fame came to the ears of Sultan Ahmat of Massenya, whom he went to see to ask him for a larger plot outside the town of Kouno for himself and his faithful.’⁷ In an article published in the newspaper N’Djaména Al-Djadida,⁸ Adam Abdallah Mahamat Fadoul provides an idea of the renown of the sheikh—at least in Arab-Islamic circles—in the following terms: His Eminence Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara, of the town Narudine Abul Barakat: may the salvation of God and His blessing be upon you. The N’Djaména Al-Djadida newspaper, published in Arabic, which makes great efforts to spread this beautiful language, the language of the Holy Quran, has the pleasure of meeting your Eminence to grant you an interview. We thank you and pray to Allah the Almighty to make Islam triumphant through you. (Adam Abdallah Mahamat Fadoul 2008: 5)

The sheikh and his action were therefore perceived here as a means or a way to contribute to the triumph of Islam in the country.

The ‘hijrah’ from Kouno to Madina Nasrudine Abul Barakat On the authorization of the Sultan of Massenya, the sheikh and his followers settled on a site 4 km south of Kouno on the main route leading to Sarh. At this lo-

 Interview with M.A. in the sub-prefecture of Kouno, 24 August 2015.  A newspaper published in Arabic by the Association Ansar Assuna Al Mahamudia. The name of the newspaper means ‘the new N’Djaména’.

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cation, they built a town called Madina Nasrudine Abu Barakat (lit. ‘victorious and blessed city’).

Fig.  and : Ruin of Mbrouka © Remadji Honaithy

In this mabrouka there lived a thousand of the faithful—men, women, and children—coming not only from Kouno but from as far away as Cameroon and Nigeria. Our visit to the remains of the site allowed us to realize its scale. According to our observations, the settlement stretched roughly 1 km along the road and extended inwards about 0.5 km. The whole was surrounded by a wall and the houses of the faithful and their families. At the centre had clearly been the mosque, along with the sheikh’s house. According to measurements made of the foundations of this mosque, it was approximately 30 m long by more than 20 m wide, with a main door and two secondary doors in each side. Next to the minaret there was a doorway reserved for the entrance of the sheikh once the faithful had been assembled. We could also distinguish the upright supports for a shed that doubtless served as a Quranic school for the youngest members of the community. Finally, facing the road was a sort of platform or rostrum where flagpoles carrying flags were to be planted. We also discovered wells. The exile of a sheikh from a centre to the periphery for the establishment of a sanctuary dates back to the jihadist tradition, whether Sufi or Salafist. The leading Mahamat reformer Al Moravide, the precursors of the Tijanite, Kadirite, and Mourides brotherhoods, and the reformers Usman dan Fodio, and Mahamat Yusuf all passed through the same process.

A clear choice for a martial jihad In an interview with the editor of the N’Djaména Al-Djadida newspaper, the sheikh declared the coming of Al Khidir and his willingness to assist him in

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his jihadist enterprise.⁹ These words provide an idea of the jihadist propensity of the sheikh and his followers, even if they do not allow us to clearly understand their doctrine and brotherhood. However, this statement lies at a merging of an eschatological reading of Sufism and Takfirism. The continual recitation of the formula ‘La ilaha illaha’, the noticeable presence of prayer beads, and the regalia of the faithful are proof of the group’s belonging to the Tijanite Sufi current. Present in Chad since before the colonial period, this version of Islam—one of whose characteristics is a widening of the reading of the sacred text—was an instrument of the diffusion of Islam and today is an inescapable current in the religious dynamics of Chad. Far from being firmly in the line of reformist leaders like Usman dan Fodio— whose struggle was based on a societal, Islamic-conservative project circumscribed by the Islamic shariah—the sheikh stood out by his jihadist propensities, which he wished to lead from Chad to as far as Denmark. This was in response to the caricature of the Prophet Mohamed published in the name of freedom of expression by the West and the defenders of its values—but was seen by Muslims, Chadians in particular, as the umpteenth provocation. A Sufi of the Tijanite persuasion, the sheikh became a devotee, a stage in which initiatory exercises and rites are practised. During a stay in Nigeria, Ahmet Ismael Bichara discussed the order’s protocol with a muqaddam representative of the Tijania.¹⁰ The sheikh told him: ‘When I perform my zikos (prayers), I look at the light.’ The muqaddam, intrigued by this assertion, simply retorted: ‘And if you observe the light, what do you mean by that? Go back to your country and remain calm. Take care of your askar.’¹¹ We are here at the heart of the Sufi tradition, for which light is of fundamental symbolic significance. Victory, deliverance, the nour (light) call forth many interpretations, differing according to one’s intellectual level and/or degree of esoteric penetration. The Quran, the hadith, and other traditions attributed to Islam are presented to explain the preponderance of light—but especially its esoteric aspect. The emergence and growth of esotericism and its many branches (e. g. numerology) in Islam, its precursors, theorists, and rituals based on precise formulae, indicate the importance of initiation and its framing within the heart of the occultist universe.

 In the Quran, Al Khidir is presented as the leader of the allies of God; the Quran mentions him as a person endowed with enormous knowledge. Sufis consider him to be a mystical master.  In Tijanite Sufism, a muqaddam is a teacher authorized by a sheikh to assist in teaching other students.  This term is used in Chadian Arabic to mean ‘soldier’.

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With his incomplete Arab-Islamic training and his inconclusive commercial activities, the young Ahmet Ismael Bichara, armed with the mystical formulae learned during his educational career, excelled in devotion and proclaimed himself a sheikh—in violation of the Sufi norms according to which it is de rigueur to respect the hierarchy and chains of title transmission. Professing a Sufi Islam—which in its Tijanite aspect was closer to the brotherhoods of West Africa, including Senegal and Nigeria, than to those of Morocco—but having neither a sheikh (initiatory master) nor orientation, the sheikh declared his filiation from Al Khidir and said he was waiting for his coming. A contemporary of the prophet Moussa [Moses], Al Khidir—presented by the Quran as an ally of God—is the subject of diverse interpretations, testifying to a doctrinal divergence that explains the plurality of brotherhoods. A historical figure for Sufis who adopt a literal reading, for supporters of the Sufi current such as Ahmet Ismael Bichara, Al Khidir is both a historical and a mythical figure living in the invisible world, likely to return at the end of time to lead the jihad in order to save humanity. Ahmet Ismael Bichara’s jihadist enterprise can be situated in the line of Muhammat Al Mahdi in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and Goni Wadday in the Benue region of northern Cameroon. Their resemblance lies in their expectation of a messiah to save humanity. This is undoubtedly sectarian violence resulting from a religious brotherhood orientation which is at the same time extremist; and it was based on the imaginary genius of a pretended sheikh, one who was located on the margins of initiatory circles and was a novice in esoteric sciences.

The escalation to jihad The process of radicalization occurred gradually, often under the eyes of the inhabitants and administrative authorities of Kouno. The continuous and permanent invocation of the formula of the profession of faith (shahada) was one of the signs distinguishing the followers of the sheikh from the other Muslims in Kouno. The people of Kouno also reported the followers’ particular way of practising salah (prayer), with continual cries: ‘When they pray, they do hin hin ¹² like soldiers marching past. Sometimes, they did this until the early hours of the morning.’ The feeling of belonging to an exceptional group of Muslims, at odds with others, was created and developed, and it reached such an extent that the other Muslims in the town of Kouno were perceived only as im-

 Onomatopoeia expressing effort.

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pure. The lukewarm greetings and the deterioration of social relations were indicative of a widening gap between the two groups, and the establishment at 4 km from Kouno of Madina Nasrudine Al Barakat marked the rupture of the new group from its original society. The construction in this town of a podium with numerous fixed flags (13 according to the inhabitants of Kouno), far from expressing any kind of societal project, symbolized belonging to a group (‘us’) which differed from others (‘them’) through symbols. Moreover, during the confrontations with the police, the national flag was one of the first symbols that the jihadists attacked. The rejection of society and its models and institutions went further: He had problems with everyone. Doctors, vaccinators, etc. Sick women were no longer brought to health centres. During the polio immunizations, for example, he had formally refused to allow his disciples to be vaccinated even when the authorities had suggested to him to bring in the women.¹³

Many testimonies collected on the spot reported the fact that the sheikh’s followers walked around with homemade weapons (knives, machetes, swords, sticks). Within the new town, homemade weapons were visible at all levels, as revealed by the commentary of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper N’Djaména Al-Djadida, which noted the presence of men armed with swords, machetes, and spears. Even outside the camp, the students and adults emerging from Madina Nasrudine Al Barakat were always armed. In this way, the population of Kouno could rub shoulders with them in the markets and other public places with their weapons at hand. Over a period of three to four months, this situation began to be widely discussed, and a feeling of apprehension gradually took hold among the population. Indeed, they perceived in the actions of the sheikh and his followers the preparations for a violent confrontation. The intransigence of the sheikh only reinforced this psychosis. Faced with this situation, which in the view and knowledge of everyone seemed to be getting more inflamed without any proper solution being found, local people and administration officials were the first to sound the alarm bell and warn the authorities of the danger that was simmering. It was in this context that the administration decided to send representatives to discuss matters with the sheikh. After his refusal to allow the intervention of vaccinators in his town, the prefect of the department and then the governor of the region had to intervene. Nothing worked. He told the prefect to go and tell the N’Djaména authorities that he would continue to oppose the vaccination even if they sent him 1,000 boxes of sugar and rice or other foodstuffs.

 Interview with M.A. in the sub-prefecture of Kouno, 24 August 2015.

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The governor arrived next and asked him to be flexible. The sheikh replied that if the governor continued to ask him to stop his work, he would cut his head off. He then gave his flag to the governor and forced him to recite the shahada. ¹⁴

After the governor, a delegation of cantons chiefs and imams of the region met the sheikh—again without success. Several delegations composed of religious leaders, members of the Conseil Supérieur des Affaires Islamiques (CSAI), and authorities in charge of managing security issues followed one another to Kouno without success. Some of these emissaries, taken hostage for several hours by the sheikh, were forced to pledge allegiance and fidelity to him and were subjected to religious practices in the same way as the followers of the sheikh. The failure of these crisis resolution mechanisms was a sign of a dismal future. An attempt by the gendarmerie to disarm the followers of the sheikh definitively set a match to the power. On Sunday, 29 June 2008, at 17:34 PM, Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara joined Adam Abdallah Muhammad Fadul by phone and said: ‘Declare the jihad. Spread this information in your newspaper. Declare this jihad today because the police have arrested some of my men.’ To the journalist’s question about ‘the number of men arrested’, the sheikh replied: ‘Declare news of the jihad to the whole world.’ The jihad was officially launched. According to the words reported by Agence France-Presse (AFP), the sheikh told reporters: ‘I ask all Muslims to prepare for a holy war against Christians and atheists. My men and I are organized to declare a holy war from Chad to Denmark’ (AFP 2008). Sunday, 29 June 2008, was therefore the fateful day. Indeed, after the clashes of the day before, the sheikh and his faithful (approximately 700) launched a large-scale offensive on the city of Kouno, ‘burning 158 homes, four churches, a dispensary and the gendarmerie’, according to then Chadian Minister of the Interior, Ahmat Mahamat Bachir. In addition, according to the people we met on site in Kouno, the homes of several marabouts, night-clubs, businesses, etc. were also destroyed. The counterattack by the police was equally implacable. The toll: ‘at least 68 followers of Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara and four members of the security forces were killed, and more than 51 people were seriously injured’ (Amnesty International 2008). On site, our informants even speak of 200 dead. The sheikh and seven of his followers were arrested while attempting to cross the Chari River. In Narudine Abul Barakat, now in ruins, nearly 100 women and more than 120 children were released by the police and handed over to their relatives. The town was destroyed. To this day, only the ruins still bear witness to its meteoric ascent. In a follow-up operation, another gestating mabrouka, named Daira, 25 km from Kouno and led by Fulani, was also destroyed. In addi Gendarmerie official in charge at the time; interviewed at Kouno, 25 August 2015.

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tion to weapons (mostly unloaded), psychotropic substances (drugs, tramol) were found in personal property seized in the town and destroyed. The sheikh and his lieutenants were taken to N’Djaména, where they were paraded before the press, tried, sentenced, and imprisoned. To this day, no further official news of the sheikh has filtered out.¹⁵

Concluding remarks As a consequence of the sometimes cordial, sometimes conflictual nature of their cohabitation, complex relationships have more or less always existed between the Sufi leaders and the administrative authorities and their traditional auxiliaries in Africa in general and in Chad in particular. Where these relationships have been cordial, Sufis have contributed to the process of establishing kingdoms and empires. Later, with the triumph of Western imperialism, sovereigns were subjugated as much as were religious leaders. The Sufis were more easily aligned with the new masters than the other currents that have always shown themselves hostile to the colonists. The Sufis thus became a kind of ally to colonial circles. The bestowing of gifts (copies of the Quran) to Sufi leaders, the organization of pilgrimages for them, and the award of medals, recounted with very interesting details in the colonial literature, are a perfect illustration of the cordial relations between the colonial administration and Sufi dignitaries (Tijanites in Chad and Cameroon, Qadiriyya in Nigeria). The result has been a labelling of Muslims as ‘bad Muslims’, ‘good Muslims’, and Islamists for whom a surveillance service transformed into an office of Muslim Affairs was created. This tradition of mistrust vis-à-vis other, non-Sufi Muslims has been perpetuated by the majority of post-colonial African states. Indeed, the transfer of political power from the colonial elite to the African elite, which has most often ended up in an attempt to reproduce the colonial model of management, did not fundamentally change the situation: the post-colonial powers became allied with the Sufis, who are considered closer to political power by virtue of their hierarchical system and considered more tolerant by virtue of their political discourse. In the same way as citizens and authorities in charge of peace and security issues, Sufi dignitaries and their flock participate in the search for peace, national cohesion, and harmony. Nothing seems to dis-

 The sheikh is no longer in prison. He was liberated in 2017, and in his own explanation to one of our colleagues he said, because of Allah. But this has not come into the news, nor in any other public media. He lives in Ndjaména.

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pose a Sufi to tip over into violent extremism. In Chad, one can clearly see that the Conseil Supérieur des Affaires Islamiques—considered the body in charge of managing all questions related to religion and the life of the Chadian Muslim community—is controlled by the Tijanites. This council is close to the authorities, of which it is considered an ally to the detriment of other, vilified and labelled orientations. It is therefore justified to question the trajectory of Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara, which undoubtedly challenges this angelic image of Sufism as being tolerant, conformist, and pacifist. The Western reading, influenced by the flow of events related to sectarian violence and images, slogans, and the media, boils down to the saying that ‘Salafist equals extremist’, and this reading very rapidly promotes a negative view of Salafism to the point of confusing it with violence. African states make use of the same semantics of stigmatization, ‘buttering up’ Sufis and declaring war on Salafists deemed to be anti-conformist and bent on revolutionary theological discourse. Analysts, experts, and other theorists affiliated with think tanks or research networks compete with each other in ingenuity to develop paradigms presenting Salafism as a vector of violence. In fact, Sufism and Salafism are two visions of Islam that are markedly separate, in spite of some similarities in religious practices. On the subject of jihad, the criteria of differentiation between Sufism and Salafism on the level of doctrine and worship are not particularly clear. A retrospective look at the process of implantation, diffusion, and/or resistance by Islam to the Western thrust reveals that on the subject of jihad, the dividing line between Salafists and Sufis gives way to the bellicose propensity of leaders who do not hesitate to unleash death in the name of Islam and its ideals. This has been illustrated in history by the jihadist enterprises of figures such as Usman dan Fodio, Sékou Amadou, and Alhadji Umar Tall—who aimed to re-establish Tawhid (the Unity of God), the credo in Muslim discourse and behaviour. The jihadists of the last century resorted to Quranic verses and hadiths attributed to the Prophet to justify their warlike enterprises. As if that were not enough, they evoke dreams and visions of the character of the Prophet to legitimize their fight. The reference by Sheikh Ahmet Ishmael Bichara to Al Khidir, coupled with the context of the publication of the caricature of the Prophet by the Danish newspaper and its repercussions, leads to a certain difficulty in defining the Sufism of the sheikh. Indeed, he is Sufi by his referent and his religious practices; but his recourse to martial jihad, ‘from Chad to Denmark’, undoubtedly places him in the Salafist ideological movement that believes that the faithful Muslim must die to save the honour of the Prophet when the latter is ridiculed. The trajectory of Sheikh Ismael Ahmet Bichara and the dénouement of his jihadist adventure allows light to be shed on an example of radicalization that took root on the ground in Chad and which rapidly brought into question the

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secular foundations of society. This story also sheds light on the difficulties of a state which wishes to be secular and to succeed in the face of the rise of extremist threats. When it came to the armed response, the results appear convincing since the sheikh was imprisoned and seems to have fallen into oblivion and his followers have been dispersed. Nevertheless, the security solution may in some cases allow one to extinguish in a circumstantial way the fire but cannot diminish the slow and insidious processes of radicalization that are taking place in our society.

References The data used to write this chapter were collected in Kouno in August 2015. Abdallah Mahamat Fadul Adam (2008). ‘Le Journal N’Djaména Al-Djadida rencontre les Cheik de Sarh, Mabbrouka et de la cité de Nasrudine Aboul Barakat’, N’Djaména Al-Djadida, 28 June 2008. AFP (Agence France-Presse) (2008). ‘Tchad: 72 morts lors de l’arrestation d’un “gourou” djihadiste’. 2 July 2008. Ahmed Ngaré, Kodi Mahamat (2008). Le Chari Baguirmi et le Salamat. Cahier d’Histoire, July – August 2008. Amnesty International (2008). Tchad. 68 personnes abattues par les forces de sécurité lors de l’arrestation d’un chef spirituel musulman. Déclaration publique ref. AFR 20/006/2008 (Public). Coudray, Henri (1992). Chrétiens et musulmans au Tchad. Islamochristiana, n°18 Roma, pp. 175 – 234. El Fasi, Mohammed & Hrbek, Ivan (2010). L’avènement de l’islam et l’essor de l’empire musulman. In El Fasi (sous la dir.), Histoire générale de l’Afrique, UNESCO. INSEED (2012). Deuxième recensement général de la population et de l’habitat (RGPH2, 2009). Résultats globaux définitifs. N’Djamena, Institut National de la Statistique, des Etudes Economiques et Démographiques. Ladiba, Gondeu (2011). L’émergence des organisations islamiques au Tchad. Enjeux, acteurs et territoires. Paris, L’Harmattan. Ladiba, Gondeu (2013). Notes sur la sociologie politique du Tchad. Working Paper n°006, Sahel Research Group, University of Florida. http://sahelresearch.africa.ufl.edu/fîles/Gondeu_NOTES_Final_FR.pdf Magnant, Jean-Pierre (ed.) (1992). L’islam au Tchad. Bordeaux, Centre d’étude d’Afrique noire, Université de Bordeaux 1. Mohammed El Fasi & Ivan Hrbek (2010). Etapes du développement de l’islam et sa diffusion en Afrique. In El Fasi (sous la dir.) Histoire générale de l’Afrique, Unesco. N’Djaména Al-Djadida, n°34, September 2008. N’Djaména Al-Djadida, n°35, October 2009. N’Djaména Al-Djadida, n°74, December 2009. N’Djaména Al-Djadida, n°83, April 2010.

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N’Djaména-Hebdo (2006). ‘La communauté musulmane du Tchad organise une manifestation le 11 février 2006: jets de pierre sur les écoles catholiques’. N’Djaména-Hebdo n°929, 1 February 2006. RFI (2008). Carnage à Kouno. http://www1.rfi.fr/actufr/articles/103/article_68179.asp

Walter Gam Nkwi

6 Ruben Um Nyobe: Camerounian maquis, radical, and liberator, ca 1948 – 1958 Abstract: This chapter focuses on the biography of Ruben Um Nyobe, a leading figure in colonial French Cameroun. He led the fight against French colonial rule from 1948, when he was at the centre of the formation of Union des Population du Camerounais (UPC), to 1958 when he was killed by French colonial forces. The chapter shows that his life was confronted with drastic changes in his environment, changes which saw him joining an opposition party against the French colonial administration and which were finally accompanied by conflict and the rupturing of the status quo ante. I position the chapter within the concept of radicalization—a slippery term depending on who uses it and in what context, and whose usage has provoked lively debates in academic discourse. Recently there has been an upsurge of Muslim fanatics who claim they want to purify the faith. Western politicians as well as scholars have come to brand these groups of Muslims as jihadist terrorists, and the word ‘radicalization’ has become central and almost a buzz word, connoting for people the ‘other’. Consequently, in most academic discourse and debate the word has become synonymous with reasons for violent action, terrorism, and actions opposed to democratic values as upheld by Western powers. However, the definition of the concept is more neutral that this, and its meaning is rather debatable, as I will show in this chapter.

Introduction The biographical story which I present in this paper is that of Ruben Um Nyobe, a leading figure in colonial French Cameroun who led the fight against French colonial rule between 1948, when he was at the centre of the formation of Union des Population du Camerounais (UPC), and 1958 when he was killed by French colonial forces. His story shows how he was confronted by drastic changes in his

In this chapter, I use ‘Cameroun’ whenever referring specifically to French Cameroun and the beginning of the state in 1960 before unification with the British part. For the British part, I used ‘Cameroons’. For people from either part of the country, I generally use ‘Cameroonian’. Old UN documents refer to ‘the Cameroons under French administration’ and ‘the Cameroons under United Kingdom administration’, but these terms are too awkward and are open to contestation. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-006

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environment—changes which saw him joining an opposition party against the French colonial administration, and changes which finally resulted in conflict and the rupturing of the status quo ante. I wish to position him in this chapter within the context of communication technologies that were present to facilitate his choice. Communication is one of the backbones of governance and power relations, and therefore understanding communications systems changes therein will reveal insights into expected and unexpected power relations and the ‘making’ of power in colonial history.¹ Quite recently, communication technology in the form of social media has influenced resistance and revolutions.² For instance, it has played an interesting role in coordinating the uprising and spreading of information during the Arab Spring both within and beyond state borders.³ Yet the Arab Spring uprisings have sparked polarized debates about the role of the Internet and social media tools in political mobilization.⁴ Ekwo and Williams argue that there is a strong connection between unrestricted information flow and effective democratic governance, as such a flow provides a platform for people to criticize home governments and generate international support. In this sense, information communication technologies (ICTs) can be seen as tools for democratic political change and mobilization.⁵ In those days of Um Nyobe (specifically, 1948 – 1958), communication technologies were quite different from the type of communication technologies of today. They included schools, roads, churches, and print media, to name but a few. Those who appropriated some of these tech-

 Manuel Castells, Communication Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); James Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood (London: Longman, 2011)  It re-echoed the success story of the social media as well as the communication technology of the time. Since November 2016, anglophone Cameroon has been on strike due to their marginalization by the francophone-dominated government. Up until 17 January 2017, when the Internet was cut off, most of the communication was conducted through the Internet. These incidents show the significance of communication during the period of conflicts, ‘terrorism and radicalization’. For more, see Pamela Ogwuazor Momoh, ‘Tunisia, Egypt the social media and political activism’, Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, Vol. 6, Issue 6 (2013): 45 – 47; Madeline Storck, ‘The role of social media in political mobilisation: A case study of the January 2011 Egyptian uprising (MA Diss. University of St. Andrew, Scotland, 2011).  Nadine Kassem Chebib & Rabia Minatullah Sohail, ‘The reasons why social media contributed to the 2011 Egyptian revolution’, International Journal of Business Research and Management, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2011).  See Karin Anden-Papadopoulos & Mervi Pantti, Amateur Images and Global News. (Bristol and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011).  Uchenna Ekwo, Media and Arab Spring (Dublin: University of Dublin Press, 2012); also see his article, ‘Media-political complex in the era of media convergence: Lessons from the Arab Spring’ (Working Paper, the Clinton Institute of American Studies, 2011); Kelsey J. Williams, ‘The role of social media and the Egyptian uprisings’, (Master’s Thesis, Karlstad University, 2014).

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nologies, such as the schools and churches, were the first people to challenge the colonial administration and were seen in the eyes of the colonial authorities as radicals and extremists, fanatic and revolutionary. Radicalization is a slippery term depending on who uses it and in what context, and its usage has provoked lively debates in academic discourse. Recently there has been an upsurge of Muslim fanatics who claim they want to purify the faith. Western politicians as well as scholars have come to brand these sets of Muslims as jihadists or terrorists, and the word ‘radicalization’ has become central and almost a buzz word, connoting for people the ‘other’. Consequently, in most academic discourse and debate it has become synonymous with reasons for violent action, terrorism, and actions opposed to democratic values as upheld by the Western powers. However, the definition of the concept is much more neutral and quite debatable. According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, radicalization is ‘the action of holding extreme views’—while among the synonyms of ‘radical’ found in the thesaurus dictionary are ‘extremist’, ‘fanatic’, ‘militant’, and ‘revolutionary’. Therefore, it will not be totally incorrect to maintain that radicalization is equivalent to moving to more radical/extreme ideas. In recent years this concept has been used to mean Muslim revolutionaries. Radicalization means different things according to a person’s interpretation of a situation. In the situation of Um Nyobe, the attempt in this chapter is to appreciate how radicalization of any kind can be related to changing contexts and circumstances. However, as the definitions indicate, radicalization in the context of Um Nyobe can also entail a much broader field. In such a dynamic, the role of information, both its accessibility and creation, becomes crucial.⁶ Consequently, the ICTs of any given time and their accessibility to people are important factors to take into consideration in an attempt to understand the radicalization of Um Nyobe.⁷ Why was Um Nyobe a radical? Did his radicalization include violence? Was it an apolitical ideology? Or religious? Where do we situate his radicalization? Several methods were used to harvest the data that was used to write this chapter: primary data which I collected from the archive of the International Institute of Social History (IISH), Buea National Archives, and interviews of people who knew and saw Um Nyobe. From 4 September 2012 to 30 January 2013, I was a research fellow at the IISH, Amsterdam. During my stay I accidentally stumbled over relevant material which concerns labour movements and political activism in French Cameroun. The speeches of Um Nyobe at the United Nations  Gleick, The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2011).  See for instance: S. Bouhdiba, ‘Will Sub-Saharan Africa follow North Africa? Backgrounds and preconditions of popular revolt in the light of the Arab Spring’, ASC Working Paper (Leiden: African Studies Centre, 2013).

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were carefully archived and I collected them. Back in Cameroon I entered and used the National Archives, Buea, where files were consulted about the UPC activities in British Southern Cameroons. This was a pointer to the fact that Um Nyobe’s activities went beyond French Cameroun. Finally, interviews were another method which was used to gather data for this paper. These interviews were conducted by my research assistant, Mbock Berthe, who happens to have come from the Sanaga-Maritime region where Um Nyobe was born and lived most of life.⁸ She was of double advantage to this chapter. Being Bassa and francophone, she reduced the cost of employing a translator and could also imbue the interviewees with trust. Her knowledge of French gave me double assurance, and I could quickly close up my own gaps in relation to my average knowledge of French. The informants consist of those who witnessed Um Nyobe and those who just heard about him and his activities. All these methods collectively painted the picture of Um Nyobe which this paper presents. From the mid-1940s, nationalist struggles became rampant in different parts of Africa. Whether it was francophone, anglophone, or lusophone Africa, nationalists wanted to cast off the yoke of colonialism. The reasons for this increase in nationalist activities were many, but the most significant ones were the effect of World War II, which called into question the myth of ‘white man’s superiority’; the defeat of France at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954; the independence of the Indian sub-continent in 1947; the Atlantic Charter of August 1941; and the formation of the UNO in 1945.⁹ To mount pressure on the colonial administration, several political parties that fought for the independence of their nations were created. One such party was the UPC. Formed on 10 April 1948 in Douala, the main aim of the UPC was immediate independence and reunification of the two Cameroons. The architect behind this goal was the astute nationalist Ruben Um Nyobe, who became the secretary general of the party until his demise in 1958. Scholars of Cameroon history have paid sufficient attention to Um Nyobe and his role in the radicalization and liberation of French Cameroun from colonial rule—albeit not a liberation with the outcome which he had dreamed of. Konde graphically captures the central role which Um Nyobe played in African nationalism between 1952 and 1954 in the heyday of the Cold War. Mbembe focuses his work on Um Nyobe, his role as the secretary general of the party, and the intrigues of the French colonial administration to orchestrate his death in

 I remain grateful to Mbock Berthe, who conducted the interviews.  A. J. Grant and Harold Temperly, Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, 1789 – 1950 (London: Longman, 1979)

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1958. Terretta reassesses the political alternatives imagined by African nationalists in the first wave of Africa’s decolonization, with a focus on Cameroun’s UPC. The author further maintains that after the banning of the UPC in 1955, many of the Cameroun nationalists went into exile, especially to Ghana where they gained support from Kwame Nkrumah’s Pan-African Bureau for African Affairs. Richard Joseph focuses on the social origins of the UPC, and in his other article he examines Ruben Um Nyobe and the Kamerun rebellion. Apart from Joseph and Mbembe, many scholars who have researched the UPC have implicitly examined the activities of Ruben Um Nyobe. Joseph, in treating the social origins of the UPC, has given particular attention to Um Nyobe. In another article he focused on the ‘Kamerun’ rebellion.¹⁰ However, although many scholars have done work on the UPC, Um Nyobe’s party, few works have actually detailed his activities per se, let alone looked at him through the lens of ICTs in the conflict period of the UPC. Consequently, this chapter hopes to add to the debate on Um Nyobe. In what follows, I will begin by sketching the birth and schooling of Um Nyobe. I will then examine the socio-political and economic atmosphere which shaped his character as well as his role in the movement. The third part will focus on his mobility, and his speeches in Cameroun and the United Nations. The fourth part will examine the waning of the UPC and Um Nyobe’s demise, while the Conclusion will focus, among other things, on the Cameroon he left and its relevance to today’s Cameroon.

 Meredith Terretta, ‘Cameroonian nationalists go global: From forest maquis to a pan-African Accra’, Journal of African History, 51 (2010): 189 – 212; also see her PhD dissertation, ‘The fabrication of the post-colonial state of Cameroon: Village nationalism and the UPC fight for nation, 1948 – 1971 (PhD Diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2004); Richard A. Joseph, ‘Ruben Um Nyobe and the “Kamerun” rebellion’, African Affairs, 73, 293 (1974): 428 – 48; also see his PhD thesis, which was later published as Radical Nationalism in Cameroun: Social Origins of UPC Rebellion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977); Willard R. Johnson, The Cameroon Federation: Political Integration in a Fragmentary Society (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970); also see his article, ‘The Union des Populations du Cameroun in rebellion: The integrative backlash of insurgency’, pp. 671– 692, in Robert I. Rotberg & Ali A. Mazrui (eds), Protest and Power in Black Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970); J. A. Mbembe, Ruben Um Nyobe, Le Probleme National Kamerunaise (Paris: Karthala, 1984); Victor Julius Ngoh, History of Cameroon since 1800, (Limbe: Pressbook, 1996), 156, and his other work, The Untold Story of Cameroon’s Reunification, (Limbe: Pressbook, 2011), 39; Ferdinand Chindji Kouleu, Histoire Cachee du Cameroun, (Yaounde: SARAGRAPH, 2006); Emmanuel Konde, African Nationalism in the Cold War Politics, 1952 – 1954, (New York: Xlibris, 2012); Nfamewih Aseh, The Political Philosophies and Nation Building, (Yaounde: Imprimerie, 2005); Mongo Beti, Main Basse Sur Le Cameroun, (Ville St-Laurent: Editions Quebecoises, 1974).

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Birth and schooling of Um Nyobe Ruben Um Nyobe was born around 1913 at Song Peck near Boumnyebel, in the Sanaga-Maritime region of French Cameroun. He received his primary education from Presbyterian mission schools. He first attended the Presbyterian mission school at Makai, where he was baptized in 1921. In 1924 he left the school at Makai and enrolled in another Presbyterian school in Ilanga, near Eseka, where he graduated in 1929. Um Nyobe next enrolled in the Presbyterian teacher training college at Foulassi in Bulu country, Centre South Region of Cameroun in 1931 but was dismissed the same year that he graduated because of his activism. He was noted to have emerged as the leader of the protest actions at the school. For a number of years after graduation, Um Nyobe taught at various Presbyterian schools. He sat and passed the civil service examination in 1935. While working as a civil servant, he undertook further studies by correspondence, which resulted in his obtaining the first part of the baccalaureate in 1939 and his appointment to the clerk’s office of the Edea court. Um Nyobe, therefore, did not attend any Western university, unlike his contemporaries Franz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Amical Cabral, and Julius Nyerere. Achille Mbembe captures this aspect of his life eloquently in the following words: À la différence de Fanon, Nkrumah, Cabral, ou Nyerere, cet homme venu du village, n’est pas allé dans les universitées occidentales. Mais il est sorti des meilleurs lieux de formation que lui offrait, a son époque, son pays. ¹¹

His background was relevant to his political career in various ways which can be appreciated. His Bassa cultural heritage imbued him with respect for the wisdom of traditional society, a strong sense of self, and an iron will to do that which was right. The American Presbyterian schools which he attended reinforced Um Nyobe’s heritage by inculcating in him a spirit of self-reliance, independence of thought, and democratic participation. His experience as a clerk in the colonial administration gave him a clear insight into, as well as some legal grounding in, the practical realities of colonial oppression. Um Nyobe knew the bane and the boon of vulnerability to French colonialism in Cameroun.¹² Mission schools are reputed to have fostered and formed radicals, and a cursory observation of nationalists in pre-independence Africa indicates that many  Mbembe, Ruben Um Nyobe, Le Probleme National Kamerunaise, p. 8. (‘Unlike Fanon, Nkrumah, Cabral, or Nyerere, this man from a village did not go to Western universities. But, in his time, he came out of the best places of training that his country offered him.’ My translation)  Konde, African Nationalism in Cold War Politics, 1952 – 1954, p. 79

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were indeed products of mission schools.¹³ One characteristic of these people was to have full confidence in themselves and their ability to sacrifice themselves for their countries. This is evident in Um Nyobe in a letter which he wrote to his friend Essi Essama in 1949 and which was intercepted by the French police. In that letter he said, inter alia: Our emancipation … requires enormous sacrifices from us, of course, but when one thinks back to the time of the indigénat, when it was possible for a chef de sub-division to round up all those whom the chief and he himself detested and imprison them without trial and without a possibility of defending themselves, one is happy to undergo all of this in the fight for the independence of one’s country. The fact that these officials have to restore in their regions all the practices that have been abolished revealed their fear of our emancipation.¹⁴

The French colonial administration was known for its policy of indigénat, which in actual fact presupposed that French Camerounians were to become French citizens. This meant the lost of identity and hence of ‘Cameroonness’. The French had empowered traditional rulers and even invented some to ensure that they rounded up those people who were escaping from the policy. Once these people were rounded up, they were simply thrown into jail without trial. Um Nyobe frowned on all these injustices and was prepared to die in order to redress such a situation. In retrospect, the choices which people make to emancipate themselves from oppression at any given time are facilitated by the type of technology available for communication at that point in time. During the colonial period, letter writing became an important genre of communication technology; and the letter of Um Nyobe, placed in proper perspective, suggests that such communication was at the basis of his choice. Quite recently, radical groups in Africa and the Middle East have appropriated social media as the best form of communication. As I have argued elsewhere, school and schooling in itself was a communication technology in its own right; and those who appropriated it as Um Nyobe did emerged as a social class apart from their peers.¹⁵ These types of ICTs which were opened to him—or better still, which he has been using—were to form him and make him the person he was.

 For instance, see William E. Phipps, ‘The influence of Christian missions on the rise of nationalism in Central Africa’, International Review of Misions, 57, 22, (1968): 229 – 232.  Letter from Ruben Um Nyobe to Essi Essama, via M.P.A., Metet, 10 September 1949. International Institute of Social History (IISH) Archive, Amsterdam.  Walter Gam Nkwi, Kfaang and its Technologies: Towards a Social History of Mobility in Kom, 1928 – 1998 (Leiden: ASC Publications, 2011).

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The atmosphere that shaped the rise and character of Um Nyobe The French policy in Cameroun was quite harsh in almost all its facets. It exhibited incredible injustices which were primarily to be found in the domain of labour and the invention of citizenship. The first of such policies was that of the indigénat. This policy of indigénat considered Cameroonians to be subjects of the French (suject Française, French subject). The law did not leave possibilities of expression for political freedom or possibilities to defend the rights of indigenous workers. Furthermore, there was the prestation or compulsory labour obligation, which required all males to furnish the French colonial administration with ten days of free labour per year. Additional conflictual situations arose over the suppression of the native courts and the emasculation of the powers of traditional chiefs. Under the Mandate period (1916 – 1945), the French colonial administration visualized a Cameroun which, like France’s other colonies and territories, would eventually develop with France into a single, integrated political and economic unit. France’s entire colonial policy was summarized by her pragmatic imperialist, Albert Sarraut. In his well-known study, La Mise en Valeur des Colonies Francaises, he maintained that the sole right which should be recognized is that of the strong to protect the weak. France was guaranteeing the economic growth and human development of its colonies.¹⁶ It was for that reason that she formulated the policy of assimilation conducted under the rigid control of the French colonial administrators. The Cameroonians were officially classified according to how they had evolved toward the French social ideal. Citoyens (citizens) were those most assimilated to European law; they had the civil and political rights of persons of French origin. Sujets were those who followed native customs and could become citoyens only by showing evidence of having become Europeanized. The most apparent practical distinction between the two types were the exemption of the citoyens and a few special classes of sujets from the indigénat, the system of summary punishment for sujets. ¹⁷ Forced labour was another issue in French Cameroun which preoccupied the French representations in the Permanent Mandate Commission in almost all its meeting sessions. In trying to sort out the various forms of forced labour em Albert Sarraut, La Mise en Valeur des colonies Francaises (Paris: Payot, 1928), 19.  H. S. Gray, A Study of Cameroon UPC Rebellion and Chinese Communist Involvement (Michigan: Michigan University Press, 1967); Thomas Hodgkin, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (New York: New York University Press, 1957).

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ployed by the French colonial administration, the Permanent Mandates Commission was hopelessly lost. According to the general provision of the League of Nations regarding the ‘B’ mandates, the Mandatory powers ‘shall prohibit … all forms of forced or compulsory labour except for essential public works and services, and then only in return for adequate remuneration’. Such imprecise terms as ‘essential public works and services’ and ‘adequate remuneration’ were virtual invitations to abuse. As a matter of fact, not only did the French use a complex classification system for the various categories of forced labour, but even the fine legal distinctions drawn by their delegates in Geneva had little in common with the actual modus operandi of French administrators in the rural villages of French Cameroun. The French colonial authorities imposed taxes that were often too heavy for the Africans to pay, some of whom were already povertystricken, and prestations (the tax in the form of labour of ten days per year working on the roads) and requisitions of labour (which often degenerated into abuses) for the construction of roads, railways, and harbours.¹⁸ Yet whatever the verbal gymnastics that took place between the French authorities and the League of Nations, the fact remained that Cameroonians throughout French Cameroun suffered greatly from conscription to work against their will—especially during the first decades of French mandate and continuing until the political reforms which were instituted after World War II. This labour was used not only for the extension of the railways and the construction of roads, but also to work in the private plantations of Europeans.¹⁹ While the French representative, Duchene, was assuring the Permanent Mandates Commission that there was no forced recruitment of labour for private work, Cameroonians in every area of French Cameroun were being headed by administrators to work for indefinite periods on European plantations, often without pay.²⁰ And

 Hubert Deschamps, ‘France in Black Africa and Madagascar between 1920 and 1945’, pp. 226 – 251, in Colonialism in Africa, 1870 – 1960, Vol.2: History and Politics of Colonialism, 1914 – 1960. Ed. by L.H. Gann & Peter Duignan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, ‘French colonialisation in Africa to 1920s: Administration and economic development’, pp. 165 – 199 Vol. 1: Colonialism in Africa, 1870 – 1960, Vol.2: History and Politics of Colonialism, 1880 – 1920. Ed. by L. H. Gann & Peter Duignan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).  Joseph, Radical Nationalism in Cameroun, p. 28; also see Frederick Cooper, Decolonisation and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)  Pa(1933), 6, Notes for the League of Nations Report for Cameroon Mandate (National Archives Buea); Ba(1923), 5, Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations, Third Session for the Cameroun Mandate (NAB), 123.

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while Theodore Marchand, the French Commissioner to French Cameroun, was testifying that compulsory labour for public works was limited to ten days, and beyond this period the workers were paid the same rate as free workmen, observers on the spot were reporting cases where the administrators had told natives to work off their ten-day prestation tax and, once having assembled them, had marched them off to the railway for a period of nine months.²¹ The hard labour coupled with heavy taxation on peasants who were barely eking out a living had a very deep impact on Um Nyobe. Born in 1913, by the 1930s and 1940s—when most of the adult French Camerounians were subjected to paying taxes as well as performing hard labour in road and railway construction—he was a living witness to the exploitation. Furthermore, as a clerk under the same French colonial administration, he was provoked by these policies of exploitation. The Presbyterian creed and schooling as a student had instilled in him a deep hatred toward such a policy. Consequently, all these factors placed him, more than anyone else during his time, in a position to galvanize leadership against the French policy.

The volte-face in French policy What recourse had Cameroonians when faced with this oppressive system? Of course this system did not go on sine die. The post-World War II arrangements which forced mandate powers to moderate their policies had lasting ramifications in French Cameroun. It was such reforms that projected Ruben Um Nyobe onto the national and international stage. It was also through such a policy that finally he was codenamed a maquis and radical as well as a liberator. In 1945, with the help of the Confederation General des Travailleurs (CGT), a French syndicate which shared views similar to those of the Communist Party, Um Nyobe was able to participate in the creation of the Union des Syndicats Confédérés du Cameroun (USCC), of which he was the assistant secretary general. The USCC organized conferences where experts from professional schools in syndicalism were invited to give talks on the exploitative nature of colonialism. Um Nyobe was always present at these conferences. In 1946, the French colonial authorities introduced political activities into Cameroun following French Cameroun’s new status as a UN Trust Territory. Ar-

 Raymond Leslie Buell, The Native Problem in Africa (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928), 323; David Gardiner, Cameroon: United Nations Challenge to French Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 32.

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ticle 76 (B) of the UN stated that the UN Trust Territories were to prepare their territories for political and socio-economic advancement toward self-autonomy and government. Given this, UN missions came to visit French Cameroun, gathered petitions, and also invited political and trade union figures to the UN Headquarters in New York.²² Following such reforms on the international scene, radical and anti-colonial nationalism in French Cameroun was born in earnest in 1947. On 14 April 1947, nine men including Ruben Um Nyobe registered a political party called Rassemblement Camerounaise (RACAM), as required by the law in Douala. These people belonged to the Communist-inspired USCC, which was advocating general strikes to pressure the French colonial administration for reforms. RACAM’s main objective was to secure the independence of Cameroon in conformity with the UNO Charter, even though Article 4 of the Trusteeship Agreement did not seem to make allowance for it. Rather, the Article empowered France to administer Cameroun as an integral part of French territory. RACAM regarded this integration of Cameroun into the French Union as assimilation pure and simple and set itself against it. It was no wonder then that the French administration in Cameroun judged the party undesirable and banned it the same year.²³ With the banning of RACAM, its members created the political party UPC on 10 April 1948. Having learned their lessons with the fate of RACAM, the new group stated its aim in rather general terms.²⁴ It was on such terms that the French administration in Cameroun registered the UPC. But the party subsequently elaborated a programme which would have been rejected if it had been included in its original statutes. The expanded programme included the suppression of the artificial boundaries created in 1916 between the two Cameroons; abandonment by France of its policy of assimilation; and fixing of a time limit for the trusteeship after which Cameroon would achieve reunification first before achieving independence.²⁵ Although Um Nyobe was the main figure, he was not the founder of the UPC party. One school of thought holds that Um Nyobe was not a founding member of the UPC because he was hospitalized. Others claim that at the time the UPC was formed Um Nyobe was representing the USCC at the ‘Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine’ conference in Abidjan. As such, Leonard Bouly was the founding

 Gardiner, Cameroon  Victor Bong Amazee, ‘The role of the French Cameroonians in the unification of Cameroon, 1916 – 1961’, Transafrican Journal of History, Vol. 23: 195 – 234.  To group and unite the inhabitants of the territory in order to permit the most rapid evolution of the peoples and the raising of their standard of living.  Gardiner, Cameroon, pp. 44– 45

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father of the party.²⁶ Yet another view holds that at the creation of the UPC, Um Nyobe and some other members of the party did not present themselves as founding fathers until the party was recognized. Leonard Bouly was the first secretary general of the UPC in 1948.²⁷ Whatever the different views, Um Nyobe became the UPC secretary general and devoted his colossal energy to the organization of the party as well as gaining the party an international reputation.

Um Nyobe and the UPC The recognition of the UPC by the colonial authorities gave Um Nyobe the opportunity to show himself at Abidjan on the 17 June 1948 as the official representative of the UPC at the conference of the ‘Rassemblement Démocratique Africaine’. Outside Africa, Um Nyobe made his first appearance on the world stage at the 309th meeting of the UN Fourth Committee as the representative of UPC on 17 December 1952.²⁸ In that year, the UPC asked to be able to present to the General Assembly an oral petition concerning the reunification of the Cameroons. Although this request was rejected by France, the request was granted, and Um Nyobe appeared in front of the UN Assembly on 17 December 1952. He was there with Charles Okala, a moderate French Camerounian sent by the French.²⁹ Um Nyobe went to New York to complain about the ill treatment perpetuated by France on the Camerounians at the UN Trusteeship Commission and, more importantly, to air his views with regard to the political destiny of French Cameroun. French Camerounians made it possible for Um Nyobe to pay his way to the UN. According to Ananie Rabier Bindji, Um Nyobe was able to attend the United Nations Organization fourth commission owing to the help of the Association of Cameroon students in France, Britain, and Northern Ireland.³⁰ They wanted change in their country and were strong supporters for immediate independence and reunification of the two Cameroons. In addition, for Um Nyobe, independence was the only means to increase or improve the

 Ibid.  Ibid.  Konde, African Nationalism in Cold War Politics, 1952 – 1954, p. 67.  John O’Sullivan, ‘Union Des Population Du Cameroun (UPC): A study in mass mobilization’, Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies, Vol. 3, No.1 (1972), 61.  Interview with, Ananie Rubier Bindji, 75 years old, journalist, Douala, 15 November 2016.

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standard of living of the working class and the poor peasants under the French colonial administration.³¹ In his speech, he showed that France administered Cameroun as part of its overseas territories and had the intention of incorporating them into the French empire, whereas Cameroun was under the supervision of the UN and was given to France only as a mandate and later as a trust territory. He equally accused France of implementing or putting in place political reforms in Cameroun which were contrary to the trusteeship agreement. For Um Nyobe, those reforms were meant to divide the country. Um Nyobe insisted, however, on the fact that the two Cameroons had to be reunified and had to evolve politically together.³² In his own words: I stand here today to represent the UPC party, the party which is the only true representative of the Cameroun people. I called on the genuine application of the principles which underlie the Trusteeship System which states that the Cameroun should be administered for the good of the Cameroun people. The reunification of Cameroun should be the first step in this process. But Britain and France have refused to comply, which means they refused to act in accordance with the stated goals of the UN Charter. Cameroun was a legally free country which was occupied by foreign military forces after the Germans were driven out in February 1916. The Trusteeship system was not a continuation of the Mandate system. The division of Cameroun was artificial, arbitrarily enforced as a result of World War I, which is benefitting only the colonial powers …³³

Um Nyobe returned to Cameroun in 1953 and printed his intervention at the UN in the form of a memorandum entitled ‘Que veut le Cameroun?’ (‘What does Cameroun want?’). In that text, it was maintained that Cameroun wanted the reunification of the two Cameroons on one hand and, on the other hand, immediate independence. At the January 1954 UN session, Um Nyobe asked the French authorities to organize a referendum on the questions of the reunification and to fix a date to end the administrative rule of France in Cameroun as well as state their acceptance of the idea of independence.³⁴ Thus, it was from that moment that he was watched with a critical eye by the French authorities. Whenever he returned

 Ibid.  Report of the Trusteeship Council, ‘Statement made before the Fourth Committee at its 309th meeting on 17 December 1952 by Ruben Um Nyobe, representative of the Union des Populations du Cameroun’.  UN Document A/C.4/226/Add.1, Um Nyobe Speaks at the UN (File Vb/b/1954/1, Union of Population of the Cameroons, National Archives, Buea).  Report of the Trusteeship Council, ‘Statement by Mr. Ruben Um Nyobe, representative of the Union des Populations du Cameroun, at the 443rd meeting of the Fourth Committee on 25 December 1954’.

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to Cameroun from the UN, those who openly defied the French regime eagerly welcomed him, while he gave accounts of his visits in public gatherings and UPC congressional meetings and duplicated and distributed copies of his speeches as tracts in local meetings. His moderate and determined speeches to the Trusteeship Council and General Assembly were duplicated and distributed throughout the country. Tens of thousands of letters and petitions were sent to the UN to convey the UPC’s watchwords—social justice, end to racial discrimination, total independence, and reunification—slogans that echoed the promise of the UN Charter itself. Um Nyobe was able to print and duplicate the message with communication apparatuses such as the typewriters and photocopiers which were available, and these machines had been introduced into French Cameroun by the French colonial administration.³⁵ Communication technologies go with connection and the creation of social networks. During the Fourth Committee of the UN, Um Nyobe came in contact with African anti-colonialists who were also at the UN to press home their grievances against French colonial administration. Among these were the representatives of Algerian nationalists, Ahmed Ben Bella and Messali Hadj. The former was the secretary general of the Liberation Movement of North Africa. At meetings such as the International League for the Rights of Man (ILRM) and the American Committee on Africa, also held at the UN because it had an office there, Um Nyobe met the future first president of Togo, Sylvanus Olympio. All these figures inspired Um Nyobe.

The waning of the UPC and the death of Um Nyobe The appearances of Um Nyobe in the UN meetings and his speeches sent shock waves down the spines of the French colonial administration in French Cameroun and in France. Based on these fears, the French looked for ways and means to outlaw the party. On 18 April 1955, Um Nyobe’s house was attacked by the police, and his wife and 20 UPC militants were taken hostage by the police. As a consequence of this attack, Um Nyobe escaped and took refuge in a forest at Boumyebel. It was at this point that the word maquisard, with its French correlation of maquis, began to be used. It became the equivalent of the space of resistance  Thomas Deltombe, ‘The Forgotten Cameroon War’ (N.P: N.D.); Terretta, Nation of Outlaws, State of Violence; Nationalism, Grassfields, p. 203.

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located throughout the territory of French Cameroun, the space outside of state control, concealed and inhabited by true nationalists. Maquis designated a specific action (being resistant) more than a specific place. For this reason, one might have said as to another’s whereabouts, he or she ‘is in the maquis’, which without revealing the person’s whereabouts, explained what the person was doing. Initially, the terms maquis and maquisard—meaning freedom fighter—expressed UPC nationalist ideology and connoted resistance, courage, and the liberation of Cameroun from neo-colonialism. After independence, however, the post-colonial state government applied the term maquisards interchangeably with words like ‘bandit’, ‘terrorist’, ‘rebel’, ‘subversive’, and ‘secessionist’, coating it with negative connotations.³⁶ It was at that moment that the Roman Catholic Church began to apply pressure against the UPC. On Easter Sunday, at the episcopal conference, letters of protest against the UPC were duplicated, which were then read in all Catholic churches. The instigator of these letters against the UPC was Dr Louis Paul Ajoulat, a medical doctor who was the leader of the Catholic anti-independence party Bloc Democratique Camerounaise. The UPC’s ideology was very dangerous for the French colonial administration. Not only was it so because the UPC had called for immediate independence and reunification at the UN Fourth Assembly;³⁷ it was even more complicated because of the position of France in the international scene. France had just been humiliated in a war with Indo-China at Dien Bien Phu, and the Algerian War of Independence which started in 1952 was still raging on. The challenge posed by the UPC gave the French colonial administrators sleepless nights, because they saw the last vestiges of their colonial empire slipping away if their trusteeship over French Cameroun were to be terminated following the petition of Um Nyobe and the UPC. Above all, the voice of the UPC was heard at the highest assembly of the day, the UNO. This meant that its petition had received the widest publicity. However, oral traditions have another version of the narrative. According to Bikoi Bihie Bernard, who witnessed most of the formative years of French colonization right up to independence:

 For more, see Meredith Terretta, ‘The fabrication of the post-colonial state of Cameroon: Village nationalism and the UPC fight for nation, 1948 – 1971’, (PhD Diss. University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2004).  Victor Julius Ngoh, Cameroon 1884 – 1985: A Hundred Years of History, (Yaounde, Cameroon: CEPER, 1986), 145.

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The French were frightened at the awakening of UPC and its platform of immediate independence and reunification. Since it took over French Cameroun, they had felt that French Camerounians were children who needed to be nurtured and so needed civilization. All of a sudden, the formation of UPC and its objective were more frightening because the French felt that the world was to soon know about their harsh policies in Cameroun. The French colonial administration had to rely on several methods to contain that party, even using the Catholic Church and labelling the UPC as a communist party …³⁸

With fright, the French colonial administration resorted to using the Catholic Church in French Cameroun to preach against the UPC as a communist party. It was at this juncture that the French bishop further issued an episcopal letter to be read in all Catholic churches in French Cameroun. Following the publication of the pastoral letter, violence erupted between anti-independence supporters and pro-independence supporters affiliated to the UPC. In some areas, missionaries were attacked and churches destroyed. On 22 May 1955, the French authorities banned all UPC meetings in Mbanga. The UPC resisted and one policeman was eventually killed.³⁹ The situation even got worse, when the violence reached the south part of Cameroun, particularly Douala. On 26 May 1955, Governor Roland Prè brought French troops stationed in Congo to stop the insurrection in Douala. Thus, there were tens of people killed there, 600 wounded, and 17 UPC militants were arrested. On the 13 July 1955, the UPC and all its organs were banned.⁴⁰ Um Nyobe and his supporters therefore went into the maquis in the Boumyebel forest in order to continue their activities clandestinely. Here we see violence meeting with radicalization, and a resistance movement was formed. Felix Roland Moumié, who was the president of the party, and other leaders such as Ernest Ouandié and Abel Kingue took refuge in Kumba, in anglophone Cameroon. From Kumba, they went into exile in Guinea Conakry and Egypt. Um Nyobe, who remained in Cameroun, was the lone UPC leader in the country. A Roman Catholic bishop, His Lordship Thomas Mongo, successfully convinced Um Nyobe to come out from the maquis. A similar move in 1957 had been abortive as Um Nyobe had asked for a total and unconditional amnesty for all that had happened before 1956, the reinstatement of the UPC, the reunification of the two Cameroons, and the country’s immediate independence. Bishop Mongo reported his encounter with Um Nyobe to the colonial authorities. While the amnesty law was voted in on February 1958, this law applied only to the incidents that were committed on 2 January 1956—that is, those who were implicat-

 Interview, Bikoi Bihie Bernard, 82 years, Boumyebel, 7 January 2013.  Ibid.  Joseph, Radical Nationalism in Cameroon, p. 305; Johnson, The Cameroon Federation, p. 334.

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ed or had been involved in the incidents of December 1956 were not included in the amnesty. In addition, the UPC was not re-legalized. Thus, Um Nyobe saw it as a necessity to continue with both the political and armed activities in the maquis and set up his headquarters at Mamitel in the Boumyebel area. Early in September 1958, the French army under the supervision of Colonel Lamberation, located Um Nyobe’s headquarters at Mamitel. As a result, Um Nyobe withdrew from Mamitel on 10 September 1958 under the rain with eight of his supporters, including two women and Theodore Mayi Matip, who was one of his closest aides.⁴¹ They decided to move to another place in the forest. Alexander Mbend Libot led them to a secret cave. Um Nyobe decided to send two people to the nearby village. The aim was to find someone who could direct them to the group of Mbend Libot in the maquis. On 13 September 1958, Paul Abodoulaye, who was part of the French army, shot Um Nyobe in the back and he died from his wound. Mayi Matip escaped the assassination, and the reason he gave was that he had gone to urinate.⁴² Um Nyobe’s body was exposed to the public in Boumyebel, and a few days later it was taken to his village for burial. After the death of Um Nyobe, Ernest Ouandié, Felix Roland Moumié, and Abel Kingue went into exile to Kumba in the British Southern Cameroons, from where they were able to continue their struggle for independence. In Southern Cameroons, according to Ngoh, the One Kamerun (OK) of Ndeh Ntumazah, the Kamerun’s People Party of N. N. Mbile, and the Kamerun National Democratic Party (KNDP) of John Ngu Foncha were initially inspired by the UPC—though some of them later changed their ideologies as a result of the ‘terrorist acts’ of the UPC, as these actions were further branded by the French colonial administration. Ngoh also notes that the OK and the KNDP pointed out many good reasons in favour of reunification to the visiting mission of the UN in 1955.⁴³

Conclusion With Um Nyobe’s death and most of his collaborators in exile, the French authorities could breathe a sigh of relief. They firmly embraced the fact that a policy should be put in place to always control Cameroun. The French then searched for surrogates who could easily be remote-controlled and who could readily support their policy in French Cameroun. The objectives of the UPC, which Um

 Interview, Kobla Moise, 80 years, Boumyebel, 7 January 2013.  Ibid.  Julius Ngoh, The Untold Story of Cameroons Reunification, p. 20.

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Nyobe had vehemently advanced in the various meetings at the United Nations, were rekindled after his death but were at best rather cosmetic. There was independence and reunification of the two Cameroons, but this was realized in 1961 in a far different form from that envisioned by Um Nyobe. Ahidjo, who became the incarnation of French policy in Cameroun, became its first president in 1961, and by 1962 he had arrested four opposition leaders for publishing an open letter criticizing the dream of the creation of a one-party state and what these leaders called a fascist-type dictatorship. These opposition leaders were Andre Marie Mbida, Bebey-Eyidi, Charles Okala, and Mayi Matip. After the reunification, there was an increasing centralization of power in the hands of Ahidjo and a de facto prohibition of any form of political opposition. It has been part of this process that the anglophone region of Cameroon was finally integrated into a unitary Cameroon, superseding the federal republic and superseding the dream of Um Nyobe, which was reunification before independence. It is because of this that the anglophone Cameroonians have cried foul since 1961, and this background is not unconnected with the 2016/17 strikes rocking this part of Cameroon. Richard Joseph contends that when we come to consider today the apparent peculiarity that Cameroon, since independence, has been governed to such a great extent by decrees and laws of exception, it must be borne in mind that the French colonialists were content to rule their territories on this basis until 1945 and beyond. Practices greatly reminiscent of the system of administrative justice, or the indigénat by which the local French administrator could both arrest and summarily punish villagers for a wide range of loosely defined offences, can still be seen today. In today’s Cameroon, prefects, sub-prefects, and gendarmes function within a political framework characterized by a state of emergency laws and hostility to political initiatives or autonomy. In the harassment of the popular masses for reasons sometimes best understood and known only by those in power, there has therefore been no break in the continuity from the colonial period.⁴⁴ Be that as it may, the radicalization of Um Nyobe cannot be properly appreciated if removed from its context. His radicalization was not religious; it was at best socio-political and borne out of the atmosphere which the French colonial administration created in Cameroun. Therefore, his radicalization can be linked to such a colonial policy, but other crucial factors were his schooling, the developments in air transport, letter writing, typewriters, and duplication machines— ICTs avant la lettre. His sudden murder by the French colonial forces had a time-

 Richard Joseph (ed.) Gaullist Africa: Cameroon Under Ahmadou Ahidjo, (Ibadan, Nigeria: Fourth Dimension Press, 1977).

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less impact on the dream which he had dreamed for his Cameroun father/motherland. He failed to see his dream realized. Although Nelson Mandela saw his realized in his own lifetime, one could contend that radicals do not always live to see their dreams come true. Um Nyobe was one such radical.

Souleymane Abdoulaye Adoum, Jonna Both, Mirjam de Bruijn & Sjoerd Sijsma

7 ‘It’s the way we are moulded’

Abstract: This chapter is based on three interviews with Souleymane Abdoulaye Adoum. Souleymane’s fragmented biographical narrative, as described in this chapter, shows how rather radical ideas have deep roots in the life of a person, especially someone who lives in a country with a history of troubles and conflicts such as Chad has. Souleymane retraces his own radical position (which is not a constant in his life, but varies), his first experiences of violence as a child, and his deep indignation (and that of many people around him) at the way his country has been governed since the colonial occupation.

Introduction The following text is based on three interviews conducted with Souleymane Abdoulaye Adoum. The first was conducted in Mongo, Chad in 2014, and the two subsequent interviews took place in Leiden in the Netherlands in December 2015 and December 2016. The first interview was conducted by Mirjam de Bruijn and Sjoerd Sijsma (the latter also filmed all three interviews), and the other two were conducted by Jonna Both and Sjoerd Sijsma together. During the interviews, Souleymane was asked about his research with former rebel-combatants and excivil-service men in Chad¹ and about his own life history. The interviews were initially undertaken to help the PhD researcher (Souleymane) summarize the focus of his research and the motivations behind it while his fieldwork was ongoing, in order to use the film for the finalization of his project. However, soon there emerged a story that in itself was very relevant to tell. In the fragmented biographic narrative of Souleymane recounted in this chapter, we show how developing rather radical ideas can have deep roots in a person’s life (his)story and that the development of such ideas is almost inevitable in the kind of country in which he lives with his family. Souleymane traces his own radical position (which is not constant, as the analysis of the interviews later on will show) back to his earliest experiences with political violence as a child, as well as

 As part of his PhD research on the relation between communication, communication technology and violence in Chadian history since colonial times, Souleymane had interviewed primarily former rebels and ex-civil-service men in Chad. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-007

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his deep indignation (and that of many people around him) at the way his country has been governed since colonial occupation. By building on an individual’s narrative in this chapter, we do not suggest that a process of radicalization such as the one that could be read into the narrative of Souleymane is an individual affair; rather, there is sufficient reason to believe—according to our collaborative and individual research experiences in the country—that Souleymane’s perspectives echo a collective stance in Chadian society. This makes his ideas profoundly social instead of individual (see Crone 2016: 597). His perspectives have come about through interactions with others in a society in which oral exchange is highly valued and often politicized. Most young men in Chad have profound (and one could argue, partial) knowledge of the country’s history with war, often learned from fathers and uncles that they spend much time with. This is especially the case in the country’s Muslim families, where women predominantly tend to live and socialize in separate spheres from men. To the extent that the perspectives revealed in this chapter— and the contexts from which these perspectives emerge—are shared by many, one can question whether some of these oral exchange networks should be qualified as fostering a tendency toward extremism, given that ethnic hatred for example, almost as an ideology and as a valid political response to injustice, are becoming more and more pronounced in Chad. To a certain extent, new social media such as Facebook enhance some of the more extremist debates, as the interview transcribed below will show when Souleymane refers to the debated position of the French in Chad. The networks alluded to here are not extremist networks like those in other parts of the Sahel that are fuelled by religious ideology. But ethnic animosity is often deeply present or implicitly referred to in social discourses by members of these groups, as is the denial or the downplaying thereof at other times. This therefore corresponds with the notion of fluidity of opinions and thoughts over time and related to contexts. While social inequality on the national scale, coupled with international interference (see De Bruijn & Both 2017), seems to play an important role in what we can understand in this chapter as radicalization, we cannot deny that these discourses are building on—as Souleymane’s narrative shows—an extensive history of people’s personal and collective memories of violence to begin with. What would his radicalization look like if he had not known so much violence in his childhood, youth, and adulthood and if his parents had not been subjected to such experiences? These concerns correspond with the analysis by Crone (2016), who suggests it is not so much extremist ideology that leads to violent extremism, but rather that the experience of violent milieus and familiarity with violence may lead people to ‘converting their violent skills [already existing] to serve a politico–religious cause, which from their point of view is noble and

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prestigious’ (2016: 593, emphasis in original). Crone’s case study is about young men being involved in petty crime (and subjected to ‘legitimate state violence’ in return in France) before turning to terrorism; nevertheless, the notion of prior experience with violence as ‘facilitating’ a more violent ideology and the inevitability of such a way of thinking deserves consideration after reading Souleymane’s interpretation of his life and his country’s fate. It is difficult in this short chapter to do justice to the hours of film and many personal conversations shared between Souleymane and the authors. Naturally, shifts in expressions emerge in a single person’s stance when interviewed at different times and in different spaces. This is inherent to the genre of the biographic narrative, in which the intersection of different identities can be identified (Willemse 2009: 84). At times in his narration, Souleymane prioritizes his identity as a researcher; at other times he is a frustrated Chadian citizen; at others a concerned father, a former teacher, and so on. Sometimes his analysis is more distanced; at other times—for example, when he is filmed in 2014 close to his hometown, which holds so many childhood memories of violence—the narrative is more personal. The shifts in one’s stance can also be explained by the threat of surveillance in a country such as Chad. One may at one time feel free to express oneself, especially while staying in Europe for a while; yet at other times one may suddenly feel more unsafe owing to abrupt political developments. One may also experience a tension or contradiction within oneself, especially coming from such a difficult context—at one time believing that violence is the only way to resolve certain things, at other times strongly believing that there are still alternatives to violence. In other words, shifting positions and apparent contradictions make it worthwhile listening to a person over time, and this shows the value of conducting more longitudinal research, especially with regards to themes such as radicalization. After all, we are dealing with the intersection of experience, memory, and identity construction against the background of a degrading and harsh environment, an environment that necessitates close reading and careful navigation in order to survive (see Debos 2008; Vigh 2009; Berckmoes 2015). To a certain extent, fluidity on the level of identity and beliefs is therefore key in such a context. We nevertheless believe that the narrative teaches us something about radicalization as a process, its potential longue durée, and about the threshold people in Chad currently seem to have reached, with almost no hope for a less violent future but rather with violence approaching on the horizon more than ever. The subheadings in this chapter are intended to give some structure to a narrative that is (apart from selection and ordering) left largely intact and not interpreted in the main text. The first part, entitled ‘It’s because of what we’ve lived through’, is primarily about what Souleymane himself has experienced (different

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forms of violence) since his early childhood and thereafter—and how, according to him, this has subsequently influenced his ideas. It also illustrates more generally Souleymane’s interpretation of his country’s violent history. The second part, entitled ‘Our system of government can’t stop violence; there is a risk of returning again to point zero’, concerns ‘la mauvaise gouvernance’ and the indignation this causes among educated people in the country. Elsewhere we argue that this can be seen as a form of ‘displacement’ (De Bruijn & Both, forthcoming). The third part, entitled ‘Today we live in inter-community hatred’, concerns the outbreak of violence that Souleymane—like many of his compatriots—expect for Chad in the near future and how this is explained as the outcome of a form of collective polarization, entrenching people in their ethnic and regional identities (radicalization). This is closely related to the accumulation of experiences of injustice, growing inequality, and the deep roots of mistrust and violent experiences in the population in general.

‘It’s because of what we’ve lived through.’ While Jonna was transcribing the films in June 2017, Souleymane was working in the same office with her. He was visiting the Netherlands to defend his thesis. Seeing what Jonna was doing, he said to her: ‘I’m a radical, am I not? I’m not the only one. It’s my whole generation. It is because of what we’ve lived through.’ (Leiden 23 June 2017)

‘At first it was the government [at independence] that inherited from the colonization that had been there. And it was this government that pushed the Guéra region to rise up. The first rebellion in Chad was born in the region of Guéra in Botchotchi [Mangalmé] in 1965. And the bush people there were behind the rebellion, because the rebellion was born of the injustice that characterized the life of the population of that area. The rebellion was born out of bad governance—because of the cattle tax. And this tax was levied in an extreme way. The population had no representative that could explain their situation, and that is why they rose up in rebellion. And after the uprising, government forces were unleashed on the population. And it was in this way that the villages were emptied of their young people. All the young people went to join the rebellion. After a long armed struggle, the rebellion took power. At that moment, all the youth who had already reached the age of puberty had taken up arms. And during that period we didn’t know who was a soldier and who wasn’t. So everybody carried weapons. And they were split into factions. This is what perpetuated the violence, even during the taking of power by the rebellion.’ (film 1)

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‘In December 1978 [at the age of 8] I arrived in Mongo, because my father was a civil servant and he was posted here. We arrived in December, and three months later the rebellion took power. So in this city [he looks toward Mongo from his location on the mountain], anarchy reigned. And all that period, from 1978 until 1990, the violence never stopped recurring—especially organized violence on the part of the rebel groups or the state. And when the rebels arrived there, they arrested all the members of the government forces that had been abandoned to their unhappy fate. And they beat them up in front of us. We were children, and we saw adults tied up and stripped and tortured. And after they had been imprisoned for a few days, they were found dead behind the mountain. During our walk with children of our own age, we suddenly came out in front of a ravine and found dead bodies. They were the bodies of loyalist ex-soldiers in that town. Even certain friends and colleagues of our father were arrested and executed outside the town on the road which leads to Am-Timan, 15 or 20 km away. They were murdered there. We also saw our marabouts killed. The people who had taught us the Quran were murdered. So … that was the violence … everything was violence. And it was in these circumstances that we grew up. So the [academic] research I’m doing is also connected to my personal life.’ (film 1) ‘But from 1979 on, the rebels took power. They replaced the government, and they became the government. And these rebels that became the government did not master it [governance]. They didn’t even know what the state was. Because it was a popular rebellion and suddenly it came to power. They had no formal education. […] And they accused anyone and everyone of being in cahoots with their enemy, and that is how the violence was inflicted on the people here in Mongo.’ (film 1) ‘This situation has moulded us in the direction of violence. We can’t solve a problem in a reasonable way, through dialogue. No! Always, we use force in our actions. It’s the way we are moulded. Because we live it every day. Whoever doesn’t have a means to defend himself feels weak. Isn’t that the case? Well, at a certain point during the rebellion, for the youth who had already reached the age of puberty: either they joined the rebels, or they left the town because they couldn’t tolerate it. But at that time we were still children. So we saw that … we didn’t know the meaning … so … there you are … But those who at that time already knew how to distinguish between good and bad … either they were rebels or they abandoned the city. They went to live under other skies. That’s how many young people left the city, especially those who attended school; the students deserted the

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town—they left in large numbers. But when they left the town, those in power arrested their fathers. They said, “OK, since your children are not here, they’ve fled; they’re gone over to the side of the enemy, so you will pay the cost.” Some parents were executed. Others suffered heavy fines, ranging from 350,000 to 500,000 FCFA. At the time, finding such a sum was more than impossible. Well … even though we were small, we at least knew that at that time people were supportive. Even if you had nothing, as soon as the rebels imposed a fine on you, people contributed and they saved you. ‘My father was assigned here in Mongo … and within three months of his arrival, the rebellion returned [to the region]. So, he stayed at home idle; he did nothing. Even to support us with enough to eat was a problem. Luckily, my mother was resourceful; she started making cakes. Very early in the mornings, I took the cakes on my head to sell them in the neighbourhood. In this way we were able to support our needs. And afterwards, she had a little business at the market. And this is how we adapted, how we got going in life again; otherwise, that time would have been really difficult. I remember that I had only one boubou. I washed it at night and wore it in the mornings to go to school, when classes resumed in 1982. Besides, between 1979 and 1981, there was no French school—because the rebel fighters hated everything connected with the West. So all French schools were banned in the town. Those of us who attended French school stayed at home from 1979 until 1981 and returned to school in 1982.’ (film 1) [Concerning his father] ‘He was there … calm the way he is … Maybe it’s his composure, his way of behaving that spared him from the rebel violence. But he was also arrested. I think he was arrested in 1981—by the FAP [Forces Armées Populaires] rebel group here. After spending some time in prison, they were released—he and his brother—for reasons that I don’t know.’ (film 1) ‘I’ve been inspired by my father’s courage all my life. That’s the way it is. He was very courageous. With the little means at his disposal, he educated us. With this limited means, he prevented us from suffering. He always supported us in our needs. Perhaps my friends from my time at university can testify to this; in spite of his circumstances, he sent me 25,000 CFA francs at the end of every month when I was at university. It was during the very difficult period.’ (film 1)

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‘It was really painful but we didn’t know because … Well, it’s normal everyday stuff because we grew up in it. […] At first, when we heard the gunshots, we tried to hide in our houses; but afterward … when we heard the gunshots, we went out of the house to see what was going on. So we adapted to this violence.’ (film 1) ‘So in 1982, my father started working again—but with such trouble, because in 1982 the Chadian administration was in the course of rebuilding itself and had no means at its disposal. It was the era of half-pay. The pay was meagre.’ ‘From 1982/1983, there was the establishment of the administration … the reopening of the socio-educational centres. And up to 1986 it seemed to work. But this region experienced still other troubles—because it were the sons of this region who brought Hissène Habré to power. Perhaps they thought things were going well … but a climate of suspicion and mistrust surrounded the relationship between Hissène Habré and his allies, the Hadjaraï. As a result, he accused them of a coup d’état and initiated a purge of this community. We went backward again in 1986. I was 16 years old then. So the Guéra region is acquainted with unrest, with military acts of violence. We saw our teachers pulled out in the middle of high school classes to be executed.’ M: ‘Dead?’ S: ‘Dead. They killed them, yes.’ M: ‘Because … ?’ S: ‘Because they were natives of the Guéra region and because some of the sons of the region rebelled against the state under Hissène Habré. This was in 1986. Of course, Hissène Habré had a hard time parting from the sons of Guéra, but it was not all the sons of Guéra! Isn’t that so? But they considered all Guéra’s sons to be rebels, and that’s how the remainder were forced to go back to those who were in the bush. They attempted a reconciliation in 1987; but, a few months later, the reconciliation failed and Guéra’s sons took the path of resistance. And that’s why Hissène Habré once again sent government forces to purge the communities in Guéra. They were killing people. In the boarding school of the Mongo Evangelical Mission, all students between the ages of 20 and 30 were slaughtered. The pastors met the same fate. ‘So that’s the way it was. They went back to the bush; they went to meet at the Sudanese border. And soon after, when Idriss Déby got into trouble parting from his master, Hissène Habré, he [Déby] also went to the bush. And they all found themselves on the Sudanese border, where they formed the so-called MPS [Mouvement Patriotique du Salut], the current ruling party. They came back to take power after the congress of Bamina, which was held in November 1990. And after this congress, Gaddafi helped them with the backing of

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France and they overthrew Hissène Habré. In 1990 Idriss Déby took power with a son of Guéra as a second-in-command: Maldoum Baba Abbas. But a month later, they parted ways. Idriss Déby set up Maldoum by saying that he [Maldoum] was preparing a coup against him. He imprisoned him. Idriss Déby sent his army into Guéra … The same scenario was repeated! They sent soldiers; they started killing people for the slightest thing. It was Abbas Koty who ran the purge operation in Guéra. And that’s the way it was. ‘At Bitkine—when they had already taken Maldoum to N’Djaména, they imprisoned him—they sent the army to Bitkine. After arriving in this town, they gathered the people by saying they had a message to deliver to them. And when people had gathered, soon after the army surrounded them and sprayed them with bullets. An act of great human cruelty. All were killed! ‘In the south, when I went to Sido, those who had lived through the troubled period of 1979 explained to me that it was the same situation. […] These are the violent acts and things that we have experienced here. For example, suppose there’s an orphan from that period or someone who is born and who never saw his father—and you tell them that their father was killed by so-and-so; what will be the reaction of that child vis-à-vis those who killed his father? There you have it … and this expresses a hatred. Today, there is inter-community hatred. Is it not so? We live it. We don’t like to feel certain groups around us in Chad—because they have committed appalling actions, acts of violence either on our relatives or on our friends. All these acts of violence leaves scars today in regard to how to live together.’ (film 1)

Our system of government can’t stop violence; there is a risk of returning again to point zero. ‘One can’t express oneself as one wishes. And at the level of the state, there is a violence which expresses itself by the suppression of civil servants … that’s also violence!’ (film 1) ‘If a person can’t do [as work] what he deserves to do, that’s also a form of violence. For example, if, in a situation where there are competent civil servants, they put as a director someone who never went to school, this is also violence. If we accept that, it’s because violence is present. They made people disappear because they didn’t want to submit. They didn’t want to submit to situations that

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have nothing to do with the law. Yes, we saw that … [Souleymane begins to speak slowly, he looks away, sitting on the mountain]. Senior civil servants are not promoted into high-level responsibilities [in most cases]. And when they send you a trainee to become the head of a department, certainly it hurts you. You don’t want to collaborate with him because usually he doesn’t deserve the position. But you can’t do otherwise. So there are many forms of violence in the midst of our lives.’ (film 1) [In answer to a question about what was most shocking for Souleymane during his research] ‘It’s the part played by the authority of the state. War has taken root in this society. The war has destroyed everything. And what war has imposed on us seems to be the law of the republic. And this new law can generate nothing but new war. And this law destroys the country more than it sends it along the road of reconstruction. That struck me: the fact that an agent of the state couldn’t even provide a report from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. I was struck by the fact that there is total inertia in the administrative machinery of my country. So that aspect struck me deeply. Because a state must at least provide its population with the minimum essentials, the minimum security, the minimum care. But we don’t see all this. We hear it only in political speeches.’ (film 3) ‘We don’t see the future because we are already … we see only daily life. It’s a question of survival today. And that has to change. Do you think that today we feel comfortable, when in the morning we wake up and see our children having fun because they don’t go to school? Even our hospitals lack the basics of first aid. Most often they are closed because of strikes by the health personnel. ‘So, our system of government can’t stop violence. No. The way of managing the country is harmful. An example: the control of the state. A ministry of control of the state was instituted. Since it has been in operation, we have never seen those in power … people in power are not accused of embezzlement. Never. But it is they who build beautiful villas, who drive around in beautiful cars. They have money, eh? They’re distributing [money]. But they don’t siphon off funds; it is others who are often accused of embezzlement. This is also a form of violence … So these are the problems we see in this country; and if it doesn’t change, maybe we risk returning again to point zero.’

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[In response to a question we did not hear] ‘Well, maybe there is also a dialogue installed by this pretence of democracy. I say it’s not a democracy but a pretence of democracy [laughs]; maybe that’s happening, maybe it will change their [the state actor’s] mentality. ‘But for us, when we are overwhelmed, we are forced to resort to violence. It’s part of our lives. More than half of our lives have been spent in violence. Therefore it’s not easy to convert our mentality. ‘Because I personally can’t bear the injustice, and I also can’t accept that the injustice is perpetuated … and, as such, maybe one day I will be forced to overcome the injustice by violence. Yes. Maybe that. I’m not afraid—because violence has always been part of my daily life.’ (film 1)

‘Today we live in inter-community hatred.’ ‘For a start, in daily life there’s a loss of trust between Chadians. Chadians don’t trust each other—because mistrust has spread throughout Chadian society. This is due to the fact that the control of power has become clannish. When those in power are hated by others, it’s because they’ve monopolized all the benefits. They don’t agree to equitable sharing. It’s the clan. And this violence teaches only violence. Even at school, children group together by ethnicity … Today in Chad we don’t make friends with someone we don’t know well. A very simple example is that of the ethnicity of the party in power … they are the bearers of our misfortunes. A large number of Chadians know it. So, there you have it: violence hasn’t left Chad. ‘And justice doesn’t exist. Yes. The army is clannish. So the very foundation of national unity—which is the army—it’s in the service only of a clan. A Zaghawa² can do anything and he won’t go to prison. But when it’s you that does something to him, it’s not just you who suffers the punishment, but your entire family and your ethnic group will suffer the consequences. Yes … the value of Chadians is not the same. One Chadian is more valuable than the other because even the diya—that is to say, the blood-money that is paid for a crime of blood— is not the same.³ One Zaghawa claims 45 or 50 million [FCFA], but for another ethnic group it’s 5 million. You see. Things are at such a point that injustice  The ruling elite in Chad, including President Idriss Déby, are members of the Zaghawa ethnic group.  Diya is a principle in Islamic law whereby compensation (blood-money) is paid to the victim, or to the family/guardian of a victim, of a crime of bodily harm or murder.

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does nothing but perpetuate hatred among Chadians, mistrust among Chadians; and mistrust can’t leave Chad in these conditions. We are waiting. Yes, we are waiting. The day when Déby goes, what will it bring?’ (film 2) J: ‘And are others not united now? Because they are all, or almost all, against the same … the same group?’ S: ‘Yes. Well … they have the same language. But I don’t think there’s unity, because everyone is convinced that if the other takes power they will enjoy it in the same way—because experience has shown that in the past, and it continues. The Hadjerai,⁴ for example, helped to bring Hissène Habré to power. They helped bring Idriss Déby to power. And finally, what happened with them? They abandoned the army because they were mistreated. […] So Chadians, even if there is unity running through what they say, suspicion [of each other] can’t provide trust between them. So that’s the problem also: fear of the other. Yes!’ (film 3) J: ‘In your chapter, the last one we talked about, you describe well what the consequence is of all this for the Chadian population. Can you elaborate a little, explain your view?’ S: ‘For me, the state manifests itself and asserts itself through its administrative, political … military structures … But these institutions seem inert and exist only in name … I think that faced with such a situation, the population must act—and this is the case in my country … When people are sick, the hospitals are closed. When there’s a brawl at the market, the forces of order can’t intervene, because this brawl most often is between two tribes very close to those who hold power. So it’s the case that my country is plunging more into disorder. That’s it. So, we have to say it out loud so that it changes. […] our governance is lagging behind. The very foundations of democracy are not respected.’ J: ‘In your thesis you explain that as a result people are withdrawing into their homes, into their ethnic groups … Can you expand on that?’ S: ‘Yes. In a republic, one has to trust one’s systems of security and administrative structures. But when all that doesn’t work, and when we see that these tools have an ethnic, clannish configuration and that they defend only a part of the population—the best thing is to stand aside, to escape, and to be among those where, in the case of a situation of insecurity, one could still defend one-

 The Hadjerai comprise about 7 per cent of the population of Chad and are the main ethniclinguistic group in the Guéra Region.

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self collectively. And this has been caused by the bad management of the country. There is growing impunity in Chad. No health centres, no schools. And communities are obliged to organize themselves into associations to club together and create schools, to look for teachers, to create health centres, to look for nurses and to pay them themselves. These kinds of practices still exist in certain remote areas.’ J: ‘So, withdrawing into your own home: this is the solution to …’ S: ‘No, it’s not a solution. But the circumstances require it … the current circumstances require it … You can’t live alone, you can’t isolate yourself from your parents, because in the case of a small problem or a small accident—for example, if you knock a child down in traffic—you are required to pay millions and millions in damages and interest … So, on your own you can’t pay. It’s necessary to have the support of parents. And it’s not just anyone who comes to your aid … there are only the parents. So it’s a situation [withdrawal into one’s ethnic group] that’s dependent on the circumstances, although in this way we do not honour national cohesion. But we have to do that because we are not protected by the state. No.’ (film 3) ‘From the beginning a mother advises her child who goes to school not to mix with the other children—you must always be beside your big brothers, who can defend you if there are fights with those of your own age. So imagine how the idea of violence is passed from parents to children—because the child must not be separated from his elders; he must be protected in case of a fight. You see? So it’s the communication, the communication of violence …’⁵ (film 2) ‘Yes, ICTs [information and computer technologies] play a role, because we always … We communicate violence—because today it’s a whole Chadian community that is against an ethnic group. […] So communication has a role; ICT plays a vital role. If you look today on social networks where Chadians exchange or write, you feel there is a general frustration. They say in relation to the president that they have to make him leave. France is behind him. But how to do it? To seize a French citizen some day in Chad? There … things like that are being said … to bend France from its position protecting the Déby regime … Perhaps

 Souleymane does not permit his own children to play on the street but rather has them watch television, to prevent them from having problems with the neighbours. Source: informal conversation JB & SAA.

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the alternative is to begin to murder the French citizens living in Chad … This is suggested as a solution. These are the things people are writing on their Facebook pages. And so … ICT has an influence.’ (film 2)

Analysis and discussion The state of governance: Disillusion for the civil servant Souleymane sees himself as a civil servant, as belonging to the educated people in the country. His father was a civil servant, and later Souleymane himself became a secondary school teacher. Belonging to this group in society he feels particularly affected when governance goes awry. When he thinks about the Frolinat rebels who took power in 1979, for example, he says: … And these rebels that became the government did not master it [governance]. They didn’t even know what the state was. Because it was a popular rebellion and suddenly it came to power. They had no literate officers. And it was the people from the bush, young people from the bush who rose up to take power, and they had no mastery of anything.

Bad governance has struck Souleymane since childhood. He interprets the inequality in the system of governance as a form of violence and as one of the pertinent causes of his ‘radicalization’. This is particularly so because bad governance was not just a problem that followed the events of 1979 but is a problem that persists in his environment. The takeover by Déby in 1990 was collectively seen in Chad as a takeover by bushmen, by uneducated rebels. For many Chadians, this fact (and the persistence of a clan logic to fill administrative and political posts) explains why, in the words of Souleymane, ‘there is total inertia in the administrative machinery’ of Chad until today. Thus this system of governance explains his immense frustration, and it causes him to have no confidence in politicians. The existing governance system still communicates to Chadians, according to Souleymane, that a weapon is required to obtain and maintain power and to loot community property and goods. So there is a direct association with the idea that ‘war […] seems to be the law of the republic. And this new law can generate only new war. And this law destroys the country more than it sends it along the road of reconstruction.’

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Continuity and persistence of violence The continuity of violence is a theme whose beginning is located by Souleymane at the time of colonization. Perhaps it changes forms somewhat … but violence is there to stay. And people have adapted to it. At the same time as they have adapted to violence, the violence that is repeated in the history of Chad is never exactly the same—perhaps exactly because it is inscribed in a memory of violence that is still accumulating. People today also adopt violence as a solution/response to the current political situation—though not in the form of a rebellion, which was perhaps the preferred method in the past. Now it is much more the prediction of inter-ethnic violence in the near future, expressed in quotidian conversations or suggestions and deeply nourished by years of experience with bad governance. According to Souleymane’s analysis, hatred, suspicion, and revenge among Chadians are at the root of the continuing violence in the country. The fact that people are not protected by the state means that people are withdrawing and anchoring themselves in their homes, their families, clans, ethnic groups. And the communication of mistrust vis-a-vis the Other already exposes the young Chadian child to hatred. Following his observations, we will understand that Souleymane believes that for those who are already moulded by violence at such a young age, by communication of hatred for the Other … violence in the future seems inevitable. For those who are seeking to establish a non-violent climate in this country, this analysis offers perhaps also a route to hope: a space and a time (i. e. childhood) in which to begin to combat an education pervaded by violence.

Alternatives Does Souleymane also believe in non-violent solutions for his country? Solutions that can make a break from the model of a violent form of governance? If you listen carefully, there are alternative ideas he refers to. In interview-parts not cited above he says he believes in a Chadian solution for his country, a solution without the influence of external countries and forces: ‘It’s not the Chinese; it’s not the French; it’s not the Americans. It’s not other people who can give us peace. Peace will come from ourselves!’ And he has not lost hope that a national reconciliation can take place: ‘For me, national reconciliation is an option that

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will be the best, if Chadians come to this conference⁶ with sincerity’ (film 3). At the same time, he has much fear that today’s politicians could use such a conference to divide once again the Chadian people—because he does not see evidence of a genuine nationalism in Chad. The divisions, according to him are too deep, and the interests are individual or else clannish.

References Berckmoes, L. (2015). (Re)producing ambiguity and contradictions in enduring and looming crisis in Burundi. Ethnos 82(5): 925 – 945. Crone, M. (2016). Radicalization revisited: Violence, politics and the skills of the body. International Affairs 92(3): 587 – 604. De Bruijn, M. & Both, J. (2017). Youth between state and rebel (dis)orders: Contesting legitimacy from below in Sub-Sahara Africa. Small Wars & Insurgencies 28(4 – 5): 779 – 798. Debos, M. (2008). Fluid loyalties in a regional crisis: Chadian ‘ex-liberators’ in the Central African Republic. African Affairs 107(427): 225 – 241. Vigh, H. (2009). Motion squared: A second look at the concept of social navigation. Anthropological Theory 9: 419 – 438. Willemse, K., Morgan, R. & Meletse, J. (2009). Deaf, gay, HIV positive and proud: Narrating an alternative identity in post-apartheid South Africa. Canadian Journal of African Studies 43(1): 83 – 104.

 Here Souleymane hints at a national conference aimed at reconciliation and democratic rule, such as the one that was held—but failed in his eyes—in 1993 in Chad.

Part II Present-day processes of radicalization

Djimet Seli

8 Radicalization processes and trajectories in western Chad Abstract: The western regions of Chad, which are the subject of my research on radicalization and violent extremism, border on Niger and Nigeria, an area currently in the spotlight because of insecurity related to the phenomenon of Boko Haram, a phenomenon which has ravaged the area for a number of years. The reactions and spontaneous conversations of young people in the area are marked by a certain degree of radicalization, according to their different trajectories and also according to the specificities of each region. Some of the youth are driven by poor governance, some by the local model of an ostracizing society, and others are victims of the indoctrination of new, more fanatical religious currents. In addition, there are some that respond to many of these factors. This chapter aims to examine some of the causes and processes of radicalization of young people in this area of Chad.

Introduction Western Chad is a part of the country that, during long decades of unrest, has been relatively spared from political violence. The majority of violence of this type that occurred in Chad between 1964 and 1990 occurred in almost all areas of Chad except for the west, which remained a haven of peace. Certainly, in 1991– 1992 there was a brief period of rebellion, but observers and political analysts interpret it as a last-ditch struggle by the elite of the Habré regime which fell in 1991. Until the appearance of the Boko Haram phenomenon, western Chad had remained a quiet corner in a fast-developing Chad. But in recent years the young generation has been showing increasingly disturbing signs of hardening religious positions and a rejection of the system of governance; this has culminated in their enlistment among the Boko Haram jihadists. It is important in this chapter to understand the aspirations and the unrest of this generation of young people. Are they disappointed by the model of society they live in? Are they the victims of an indoctrination campaign because of the new, more fanatical religious currents? In short, this chapter is concerned with understanding this deep unrest among the youth.

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Framework of the study and methodological approach From the geographical point of view, western Chad is a vast area, and I cannot claim to cover it entirely in this modest work—far from it. Derived from anthropology work based on field investigations, the data contained in this chapter are valid only for the areas where I actually conducted research. These areas are the administrative regions of Barh-el-Gazel, Kanem, and Lac. This part of Chad is characterized from a physical point of view by semi-desert and desert soil. Of this vast area, only part of the Lac region has satisfactory agricultural potential thanks to the very fertile polders of Lake Chad. The rest of the area, the Kanem and Barh-el-Ghazel regions, have very limited agricultural activities owing to poor soil and very short rainy seasons. In all three regions, livestock and retail activities are very popular. Added to this is the large-scale rural exodus for seasonal work, some small commerce with major cities in Chad (primarily the capital, N’Djaména), and also emigration to some neighbouring countries such as Nigeria, Libya, and Arab countries (mainly Saudi Arabia). As a consequence of the lack of prospects western Chad can offer young people, these youth—inspired by their many elders who have succeeded in business or trade—cherish dreams of following in their footsteps. However, the pathways to realizing these dreams are full of pitfalls and are the cause of frustration and unrest among the youth. This area was targeted for the investigation of radicalization and violent extremism as a result, on the one hand, of the development of jihadist activities and the involvement of young people from these regions—and on the other hand, because of religious tensions noted here and there. While not favouring a quantitative method, I though it wise to choose three different case studies to better render an account of the diversity of causes and processes that lead to what may be called the radicalization of young people in this area of Chad.

Minallah: Deep-seated rancour against the Sufis Setting out for a round of investigations into radicalization and violent extremism, my starting point was Moussoro (300 km to the northeast of N’Djaména). A few hours after my arrival, a hearty meal was provided by my host by way of hospitality. While we were seated, an old man, with his insistent and attention-grabbing

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‘As-salāmu ʿalaykum’¹ caught our attention and forced us to respond. My host and I simultaneously responded theatrically to the greetings of the old man. My host responded with an inquiry: ‘Waʿalaykumu as-salām. Who are you? Who do you want to see?’—while I answered with an invitation: ‘Waʿalaykumu as-salām. Faddal.’² My host’s response almost contradicted mine. And as if by reflex, each of us insisted on his reply. My response was motivated by Chadian hospitality in general, and in particular that of the city of N’Djaména where I live. According to this, when one is at table and a visitor arrives, whether he sends you a greeting or not, it is customary to invite him to share the meal by saying ‘Faddal’. My ‘Faddal’ was also to fulfil my responsibility as leader of the mission, to show my hosts that I was accessible, amiable, and so on, especially since I had come to meet people to understand their motivations toward radicalization. Faced with the insistence of my ‘Faddal’, which ran the risk of bringing the old man nearer, my host stood up abruptly and went very quickly to meet the visitor, with whom he briefly spoke in their local language and at the end of which the old man turned back to the path. Upon his return, in very direct language, my host commented on my response which had contradicted his: How can you say ‘Faddal’ to someone whose social status or purpose—never mind his religious denomination—you know nothing about? Of course, I understand because you come from N’Djaména—but here, we’re very careful. We don’t approach just anyone in any old way. For example, this old man, you don’t know if he’s of our status? Is he not sent by the authorities to investigate us? Does he have the same religious beliefs as we do?

Having realized that I was new to the realities of their locality, my host felt embarrassed by his responses to me. A few minutes later, he went back to the subject to help me better understand the reasons for his decision to keep the unexpected visitor at a distance. First affirming his Wahhabi Islamic practice proudly, he justified his reluctance to receive the visitor on the basis of a certain number of events that had been going on for some time in their locality and that had led to the people of his Sufi brotherhood becoming the object of conspiracies hatched by a number of people with dubious Islamic practices, especially by the elders who benefit from the support of the state. The state has closed a number of our mosques and forbids our preaching. It’s been proved that it supports the Tijania. Here, the state is against us. It seeks to attack us by all means by attacking what is today our strength—trade—and what is our hope—Islam. For us here,

 Chadian Arabic used in greeting (lit. ‘peace be upon you’).  Chadian Arabic term of invitation; in the circumstances of eating, an invitation addressed to a visitor to come and eat.

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the first battle we’ll have is between us and the practitioners of Tijania or the state—since we’ll never agree to join those who observe a bad Islamic belief. Despite our patience, we’re scoffed at. But we’ll soon react, and it won’t be our fault. (Minallah)³

Hassan: ‘When I see a water and forestry officer or a customs officer, I get angry inside.’ On the afternoon of my arrival at Mao, I went out with my host on an observation walk through the city. Attracted by my different appearance from his own, a young man came up to me who—because of his attitude—first aroused distrust and then interest on my part. The young man in question was called Hassan Abdraman, and he had an aggressive energy, an attitude of rebellion, and the air of a drug addict.⁴ This was a 27-year-old youth who dreamed of having a comfortably-off social life. To do this, he left school very early at the age of 11 in CM1 class, influenced by the dream that his older brothers had inculcated in him, whose circle he frequented and whose chat and discussions turned only around envy of the positions of successful businessmen of the region with whom everyone identifies. He explained: I left school because in the evenings, when we met where young people hang out, my older brothers told me that school is no good. You waste many years to become a teacher, scream all day long in front of students, and end up leading a miserable life like ‘Sara’.⁵ In their dreams, they planned to go to Libya, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates—and to come home with a lot of money and open big shops in N’Djaména or have trucks for transport like many of our elders in this city. By dint of listening to this kind of talk at length, in the evenings and over months, I was seduced because I also dreamed of becoming a rich man with a herd of camels in the village, of having a beautiful house in N’Djaména, of going on pilgrimage to Mecca to have the prestigious title of ‘Al Hajj’, of having large resources here, a big shop in N’Djaména, and having a car to come here from time to time to bring food to the family.

To realize his dreams, Hassan Abdraman left school very early to follow in the footsteps of elders who had made successes of their lives. But at the first step of the journey he already encountered a series of frustrations that shattered his dreams, and he ended up destroying himself with drugs. Indeed, three years

 Minallah G., male, 37 years old, interview conducted in Moussoro in June 2015.  Interview conducted in Mao in June 2015.  ‘Sara’ is a generic term applied to people from southern Chad who are better educated, sent to other regions as civil servants, and are particularly numerous as teachers.

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after leaving school, he tried trading. He began importing sugar cane from Lake Chad to the markets of his city. Although sugar cane sells well at the market, the expenses related to various aspects of racketeering were multiplied: You can’t understand how much the state doesn’t want us young people from the west to succeed. I chose to sell sugar cane that I bought just near here at Lake Chad. But as people don’t want us, the water and forestry agent racketeers pick on us all along the road. To bring the sugar cane from the lake to here, I had to pay more than four water and forestry control posts. I paid according to the bale. For each bale, I paid 250 CFA at each post. In addition to the water and forestry agents, I had to pay other unjustified fees at certain barriers—and all this was for nothing since I didn’t get any receipts.

Despite the tenacity of Hassan Abdraman in persevering in the sugar cane trade, these rackets multiplied and eventually got the better of him—because he declared that he did not understand that sugar cane, which is a local product of agriculture, could be subject to any tax. Despite his perseverance, he felt justified in his sense of injustice. He gave up. But in order not to remain idle, he persevered in trade and changed his route and goods. His new business consisted in sourcing N’Djaména-manufactured products to sell at the markets of different localities in the region. Again, the frustrations accumulated. From N’Djaména to Mao, a distance of about 400 km, he had to face several unjustified checkpoints for the sole, unspoken purpose of exploiting money from traders. We’re not in a country at war, so I don’t understand why we’re multiplying the checkpoints. From N’Djaména to here, there are six checkpoints. And at each checkpoint, there are several formalities to complete. There’s the police; and as soon as you finish with the police, there’s the gendarmerie; as soon as you finish with the gendarmerie, there’s the customs; as soon as you finish with the customs, there are the water and forestry agents waiting. As soon as you finish with these, there are the ANS [National Security Agency] people, the political police.

In spite of these multiple annoyances, Hassan Abdraman had no choice but to submit as everyone does. In addition to these different formalities, there are days when an official of these control bodies can, according to his mood, make life difficult for a trader. In this case, Hassan Abdraman had the misfortune one day to encounter a customs officer who, under the pretext of checking the regularity of the receipts for the goods, chose to ruin the consignment. I arrived at the checkpoint. After presenting all the papers, the customs officer told me that my goods were not properly cleared and that I had to pay a certain amount for the value that was missing. I refused and told him that I was a retailer and bought my goods from a wholesaler in N’Djaména. The customs had only to go and check with this trader. And

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besides, if the value was insufficient, why did the customs which issued the receipt do so? My resistance didn’t go down well, and a part of my merchandise was seized.

This behaviour of state agents is felt by Hassan as an obstacle to the development of young people in his region, whose only activities remain trade or emigration. This created in him frustration and revolt against the state: Today, when I see a water and forestry officer or a customs officer, even if they are a friend or relative, I get angry on account of what I was subjected to.

Issakh M.: Down with aristocratic society Arriving in the Lac district, which is supposedly a region from which many young people went to join the Boko Haram jihadists, I wanted to meet someone who had reformed—for the purpose of my inquiries was not only to understand the level of radicalization, but also the experience of those who have reformed. At my insistence, my guide put me in touch with Issakh M.⁶ Issakh M.—the thin, pointed goatee following the shape of his triangular chin, his inquisitor eyes initially doubting my identity as a researcher before being convinced of it—did not seem to be a sincere repentant. The gravity of the tone of his discourse betrayed him in his supposed repentance. The virulence of his barely controlled speech— punctuated with Quranic surahs and implacably opposed to the current system of corrupt governance—was directed against the social system in which he lives. His speech was aimed primarily at the traditional chieftaincy, which he condemned for all evils, including constituting a brake to the advent of a just Islamic society of which he dreamed. Traditional chieftainship has always been an obstacle to Islamization. Already, for centuries, when they [the elite] received Islam, they appropriated it and confiscated it. And today, the world has opened up and real values are circulating everywhere. In Islam, there’s no leader; there’s only the Muslim community. And if there’s a leader, he’s a leader chosen by the community on the basis of the strength of his faith or his bravery in the fight for the propagation of the Islamic faith. When the struggle results in the Islamic ummah, this traditional chieftaincy will disappear.

In the unleashing of his passion against the aristocratic system, which he denounced in each phase, he even forgot that he was a repentant and had to there-

 Young man, about 30 years old, unemployed; interview conducted in Bol in June 2015.

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fore control his language. On the contrary, he prided himself on having tried to overthrow the established unjust order. As he saw it, his fight for a time alongside the Boko Haram jihadists was not only to make Islam triumph, which is already a reality, but to translate Islam into reality from the point of view of the organization of society. And for the triumph of this cause, he did not exclude resuming the struggle: We came back, but that does not mean we are defeated and will accept things such as they are. Islam is a religion of equality, as everyone recognizes. But if that’s the case, how does it come about that some people think they are socially superior to others. If we have rebelled, it is because we are on the right path of the Islam which wants to restore its principles wherever it is practised.

Frustrated youth: A fertile ground for indoctrination and rebellion An analysis of the discourse and behaviour of my three respondents places me on the track of certain elements that can be considered the ‘leaven of the dough’ of radicalization among youth in western Chad. These elements include the following: religious indoctrination, poor governance, and the stratification of the unequal society that characterizes the societies of western Chad—the remains of the Kanem slavery kingdom. Indeed, until very recently, the Islam of Chad was predominantly Tijaniya Sufi, a syncretic Islam and therefore tolerant (Mahamad 1980). An illustration of this tolerant Chadian Islam is more alive in the region of Guéra, a crossroads of religions where we can find in the same family Muslims, Christians, and animists—who all live in perfect harmony (Fuchs 1997). This Islam manifests itself in cases where ‘Islam and animism sometimes coexist in the same individual’ (Magnant 1983). This Islam is one in which the elders recognize themselves and feel at home, those elders who do not understand the current trend of more radical Islam among the youth—as noted by Abba Seid:⁷ I don’t understand young people and their way of practising Islam today. It is we who taught them the basis of Islam, and suddenly they add things and it spoils everything. The way to eat, to dress, to pray. The young people go so far as to say that the Islam that has been practised up to now is not the true one—that the true Islam is the one that consists of not applying relativity to things but of applying force to everyone who is not like you to make them like you. But what’s going to happen if others behave in this

 A peasant man, about 62 years old; interview conducted in Mao in June 2015.

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way? I think this way of doing things will itself destroy Islam. Moreover, today, we already see it when we hear what is going on around us: Muslims are killing other Muslims in the name of Islam. Where is the Islam in this?

The negation of ‘traditional’ Chadian Islam by young people in the western regions began to take shape following the arrival of preachers from Arab countries and from a Muslim elite formed in northern Nigeria, who are tapping into a current driven primarily by the frustration resulting from the lack of opportunities in a caste society. Unfortunately, the lack of opportunities for young people coincided with the emergence of educational centres for religious radicalization. In fact, for more than a decade, there has been a proliferation of new Islamic currents from Persian Gulf countries, mainly from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Kuwait, and Qatar (Ladiba 2011). These essentially Wahhabi—and therefore Salafist—currents have played on the sensitive strings of Chad’s needs, especially among the youth. In this manner, year after year, there is a proliferation of Islamic non-governmental organizations; but under the mask of charitable actions, there is a particular interest in the spread of ideological Islam (Ladiba 2011). To propagate this pure Islam according to their objectives, these organizations depend on Islamic education or ‘re-education’ of young people and women. Many Quranic schools of new types have opened (La Voix 2009).⁸ A large proportion of the national territory is now swarming with these Quranic schools, known as mabrouka. The education in these mabrouka, whose teaching content often escapes the authorities in charge of national education, is aligned with the respective curricula of the countries of origin of these organizations— that is, with those of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, and so on. Adam Hissein,⁹ a former boarder at a mabrouka, boasts: You can’t compare people who are trained under a tree by a single marabout to someone like me who is a product of a mabrouka. The training by the local marabouts doesn’t follow any programme: students just learn according to the knowledge of the marabout. But in the mabrouka, we learn according to the programme of Saudi Arabia, a model country as far as Islam is concerned. We’re trained by several teachers, including ideologues and sheikhs that sometimes come from Arab countries.

 Before the arrival of these new types of Quranic schools, there was the traditional type of Quranic school where the neighbourhood children gathered in a corner of the neighbourhood to study the Quran—for two hours at dawn and again for two hours in the evenings—with a volunteer marabout or one paid for by the students’ parents. But the new types of Quranic schools created in recent years by Islamic organizations are located very far from villages and cities, and children live in boarding schools created for this purpose by the funding of these organizations.  Young man, about 27 years old, ‘resourceful’; interview conducted in Michemiré in June 2015.

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This training in mabrouka, sometimes by ideologues and sheikhs from Arab countries, is unfortunately not free from attempts to radicalize learners. It is often based on the negation of Chad’s traditional, tolerant Islam. Many young people from these training centres question or even denigrate Sufi Islam as being assimilated to idolatry (Coudray 1992); and, as reported in the newspaper Le Progrès,¹⁰ even the vice-president of the CSAI, a Tijani Sufi, saw his Islam challenged by a jihadist marabout. In this way, in the bosom of families, we are witnessing more and more a religious conflict between generations, where young people consider the elders as having learned badly and as requiring to be re-Islamized afresh because their traditional Islam is a counterfeit which must be reformed—as maintained strongly by Issa D.:¹¹ Listen: our parents and grandparents practised an Islam tainted with a lot of ignorance, because there was no one well equipped with true knowledge of Islam to explain to them what the true Islam is that they practise in Saudi Arabia. Today, we are lucky that Chad is open to the rest of the world and we have received a true Islamic education from people who know about this. Therefore, it’s up to us to teach it to our parents and to other people who do not know it well, including other Muslims who have learned it badly.

The most illustrative example of radicalization in Chad following the Salafist discourse of these new types of indoctrination is that of the mabrouka Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara,¹² who succeeded in indoctrinating approximately 700 men, women, and children with whom he launched a jihad by slaughtering non-Muslim villagers (Tchéré 2008).

Brotherhood conflicts and the bias of the state The conflict between generations, related to the Islam of the elders more inclined to Sufi Islam and the young people more inclined to the practices of Salafist Islam, reflects on other planes the tense atmosphere between the Salafist currents symbolized by the Wahabbiya and Ansar al Sunnah, on the one hand, and the Sufi stream represented by Tijania, on the other. Because of its weight in the past, the Tijania current has a stranglehold on Muslim religious organiza No. 2456, 1 July 2008.  Young man, about 30 years old, marabout; interview conducted in Chadra in June 2015.  Sheikh Ahmet Ismael Bichara is a marabout founder of a Quranic school bearing his name in the village of Kouno (southern Chad). On 29 June 2008, he launched a jihad which he said was going to extend from the south of Chad as far as Denmark and which left more than 70 dead.

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tion in Chad—in this case the Conseil Supérieur des Affaires Islamiques (CSAI), founded in 1976. The CSAI has, since its creation, been in the hands of Tijani leaders, and since the 1990s has been led by Sheikh Hassane Hissein, a figure very close to the state authorities but in open conflict with the Salafists: This latest development again impels Sheikh Hussein Hassan to hurl anathema at Ansar al Sunna, describing them on occasion as terrorists close to the Boko Haram sect against whom Chadians must rise up to block them from the country. These serious accusations, in addition to those dealing with the imam Abu Haniffa [Hanafite school] being responsible for terrorism in the world and Sheikh Ousseimine being a heathen, reverberate in Muslim circles at national and international levels. Earlier, faced with similar accusations by the president of the CSAI and feeling exasperated, Ansar al Sunna had said the gonout ¹³ at their Friday prayers in all their mosques. (Mahamat 2015)

These Muslim brotherhood conflicts are further exacerbated by the highly controversial position of the state. Indeed, the latter, in wishing to play its role of referee, was not neutral when it decided for security reasons (Mahamat 2016) to close some mosques and preaching sites of Salafists, mainly in the western regions of Chad. This act of the state is interpreted by Salafists as a bias in favour of the Tijania and its leaders who are close to the state (Mahamat 2016). The taking of sides by the state, and especially the victimization of Salafists, often increases the tension and seems to promote radicalization and violent extremism among the youth more inclined toward Salafist Islam. Many young people in the West tend to radicalize their position in this respect and maintain more and more jihadist discourses—such as that of Nourrene Kalmadja:¹⁴ For us here, the first battle we’ll have is between us and the practitioners of Tijania or the state—since we will never agree to join them, those who adhere to a bad Islamic faith. Despite our patience, we’re taunted. But we will soon react, and it won’t be our fault.

 A kind of fatwa, a prayer which is said only in cases of extreme tension against somebody by an imam during the community prayers on Friday.  Young man, about 30 years old, unemployed; interview conducted at Rig-Rig in June 2015.

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The aspiration for an ‘ummah Islamia’, an egalitarian society All of the west of Chad, which is the subject of this study, was part of the Kanem empire between the 11th and 16th centuries (Zeltner 1980). This empire had an economy based primarily on the sale of slaves in Egypt, Turkey, etc. (Lange 1978; Abdulrahman 2004). The empire practised a slavery which leaves as an inheritance today the existence of an unequal society of castes (Mahamad 1980; Conte 1983a, 1983b; Abdulrahman 2004). This society is stratified into a class of nobles, of ‘unclean’, and of blacksmiths. Some of these classes have more privileges than others. The disadvantaged classes, in search of a model of egalitarian society that the state could not establish, are more inclined to respond to the sirens of Salafist discourses that advocate the ‘ummah Islamia’, a just and egalitarian society for all and within the bosom of which, if there is inequality, it will be on the basis of one’s degree of faith, as Issakh M. puts it. For people who are disadvantaged by the current configuration of society, the discourse of radicalization, which is seen as a higher degree of religious belief, finds a very favourable echo in cases like that of Issakh M.—who, despite being repentant, has not diminished his anger against the stigmatizing model of the society in which he lives and who dreams of overthrowing it through jihad. Beyond the stratification of society, the anger of young people in general— and of those of the lower classes in particular—is directed against the poor governance, which not only has been unable to establish equality, but further consolidates the system, the corruption, and the racketeering that prevent young people from fulfilling themselves. In this regard, the above story of Hassan Abdraman is a testament to the harm that the state, through its corrupt officials, causes young people who try to set up in life—and, in return, the attitude that these young people adopt vis-à-vis the state. They think that the solution to their troubles is through jihad for the establishment of an Islamic society (the ummah) within which will reign equality and justice for all.

Conclusion Western Chad, which remained a haven of peace for a long time, was suddenly revealed in 2015, through the Boko Haram incursions into the Lac region, to be a zone of insecurity that we had never seen before. Faced with this insecurity, there is a generation of young people who aspire to happiness but who see more and more their dreams shattered by factors which are as much endogenous

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as exogenous. As a result, this generation, frustrated by an unjust and non-egalitarian social model, and worked on by an idyllic religious discourse, adopts a position of withdrawal from both traditional values and state institutions. This attitude sometimes throws them into the arms of hawkers of religious mirages. As such, it is not uncommon to find young people in western Chad radicalized by their speeches or actions. However, this tendency toward the radicalization of young people is a response to a rather diffuse and complex process and causes, so we must be wary of seeing in it only the hand of religion—especially since it rides only on the favourable wave of a deep socio-cultural malaise among the youth. A youth that, lacking prospects, revolts or hardens its position in a religious movement which it thinks will deliver salvation: does it deserve to be called radicalized, with all the pejorative and stigmatizing odour that goes with this term? Does the attitude adopted by these young people differ from that of activists who are sometimes considered in a positive light? Are not the attitude and actions of these young people simply the result of frustrations, of anger which is not channelled by leaders toward constructive actions?

References Abdulrahman, B. H. (2004/05). Socio-political and economic impact of the trans-Saharan slave trade on Kanem–Bornu empire 14th–16th centuries. Annals of Borno 21/22: 48 – 56. Conte, E. (1983a). Marriage Patterns, Political Change, and the Perpetuation of Social Inequal ity in South Kanem (Chad). Paris: ORSTOM. Conte, E. (1983b). Castes, classes et alliance au Sud-Kanem. Journal des africanistes 53(1/2): 147 – 169. Coudray, H. (1992). Chrétiens et musulmans au Tchad. Islamochristiana, no. 18, Roma, pp. 175 – 234. Fuchs, P. (1997). La Religion des Hadjeray. L’Harmattan: Paris. La Voix (2009). La Rédaction: Islamisme au Tchad, centres de dressage pour les enfants et les épouses. La Voix no. 012, 4 – 11 August. Ladiba, G. (2011). L’émergence des organisations islamiques au Tchad. Enjeux, acteurs et territoires. Paris: L’Harmattan. Lange, D. (1978). Progrès de l’islam et changement politique au Kanem du XIe au XIIIe siècle: un essai d’interprétation. The Journal of African History 19(4): 495 – 513. Magnant, J.-P. (sous dir.) (1983). L’islam au Tchad. Bordeaux: CEAN. Mahamad, M. D. (1980). Islam et pouvoir au Tchad. Bordeaux: CEAN. Mahamat, A. M. (2016). ‘Vers une tension politico-religieuse entre Tidjanites et Ansal al Sunna au Tchad’. Le Citoyen no. 136, p. 6. Tchéré, A. (2008). ‘Le Marabout djihadiste est capturé: le “Mahadi de Kouno” se révèle vulnérable face à l’Etat’. Le Progrès no. 2456, p. 1&3. Zeltner, J.-C. (1980). Pages d’histoire du Kanem: pays tchadien. Paris: L’Harmattan.

David Ehrhardt

9 Radicalization in northern Nigeria: Stories from Boko Haram Abstract: This paper explores the limits of the ‘conveyor-belt’ conception of radicalization, by analysing the life histories of (former) members of one of Africa’s most notorious ‘radical’ movements, northern Nigeria’s Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunna Lidda’Awati Wal-Jihad (a. k. a. Boko Haram). Through the stories of six people who in some way became part of the organization, the paper complicates the intuitive conveyor-belt narrative that violence is driven by ideological indoctrination. It shows that there are many different pathways that end up in violence, many of which are less intentional and more contingent than the conveyor-belt model suggests. Of course, religious conviction is often an important element of these pathways, as are family and friends, opportunistic incentives, and coercion. But the sequencing of organization membership, conviction, and violence can vary immensely, with serious implications for what it means to ‘radicalize’. Moreover, pathways into violence are often characterized by information gaps on the part of the ‘radicalizing’ individual, rapidly changing circumstances, and—perhaps most importantly—irreversible decisions with unforeseen consequences.

Introduction Radicalization, or the process through which people end up committing acts of violence, is often viewed as an intellectual process, an ideological journey by which individuals become increasingly convinced that violence is a justifiable course of action. The European Commission, for example, describes it as ‘people embracing radical ideology that could lead to the commitment of terrorist acts’ (EC 2016). Derived, perhaps, from stories of lone-wolf terrorists and religiously inspired suicide bombers, this intellectual representation of radicalization is combined with a persistent two-part narrative. First, this narrative holds that radicalization is driven by individual indoctrination to the point where a person becomes convinced that violence is the best way forward. Second, it suggests that violence, and often membership¹ of a violent organization, follows after

 To ‘join’ an organization, or to become a ‘member’, is understood to involve working towards furthering the aims of the organization, as well as being both a measure of self-identification with the organization and a measure of acceptance of membership by existing members. The https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-009

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this change in conviction. In other words, it suggests a one-directional causal chain, much like a ‘conveyor belt’ (Moskalenko & McCauley 2009), in which the decisions to join a violent group and commit violent acts are the direct consequence of people’s shifting ideological conviction. This paper explores the limits of this conception of radicalization by analysing life histories of members and former members of one of Africa’s most notorious radical movements, northern Nigeria’s Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunna Lidda’Awati WalJihad, or Boko Haram. Ever since its rise to prominence in the early 2000s, Boko Haram has been one of the world’s most poorly understood radical movements. Through the stories of six people who in some way became part of the organization, this paper complicates the intuitive conveyor-belt narrative of violence as driven by ideological indoctrination. It will show that there are many different pathways that end up in violence, many of which are less intentional and more contingent than the conveyor-belt model suggests. Of course, religious conviction is often an important part of these pathways, but the sequencing of organization membership, conviction, and violence can vary immensely. Moreover, pathways into violence are often characterized by information gaps on the part of the ‘radicalizing’ individual, rapidly changing circumstances, and—perhaps most importantly—irreversible decisions with unforeseen consequences. Many of these arguments are not new and in fact resonate with empirical studies of radical violence all around the world (e. g. Jonsson 2014; Neumann 2015; Mercy Corps 2016). Yet both theory and policy discourses have been slow to adjust to these empirical findings. In a recent theoretical contribution to the radicalization debate, Khalil (2017) makes an attempt to acknowledge the variation of pathways to radical violence by suggesting three ideal-typical trajectories into radical violence. His model allows for a flexibility that is a step in the right direction in terms of analysing the stories presented below. At the same time, the Boko Haram stories suggest that even more analytical flexibility might be required, in particular to account for and include the patterns of recruitment into (potentially violent) radical organizations. Theoretically, the paper therefore suggests an analytical approach to radicalization that focuses on identifying the conditions under which different sequences of recruitment, membership, conviction, and violence occur. Methodologically, this paper is an exploration of six life stories of individuals who have at some point been members of Boko Haram. These stories were

specific meanings of membership of Boko Haram have likely varied tremendously among individuals, as well as in space and time, and further research could be undertaken to illuminate these variations.

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selected from 59 life histories of former Boko Haram members collected by a team including the author,² with the purpose of covering some of the diversity of members’ experiences. They are illustrations of the varied nature of the paths that have led people to Boko Haram and were collected in a somewhat unconventional manner—through interviews with friends and family—due to the security risks of conducting primary research in north-eastern Nigeria at the time (late 2014). In many ways, this period was the peak of Boko Haram violent activity, and it led to the establishment of a so-called caliphate that was defeated only in late 2015. As such, it was a dangerous time for fieldwork in the region. In response to this challenge, the life histories were collected through interviews with family members and close friends of the Boko Haram members. This strategy has obvious weaknesses, but it also has several strengths that suggest the insights drawn from these stories are valuable. Problematically, the partial and limited viewpoint of an external observer is imperfect as a measure of people’s internal motivations. As such, we have to be cautious in the extent to which we trust the stories to represent the entirety of the Boko Haram members’ experiences. Memories are also notoriously unreliable, and many of the stories collected were about events that happened years before the interview took place. We therefore need to interpret the stories cautiously and accept that they are probably neither representative of nor comprehensive for the experiences of radicalization into Boko Haram. At the same time, the stories do tell us important, and often new, information. Many of the interviews were about basic aspects of the members’ lives, such as family background, education, and occupation, which are details friends and family are likely to know and remember correctly. Moreover, I do not use the stories to build a full description and explanation of Boko Haram’s radicalization; rather, this study is an early, and partial, descriptive step in a cumulative effort that it is hoped, over time, will build a more complete picture of the origins and dynamic development of this organization and its membership.

What is Boko Haram? Before turning to the stories, a brief sketch of the organization under analysis may be helpful. Referred to by its members as Jama’atu Ahlis-Sunna Lidda’Awati

 I would like to thank Professor M. S. Umar, Professor Raufu Mustapha, our research team in Borno State, and other members of the Nigeria Research Network for their great contributions to this project.

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Wal-Jihad (JAS) but more commonly known to the public as Boko Haram, this insurgent movement was formed in the early 2000s around reformist Islamic teachings and deep, local political grievances. Since then, it has gone through at least four stages of organizational transformation:³ – a youth-based offshoot of a mainstream Salafi⁴ movement, which over time became an increasingly politicized religious sect (1998 – 2009); – an underground terrorist organization (2009 – 2013); – a full-scale insurgency aiming to take control of the north-eastern part of Nigeria (2013 – 2015); – an underground organization aimed at committing acts of terrorist violence (2015–today). At the time of writing, in the fall of 2017, Boko Haram remains a serious security threat in north-eastern Nigeria. Its members still coordinate violent attacks with some regularity, and their tactics have evolved to include suicide bombing, sometimes employing women and children. Its territorial control is limited, although people say that some rural parts of the north-east are still not secure enough for the internally displaced people to return. Official estimates of the number of victims of the insurgency have risen to 100,000 (Tukur 2017), but the real figures are likely higher. On top of the violence, the region is now under threat of serious food shortages resulting in part from the incessant political insecurity; the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that around 5 million people in the region are in need of urgent food assistance (UNOCHA 2017). What motivates people to join Boko Haram and contribute to such violence and destruction? This question is particularly puzzling given the current negative reputation of the movement across northern Nigeria and the alleged ‘insanity’ of Boko Haram’s leadership (Iroegbu 2016). As background to the stories presented below, this section aims to describe what Boko Haram may have had to offer its prospective members. In other words, it aims to identify some of the positive reasons why, at different points in the movement’s history, individuals may have

 There are several good overviews and analyses that describe in some detail the movement’s historical trajectory (e. g. Adesoji 2010; Muhammed 2010; Ohuoha 2010; Loimeier 2012; Agbigoa 2013; Higazi & Brisset-Foucault 2013; Mustapha 2014; Perouse de Montclos 2014; Amnesty International 2015; Comolli 2015; Smith 2015; Varin 2016).  Salafism, following Ostien (forthcoming), is understood here as an orthodox stream in Islamic thinking that aims to return to the Islam as it was practised when the Prophet was alive. Salafis base their religious beliefs on the Quran and the sunnah from the hadith and reject all subsequent ‘innovation’ (bida).

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chosen to join them. More specifically, I will focus on three dimensions in which Boko Haram provided opportunities: first, faith and reformist ideologies; second, opportunities; and third, violence. Throughout this analysis, it is important to keep in mind that the movement transformed fundamentally over time. As a result, what Boko Haram had to offer its prospective members also transformed, and the decision to join in the early 2000s was quite different from the decision to join in later years.

Faith and reform Boko Haram, to many of its members as well as to the public, is first and foremost a religious organization. Most people place the starting point of the movement in the 1990s or early 2000s, and Mohamed Yusuf is generally considered the first leader (Loimeier 2012; Comolli 2015). Yusuf was educated in the tradition of Izala, a northern-Nigerian Salafi movement that came up in the 1970s as a force for Islamic reform against the mystical Sufi brotherhoods that had long dominated the regional religious landscape (Loimeier 1997; Kane 2003). Yusuf was a young and charismatic preacher who managed to quickly gather a substantial following among the youthful population of Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, and the surrounding areas. Mixing Izala beliefs with Saudi Wahhabism and some of his own theological inventions, Yusuf presented his followers with a radical and anti-establishment doctrine that turned out to have a wide appeal. He preached in the centre of Maiduguri, in a compound named the Markaz; and while there were occasional tensions with the state authorities, under Yusuf’s leadership (ca. 2000 – 2009) Boko Haram was long considered a more or less normal, albeit ideologically extreme, Islamic sect. Politics entered into Boko Haram’s trajectory with the 2003 gubernatorial elections. Courted by one of the candidates for the governorship, Ali Modu Sheriff, Yusuf provided electoral support in exchange for a promise of government positions and a serious commitment to the implementation of shariah law. In 2000, Borno State had pledged to re-introduce the shariah criminal code as state law, but since then little substantive progress had been made on the implementation. Yusuf saw the elections as a way to get involved in shariah implementation—a position of considerable power due to the popularity of shariah among Borno’s Muslim-majority population. Sheriff won the elections, with thanks to Yusuf’s support, but failed to deliver on his promise. The resulting falling-out between the two leaders marked the starting point of Boko Haram’s radically anti-government ideology. In Islamic as well as political terms, Boko Haram thus became an anti-establishment movement—a fundamentalist sect that called for ever-stricter adherence to

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the tenets of Salafi Islam, as well as a radical anti-government movement that rejected the legitimacy of the Nigerian (multi-religious) federation. In a region and period in which religion was highly salient and disillusion with formal politics ran deep, this was a powerful combination capable of drawing in large numbers of followers.

Opportunities Beyond its Islamic and political appeal, Boko Haram is also a social group that has offered its members opportunities for important network connections and economic opportunities for personal advancement. First, for supporters from younger generations, the sect created opportunities to rebel against their parents and choose a life outside the often constraining parameters of conservative northern-Nigerian family expectations. Second, for some women, Boko Haram opened up opportunities of religious learning and political activism that are inaccessible in many of the more conservative Islamic communities in the region (ICG 2016). For others, of course, Boko Haram was a rather infamous source of violence and terror—though most of these dynamics occurred only after the crisis of 2009 and the death of Mohamed Yusuf. Finally, Boko Haram was also a source of economic opportunities, at first largely through legitimate trade but later, as the violence increased, also through widespread criminality. Boko Haram and its members have had a complex relationship with education, one of the major drivers of social mobility and, more broadly, economic opportunities and development. The movement’s nickname, Boko Haram, is derived from the Hausa phrase for ‘Western education is immoral,’ underlining one of Yusuf’s more controversial religious teachings against the proliferation of secular education. This, in combination with the recurrent attacks on schools and educational facilities in the later years of the movement, has given Boko Haram an image of being anti-education and, more generally, anti-modern. Yet the movement’s real orientation has been more nuanced. For while Western education may be anathema, Islamic education was actively promoted both in traditional tsangaya Quranic schools and ‘modern’ Islamiyya ones; and in many cases, women’s access to schooling was promoted, alongside measures for their financial empowerment (ICG 2016). Even in the field of education, therefore, Boko Haram could provide opportunities for advancement to some—even if those opportunities were heavily constrained by the movement’s idiosyncratic religious doctrine.

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Violence As time progressed, Boko Haram became more than a religious–political organization with opportunities for personal advancement; it became a full-fledged insurgent military operation, specializing in large-scale collective violence against state security forces, traditional rulers, non-Salafi Islamic leaders, Muslims who criticized the movement, and non-Muslims. Most analysts identify the ‘crisis of 2009’ as the turning point of Boko Haram’s move toward violence. What began as a heated exchange between police and Boko Haram members, over a controversial law imposing motorcycle helmets, escalated into a full-blown fire-fight that ended with the extrajudicial execution of many Boko Haram members, including the leader Mohamed Yusuf. After this crisis, the movement was decimated; but the new leader, Abubakar Shekau, managed to transform it into an effective underground terrorist organization. While many suffered from this transformation toward violence, both within and outside the organization, it also created its own perverse incentives for recruitment. First, many recruits were coerced into membership. Second, the increasing hostilities between Boko Haram and the state security forces increased the risk of remaining ‘unaffiliated’ for those caught in the crossfire. For some of them, joining Boko Haram may have felt like the ‘safer’ option than relying on patchy protection offered by the Nigerian security forces. Finally, Boko Haram’s insurgent turn also provided clear incentives for ‘specialists in violence’, such as criminals or military and ex-military fighters from neighbouring countries, to join and collect wages and loot (Tilly 2003). These sketches of the dimensions of faith and reform, opportunities, and violence can go some way in making understandable the kinds of positive appeal Boko Haram may have had for its prospective members. They also highlight how Boko Haram has been a different organization to different people and changed dramatically over time. The stories of radicalization, detailed in the next section, will expand on these sketches and begin to connect them to the lived experiences of individuals who actually made the choice to join.

Stories of radicalization Over the years, many explanations have been proposed for the Boko Haram phenomenon, from structural variables such as the poverty and relative deprivation of the region, the dominance of traditional Quranic (tsangaya) schools, or the high number of unemployed young men, to more historical explanations such as the influence of international Islamic terrorism, the legacies of the pre-colonial Sokoto jihad, or the nature of reformist, fundamentalist Islam in the region.

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The case studies presented below will showcase some of these variables in their context. They are real, anonymized stories from Boko Haram members. Some of the members may still be alive and part of the organization; others have managed to leave the group, or they are no longer alive. Around each story, I highlight certain salient aspects and connect them to the wider context of northern Nigeria, as well as the more general patterns we found in our analysis of the 59 life histories (Umar & Ehrhardt 2014). The stories are clustered into four sets, organized around some of the more common reasons for joining Boko Haram: faith, family and friends, coercion, and opportunism. Overall, the picture these stories paint is a complex and often ambiguous one, and the questions they raise do not allow for straightforward answers or silver-bullet solutions. Rather, they serve to humanize the people analysed here and suggest that the choices and decisions that made them ‘violent radicals’ may not have looked that way when they made them.

Faith Whatever the full scope of Boko Haram’s activities and the motives of its leaders, it is at least in part a religious organization, under the general banner of Islam. It stands to reason, therefore, that many of its members joined for religious reasons—that is, because the faith propagated by Boko Haram leaders matched their own ideas about true Islam and the good life. Intuitively, this idea—that people join religious organizations for religious reasons—is often extended to motives for violence: what could better motivate the violence perpetrated by members of religious organizations than religion itself? While this idealist line of reasoning may hold a grain of truth, the stories told below will also show its limits. In particular, the stories will suggest the importance of analysing religious motives as embedded in broader political ones and in meaningful social connections. Abdul’s story is in some ways a classic narrative of finding religion: a risktaking, seemingly careless young man finds inspiration in Islam to change his life. Such stories can be found all over the world, yet Abdul’s also has elements that have to be understood within their specific, northern-Nigerian context. The organization that Abdul joined at first, Izala, is an Islamic movement with religiously reformist, anti-Sufi roots and a modern, Salafi orientation (Loimeier 1997; Kane 2003; Ostien 2018). When Abdul joined Boko Haram, Mohamed Yusuf’s charismatic qualities likely were important and set this movement apart from the others; but it is also good to realize that movements such as Boko Haram have been a constant feature of northern-Nigerian society in the past century

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(Last 2014). Religion, to many young Nigerians, is not merely a set of beliefs or ritual practices but also an ideology of great attraction, given that most secular ideologies (such as Marxism, liberalism, or nationalism) have done little to improve people’s lives. In this context, Abdul’s choice was perhaps not only a choice to ‘seek knowledge’ for reforming his personal life but also an expression of politically progressive, reformist ambition. Case study 1: Abdul, male, early thirties⁵ Abdul became a member of Boko Haram in the days that Mohamed Yusuf started preaching, sometime in 2007. He was enrolled in primary school as well as an Islamiyya school, and after his secondary school he went on to obtain a National Certificate of Education (NCE). Abdul started business or working in the market immediately after his secondary school days, to help his father take care of the house and his siblings. Before he joined Boko Haram he was a very good footballer and a dangerous drug addict and a criminal at the same time. It was believed that Abdul had problems with his employer because of the bad habits that he adopted and was fired for this reason. From the small savings he had, he established his own business as a trader; however, it kept failing due to his bad habits. His drug habit also made him interact with criminals; people suspect he was engaged in criminal activities himself. The business was largely run by his junior brothers. Before joining Boko Haram, Abdul was a member of Izala. From the time that Abdul joined the Izala sect, he started abandoning some of his bad habits and concentrating on religion and a desire to know more about Islam. He was seen more frequently in the mosque and started looking after his business, which would have died if not for his younger brother and some of the employees who were dedicated to the business while he was a drug addict. It was during the time that he was seeking knowledge in Izala that Boko Haram members came to his town and started preaching. Out of curiosity, he was always there when they came around, which made them notice him and make him a contact person. That was how he became a member. Owing to his dedication as one of the pioneer members, Abdul later became part of the council of leaders in his area.

There is a certain irony in Abdul’s choice to reform his life by joining an organization that would become as notorious as Boko Haram. But at the time in 2007, this irony was impossible to foresee, as Boko Haram was more of a radical religious sect than a violent insurgent movement. Moreover, beyond Abdul’s religious and reformist reasons for attending sermons and joining Boko Haram, his story also highlights another dimension of the process of joining: interactions with existing members—for as Abdul became a common presence at local reli-

 The case studies are lightly rewritten versions of the stories that were collected by the research team in Borno State. Most of the words are verbatim citations from the interview transcripts, reorganized and revised only to enhance their legibility.

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gious gatherings, existing members took notice and led him into the movement by giving him a function. The second case, which tells the story of Aisha, also underlines the importance of such social connections in the process of joining, even if religious motivations are present. Aisha’s connections are family-based: her sister, with whom she has a strong relationship, convinced her to attend Boko Haram sermons. At this point, it seems religious motivations played a role in convincing Aisha to keep returning to Boko Haram’s base, the Markaz compound; and, in the end, Aisha’s decision to also marry a Boko Haram member, against the will of her parents, sealed the deal. Case study 2: Aisha, female, early twenties Aisha was widely considered a ‘decent girl’, living with her parents and waiting for admission into the university after she had finished secondary school. Aisha’s father liked her a lot because she was always concerned about his welfare. Whenever he worked late, she waited for him to serve him food. Aisha was also loved by all her siblings, and she liked them in return. Her family is considered to be average in socio-economic terms, with her father working in a state ministry and her mother a primary school teacher. Aisha’s elder sister married a Boko Haram member without the family knowing the new husband was a member. Aisha liked her sister very much, so she would go to her sister’s house to see her at any opportunity she got. After the husband had converted her sister, the sister in turn convinced Aisha to start going to Boko Haram lectures. With support from her sister and her constant visits to Markaz, the Boko Haram compound, Aisha joined in 2008. There she met her husband, whom she married without her parents’ consent and, in fact, in the face of their serious opposition. Due to this gross disobedience, her father was really angry and hurt. Aisha became so deeply involved in Boko Haram that her husband forced her to stay in the Boko Haram compound, to help in volunteering work for the leader. After marrying a Boko Haram member, Aisha started despising her parents. She no longer visited her family; and even if she did, you would hardly recognize her because she always wore a black veil to cover her face, in the Boko Haram style. After joining, Aisha also became very aggressive and unfriendly toward everyone outside the movement, including her parents.

What role does religion play in the radicalization of members of a religious radical movement such as Boko Haram? The stories of Abdul and Aisha give important clues about this puzzle, but they also raise further questions. Both stories suggest that religious motives matter, as Mercy Corps (2016) has also found; but these motives are also connected to political ambitions and often embedded in social connections. For Abdul, the social connections arose from his attendance at sermons and took a formal, organizational form as they made him a contact person; for Aisha, the connections comprised her sister and, subsequently, her husband—even as they destroyed her relationship with the rest of her family

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outside the movement. Moreover, Aisha’s engagement in volunteering suggests that women may have specific opportunities in Boko Haram which perhaps exceed those outside the movement. This point will come up again in later stories, particularly for Khadiya’s case. For now, suffice to say that religion, while important to the radicalization of some, rarely operates in the absence of wider political or social factors.

Family and friends In all the stories we have collected about Boko Haram members and former members, the single most common factor is the role of family and friends in leading new members into the movement. Virtually all the stories suggest that strong social ties are crucial in understanding processes of radicalization—with the exception, perhaps, of those who have been forced into the movement. For most others, radicalization appears to be at least as much a social process as it is an ideological or opportunistic one. Family and friends serve as entry points, as trust builders, as ways of cementing weak or sporadic ties, and as communicators of the movement’s ideological messages. In the case of Khadiya, below, she was forced to join Boko Haram under pressure from her husband, since ‘it was a known rule that all Boko Haram members must come with their wives during preaching’. But as time went by, Khadiya appears to have accepted and internalized the movement’s rules and beliefs, as she rose in the movement’s ranks and acquired leadership positions—even as these activities separated her from her family. Case 3: Khadiya, female, early thirties Khadiya is a full-time housewife, married with five children, and does not go to the mosque like the men except for special occasions. She does not have an occupation. She is the firstborn among the girls and a very quiet person. In the kind of home she comes from, girls are usually not allowed to go anywhere and so do not know anywhere in town until they are married off. Her family is based here in town and her father is a small-time businessman in the market. Her father takes only the male children to conventional primary school and the local Quranic tsangaya school, while the female children are not taken to any school but tsangaya. It is after the tsangaya that they are married off very young; only the ones that do not get married, like Khadiya, are taken to Higher Islam School, a conventional secondary school that has a special class for tsangaya graduates. Khadiya met her husband in the secondary school. The relationship between Khadiya and her parents was very good until she joined Boko Haram, after which she began to have serious problems with them.

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Khadiya joined Boko Haram as a result of her marriage, under pressure from her husband. It was a known rule that all Boko Haram members must come with their wives during preaching, and when a wife refuses she is forced to attend or even join. Owing to her marriage, Khadiya’s husband forcefully introduced her into the sect. She was ordered to go to all the preaching as their house was near the Markaz compound where her husband spent most of his time. Before the 2009 crisis, Khadiya was in charge of coordinating women in one area—because whenever the women go for preaching, they usually converge in her house before they are escorted by the military wing (hisbah) of the sect. After the 2009 crisis, she was put in charge of caring for the wives of Boko Haram members who had been killed in action. This she used to do in secret. She also organized weddings between widows and members that wanted to marry; moreover, she eventually became a very strong advocate for the sect among women, sometimes even to the point where she was allowed to preach.

Besides the importance of Khadiya’s husband in her journey into radicalism, her story also highlights other aspects of religious radicalization in northern Nigeria. One is the connection between generation and radicalism: in all the stories we have collected, those who join can be considered ‘young’ people. Radicalization into Boko Haram, it would seem, is a young person’s game. Second, Khadiya’s story brings up the opportunities Boko Haram offered to some women: social and religious engagement, activism, and even preaching. These gendered dynamics are important to underline, particularly given Boko Haram’s misogynistic actions and rhetoric that have received widespread media attention (ICG 2016). Finally, the story highlights the impact of religious radicalism on family relations. In many cases, particularly as the movement became increasingly violent, the choice to join Boko Haram came at the expense of good relations with parents and other non-member family members. In some cases, this may have been part of the reasons for joining; but in many others, in contrast, it appears that it was an unintended, and perhaps unforeseen, consequence of a choice made for different reasons. This pattern is important because it flies in the face of a common preconception that those who join are people with poor family links—in fact, it suggests that the causal arrow can also point from radicalism to the destruction of family ties. Case 4: Shehu, male, mid-thirties Shehu attended a local Quranic tsangaya school. His school was near his house, so he was not relocated to another town as is the traditional practice in Quranic education in northern Nigeria. His family is average in socio-economic terms, because their father already has an existing family business of buying, processing, and selling of hides and skins. Shehu started working as an apprentice in his father’s business. After graduating from his father’s tutelage, he started working for his father as a manager. He stopped working after some time and went on to start learning how to sew as a tailor. He came to be known as a very good

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tailor before he joined the sect. All the male children of Shehu’s family are involved in the family business. Apart from the family business, his father was also a tsangaya ulama, or Quranic teacher, with his own tsangaya school in the ward and a lot of students. Shehu is married and has four children. He eventually left his father’s business completely and went on to become a very good tailor with a lot of customers. It was his brother who influenced him to join the sect, before the 2009 crisis. When his brother joined, he was continuously preaching to him. He also kept inviting Shehu to the Markaz, the local base of Boko Haram before the 2009 crisis, for some time before he finally joined. But his brother’s persuading was only one reason for Shehu to join: in addition, he was also under threat from the security agents as they were looking for Shehu’s brother. In a few instances, he was arrested for simply asking questions about his brother, even though the security services were not aware that Shehu was also a member. Shehu was made an official tailor of the sect and was highly respected among the members. Apart from the tailoring work, he is also involved in the terrorist activities of the sect.

Shehu’s family relations were also at the heart of his radicalization: his brother, like Aisha’s sister, was one of the driving forces behind his joining of Boko Haram; yet, unlike both Aisha and Khadiya, it is unclear whether his joining caused a rift between him and his other family members. But two other things also stand out about Shehu’s story: first, the economic opportunities Boko Haram offers (in the shape of creating demand for tailoring services); and, second, the introduction of security forces and the threat of arrests and violence into his narrative of radicalization. For Shehu, it appears that the choice to join Boko Haram did not come at the expense of his tailoring business and may even have bolstered it. Moreover, there seems to have been a threat from the security forces, keen on finding and arresting his brother. As the literature on rebel movements suggests, such threats can in themselves be a reason for participating in radical and violent organizations if the threat from security forces seems at least as great as the threat from being part of a violent movement (Kalyvas & Kocher 2007). This connection between the threat of violence and radicalism is the theme of the next section.

Coercion There is something intuitively compelling about the idea that radicalization can be coerced, in part because it absolves the radical perpetrators of some of the blame for their actions and it frees analysts from the obligation of trying to find positive reasons why people could radicalize. Yet, at the same time, the idea is problematic because, at heart, coercion and radicalism appear to be in contradiction: can someone be coerced to change their ideas? People can be

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forced to act in ways that run against their conscience—for example, by committing acts of violence; but can they be forced to internalize radicalism—that is, to believe that violent acts are permissible in order to achieve their goals? While I have neither the ambition nor the evidence to tackle this complex question comprehensively, Maryam’s story will help us to begin outlining a few parts of the puzzle. Case 5: Maryam, female, mid-twenties Maryam went to Islamiyya school and was a full-time housewife without occupation. Her father died when she was very young, so she was raised by her grandmother and her mother, who eventually married her off. This was because they were scared that a lot of young guys were always coming to see her. She was widely considered an attractive, decent girl until she was kidnapped by Boko Haram members on her way to the market. She was going to Monday market when she entered a taxi and was taken away at gun point in the keke napep (tricycle taxi). Eye witnesses say she screamed for help, but no one could help because her abductors were holding AK47 rifles. After about a year she came back with a Boko Haram husband to preach to her grandmother to follow Boko Haram teachings, but her grandmother refused. We hear that she now just follows her husband around, but most of time she is kept in captivity.

Particularly in the later years of the Boko Haram insurgency and after the kidnapping of the 276 girls from Chibok, stories of forced recruitment accompanied by atrocious violence were common. In a recent report, however, Mercy Corps (2016) suggests that most recruitment fell somewhere in between completely voluntary and entirely forced. This is an important analytical starting point for understanding the influence of coercion on recruitment not as a binary variable, but as a scale from fully free to fully coerced. Maryam’s story, on this scale, is likely closer to the coercive end than most; but it is unclear how much agency Maryam retained in the months after she was abducted. The fact that she returned to convert her grandmother suggests that she internalized Boko Haram ideology, but we know little about the process by which this internalization occurred. What we do know is that violence and coercion were part and parcel of many people’s decisions to join Boko Haram (or to resist them) and that such coercion could come in many different shapes. Shehu’s story, above, illustrated the role security agents could play in pushing people toward Boko Haram; equally, though, other people were likely frightened away from Boko Haram membership by the violent interventions of the Nigerian state or the vigilante youth in the Civilian Joint Task Force. As Maryam experienced, Boko Haram itself also engaged in abductions and coercion in order to swell its ranks, including the kidnapping of women and children. And coercion could sometimes take a financial form—

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for example, through loan sharks who enticed young, struggling businessmen with easy loans only to demand the beneficiary join Boko Haram when the loans could not be repaid on time (Mercy Corps 2016).

Opportunism Beyond these heavy-handed forms of forced recruitment, Boko Haram also offered more positive, opportunistic motives for joining—for example, by providing access to wealth, weapons, or influence, or with the promise of acquiring education, status, or respect, or of being feared. Boko Haram was thus a source not only of religious inspiration or social connections, but also of opportunity—opportunities to make money and advance in economic terms, but also to get access to new networks, and an opportunity for adventure. What Verkaaik (2004) has argued for Pakistan, many have told us for northern Nigeria: joining radical protest movements and even engaging in violence can sometimes, particularly prior to the act, seem fun and adventurous. With hindsight, such an argument seems bizarre given the extreme violence and destruction that resulted from the Boko Haram insurgency. But the point is that choices toward radicalization are not made with the benefit of hindsight, and they are often made with very poor and biased information and high levels of uncertainty. Choices that seem a good idea at the time may turn out to have terrible, unforeseeable consequences; but they should be evaluated and understood in the context in which they were taken, not in relation to the consequences they produced. Musa’s story may be a good example to illustrate this point. Case 6: Musa, male, mid-twenties Musa received no formal education, and his family is poor compared with the rest of the local population. He was known to engage only in odd jobs to make ends meet. He refused to join in the farming tradition of his family. Musa’s father is a peasant farmer, who is well known here in town. His father also has more than one wife, and they are living in the same house. His mother is from one of the villages around, where she was a daughter of a tsangaya teacher (ulama). According to the story, his father did not take his children to any school because he could not afford it. But he has been a very good farmer. The other siblings of Musa are also involved in farming and some other kinds of trade. Musa has recently married. Musa was a very popular person among his peers in the neighbourhood. As he was not enrolled in any kind of school, he practically grew up on the streets, which made him well known. As a young person in the area, there were a lot of his age mates who were also unemployed and also refused to learn a trade. As such they are mostly seen around the neighbourhood sitting around, doing nothing from morning until night. When the sect Boko

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Haram came and established a new centre very close to the area where they spent their time, a lot of the youths started going to the centre, out of curiosity. Also, everything the sect did then was anti-government, so a lot of these youths joined the sect for that reason. Musa joined Boko Haram as a member after the 2009 crisis, when the members had come back from the forced exile. When they came out from hiding and came back to town, they started convincing youths like Musa to join. He was made an informer in the beginning, and later he also started doing other activities, including killing. Many people saw him with a gun. Why did Musa join? As a result of influence from friends—because some of these friends came back from their exile and stayed in town. He saw that the friends were gaining respect in the area; so when they invited him, it did not take long for him to join. Among these friends were a lot of the members of their ‘gang’, who used to play together before Boko Haram. It is these same friends that came back and helped in recruiting others like Musa. One of the things that convinced him was the way his Boko Haram friends were spending money. This was especially attractive since he knew they were very poor before they joined.

With every violent incident that occurs in northern Nigeria, pundits are quick to highlight how the large population of unemployed young men is likely one of the factors that can help to explain it (Onuoha 2014). Different analysts apply slightly different mechanisms to explain this hypothetical relationship, but it is often a variation on the idea that unemployed young men are cheap to recruit, have little else to do, and have little to lose (and hence few incentives to avoid taking risks). In some ways, Musa could be seen as an example of this idea, even though I should note that the other five stories are not, and neither are the majority of the stories I have not presented here. He was unemployed and is believed to have joined because he saw his friends benefit from membership with respect and money; and after joining, he was not only seen as an informer but also observed with a gun. It may therefore be the case that Musa chose violence and radicalized because he considered it was the best option he had. Yet this requires us to make some pretty strong assumptions about Musa’s information and motives, as well as the context within which he took his decisions. First, it suggests that Musa knew exactly what he was getting into when he made the initial choice to join his friends as an informer. Maybe he did, and maybe he did not—but what he certainly could not have known is how the movement would escalate and turn increasingly violent over the years after his joining. Second, therefore, timing and context matter: in the time after the 2009 crisis when ‘members had come back from forced exile’, likely around 2011, Boko Haram had not yet become the full-blown insurgency notorious for kidnapping, sexual violence, and large-scale killings. It was certainly a violent organization, partly underground but primarily aiming to attack the Ni-

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gerian government (as well as local enemies such as traditional leaders and Islamic preachers who spoke out against Boko Haram) in revenge for the 2009 killings. Public support for the organization was likely already waning, but many could still empathize with their anti-government stance—even if they perhaps did not support the methods. Musa chose to join this organization, not the organization that it would become years later. Moreover, he initially joined as an informer; we do not know how the gradual move toward violent action transpired, and how freely he chose this path, or how free he was to leave the organization if he had wished to. Finally, we do not know how informed Musa was about the activities of Boko Haram at the time. Information about Boko Haram, since 2009, has been notoriously poor, and even many locals have to rely on gossip. Musa may have known what he was getting into, but he may also have trusted the wrong rumours.

Reflection How do people end up fighting for organizations like Boko Haram? A persistent intuition suggests that it requires ‘radicalization’—that is, a process of ideological conversion toward accepting the legitimacy of violence as a tool of politics. But what does it mean to ‘radicalize’ in the context of northern Nigeria? Some of the stories in this chapter could resonate with conveyor-belt-like conceptions of radicalization, where indoctrination leads individuals into gradually more extremist positions, ending up with an acceptance of violence. Particularly Abdul and Aisha, who joined the organization early and for whom faith was said to be an important motivation, may have gone through a process of ‘learning’ about the legitimacy and violence before they engaged in it. Of course, we would need more information to assess the validity of this interpretation; but what we do know is that in the other stories, ‘radicalization’ appears to have taken quite a different trajectory. Khadiya, Shehu, and Musa likely joined Boko Haram for reasons other than deep ideological conviction (friends, family, money), meaning that group membership in these cases preceded—and perhaps precipitated—ideological membership and likely also their belief in the justification of violence (if they ever reached that point). For Maryam, then, it appears likely that she was forced to join the organization before she became convinced of its ideological principles; more likely than not, she was also forced to engage in violent acts prior to believing that this was the right thing to do. Here, group membership and perhaps even violent actions may have preceded any ‘radicalized’ beliefs that these actions were desirable or justified.

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Together, the limited evidence presented in these stories suggests that radicalization may involve various trajectories, in which the sequencing of group membership, ideological conviction, and violent action can take all kinds of shapes. Moreover, the stories suggest that radicalization can be a slow, gradual process in which causal connections are varied and complex. They are deeply contingent on changing circumstances and characterized by uncertainty, poor information, and strong irreversibilities. Musa, for example, may have been poorly informed about the consequences of Boko Haram membership, particularly as the movement transformed and became increasingly violent. Once he had joined, however, there was no turning back: leaving Boko Haram was always an incredibly dangerous choice, given that neither the group nor the Nigerian military had a record of welcoming or protecting defectors. His choice, however imperfectly informed, had thus become irreversible. These complications inherent in decisions along trajectories into, and out of, violent organizations also suggest one final caution for the analysis of radicalization processes: the simple idea that choices to join, avoid, or resist violent organizations should be evaluated in the specific context within which they were taken. Over the nearly three decades that Boko Haram has existed, it has transformed fundamentally. Those who joined in the early years likely did so for very different reasons from those who joined at the peak of the insurgency, or those who may still join today. In fact, the entire meaning and requirements of ‘joining’ Boko Haram have likely changed over this period. Yet given the near-irreversibility of membership, particularly as the group turned increasingly violent, today the early members may engage in the same violent actions as the late-joiners. Radicalization into violent groups such as Boko Haram thus involves not only diverse motivations at a single point in time, but also variation over time as well as complex interactions between the motivations and actions of those who are inside the group. This chapter has interpreted six stories of radicalization into Boko Haram and highlighted the importance of faith, family and friends, coercion, and opportunism in explaining them. But given the long life of the movement, its transformations, the enormous contextual shifts within which the movement has had to operate, and the diversity of its membership, this is likely only the tip of the iceberg. Collecting fresh empirical information is the most important strategy to further develop our understanding of the movement. From its inception in the early 2000s, Boko Haram has been shrouded in mystery, and even today the amount of trustworthy empirical material on the organization’s history remains limited. As a consequence, perhaps, scholars have found it difficult to identify causal mechanisms behind the movement’s rise and nearly impossible to evaluate, and select from, the range of structural and historical theories that have been

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suggested to explain it. New empirical material is therefore sorely needed to bring progress to the debate about Boko Haram’s origins, its impacts, and ways of preventing its return.

References Adesoji, Abimbola (2010). The Boko Haram uprising and Islamic revivalism in Nigeria/Die Boko-Haram-Unruhen Und Die Wiederbelebung Des Islam in Nigeria. Africa Spectrum, 95 – 108. Agbiboa, Daniel Egiegba (2013). Why Boko Haram exists: The relative deprivation perspective. African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review 3(1): 144 – 157. Amnesty International (2015). ‘Our Job Is to Shoot, Slaughter and Kill’: Boko Haram’s Reign of Terror in North-East Nigeria. London : Amnesty International. Comolli, Virginia (2015). Boko Haram: Nigeria’s Islamist Insurgency. Oxford University Press. European Commission (EC) (2016). ‘Radicalisation.’ Text. Migration and Home Affairs – European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/home-affairs/what-we-do/policies/crisis-and-terrorism/radicalisation_en. [Accessed 3 April 2018]. Higazi, Adam & Brisset-Foucault, Florence (2013). Les origines et la transformation de l’insurrection de Boko Haram dans le nord du Nigeria. Politique Africaine 2: 137 – 64. ICG (International Crisis Group) (2016). Nigeria: Women and the Boko Haram insurgency. Report 242, 5 December 2016. Iroegbu, Senator (2016). ‘Army: Insane “Shekau” Must Release Chibok Girls Unconditionally’. THISDAYLIVE (blog). 25 September 2016. https://www.thisdaylive.com/index.php/2016/09/25/army-insane-shekau-must-release-chibok-girls-unconditionally/. Jonsson, Michael (2014). Farewell to Arms: Motivational Change & Divergence Inside Farc-Ep 2002 – 2010. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitet. Kalyvas, Stathis N. & Kocher, Matthew Adam (2007). How ‘free’ is free riding in civil wars? Violence, insurgency, and the collective action problem. World Politics 59(2): 177 – 216. Kane, Ousmane (2003). Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria: A Study of the Society for the Removal of Innovation and Reinstatement of Tradition. Boston, MA: Brill. Khalil, James (2017). The Three Pathways (3P) Model of violent extremism: A framework to guide policymakers to the right questions about their preventive countermeasures. The RUSI Journal 162(4): 40 – 48. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071847.2017.1365463. Last, Murray (2014). From dissent to dissidence: The genesis & development of reformist Islamic groups in northern Nigeria. In Abdul Raufu Mustapha (ed.) Sects & Social Disorder: Muslim Identities & Conflict in Northern Nigeria (pp. 18 – 53). Woodbridge: James Currey. Loimeier, Roman (1997). Islamic Reform and Political Change in Northern Nigeria. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Loimeier, Roman (2012). Boko Haram: The development of a militant religious movement in Nigeria. Africa Spectrum, 137 – 55.

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Mercy Corps (2016). ‘Motivations and Empty Promises’: Voices of Former Boko Haram Combatants and Nigerian Youth. Mercy Corps. Moskalenko, Sophia & McCauley, Clark (2009). Measuring political mobilization: The distinction between activism and radicalism. Terrorism and Political Violence 21(2): 239 – 260. Muhammed, Abdulkareem (2010). The Paradox of Boko Haram. Kano. Mustapha, Abdul Raufu (ed.) (2014). Sects & Social Disorder: Muslim Identities & Conflict in Northern Nigeria. Woodbridge: James Currey. Neumann, Peter R. (2015). Victims, perpetrators, assets: The narratives of Islamic State defectors. ICSR. Onuoha, Freedom C. (2010). The Islamist challenge: Nigeria’s Boko Haram crisis explained. African Security Review 19(2): 54 – 67. Onuoha, Freedom C. (2014). Why Do Youth Join Boko Haram? US Institute of Peace. Ostien, Philip (2018). The Muslim majority in northern Nigeria: Sects and trends. In: A. R. Mustapha and D. Ehrhardt, eds Creed and grievance: interfaith relations in northern Nigeria, James Currey. Pérouse de Montclos, Marc-Antoine (ed.) (2014). Boko Haram: Islamism, Politics, Security and the State in Nigeria. Leiden: African Studies Centre. Smith, Mike (2015). Boko Haram: Inside Nigeria’s Unholy War. IB Tauris. Tilly, Charles (2003). The Politics of Collective Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tukur, Sani (2017). ‘SHOCKING REVELATION: 100,000 Killed, Two Million Displaced by Boko Haram Insurgency, Borno Governor Says—Premium Times Nigeria’. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/223399-shocking-revelation-100000-killed-two-million-displaced-boko-haram-insurgency-borno-governor-says.html. Umar, Mohammed Sani & Ehrhardt, David (2014). Life Histories of Boko Haram Members. Working Paper for the NSRP Workshop on Radicalisation and Counter-Radicalisation in Abuja, September 2014. UNOCHA, Nigeria | OCHA (2017). http://www.unocha.org/nigeria [Accessed 13 August 2017]. Varin, Caroline (2016). Boko Haram and the War on Terror. ABC-CLIO. Verkaaik, Oskar (2004). Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Inge Ligtvoet & Loes Oudenhuijsen

10 A rebel youth? Social media, charismatic leadership, and ‘radicalized’ youth in the 2015 Biafra protests Abstract: Through ethnographic observations, using online as well as offline sources, we focus on the new Biafra protests between 2014 and 2016. This period was a peak in the quest for the rebirth of the autonomous Republic of Biafra, a concept which had lived on among a part of the Igbo population since the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970 when Biafra was lost. In 2015 a series of events, including the arrest of Biafra activist Nnamdi Kanu, led to a massive online mobilization of Igbo youth frustrated with their marginal position within Nigerian society. Digital protests turned into regional meet-ups and street demonstrations across the globe. In subsequent months, bloody encounters between the Nigerian military and protesting Igbo youth left at least 150 protesters killed across the south-east of Nigeria. The chapter draws on personal observations and conversations of the two authors, who were present in Enugu in 2014 and at the end of 2015, respectively. It presents the stories of people they encountered and highlights the rapidly changing discourse and stance on Biafra in Enugu, nourished by social media and stirred by several key activists. These changes formed the background to the sudden rise of and support for radical pro-Biafra movements (MASSOB, IPOB) that had been in existence long before the time of the protests. ‘The Igbo culture says no condition is permanent. There is constant change in the world.’ Chinua Achebe, There Was A Country

Introduction ‘How long have you been in Biafra land?’ an auto-rickshaw driver in Enugu asked, referring to the secessionist state in Nigeria that gave rise to the Nigerian civil war between 1967 and 1970. In October 2015, conversations about Biafra had become so common that we often did not have to bring up the topic ourselves, unlike what we had experienced during our fieldwork in the same city a year be-

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fore.¹ Upon our return to Nigeria on 19 October 2015, we encountered a particularly important moment for the ‘Biafran’ movement. A day earlier, Nnamdi Kanu, director of the London-based Radio Biafra and leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB), had been arrested and imprisoned by the Nigerian State Security Service in Lagos upon his arrival in Nigeria.² His arrest prompted a period of violent protests which should be understood in the context of an already lingering agitation for (re)sovereignty of Biafra (see Onuoha 2013). For many, the arrest of Kanu demonstrated what they regarded to be the repression of the Igbo people by the Nigerian government—and by President Buhari, in particular, who had been elected president earlier that year. The two months of fieldwork that followed were full of references to Biafra, unlike a year earlier when people in the city barely spoke about it unless they were specifically asked. The agitation and protests, however, did not come as a surprise. Movements advocating, sometimes violently, for Biafra have existed ever since Nigeria reclaimed the state in 1970 (see Adekson 2004; Onuoha 2013). In 2014, two major incidents occurred in the city of Enugu—the hoisting of the Biafran flag at the government house, and the occupation of a local radio station³—but this did not evoke much discussion at the time. Conversations on the street then were mostly about the upcoming 2015 presidential elections, without much reference to Biafra; however, people did express feelings of Igbo marginalization. After the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, discussions about Biafra became commonplace for agitators as well as for opponents of a new Republic of Biafra, and both were eager to engage in conversations, both online and offline. Although discussions about marginalization and the aspiration for the sovereignty of Biafra have been part of Igbo society since the end of the civil war (Smith 2014), the particular discourse of resistance in 2015 and the scale of the protests that followed were exceptional in the history of post-civil war Nigeria. Years of Boko Haram terrorism and abductions, the election of a northern, Muslim president, and the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu culminated in increased

 This research was carried out by the two authors in different periods of time. For legibility, we have chosen to refer to ‘we’ when talking about observations and interviews, even when it was just one of the authors present in the field. Where necessary we will explicitly refer to each of the authors’ data sets in the footnotes.  ‘Radio Biafra Director, Nnamdi Kanu reportedly arrested’, Vanguard 18 October 2015: http:// www.vanguardngr.com/2015/10/breaking-radio-biafra-director-nnamdi-kanu-reportedly-ar rested/ [Accessed 8 February 2017].  ‘We seized Enugu Govt House for 4 hours, says Onwuka, BZM leader’, Vanguard 13 March 2014: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/seized-enugu-govt-house-4-hours-says-onwuka-bzm-lead er [Accessed 2 February 2017].

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anger among the predominantly Christian Igbo population—anger rooted in the memory of Biafra and the civil war (Onuoha 2013: 435). Moreover, the use of social media by different pro-Biafra movements this time around intensified, further feeding the already existing discourse and making the agitation for sovereignty mainstream. Memories of the civil war, feelings of Igbo marginalization within Nigeria, and the inciting effect of social media led to a particular moment of socio-political positioning and decision-making, a vital conjuncture (JohnsonHanks 2002) for all youth in south-east Nigeria. Online activism in 2014 and 2015, prompted mainly by Radio Biafra London, the diaspora organization led by director Nnamdi Kanu, turned into street demonstrations in October 2015 and bloody clashes with Nigerian military in the months thereafter. Many young Igbo people, mostly men, seemed to have quickly radicalized in their mission to reinstate Biafra during this period of time, to the extent that the Nigerian government responded with the use of extreme (military) force. The protesting youth were labelled agitators or rebels by the government and (inter)national media, their mission labelled ‘the agitation for sovereignty’ or a ‘separatist rebellion’. However, we question to what extent these young men actually did radicalize or whether they adopted a temporary ‘radical’ position, being roused by the charismatic leaders of radicalized organizations such as Kanu’s IPOB. In this chapter, we will analyse the 2015 pro-Biafra protests and the particular moment of socio-political positioning of these youth, by focusing on the role of social media, predominantly Facebook and WhatsApp. We try to understand why the seemingly massive online participation of Igbo youth was not reflected in the offline reality of the urban protests that took place. Why were so many young men verbal in the struggle on social media but did not take part in the protests in Nigeria’s south-eastern cities? Why did they not move beyond the virtual world, and what does this say about the supposed radicalization of Igbo youth at that time?

Methodological reflections This chapter is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Enugu and in online communities by both authors in different periods before, during, and after the peak of the demonstrations in 2015. Loes Oudenhuijsen was in Enugu from October until December 2015 to conduct a survey on social media and political engagement, and while there she collected ethnographic data on the ongoing pro-Biafran protests. Inge Ligtvoet undertook field research in Enugu

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throughout 2014 for her PhD project⁴ and discussed Biafra and the civil war whenever it would come up in informal conversations or interviews. Both authors became members of Facebook and WhatsApp groups of regional and local IPOB chapters and as such were able to collect stories and arguments, images (sometimes gruesome), and sentiments that could often be found only online. Although this research was conducted by two separate authors in two different periods of time, both authors share a friendship with Azu, a young Igbo man in Enugu whom this chapter is centred around. This friendship enabled us to combine our individual data and to analyze the 2015 uprising in a broader context. Through a biographical analysis of Azu’s life and his (dis)involvement in the online ‘agitation’ for Biafra, we aim to get a better understanding of the youth behind the protests, their motivations and practices, and the extent to which they have or have not ‘radicalized’.

A brief biography of Azu Azu (b. 1984) is a young entrepreneurial designer of shoes and bags and a student in civil engineering in Enugu. He found his way to Enugu in his twenties when a reverend at his church in Delta State, where he lived with his mother and sisters, asked him to join his family as a laundry boy at their new post in Enugu. Azu’s youth had not been easy. After his parents divorced early in his life, Azu was sent to an uncle in Ikom (Cross River State) to work. His uncle paid for the education Azu’s mother was unable to afford, but he was maltreated in dire working circumstances and never finished his school. Upon returning to Delta State, he started a laundry business with which he made enough money to support his mother and pay for his own secondary school fees. A few years later, he joined the reverend’s family in Enugu, where he believed he would eventually find more business opportunities. While working as a laundry boy, he taught himself how to design and make shoes. With the money he earned as a laundry boy and the first sales of his products, he was able to rent a room on the University of Enugu campus. He also started studying civil engineering at the Institute of Management and Technology. In 2014 he opened a workshop on the premises of his school, where he successfully designed and sold his products, all the while

 Both research studies were conducted within the context of the project ‘Connecting in Times of Duress’. For more information, see www.connecting-in-times-of-duress.nl

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studying to obtain a degree in civil engineering (‘because what Nigerians believe in is certificate, not […] skill’).⁵ Even though Azu made enough money to sustain himself and a part of his family, he was very much frustrated by the Nigeria he lives in. Everyday confrontations with corruption, the lack of electricity and other basic infrastructure, and a general sense of not being cared for by the government have made him cynical and angry. But however frustrated Azu was, in 2014 he barely spoke about Biafra in informal conversations or interviews. The only time he became very vocal about it was when we had breakfast with him and his cousin, a political science student and Biafran activist, who enticed Azu into saying that ‘we [the youth] should finish what our fathers started’.⁶ Biafra was central to Azu’s family history, as his father actually fought during the civil war and returned from the battlefield as a Biafran war hero. His father was said to have returned home carrying a deceased Biafran soldier on his shoulders for over 30 km while being heavily injured for life himself. Azu’s frustrations with Nigeria were closely linked to the precarious relationship with his father, who due to injuries and—but this is our interpretation—trauma from his participation in the war had never been able to take care of his family and eventually left them in poverty. The online discourse that erupted after Nnamdi Kanu’s arrest in 2015 stirred Azu’s already existing frustration with Nigeria and made him more vocal about Biafra and his apparent hopes for the sovereign republic to be reinstated. Where he had been making shoes and bags with tags ‘Made in Enugu’, proudly proclaiming the fact that his product was of Nigerian origin as opposed to all the Chinese products on the market, Azu now produced Biafra-themed products, such as a card in the shape of a Biafran flag that was sent to one of the authors of this chapter. He was also part of the local IPOB WhatsApp group and adopted its discourse, calling Nigeria ‘the zoo’ and non-Biafrans ‘baboons’. But like many young Igbo, Azu never took part in meetings or protests. Busy fending for himself and his family, he could not afford to be out on the street demanding sovereignty and the release of Nnamdi Kanu. A year after the protests, the morning after the 2016 US presidential elections, Azu’s passion for an independent Biafra had been replaced by a more general critique of the Nigerian government and the West, and an acquiescing sigh of faith.

 Interview with Azu, 11 December 2014, Inge Ligtvoet.  Informal conversation with Azu and his cousin, 19 June 2014, Inge Ligtvoet. This was the only time that Inge heard Azu speaking about Biafra in such strong words during her fieldwork in 2014. Although his anger with the Nigerian government would often come up in conversations, he never referred in any way to Biafra being the (only) solution to the perceived marginalization.

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Azu: gud morning, pls do u have any idea about the US elections, who is winning at the moment? Inge: they say Trump is likely to win Azu: a very big AMEN, my prayers are working and answered Azu: the romance with the White House and the Nigerian president has to stop, the injustices in Nigeria today has the backup of the white of today, u are not in Nigeria u would have understood better Inge: do you believe that now Trump became president, there is also a chance for Biafra? Azu: for Biafra God will work his will out for us⁷

Many movements, one discourse of marginalization To understand the position of Azu and youth who took part in the protests in 2015 online and/or offline, we have to understand the Biafra movement in more general terms. The agitation for Biafra is not organized and united in one movement but is dispersed over various movements, of which not all are explicitly or primarily Biafra movements. One of the explicitly pro-Biafra groups is Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB). Established in 1999 in Lagos, MASSOB has promoted the interests of the Igbo people (Onuoha 2011). Having lost confidence in the Nigerian state to accommodate a place for Igbos in the political sphere, MASSOB seeks self-determination for Igbos in an independent Biafran homeland (ibid.). Its leader, Ralph Uwazuruike, claimed it is a non-violent movement, inspired by Gandhi.⁸ Interestingly, MASSOB was declared an extremist group and one of the three fundamental security threats to Nigeria along with Boko Haram and the O’odua People’s Congress by then President Goodluck Jonathan in 2013 (ICG 2015). Uwazuruike himself, however, said that MASSOB stands for absolute non-violence and that they would realize the independence of Biafra through political dialogue. IPOB, in his eyes, were the real troublemakers (ibid.).⁹ IPOB is the second explicitly pro-Biafra group and currently the most active on social media and in protests. Founded in 2012 by Nnamdi Kanu, it is much

 WhatsApp conversation with Azu, 9 November 2016, 08:03 AM, Inge Ligtvoet (spelling slightly adjusted for legibility)  Interview with Ralph Uwazuruike, 9 December 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.  Interview with Ralph Uwazuruike, 9 December 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.

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younger than Ralph Uwazuruike’s MASSOB, but it has quickly grown to be the most active movement in the agitation for Biafra, using Radio Biafra¹⁰ as a medium to disseminate their message in the diaspora and in south-east Nigeria. With disapora and local WhatsApp groups and local branches that have been organizing street protests since the arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, IPOB activism has dominated the news concerning the agitation for Biafra lately.¹¹ Due to its recent emergence and growth, there is no literature on the movement thus far. However, based on our meetings with the family of Nnamdi Kanu in 2015¹² and the various manifestations of IPOB online as well as in offline meetings, we can briefly describe the movement as one that is strongly associated with Radio Biafra, the London-based radio station that is also run by Nnamdi Kanu. The sudden growth of the movement can possibly be attributed to the fact that Nnamdi Kanu, who had become popular among Igbo with his work at Radio Biafra, is also the leader of IPOB. The message that is disseminated from Radio Biafra in London to Nigeria—about the marginalization of Igbo and the need for an independent state of Biafra to solve the problems of marginalization and under-representation—is embraced by Igbo in Nigeria as well as in the diaspora, who have aligned themselves in the movement that is called IPOB. IPOB has consequently reiterated this message on various social media channels and has translated the message into concrete acts of Biafra activism in the form of organized street protests and regional meetings with IPOB members and has established links with human rights organizations such as Amnesty International to get recognition for their struggle. MASSOB and IPOB, alongside other, smaller, Biafran organizations, have their own charismatic leaders and have adopted particular strategies to gain support among Igbo living in Nigeria and the diaspora. Although in their use of words these organizations might differ, they all adopt a very similar message of Igbo marginalization, on which they build their arguments and activities. Conversations about Igbo marginalization are very common in south-east Nigeria: it is a discourse carried by both advocates of a secession of Biafra and its sceptics, and by those who are part of Biafra movements and those who are not. There is a widely accepted belief in south-east Nigeria that the Igbo are marginalized in Nigeria, as they have historically held fewer political positions and are generally understood to be under-represented in the government and the Nigerian public sphere. Many Igbo believe their political representation and power is purpose Nnamdi Kanu is the director of Radio Biafra, a diaspora radio station broadcasting to the world from their headquarters in London since 2009.  See for example https://www.naij.com/tag/biafra-news.html or http://www.vanguardngr. com/?s=biafra or https://www.today.ng/tag/biafra for news on the Biafra agitation.  Loes met with the family of Nnamdi Kanu shortly after his arrest in 2015.

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ly reduced through census-taking that is designed to undercount Igbo citizens, and through rules for the appointment to civil service positions that are weighted against the Igbo, which is evident in the absence of Igbo officers in the highest offices of government (Smith 2014). Whether or not people are in favour of a second Republic of Biafra, the sentiment of Igbo marginalization is thus widespread. We experienced this, for example, on a bus ride from Lagos to Enugu in October 2015 when our bus got stuck in the mud and a neighbour commented: ‘You see, this is why we started this whole civil war in the first place—because of neglect.’ Complaints about the pot-holed roads in the south-east of the country were common. Azu would also often express similar frustrations with infrastructure— for example, when the electricity was cut while he had to electronically sand down shoes he made earlier or when he was watching television. Although the everyday confrontation with the malfunctioning of the state is experienced everywhere in the country, among the Igbo in the south-east these experiences would sometimes be a trigger for conversations about Igbo marginalization. More particular instances that people would often mention to ‘prove’ the marginalization of the Igbo related to the quota system for admission into secondary and tertiary education, which according to many Igbo unfairly favours the Hausa population. This common discourse of marginalization has been solidified in the political pro-Biafra movements. According to Dr. Elliot Uko, one of the driving forces behind the Igbo Youth Movement,¹³ groups such as IPOB and MASSOB have successfully used the emotions of frustrated Igbo youth for the Biafran cause.¹⁴ Through social media the discourse was spread to a much larger audience in Nigeria’s south-east, very willing to listen after their disappointment with the newly elected president and in the context of increased tensions within the country. Because of social media and its opportunities for global connectivity, Nnamdi Kanu was able to share the ideology of the IPOB through Radio Biafra and its social media channels. Many followers shared their ideology and its particular, inciting vocabulary (e. g. referring to Nigeria as ‘the zoo’) with their friends and followers and quickly the movement took off. Through the medium of Radio Biafra and its social media platforms, IPOB offered the youth a political vocabulary to channel their grievances and frustrations. Some youth started joining local IPOB groups, and many considered Kanu to be their leader in the fight against the Nigerian oppressor. After his arrest, their loyalty was expressed through an explosive protest  The Igbo Youth Movement is a movement that does not aim at the re-secession of Biafra but says it aims at restoring Igbo culture and identity and educating Igbo youth about the importance of education. However, most of its youth members are pro-Biafra and involved in other Biafran movements (Interview with Elliot Uko, 25 November 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen).  Interview with Elliot Uko, 25 November 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.

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response on social media and in several cities across Nigeria’s south-east. In 2015, Azu was one of the young Igbo that adopted the discourse provided by Radio Biafra and IPOB in his day-to-day frustrations with the government, and he also joined IPOB groups online. This was a change from how he would usually speak (more often not speak) about Biafra during earlier fieldwork in 2014.

‘Unless there will be a leader like Ojukwu, no one will fight for Biafra again.’ One morning in June 2014, Azu asked us to bring okpa for breakfast at his place. Okpa is a bright orange bean cake and a product local to Enugu, a pride of the region. Food is very important in Igbo culture, and our conversation about the okpa and its meaning for the people of Enugu quickly turned into a much more political discussion about Igbo pride and the marginalization of the Igbo by the Nigerian government. The discussion was very much accelerated by Azu’s cousin, a political science student who stayed in Azu’s house temporarily. He spoke eloquently about the situation of the youth in Nigeria, especially in the south-east, and he argued why Biafra should be reinstated in order to stop the suffering of the Igbo. Azu was attentively listening to his cousin, agreeing with him every so often, and he was clearly enticed by the words spoken. As the minutes passed by, the conversation became more and more energetic, and the words Azu’s cousin used became more agitated. He mentioned the need for protest and even claimed that a new war might be necessary to regain freedom from the Nigerian oppressor. Azu, whom we had known for a few months then and who had never expressed any clear pro-Biafra sentiment to us, suddenly shouted: ‘If they decide to go to war again, I will join them!’ And further provoked by his cousin, he exclaimed: ‘We will finish what our fathers started!’ All of a sudden, he seemed ready to fight for the Biafran cause, whereas before he seemed rather to have acquiesced to his fate, despite often jokingly expressing his frustrations with the Nigerian system. The role of his cousin in the conversation that morning should not be underestimated. His eloquence and well-thought-through arguments for Biafra, and even for a new war, were well received by Azu, a rather naïve young man upset by the inability to progress due to the insecurity of the state. What we saw happening that morning in the setting of Azu’s house in Enugu was what effectively happened on a regional (even global) scale more than a year later: an eloquent leader, Kanu, was followed by a large group of young, frustrated Igbo youth (mostly men) who became increasingly vocal and willing to fight for the cause of Biafra.

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What greatly spurred the Biafra movement, in addition to the spread on- and offline of a new discourse of Igbo marginalization, was the nascence of a leader. Nnamdi Kanu, as leader of the IPOB, proposed a solution to people’s long-term grievances over the loss of Biafra in 1970 and the experienced continuation of Igbo repression in Nigeria: a second Republic of Biafra. His arrest in October 2015, on charges of terrorism, proved that the Nigerian government took his plans and his leadership seriously, but they underestimated his following, which took to the streets immediately afterward. A year earlier, Eze, a taxi driver in Enugu who was a child during the civil war, told us that Biafra was very unlikely to ever become a reality again. He said, ‘Unless there will be a new leader like Ojukwu [charismatic, with a large following], no one will fight for Biafra again.’¹⁵ A year later, probably also much to the surprise of Eze, Nnamdi Kanu rose as the leader of the global Biafra movement and turned the agitation for the sovereignty of Biafra into street protests and violent clashes with the Nigerian authorities, which led to the death of about 150 protesters (Amnesty International 2016). Prince Emmanuel Kanu, the brother of Nnamdi Kanu and the executive director of IPOB after Kanu’s arrest, carried on the discourse that his brother popularized. He was confident that Biafra would become a reality again: ‘We are a very capable people, and through dialogue and any legal means possible we will achieve Biafra. But if dialogue is not enough, we have no other choice.’¹⁶ Prince Emmanuel Kanu had been acting as an ambassador for Biafra. He evangelized in churches and speaks about Biafra upon invitation. With regard to the appraised leadership of his brother Nnamdi Kanu, Prince Emmanuel Kanu said the following: ‘Every promise the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra has made, he has fulfilled […] Biafra is a movement of the mind. When you hear the gospel, you’ll join.’¹⁷ For Azu and many others, especially young men, this was true to an extent. The nascence of Nnamdi Kanu as a new leader for Biafra created a momentum that triggered them to align themselves, albeit temporarily or predominantly online, with the struggle for the sovereignty of Biafra. The arrest of Nnamdi Kanu, who had quickly risen to the position of the new leader of Biafra, amplified the call for an independent Biafra. What we observed in south-east Nigeria in October 2015 was a crucial moment for youth, a vital conjuncture in which they were forced to (re)position themselves politically. Azu, as well as other supporters of Biafra, were captured by the vigour of the movement in

 Informal conversation with Eze, October 2014, Inge Ligtvoet.  Interview with Prince Emmanuel Kanu, 26 November 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.  Interview with Prince Emmanuel Kanu, 26 November 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.

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the particular socio-political environment of Nigeria at that time, and they adopted a radical political stance toward Nigeria and Biafra.

Social media and the Biafra movement

Fig.  and : Screenshots  & 

A crucial element for the consolidation of the Biafra movement has been the use of social media. The Biafra movements owe much to social media as an enabling component for the organization of rallies. The WhatsApp group ‘IPOB ENUGU GENERAL’ was created on 19 August 2015. Azu had become a member of the group and added Loes in November 2015. The group name suggests a regional focus of the IPOB movement in Enugu and was intended to play an important role in mobilizing local IPOB supporters for protests and other activities taking place specifically in Enugu. However, the group seemed to have taken a different turn, feeding the Biafra supporters with news about Nnamdi Kanu’s court case, Buhari’s conduct concerning the Biafran agitation, and foreign support for Biafra, related to the efforts Biafran supporters have taken in the diaspora and with

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human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International. In addition to operating as a propaganda platform, the group has largely acted as a place where the argument for an independent Republic of Biafra has been echoed, in the vocabulary provided by Radio Biafra and the global IPOB movement: Nigeria is referred to as ‘the zoo’ and Nigerians as ‘baboons’. Muslims are synonymous with terrorists, and Christians are contrasted as peaceful (figures 1 & 2). In addition to WhatsApp, Facebook has been a prime source for information. It serves as a far-reaching platform where the particular discourse (violent or otherwise) of Igbo marginalization is dispersed. Facebook groups such as ‘BIAFRANS WITH AVENGERS UNDER NNAMDI KANU (IPOB)’,¹⁸ ‘BIAFRA LIBERATION FRONT (B.L.F => Freedom!!!) under MASSOB’,¹⁹ and the Facebook page of Radio Biafra itself ²⁰ carried the same aggressive discourse with regard to Nigeria and its government that we saw on WhatsApp. In between hate messages and the latest news on Nnamdi Kanu’s court hearings, these Facebook groups and pages seemed to be fuelled by the diaspora, who posted pictures of Biafra demonstrations in—mainly— the UK. Pictures of Nigerians as well as other nationals posing with Biafra T-shirts, flags, or shawls are posted, and photos at such events were shared. What these posts show is that the diaspora played an important role in the Biafra movements. Not only that; it also shows how the movements sought to convey the message that there was worldwide attention for their cause, as well as attempting to mirror other political movements for self-determination elsewhere. Some of the Facebook posts have been referring to indigenous groups that are fighting for their self-determination, sharing updates on meetings such groups have had with the parliaments of their countries, or at the UN level. Interestingly, the Facebook groups seemed to address more than just the political issue of self-determination of the Igbos and Biafra. A fair share of the Facebook posts were about dating and sex, and sometimes they were accompanied by sexually explicit photographs. More often than not, such posts explicitly and proudly mentioned that the woman or man in question is an Igbo. These posts suggest that the Facebook groups function as communities where people find both political engagement and entertainment, as well as a place of belonging to an Igbo community. Through the variety of posts on Igbo identity, its importance was emphasized beyond the realm of politics. An important aspect of the online activity of Biafra groups is their strong international character. Many diaspora Nigerians (Igbos) have been very vocal in

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/532221920317849/  https://www.facebook.com/groups/1496094427301447/  https://www.facebook.com/radiobiafra/?fref=ts

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their agitation for Biafra, and they have helped reiterate and intensify the discourse.

From online to offline meetings Although less widespread than online activism, regional meetings have been an important aspect of the Biafra movements. In addition to social media, offline events have been central to the creation of a sense of belonging for many Igbo. Regular meetings have been organized since 2015 in various neighbourhoods where IPOB has support. In November and December, we attended two such meetings of the Trans-Ekulu offshoot of IPOB, a neighbourhood in Enugu city. They were organized at St. Theresa’s Parish, a Catholic church where one of the founding fathers of the Trans-Ekulu branch of IPOB, ‘Old Soldier’ or ‘BA4442’—his number as a soldier in the Biafra war in the 1960s—serves as a catechist. He has taken up the role of the leader of the group. His popular name ‘Old Soldier’ says a lot about the way people look at him. He is the absolute expert on Biafra, having fought in the war as a young lad in the 1960s. With his stories about the frontline, he provokes many young men to the idea of a Biafra that is literally worth fighting for. Moreover, his perseverance in the struggle for Biafra attracts a considerable amount of respect from the group. The meetings that he chairs appear to serve two purposes. First, they were organized to discuss practical matters related to the organization of protests against Nnamdi Kanu’s detention and for a Biafran secession in general. The first meeting Loes attended was on 29 November, two days before one of Nnamdi Kanu’s court hearings. IPOB sub-groups such as the one in Trans-Ekulu prepared to join the protest that was organized in front of the court in Abuja. As a result, the meeting she attended revolved around a briefing of members on the situation at the court in Abuja during a day of protests. Some of the safety measures that they could expect to be taken by the Nigerian police were explained, and a warning about police blockades, based on prior experience, was issued. The second purpose of meetings was that they convey a strong sense of belonging and confidence in the bright future that an independent Biafra holds. Both meetings started with a prayer: ‘We fight for humanity, because God said that to be enslaved is the worst thing that can happen to a human being.’²¹ Subsequently, everyone rose to their feet, removed shoes and hats, and professed, with one hand on their chest and the other up in the air, the oath, ‘never insub-

 Observation at the IPOB Trans-Ekulu meeting, 29 November 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.

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ordinating […] or jeopardizing […] the IPOB struggle’.²² Throughout the meeting, anyone who stands up to say something, starts by shouting ‘IPOB!’. The response was ‘Great Biafra!’ The continuous repetition of the cause for meeting creates a strong sense of a shared purpose and a shared future. The oath-taking features in IPOB right from the start. Before anyone could join IPOB, they had to take the oath to remain loyal to IPOB at all times.²³ All in all, around 60 people (only one woman) were present at the meeting—a low turn-out we were told, with attendance figures of 200 members not infrequent. The second IPOB meeting in TransEkulu that we joined, on 6 December, again had about 60 attendees. With three women present, their attendance had tripled, but we were inclined to think that 200 attendants at these meetings was an exaggerated figure. Mass street protests have also been important moments in the expression of the Biafran ideology. Where in 2014 we read about the first recent hoisting of the Biafran flag,²⁴ in 2015 we witnessed one in a series of protests organized by movements such as IPOB. On 1 December 2015, we travelled to Aba for a meeting that had nothing to do with the Biafra protests, not realizing that a court hearing of Nnamdi Kanu was scheduled in Abuja on that day. As a result, protests had been organized in various cities across the south-east and we could not reach our destination in Aba. We were not the only ones who were obstructed from conducting our own affairs. We joined a group of men who were watching the protesters march past from a distance. Some of them were auto-rickshaw drivers whose routes were blocked by the demonstration; others were shopkeepers who had decided to keep their shops locked, fearing looting by protesters. Having to wait for the protesters to leave behind the major junction that would enable us to continue the journey in Aba, we witnessed a festive atmosphere, almost as if the crowd were a bunch of football supporters after a match that had been won. To us, the atmosphere during this protest resembled the general mood of Biafra supporters whenever we spoke with them. Many at the time were very optimistic about the size and strength of the movement. In Aba, someone said that ‘millions, maybe 100 million have taken to the streets today’.²⁵ That seemed exaggerated, considering Nigeria’s total population of 186 million inhabitants as a non-official estimate in 2016 based on the US Census Bureau (CIA 2016). Nevertheless, the idea of a massive popular movement that would soon really bring about change

 Observation at the IPOB Trans-Ekulu meeting, 29 November 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.  Interview with ‘Old Soldier’, 2 December 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.  ‘We seized Enugu Govt House for 4 hours, says Onwuka, BZM leader’, Vanguard 13 March 2014: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/03/seized-enugu-govt-house-4-hours-says-onwuka-bzm-leader [Accessed 2 February 2017].  Informal conversation with a protester in Aba, 1 December 2015, Loes Oudenhuijsen.

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was shared by many. We are not so interested in the actual figures, but more in the message that is conveyed through such expressions—because an exaggeration of the number of IPOB supporters and protesters reflects the optimism that has been spread successfully by Nnamdi Kanu and his Radio Biafra. The provocative messages of the movements’ leaders that have been directed to the Igbo population in general, and have been taken up strongly by Igbo in the diaspora, have encouraged people to think that the cause is unanimously supported by all Igbo.

Fig. 3: Protesters in Aba

Figure 3 shows protesters in Aba with Biafra pounds, the currency of the Republic of Biafra between 1967 and 1970, which was reintroduced in 2006 by MASSOB. Owen (2009) has argued that the Biafra pound is ‘socially nourishing’ and creating a ‘moral community, as opposed to the corrupt, violent and depraved condition of the public sphere as currently experienced’ (2009: 580 – 581). The Biafra pound, in addition to the widespread presence of the Biafran half of a yellow sun²⁶ and the colours on flags, hats, t-shirts, shawls, and stickers, has consolidated the political movement of Biafra and has materialized belonging to the movement for whoever presents him-/herself with such attributes. Material objects had

 The image of a rising yellow sun is present on the flag of Biafra.

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become important bearers of Biafran pride and identity at this height of agitation for a Biafran secession. Azu was drawn to these material representations of Biafra and, rather than joining the street protests, he decided to apply the symbolism in his own creations as his own way of contributing to the rallies. The postcard in Figure 4 that was sent to Inge in December 2015 seemed to be the turning point. It was a clear opportunity for Azu to show his commitment to Biafra. The way he worked on the postcard design resembled the way he meticulously worked on his shoes and bags. He did not leave it at this postcard and started using his shop as a place from where he could act out his political ideas, through the craft of shoes and bags with the Biafran flag, as he became more drawn into the Biafran struggle. His small workshop transformed from a business to sustain himself financially to a place to show his pride in being a true Igbo and confessing loyalty to pro-Biafran groups such as IPOB. The characterization of the Igbos as an industrious people was repeatedly mentioned by Azu, and it had become his way to identify himself as part of the struggle for Biafra.

Fig. 4: The Biafra Flag

But at the time of writing, Azu is no longer involved in any group on social media, nor is he using his workshop to produce Biafra-themed products. He withdrew from the IPOB Enugu WhatsApp group, and he was not the only one. The group now consists of only 26 men from Enugu.²⁷ Where Azu introduced Loes  Members in June 2016.

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to the group enthusiastically in November 2015, he left the group himself a year later. During the time he had been a member, he had asked only two short questions for clarification about news items that had been shared in the group, but he did follow the messages and news shared by others. His membership of the group was rather passive; however, the group did influence him and made him more vocal about Biafra in everyday life. But despite his joining groups on social media and using Biafra as a theme in his designs, Azu was never a radical for the cause. He never joined street protests; and even though he once mentioned that the youth should finish what their fathers had started during the civil war, he never put those words into action. Many of the youth that took part in the online pro-Biafra protests were like Azu. Although incited by a charismatic leader and the opportunities social media provided to join the cause at a distance, only few (in the relative sense) actually materialized their online activities. They were digital rebels, not offline rebels. For Azu, leaving the WhatsApp group and his other online ‘activities’ related to Biafra was inevitable. His initial eagerness to join the Biafra movement vanished as his dreams of an independent Biafra made way for the reality of managing his shop and preparing financially for his next training in tailoring and design.

Conclusion Youth like Azu have been susceptible to the fierce discourse that has been repeated time and again on various social media, especially through the channels of Radio Biafra.²⁸ The strong media campaign of Radio Biafra and the IPOB, with its specific discourse of Igbo marginalization and its charismatic leadership, has led many young Igbo to align themselves with the struggle for Biafra. However, after several months of protests that were time-consuming and that had forced many shop owners to close their shops for days or even weeks, people seem to have gone back to the order of the day. Azu is a telling example. Where he spoke uncompromisingly about the need for Biafra whenever we visited him in his own shop in Enugu in 2015, his last mention of Biafra was that it would come to pass in God’s time.²⁹ For youth like Azu, for whom life is a constant struggle, what counts at the end of the day is that they have mouths to feed. Many realized that the protests did not immediately help them in their individual

 593,020 Facebook page ‘likes’ as of 16 June 2017  WhatsApp conversation with Azu, 9 November 2016, 08:03 AM, Inge Ligtvoet (spelling slightly adjusted for legibility)

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needs. Confronted with a vital conjuncture, provided with a new discourse of marginalization and forced to take a position, many Igbo men radically chose to take part in the struggle in the safe environment of Facebook and WhatsApp. They were rebels online; but for the sake of their livelihoods, they remained good citizens in their everyday interactions with the state. For many in the diaspora, it is much easier to reiterate the agitation for Biafra, because they do not put at risk their daily income when they protest online; hence they continue to nourish the Biafra activism online and make the movement seem as alive as ever. When you ask Nigerians in the south-east, however, they will admit that things have cooled down: ‘No, it hasn’t been hot ever since the leader of IPOB went to jail […] lesser than when u were here’.³⁰ In short, the discourse of Igbo marginalization and the call for an independent Biafra have not vanished, but they are only marginally pursued on the streets. Online, due to the major influence of the diaspora community, the activism remains vibrant.

References Adekson, Adedayo O. (2004). The ‘Civil Society’ Problematique: Deconstructing Civility and Southern Nigeria’s Ethnic Radicalisation. London and New York: Routledge. Amnesty International (2016). Peaceful Pro-Biafra activists killed in chilling crackdown, November 2016. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/peaceful-pro-biafraactivists-killed-in-chilling-crackdown/ [Accessed 8 March 2018]. CIA (2016). The World Factbook. Non-official estimate based on calculations from the US Census Bureau, July 2016. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/ fields/2119.html [Accessed 13 January 2017]. ICG (International Crisis Group) (2015). Nigeria’s Biafran Separatist Upsurge. 4 December 2015, http://blog.crisisgroup.org/africa/nigeria/2015/12/04/nigerias-biafranseparatist-upsurge/ Johnson-Hanks, Jennifer (2002). On the limits of life stages in ethnography: Toward a theory of vital conjunctures. American Anthropologist 104(3): 865 – 880. Onuoha, Godwin (2011). Contesting the space: The ‘new Biafra’ and ethno-territorial separatism in south-eastern Nigeria. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 17: 402 – 422. Onuoha, Godwin (2013). Cultural interfaces of self-determination and the rise of the neo-Biafran movement in Nigeria. Review of African Political Economy 40(137): 428 – 446. Owen, Olly (2009). Biafran pound notes. Africa 79(4): 570 – 594. Smith, Daniel Jordan (2014). Corruption complaints, inequality and ethnic grievances in post-Biafra Nigeria. Third World Quarterly 35(5): 787 – 902.

 WhatsApp conversation with Divine, 16 January 2017, Loes Oudenhuijsen.

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11 Hamadoun Koufa: Spearhead of radicalism in central Mali Abstract: Since the end of the jahilaaku, the Fulani community of central Mali has been engaged in extensive breeding and Quranic education. Notwithstanding the introduction of the Western education model, Islamic education is still the most popular. Thus, from the Fulani hegemony in the 19th century to the present day, collective memory in each generation reveres men who have marked history by their mastery of the Quran and their knowledge of hadiths. Hamadoun Koufa is one such man. Born in the early 1960s in Guimbala, he was a brilliant talibé and appreciated by his masters. A santaarou (advanced student of the Quran and hadiths), he was a poet-singer who animated a company of young girls he held in his thrall and amazed by songs full of love, romance, and flattery. After being forgotten for a decade, he returned under another hat, that of a preacher. With a closely literal interpretation of the Quran, he attacked everyone, from the simple Quranic teachers to the great families of scholars. His commitment to the rejection of the scholar-family code led him to the Dawa Tabligh and then to the Tuareg Iyad Ag Ghali, his trajectory crowned by a stay at Markaz Bamako. Returning to the Delta, he began the Dawa, followed by a cohort of followers of various origins.

Introduction Mali has been the scene of enormous socio-political crises in recent years. Long regarded by observers as a model of democracy and a haven of peace, the country was shaken concomitantly by the military coup d’état of 22 March 2012 and the total occupation of the north (three-quarters of the country) by irredentist groups armed in collusion with violent extremist groups. The international mobilization to resolve the crisis in the country made it possible to establish a return to constitutional order and the signing of peace agreements in May and June 2015. However, the crisis in parts of northern Mali has spread to the south and especially to the centre of the country. Previously, only hunters (Donso), Bambaras, Bozos, and Dogons had weapons in this region. The weapons were generally shotguns intended most often for the killing of small game (jackal, pig, wild boar, squirrel, hare, etc.) and sometimes rifles to hunt birds. The crisis of 2012 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-011

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resulted in the recruitment of communities previously spared from armed engagement, as was the case with the Fulani. The latter had abandoned their weapons since the end of the colonial conquest. Owing to the aforementioned crisis, the Fulani saw this dynamic playing out in their communities. One witnessed the birth in the centre of the country of so-called jihadists, militias, and self-defence groups. Thus, in a space of two years (2014– 2016), there appeared for the first time Ibrahim Diallo’s Fulani Association Dewral Pulaaku; Hamadoun Koufa’s Mouvement pour la Libération du Macina, whose existence is moreover challenged by specialists in the region; Oumar Aldjana’s short-lived Alliance Nationale pour la Sauvegarde de l’Identité Peule et la Restauration de la Justice (ANSIRPJ); and, finally, Hamma Founé Diallo’s Mouvement pour la Défense de la Patrie (MDP). Other communities did not remain on the sidelines, as evidenced by the creation in 2016, on the one hand, of the Donso militia in the Bambara areas of Karéri, Kiguiri, and Tounaari, and, on the other hand, the Dogon self-defence group, which in turn sows terror in communities rightly or wrongly accused of complicity with jihadists and livestock thieves. According to several well-informed observers, these self-defence groups operate under the command of the army and with the blessing of the central government. It was at the very beginning of 2015, on 8 January, that jihadists—who claimed, rightly or wrongly, to be those of Hamadoun Koufa—made a sensational entrance into Ténenkou (one of the eight cercles¹ of the Mopti Region in the centre of the country). After attacking the administrative district, they continued their way inside the city firing in the air and shouting ‘Hamadoun Koufa mayali’ (‘Hamadoun Koufa is not dead’); ‘Hamadoun Koufa ana wuuri’ (‘Hamadoun Koufa is alive’); and ‘djoonika macina, mo wari wourtindè diina Sekou’ (‘Now, people of Macina, he has come to restore the Diina of Sékou Amadou’).² After a few hours of occupation, they left the city leaving behind them the wildest rumours and the most implausible interpretations. A single subject returned every time anyone discussed this lightning assault on Ténenkou by an armed group whose existence until then had been unknown: the veracity or otherwise of the ‘resurrection’ of Hamadoun Koufa. (He was given up for dead during the attack on Konna by the French forces in January 2013.)³

 Mali is divided into a capital district (Bamako) and eight regions. Each region is sub-divided into ‘cercles’, a term which has continued in use since the French colonial period.  Diina is Arabic for ‘religion’. Following a successful Fulani jihad led by Sékou Amadou in 1818, the Macina Emirate (also referred to as the Diina) was founded.  The mujahideen advance from the north to the centre and south of the country was halted at Konna by the French forces, thanks to ‘Operation Serval’ in January 2013.

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No one had yet digested the first attack when it was followed by a second, a week later. It was precisely on 15 January 2015 that Hamadoun Koufa’s men returned to the charge, again beginning with the administrative district where the FAMa⁴ camp is located. They were on motorbikes and attacked the small town of Ténenkou for several hours and chanted the name of their hero Hamadoun Koufa, while urging people to support them because, they said, the truth they defend will triumph over the lies of the state and its crusader allies. These two events allowed them to succeed both in a show of strength and in an unprecedented media coup. It was from there that they established themselves in the Central Delta of the Niger River, a region that has a large concentration of the Fulani community. In this paper, a qualitative methodology was adopted. We conducted a series of interviews with target populations in various communities in the Mopti Region and beyond. Throughout the investigation, we used to the maximum individual interviews, focus groups, and discussions, and especially recordings of the jihadists, including those of the leader Hamadoun Koufa and some of his confederates, such as Boukari Petal and others—recordings we obtained not without some difficulty.⁵ In this chapter, we will tell the story of Hamadoun Koufa’s life (from being a talibé ⁶ to becoming a jihadist), provide an insight into the followers of his movement, and attempt to understand precisely the context in which the different trajectories of radicalization are operating in central Mali.

Pulaaku and Islam From the end of the jahilaaku until the advent of the colonizer,⁷ the Fulani community (pulaaku) was divided between extensive cattle breeding and Quranic schools. The latter led to state schools being systematically rejected by the great majority for the simple reason that they were considered to be those of the impure. Formerly, with the exception of a few large villages—which today are ‘small towns’, such as Diafarabé and Ténenkou in Macina, Djenné and So-

 Forces Armées Maliennes, the armed forces of Mali.  In the villages, there are small groups of supporters who possess recordings that they listen to and play for people they trust. Thus, the sermons are listened to by many people, but they are owned by only a very small minority.  A student of the Quran, usually entrusted by his parents to a Quranic teacher.  Jahilaaku is a term used for the troubled period of multiple leaders (ardo) before the establishment of the Diina by Sékou Amadou.

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fara in Djennéri, and Boni and Douentza in the Hairé—the Fulani almost unanimously balked at sending their children to school. This situation still prevails deep in Macina, in such places as Sossobé, chief town of Togoro Kotya commune, where most of the students leave school after primary school. According to the director of the second cycle in this village, interviewed in October 2014: The students desert classes in large numbers once they reach Grade 7. Thus, the size of the class decreases considerably compared with the previous class. And in Grade 8, you end up with a total of four or five students at the beginning of the year. But we always finish the year with fewer than the starting number, and we see no one return for Grade 9.

In this situation there are many schools in this part of the world with men who swear by the cow in some cases, and by the command of the Holy Book (the Quran) in others. From the Fulani hegemony in the 19th century to the present day, the pulaaku have always seen in each generation men of great renown for their mastery of the Quran, their knowledge of hadiths, etc. Great scholars such as Sékou Amadou from Macina, Hamadoun Abdoulaye Souwadou⁸ and his great-grandson Sidi Modibo from Dily, and Sékou Sala⁹ from Wouro Boubou (Macina) have marked the Fulani world with an indelible stamp by their knowledge, wisdom, probity, and integrity, and their giving of themselves for the divine cause. In this marabout environment, there are several levels of apprenticeship. From the age of seven, and often even before, a child is handed over by the parents to a moobo (a contraction of moodibo, marabout). At this stage, he is called a foussounaarou (pupil) and his learning is limited to mastery of the Arabic alphabet and to recitation of the surahs, with an intonation more often ‘foulanisée’ (with a Fulani accent). Between the ages of 15 and 21, having become a young man and having mastered the memorization of the Holy Book, he goes on to the student stage called falakaarou and/or santaarou in the singular and falkaadji and/or santaadji in the plural. From then on, evenings are more busy with the recitation of the Holy Quran, which is divided into hizib (tenth parts), and daytime is devoted to reading the books dealing with grammar (naahnou), transcription, translation, justice, hadiths of the Prophet, and jurisprudence with the more educated marabouts. Having passed these two stages successfully, the learner is called hafizou-alimè (a specialist in the Quran, hadiths, and all that is mentioned above).

 The Saint of Dily, a Fulani from Bakounou (Nara cercle) and a companion in the struggle of Sékou Amadou.  Saint of Dogon ethnicity from Ouro Boubou in Macina.

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This practice, which had existed under the Diina, is still in operation. Thus, there have always been santaadji specialized in memorizing the Quran in its entirety. They are called sourakoobé when they succeed in this task of memorizing the Holy Book. They are greatly respected by the marabouts and adulated by the young learners. Collective memory still retains the great names like Amadou Samba Kolado Doursi¹⁰ under the Diina and Bâ Botto¹¹ in the 20th century, to mention only two. Hamadoun Koufa, the subject of this paper, went through all these stages before becoming a hafizou-alimè and made an impression during his time at different stages.

The journey of Hamadoun Koufa His talibé life Like the Greek philosophers of antiquity who bore the name of their hometown instead of their family name,¹² the foussounaadji (students) and santaadji from the centre of the country continue to do the same today. This is how Hamadoun Hassana Cissé came to call himself Hamadoun Koufa, after his native village. He was born at the very beginning of the 1960s in the Fittouga (Niafunké cercle). Originally from Koufa (in the village of Guimbala, in the municipality of Fittouga), he had lived only a small part of his childhood before beginning his life as a foussounaarou. According to one of his old companions whom we met in Ténenkou: Hamadoun was only Koufa by name in that he knew only the Mopti Region, specifically Macina and Kunaari where he spent most of his life. After a stay in Koubaye [a cercle in Mopti] where he spent a good part of his talibé life, he returned to Ouro N’Guiya [Ténenkou cercle] before continuing his wanderings to Banamba and then Mauritania.

Several sources agree that as a foussounaarou and santaarou, Hamadoun Koufa was a gifted child. ‘Credited with exceptional memory and intelligence, he was quickly admitted to the restricted circle of Hafiz al Quran—that is to say, a certified expert in the Koran.’¹³ The Malian newspaper L’Indépendant (21 August 2015)

 The greatest master of the Quran during the Diina.  The greatest expert in the Quran in the first half of the 20th century in the Fulani world of Maasina.  We can cite as examples: Thales of Miletus, Socrates of Athens, Epicurus of Samos, Heraclitus of Ephesus.  Adam, March 2017, p. 32

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describes him as ‘intelligent and boisterous’ during his childhood. And the authors of the article in question go further: ‘at a very young age, he had full mastery of the Quran’. The data collected in the field corroborate their remarks. Thus, a former companion at duddè (the equivalent of a university), with whom he had studied in the Banamba and Nara cercles in the first half of the 1980s, told us that he was a brilliant student and was esteemed by his teacher. At the beginning of the 2000s, the marabout had sworn to him in these terms ‘mi dianguidaali, mi dianguinaali houno Hamadoun Koufa peeral’ (‘I have neither studied nor taught anyone as gifted as Hamadoun Koufa’). Another testimony from one of these elders in the duddè was in the same mode. S. Dicko is a marabout who, since 1990, as part of his kourdia (marabout mission), travels back and forth between Bamako and his native village in the Central Delta of the Niger River. He had known Hamadoun Koufa when he was a santaarou. Interviewed in Bamako in August 2015, he spoke to us in these terms: When Hamadoun Koufa arrived at the Dougouwolo fair [Bla cercle] in the first half of the 1980s after his stay in the Sahel, he was feared by all the falkaadji thanks to his perfect mastery of the Quran, and everyone went to see him. There were also those who wanted to compete with him. He was formidable during the missi or diarwa [competitive recitation of the Quran].

Hamadoun Koufa was eagerly sought after by many waldé (associations in Fulani society).

From talibé to poet-singer Young santaadji students have always joined forces with the waldé associations most often bringing together young people from the same region or even from the same community of origin. Led by a leader of men called souldaani (‘leader of the group’), an association counts among its members a competitor (missowo), an author, a composer (poet-singer) (djimowo siruudji), a griot, and/or a dimadio. ¹⁴ Hamadoun Koufa was at the same time the competitor, the author, and the composer (poet-singer) of his association, which was called mardjaanou (Arabic, ‘the diamond’). It is on the occasion of kirnel (evenings) that the poetsinger puts himself to the test. These famous kirnel (which correspond to the hirdé in other Fulani locations) are evening gatherings of young men and women of the same generation (kirnel means ‘the small hiiro’, the suffix ‘el’ ex-

 A class/social group in Fulani society: slave or subordinate, considered non-noble.

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pressing the diminutive in the Fulfulde language). The kirnel is a specific evening of Quranic students. As a poet-singer, Hamadoun Koufa himself hosted the kirnel evenings at the mardjaanou waldé. It is important to note the rhythmic difference between santaadji poetry and Fulani pastoral poetry. That of santaadji is melodic, and the rhymes are flat or regular—as in the Quran, whose rhyme they imitate. On the other hand, Fulani pastoral poetry is lively. The rhythm is jerky, and the rhyme can be found anywhere in the sentences—at the beginning, in the middle, at the end—and has no melodic intonation. In these poetic songs, Hamadoun Koufa glorified feminine beauty, precisely that of the young Fulani and Diawando nubile girls of Kunaari and Guimbala. In this way, the poet-singer made breathless the young girls he impressed with these songs full of love, romance, and flattery. For example, expressions such as ‘yimmandè anta and yaadè kaaba be ndjedodiri ko mbouri huh jawaaba’ (‘to sing for Anta or to go to the Kaaba (on pilgrimage) is the same thing’) or ‘yiidima yô n’gourè’ (‘the sight of you gives life’)—in other words, the girl is so beautiful that seeing her is a source of life. This is what the poems contained. In the same poems, he spoke of respect for the giving of the students’ word, their dignity, integrity, and diligence. One should know that ‘these songs described the travels, the conditions of talibé children, the beauty of the Fulani woman and the Fulani culture’. However, in Siruudji santaadji poems, it is not just flattery for the company of young girls or for the courage of students. For example, Hamadoun Koufa encouraged young people to use tobacco, especially the SONATAM¹⁵ brand ‘Liberté’. He sang without beating around the bush: ‘liberté na mori gniri’ (‘freedom is better than a large meal’), and ‘wagni Liberty yô hirsè’ (‘slit the throat of the one does not love freedom’). These poems were heard everywhere by the Fulani in the centre of the country from the mid-1980s to the first half of the 1990s and beyond. It should also be added that young girls who are not favoured by the waldé or who do not go to their kirnel are subject to all kinds of calumny and malediction. They are insulted and cursed in poems, just as their parents are. ‘Composed in Fulfulde and Arabic, these songs contain … insults concerning some heads of families who refuse them hospitality and toward girls who reject their advances.’¹⁶ To speak frankly and not mince words, the kirnel are occasions for debauchery. Thus, these santaadji, although greatly admired by their peers and

 Société Malienne des Tabacs et Allumettes.  See the Malian newspaper, L’Indépendant, 21 August 2015.

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by young learners, are disliked by the Fulani community for their effrontery and their ‘lack of education’. For example, the santaadji of a Nampala waldé were chased out of the village of Guilé (Ténenkou cercle) in the 1980s because of their malicious behaviour. These waldé associations, which are often rivals, can confront each other at any particular moment. Thus, we recall the violent brawl that, in the mid-1980s, took place in Gnimitongo, a village on the Niger River, downstream from Mopti, between the marjaanu waldé of Hamadoun Koufa and another association. In Diafarabé, in 1996, a confrontation was narrowly avoided between the amrouka waldé of Diafarabé and the Haaza waldé of Ouro Guiré commune (Ténenkou cercle). In addition to their harmful behaviour vis-à-vis the local populations, these young student members of waldé, who do not pray, paradoxically spend sleepless nights reciting the Quran. Hamadoun Koufa said this concerning them: We have found that it is above all the enemies of God who learn the Quran; it is those who hate God who try most to know Him. For example, in our world today, ‘wala mad ko mbouri falkaadji gouraana ndi souye Allah’ (‘there are no greater enemies of God than Quranic students’). ‘Kambè mbouri, mad wawdè ngouraana, kambè mbouri mad, souièdè Allah’ (‘They’re the greatest experts about God. They master the Quran better than anyone, but they don’t fear God in the slightest’). (recording of 2 December 2016)

It is after this stage that the santaarou devotes himself entirely to the reading of hadiths and jurisprudence, as noted above. According to our interlocutors at Mopti, Hamadoun Koufa devoted the entire 1990s to this training (studying fikh). It was this training that made him the hafizou-alimè and the much-admired preacher he was until his involvement alongside the Tuareg Iyad Ag Ghali¹⁷ via the Dawa Tabligh.¹⁸

From poetry to preaching In the early 2000s, Hamadoun Koufa made his return to the Fulani radio scene not as a poet-singer but this time as a preacher. In his early days, he explained in clear, concise, and precise language the A-B-C of Islam, the rules of prayer and other matters. He was thus very much appreciated by the ignorant masses, who never ceased to wonder about this rapid conversion of Hamadoun Koufa ‘from  A militant Tuareg leader, active against the government of Mali since the 1980s.  The Dawa Tabligh sprang up in Pakistan and has swept through Muslim countries, including those of Sub-Saharan Africa. Its members dedicate their lives to the journey and the transmission of the message of Islam throughout the world.

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poetry to preaching’. With a literal interpretation of the Quran, he spared no one, from the lowly Quranic teacher and great erudite families and sheikhs to the peasants. He called on each one not to be a parasite but to work in order to live by the sweat of their brows. With regard to the Quranic teachers, he said that instead of going every year to ask for zakat¹⁹ from poor but honest peasants, they should do as the latter do—in other words, work the land like they do. Thus, he was against begging by talibés. For him, the greed that leads Quranic masters to make children work is the same greed that leads marabouts to become swindlers or even impostors. ‘Living on child labour (talibés) is more serious than drinking alcohol,’ he said on a cassette tape heard in June 2009 in Koa (Djenné cercle) on a local radio station. He criticized the families of the descendants of sheikhs for their idleness and their parasitism. He also criticized the mixed gatherings (of men and women) called zyara that they organize annually in the name of deceased sheikhs. He was against this practice both in principle and in form: – In principle, a corpse could not bless the living—that is to say, the baraka of a dead person cannot save the living, who had not received the person’s blessing before he passed away. Moreover, it is the deceased sheikh himself who needs the prayers of the living so that leaving the earth is made light for him. – In form, the gathering of men and women of all ages and backgrounds in places that cannot contain them, never mind accommodate them, is not advised in Islam. Men and women packing together into a small village in a festive rather than in a spiritual way is unacceptable and even reprehensible. These ceremonies are organized just to make money, because each participant comes with a gift either in kind or in cash or both. Livestock breeders were encouraged to abandon extensive farming in favour of intensive farming. In his view, the current practice of breeding is at the root of the conflicts between the different communities of the region. He said that instead of having countless livestock that devastate the fields and nets of neighbours (farmers and fishermen), it would be best to have a small number of cattle, feed them well, and take advantage of the milk and meat, as they do in the land of the white man. Nowadays, livestock breeders have none of this except for the three or four months of the rainy season.

 Annual obligatory tax (alms) paid by Muslims to support charitable causes. Its payment is one of the ‘five pillars’ of Islam: sincere recitation of the profession of faith; prayer five times a day; zakat; fasting during Ramadan; and pilgrimage to Mecca.

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In this way, as an expert in the environment, he dealt with questions related to the everyday facts and practices in the region. ‘Before switching over to the Dawa Tabligh, Hamadoun seriously criticized the unjust practices in the Fulani world,’ maintained a village chief who, since the beginning of the crisis in the centre of the country, no longer lives in the area. People paid close attention to Hamadoun Koufa. For a considerable portion of his audience, the chief added, ‘as a preacher, he was for the Fulani world what Chérif Ousmane Madane Haidara represents for the south of Mali’. For his moderate sympathizers, ‘he is without a doubt the best preacher that the Fulani world has ever known since the death of Sékou Salah in 1980’—because, for many of them, according to the same source, ‘since the end of the Fulani empire of Macina in 1862, there has been no preacher of his calibre in the centre of the country’. This is the reason those people whom he succeeded in convincing—who are without doubt of all ages and from all the Delta communities and even beyond— have followed him and continue to follow him, in spite of his commitment to the cause of Salafist movements.

From more or less moderate sermons to Salafism For almost a decade, Hamadoun Koufa preached vehemently. But the movement he had begun with fervour began to run out of steam because of the fiery sermons that did not conform with the local peaceful Islam, his precarious way of life (lack of means),²⁰ and the fierce opposition from the leading marabout families to his radical discourse. Having realized with bitterness his limits, he switched to the Dawa Tabligh, an organization of Pakistani origin, which had begun to gain a foothold in Mali in the early 2000s.²¹ According to an Islamic official interviewed in the centre of the country in March 2017: Hamadoun Koufa joined the Dawa Tabligh because there is a lot of money circulating in this movement. This allowed him to escape from his miserable circumstances and achieve his objectives in regard to social justice and the establishment of shariah, which he has never ceased to proclaim.

 He was poor and lived from the sale of dried wood—and especially from the sale of audio recordings (cassettes), which still continue to sell like hotcakes.  The first Dawa missionaries (Pakistani preachers) in Mali became known to the general public as veritable patrons, investing in the construction of mosques and madrasahs. And it was from the 2000s that Pakistani preaching really took shape in Mali through the sending of emissaries to all the cities of the interior, mainly those of the north (see the Malian newspaper L’Indépendant, 21 August 2015).

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He participated in the great national meeting of the movement organized in 2009 in Sévaré, which established his effective membership of this sect. In his fourth cassette tape since his engagement in the jihad (dated 2 December 2016), he recalls his membership of this Pakistani Salafist movement. He recalls his membership speech and the conditions that determined it and proudly proclaims his fidelity to the divine word: You of the Dawa Tabligh: remember what was agreed the day of my membership in your organization—because it was following this membership that I became the jihadist that I am today. After my commitment, the Fulani community criticized me a lot and even insulted me. The Fulani have said everything about me: ‘dina fou ka moyihi mo naata’ (‘he joins any dina [sect] that comes along’). At the time of my commitment to the leaders of this organization, I said this: ‘I will follow you as long as you work with the Quran and the hadiths of the Prophet—which you do not master better than me, although I recognize that I have inadequacies in other areas. If I see you on another path, I will denounce you and inform the other followers—and I will do whatever is asked of jihadists even if you do not do it.’

With the passing of the Family Code²² by the National Assembly of Mali, preachers in Mali on all sides made themselves heard in one way or another. Hamadoun Koufa was no exception. In 2010, during one of his rare visits to Bamako, we hear of him in Banankabougou, according to a sympathizer who is still wondering about the reasons for his involvement in the jihad. He stayed at the Banankabougou Markaz in Commune VI of the Bamako District and greatly appreciated their organization, men who lived on their own contributions and preached the sacred word. This trip was an opportunity for him to meet Iyad Ag Ghali—‘the financial arm of the Dawa in Mali’²³—and to learn more about this organization. According to one of our respondents, a fervent follower of ‘Koufism’, ‘it was under the nose and beard of the state that this relationship was born and grew its wings’. He emerged from this encounter strengthened in his convictions. Once in the fold, he began the dawa from 2010, inviting those from the Delta to join him to preach the holy word. Thus he criss-crossed the Delta (Djenneri, Fakalaari, Kunaari, Mourari, Massinaari, Sanaari, Farimakéri, etc.). In each village he visited, he spent two nights and two days in each mosque in the company of a cohort of young livestock breeders, farmers, adventurers, former santaadji, a few elderly

 A law concerning a family and personal code was passed by the parliament of Mali. Opposition by the country’s Muslim majority (95 %) through the Haut Conseil Islamique allowed the promulgation of this law to be stopped by the president of the Republic. In a second proposal to the parliament the adapted law, now in harmony with Muslim law, was accepted.  See the Malian newspaper L’Indépendant, 21 August 2015.

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persons, and the curious. All contributed 250 F per day for the three meals prepared in the enclosure of the mosque by the participants themselves. After the coup d’état and the security crisis, Hamadoun Koufa intensified his sermons from Ganguel, where he had settled in 2010. It is in this village of Rimaibé, in the commune of Wouro Guiré (Ténenkou cercle), that the initiation of the dawa was adopted. He predicted in a video, dated 2011, that the peaceful dawa would be relegated to the background with the arrival of real jihadists who were already on our doorstep. The latter, according to him, would use strong-arm methods to make everyone give way. At the end of 2012, the predicted moment arrived and he joined Iyad Ag Ghali, his mentor in the north of Mali. The news of his membership of Ançar Dîne²⁴ resounded throughout Macina. We thus witnessed an unprecedented socio-political upheaval, encouraged by the commitment of the popular preacher Hamadoun Koufa and his men. The notorious presence of Fulani fighters in the Konna and Diabaly attacks is proof of this (see ORTM,²⁵ January 2013). The ‘Fulani’ jihadists thus fought the French, Chadians, and Malians on all fronts as far as the mountains of Tigaragar—and everywhere else. ‘After the defeat of Konna following the intervention of the Serval force, he left for Burkina Faso via Douentza,’ Issouf ²⁶ told us in September 2015 in Douentza. After two years of silence, he returned to Mauritania and the Central Delta in Mali. Since then, a portion of Fulani has never stopped taking up arms and responding to the call of the mujahideen that he became—and hence the radicalization of part of the Fulani community.²⁷

Toward the radicalization of a Fulani fringe The radicalization of part of the Fulani stockbreeder community did not happen all of a sudden. From our investigations, it emerged that many factors have led to this radicalization. We will present the principal factors that make it possible to understand the recruitment of the Fulani community. These factors are political,

 The militant Islamist group led by Iyad Ag Ghaly.  Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision du Mali.  He came to say goodbye to my uncle Issouf and family in January 2013 and told him that he was leaving for Timbuktu. My uncle was not fooled and knew he was getting ready to go to Burkina Faso, because Timbuktu was already under French bombing.  After this article was finalised, on November 22 2018, Hamadoun Koufa was killed in an attack on a Jihadi camp by the French Army (opération Barkhane) in Mali. His death is still contested in the region.

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socio-historical, and religious. This last factor is especially fed by the call to jihad by Hamadoun Koufa through his sermons.

The sermons of Hamadoun Koufa To place these sermons as the last of the causes—or as the first, as is the case here—would not have changed anything in the sense that all the ingredients were present for potential unrest in the centre of the country. This is why he had no difficulty in getting some of the Fulani to subscribe to Salafist discourse. The sermons of Hamadoun Koufa²⁸ contributed to the involvement of some Fulani on the side of the actors in the crisis in central Mali because these sermons denounced the social defects resulting from certain unorthodox practices by various officials. Thus, in central Mali, we can distinguish several causes that facilitated the recruitment of communities.

The state through its representatives Firstly, there are the frustrations born from the violent acts of the army, the abuses by judges, and the other repressive services of the state (gendarmerie, water and forestry agents, etc.), in complicity with Fulani diowro and amirou ²⁹ leaders—as confirmed by the ICG report of July 2016.³⁰ The various authorities are criticized, and nomadic pastoralists are at the end of their tether because of the extortion to which they are subjected by one official or another. According to a senior official from a central prefecture: The current situation is due to the lack of moral standards in public life. The customs officer, the policeman, the security guard, the gendarme, the soldier on mission, the judge, the sub-prefect, the prefect—everyone takes from this population of stockbreeders. The latter— who gives only, while no one gives to him—will rise up as soon as he has the strength to defend himself. It has happened, and this is what we are living through today.

 He criticizes the Fulani community for having accepted so many injustices on the part of the agents of the state who grown rich at their expense. At the same time, he denounces the complicity of Fulani leaders who deprive their stockbreeder parents for the benefit of a uniform wearer or of a judge whose origin they do not even know.  Diowro and amiiru are names for chiefs, or different orders.  Report of the International Crisis Group, No. 238, 6 July 2016.

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The rebellion Secondly, we can add the consequences of the raids of the Tuareg rebellion in the 1990s and the theft of animals by the rebellion—initially by the Tuareg in 2012 and only in the Méma. It should be emphasized here that the rebellion of the 1990s hit the Fulani pastoralists in the centre of the country with full force, initially by the occupation of watering sites and then by the abduction of animals and murders. As we were informed at the agriculture service in Ténenkou: In 1992, the pools dug by the ODEM³¹ to create suitable conditions for a long stay in the Méma and Sahel were occupied by Tuareg stockbreeders who had pitched tents all around them. They were guarded by armed men from the Tuareg rebellion, thus preventing other stockbreeders [the Fulani] from watering their herds.

Furthermore, ‘more than ten thousand head of cattle and almost as many sheep and goats were stolen by Tuaregs in the first half of the 1990s’, according to Samba Yero Dicko, president of the association of cattle-breeder victims of the rebellion. As we were told in November 2016 by a notable from Ansongo (Gao region): ‘This rebellion, along with the state, has particularly harmed two communities in the country: the Arabs, thanks to their trade in the Sahel, and the Fulani, thanks to their cattle in the north and the centre.’

The Diina Thirdly, there is another very important fact that must not be overlooked: ‘the nostalgia for the Fulani hegemony of the 19th century’. It should be noted that the Inner Delta of the Niger and its fringes were from the beginning until the middle of the 19th century under the domination of the Fulani maraboutic classes, as a consequence of the Diina founded by the famous marabout Sékou Amadou. At its peak the Diina was destroyed by El Hadj Oumar Tall, another Fulani jihadist. This prematurely terminated hegemony has been remembered by generations in the form of a nostalgia for past greatness, and this has been encouraged by griots who recall—through cassette recordings (popular in the 1970s and 1980s) or, on other occasions, socio-cultural events—the belle époque of this hegemony when the Fulani were the masters. So one often hears in the Delta that ‘diina wartan’ (‘the Diina will return’). This psychological and historical factor also largely explains the involvement of part of the Fulani community in jihadism.  Office de Développement de l’Elévage de Mopti.

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The meeting at Doungoura The security situation in the country has also contributed to the recruitment of Fulani pastoralists. With the intervention of the international community, one had hoped for a rapid end to the Malian crisis. However, the diversity of agendas has only helped the Malian problem to get worse, and new actors are constantly being drawn into the fray, often in areas where they are less expected. Indeed, central Mali having been abandoned, the spectre of cattle rustling hung over the head of the breeders like the sword of Damocles. According to an agricultural officer in Ténenkou, interviewed in January 2017: In 2012, during the transhumance in the Méma from Karéri to Niafunké, the Fulani were persecuted by MNLA [Tuareg] men. They were subjected to the law of the latter with thefts, often accompanied by killings.

The victims of these incidents sought in vain from the transitional authorities the authorization to arm themselves, even if only in defence. It was after this failure that the meeting at Doungoura (Ténenkou cercle) was organized. According to a community councillor from Ténenkou, interviewed in February 2017: ‘It was during this meeting in 2013 that the Fulani officials present asked the nomadic pastoralists to take up arms to guard against the potential raids of the Tuaregs.’ S. Koita, interviewed in Ténenkou cercle in March 2017, was in full agreement: It was the mayors and village chiefs present at the Dungoura meeting who encouraged Fulani pastoralists to arm themselves because the situation was out of control. For the organizers of this meeting, faced with rebel irredentists, the Fulani had to arm themselves to avoid the scenario of the 1990s.

Immediately after this meeting, the herders, especially the badiyankoobé (nomads), armed themselves and more than once deterred the Tuaregs during the transhumance of the same year in the Méma. The Tuaregs, who had tried to seize the herds, met with fierce resistance from Fulani pastoralists, and since then there has been a balance of power. ‘Some badiyankoobé who bought weapons joined Hamadoun Koufa’s troops as soon as they arrived in the Delta in January 2015,’ an NGO official said. Unlike the rebels, the slogan of the jihadists is very simple: ‘konè gooto mbouri konnè une hewbè’ (‘it’s better to have only one enemy than many’). Thus, they attacked the state only, in the form of some of its representatives that are disliked by nomadic pastoralists. According to D. Coulibaly—a village councillor in Karéri commune—in August 2016, ‘To be

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specific, it’s related to justice and all the armed groups,³² because of the bad behaviour of water and forestry agents and the police.’

The Fulani actors in central Mali’s crisis: From clubs to Kalashnikovs For a little over two years, the presence of jihadists in central Mali has caused a lot of ink to be spilt. Both the national and international press, analysts, consultants, and researchers are having a field day indulging in the most simplistic and even hare-brained interpretations—because arrived at hurriedly—and sometimes perhaps in complete fabrications from start to finish. The use of the titles Front de Libération du Macina (FLM), Ansar Dine in the centre and/or south, and Katiba Macina to designate the so-called radical groups that operate in central Mali are just pure inventions for the local populations—because, on the ground, repentants or ex-fighters, sympathizers, and even ordinary citizens that were questioned do not know what the FLM is. Some heard this expression for the first time through the questions we asked them. In the first place, they are all illiterate³³ and the only writing they master is Arabic, a language which they speak little. In no discussion, in no interview whatsoever with the pastoralists, with the ex-fighters, or even in the talks with many sympathizers was the name of the FLM mentioned. The respondents were completely unaware of the existence of such a movement. They know of Hamadoun Koufa (but not as a leader of an organized movement, as it is claimed, with secessionist tendencies). These men who operate in the area are called yimbè laddè (‘people or men of the bush’) and are referred to as such by the local population—or in rare cases they are referred to as ançarou ein (‘the defenders’), in connection with Iyad Ag Ghali’s movement Ansar Dine. In some of these recordings, the alleged ideologue of the group speaks of alqaida ein to designate these men, otherwise known as ‘the jihadists or Islamists’ who act ruthlessly in the area. The Tuaregs of Karéri commune, who make much of their skill in the handling of weapons, call them garibou laddè (‘bush beggars’). Our respondents, with the exception of the literate, know only about the existence of al-Qaeda—and of Ançarou (Ansar Dine) to a lesser extent.

 There were reports from Human Rights Watch and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) of clashes between FAMa and the Donso (a cultic hunter brotherhood) militia—according to Adam Thiam, an editorialist and writer on the Malian TV channel Africable, during the programme ‘Le debates du dimanche’ in July 2017.  In the sense of those who are unfamiliar with the Latin script.

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They know nothing of all the rest: of the Front de Libération du Macina, of the Katibat du Macina, of MUJAO,³⁴ or of Boko Haram—and even less of Daesh. It emerged clearly from our interviews that the mujahideen are of all ethnicities, even if they are mostly speakers of Fulfulde or simply Fulani people. Among these engaged Fulani, we have first of all non-native nomadic pastoralists; secondly, former santaadji; and thirdly, téréré (livestock thieves). They are, for the most part—as we were told by a civilian administrator stationed in Ténenkou cercle—frustrated victims of the various injustices and abuses committed by the agents of the state (administration and justice, police, water and forestry officials) and also by the chiefs of the lands and waters of the Delta (diowro).

The Badiyankoobé (non-native nomadic pastoralists) The Fulani community is very diverse and the differences go beyond family names, contrary to what some texts wish us to believe. In his February 2017 article, Mathieu Pellerin writes: ‘The Diallo families, of minor importance statuswise, are historically victims of the noble Dicko families.’ Such allegations do not reflect reality and concerns only Hairé³⁵ to a certain extent. What is really going on in central Mali is an opposition between nomadic and sedentary Fulanis. The former are seduced by the Islamist discourse that ‘the earth and all it contains belong to God’—because it is ‘God who sends the rain and therefore the water that makes the bourgou³⁶ grow on land that belongs to the same God’. In the Delta, the power of the customary authorities³⁷ is such that it is not possible to fish in a pond, to cultivate a patch of land, or to graze in a bourgoutière (wetland pasture) without first giving something to the owner or manager (acting on behalf of the owner). Incoming nomads, frustrated by the mistreatment they have suffered so far, make good use of the lands and waters that the natives denied them access to without payment of rights of precedence. Exploited by the diowro (owners of the bourgoutières) and the jom n’diyam (owners of the waters) in complicity with the administrative, military, and judicial authorities, the non-native breeders found in this Islamist discourse a way to assert

 Mouvement pour l’Unicité et le Jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest (‘Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa’).  A rural commune in Douentza cercle in the Mopti Region.  Echinochloa stagnina, a species of aquatic grass that grows in tropical Africa. It survives flooding in the floodplains very well and is a crucial source of fodder.  Among the most influential of the customary authorities are the diowro, who are mostly Diall (and so Diallo).

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themselves. People from the Dawa Tabligh and their associates ‘have succeeded in arming these illiterates and indoctrinating them. Since they’ve been there, injustices and levies have diminished or even stopped,’ according to an administrator in central Mali, during our interview at the beginning of 2017. In his view: It’s an ideal Islamo-revolutionary that is forming in the Delta. We took the weak, and by giving them Kalashnikovs transformed their weakness into strength. And we took the poor, and by giving them petro-dollars turned their poverty into wealth. In this way, we’ve created a new man who isn’t afraid of anything.

The santaadji The second group, as mentioned above, is composed of santaadji (former Quranic students). Unlike those emerging from the standard education system, the state does not make any provision for the young who emerge from Quranic schools, who are more numerous in the Fulani area in the centre of the country. Engaging in jihadism and fighting the state is a way for these ‘rejeter le système qui les a rejetés’ (‘to reject the system that rejected them’), as Samb wrote in his book Boko Haram (2015). Poorer than pastoralists and civil servants, santaadji are even girls’ last choice in terms of marriage. One of our interlocutors reported the following remark from a Diafarabé notable: ‘mbamanan faa mi djoguènè’ (‘to marry his daughter to a santaarou is to support for life the expenses of his couple’). Unemployment and precarious living conditions are without doubt the main reasons for their engagement in jihadism. According to an Institute for Security Studies (ISS) analysis note of August 2016 on the radicalization of young people in Mali, this constitutes one of the causes of recruitment of youth by terrorist groups.³⁸

The téréré In third and last place, we have the téréré (cattle thieves). They are most often Fulani, Rimaibe, and exceptionally Diawando. Good athletes, téréré can be bourgoukoobé (Fulani from the bourgou) like the senonkoobé (Séno Fulani) or wuwarbé (nomadic Fulani from Nampala). Some of them are from destitute families who want to enrich themselves by all means by using shortcuts. Others have decimated their own livestock, or that of their family, before turning into téréré. Some of them, who are cited as being among the actors in the crisis in central  See www.issafrica.org, August 2016.

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Mali, are prison escapees thanks to the attack on Ténenkou in February 2012 by the Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad (MNLA). However, not all the actors in the crisis in central Mali are Fulani only. According to a female bozo ³⁹ (an association president): ‘Aw ka jihadists nanny, chiiya bé dé boula’ (‘Among the jihadists here, all ethnic groups are represented’). She confirmed ‘the presence of Kotya⁴⁰ bozos among those who preached in Diafarabé in November 2016’. These therefore are the three main categories of mujahideen behind the unrest in central Mali, spreading everywhere terror and desolation in the name of the shariah of God.

The manifestations of jihad This jihad is characterized by recordings that speak of jihad, glorifying the welcome accorded to mujahideen in the afterlife. Thus, in his first recording (dated the second half of 2015) since his recruitment in January 2013, Hamadoun Koufa says: From now on, we will start all our cassettes [recordings] with verses calling to mind the jihad, because the Prophet (peace be upon him) spoke about jihad, and because we remember about jihad in order to direct each other toward jihad.

‘Mi yeti Allah, mi laati kei jihadist’ (‘I thank Allah for making me a jihadist’), he says in another recording, from 2016. Following the establishment of Hamadoun Koufa’s men in the Central Delta and its surroundings at this time, the region has been almost cut off from the world because it has been abandoned by the state, its administration, and even the soldiers of MINUSMA and the Barkhane force.⁴¹ This absence comforts the jihadists and their sympathizers and creates a sense of clear abandonment among the people. In a 2016 recording, Hamadoun Koufa asked the population: even if it [the population] is against him and his men, to recognize that it no longer pays taxes, licences, and other duties. And it is no longer punished for not having paid this or

 Interview in Diafarabé, 11 January 2017.  Togora Kotya commune in Ténenkou cercle.  The ‘anti-insurgent’ Operation Barkhane (begun 1 August 2014) is the successor to the French Operation Serval (ended 15 July 2014). Operation Serval focussed on the north of Mali; Operation Barkhane covers five Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger) and is headquartered in N’Djaména, capital of Chad.

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that to some agent of the state. This freedom has been acquired thanks to the mujahideen that are there.

Notwithstanding this, the population are victims of harassment, intimidation, and prohibitions. In Ouro Ardo commune, they deterred women from washing themselves at the river; from lying down in the open air in Karéri commune. Dance evenings were forbidden in Diafarabé; flute players were beaten up in Mopti Kéba; there was a desecration of cult sites in Hamdallaye. The 30 crossing points (sg. yaaral; pl. n’diaarè) from Diafarabé to Walado, which operate between November and March each year, have been boycotted for two years. We must not forget the cases of attacks against the Malian armed forces and the soldiers of the United Nations mission; the targeted assassinations, as was the case of the water and forestry agents in Diafarabé on the 6 April 2015, and that of the Fulani informer in Tougou in September 2015; and the settling of accounts like that of a Fulani mayor at Ouro Modi in 2016, of a Fulani village chief at Dogo in 2015, and of a Bambara city councillor in Karéri on 30 April 2016—to mention just a few.

Conclusion In summary, we can say that Hamadoun Koufa is a man with two faces. First, as a brilliant student, he had been an idol of many young people of his time as a consequence of the precocity of his perfect mastery of the Quran. As a poetsinger, he knew how to give joy to his audience (girls, young santaadji) and the Fulani to a large extent. His cassettes sold for a decade like hotcakes, thanks to the independence of spirit that characterized the message they conveyed. The second part of his life is one that gives rise to many questions. He stopped finding general approval from the beginning of his career as a preacher because of his literal interpretation of the Quran, his forthright views, his unsavoury words about the descendants of the families of sheikhs, and his inappropriate remarks in regard to marabouts and santaadji. To make matters worse, his membership of the Dawa Tabligh created a split between him and the marabout families and a large part of the population of Maliki allegiance. Both failed to understand his rapid reconversion, the justification of his violent discourse, and his call to jihad. Dazed, many had asked him directly or indirectly, why, instead of inciting others to an uprising, he himself was not starting to do as Sékou had done in his day. Indeed, he was reminded that the latter did not need to tour around (dawa) to launch his jihad in 1818.

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We must recognize that his discourse convinced all those who suffered from the attitudes and behaviour of the police, the administration, the judiciary, and their associates—in this case, the local elites (diowros, amirou, and other officials and senior officers, etc.). The victims of these abuses and extortions have committed to jihad and continue to do so, especially after the recent clash of FAMa with hunters of the Bambara Donso militia. FAMa, it should be remembered, are accused of committing abuses against Fulani elements throughout the centre of the country.

References General Ba, Amadou Hampaté & Daget, Jacques (1984). L’Empire Peul du Massina. Préface by Th. Monod. Abidjan: NEA, Paris: Edition de l’E.H.E.S.S. De Barriere, Catherine & Olivier (2002). Un droit à inventer: Foncier et environnement dans le Delta Intérieur du Niger (Mali). Paris: IRD. Laurent, Samuel (2013). Sahelistan: de la Libye au Mali, au cœur du nouveau jihad. Paris: Seuil. Pellerin, Mathieu (2017). ‘Les trajectoires de radicalisation religieuse au Sahel’. Notes de l’Ifri, February. Samb, Bakary (2015). Boko Haram: du problème nigérian à la menace régionale. Dakar-Le Caire: Editions Timbuktu. Sanankoua (Bintou) (1990). Un Empire Peul au XIXè siècle. Paris: Edition Karthala et ACCT. Sangaré, Boukary (May 2016). ‘Le Mali central: épicentre du djihadisme’. Gripp. https://www.grip.org/fr/node/2008 Thiam, Adam (March 2017). ‘Centre du Mali: enjeux et dangers d’une crise négligée’. Institut du Macina et le centre H.D. pour le dialogue humanitaire.

Reports ICG (July 2016). Le centre du Mali: la fabrique d’une insurrection? https://www.crisisgroup.org/fr/africa/west-africa/mali/central-mali-uprising-making ISS (August 2016). ‘Jeunes et radicalisme au Mali: motivés par la foi ou par les circonstances’. Rapport Conférence des Bourgoutières, Mopti. 19, 20 November 2000.

Interviews Community leaders Diowros Djom N’diyam

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Amiirou Djom Sarrè Administrative and local authorities Préfet Sous-préfet Maire Chambre d’agriculture Coopérative d’éleveurs Coopérative de pêcheurs Marabouts Imams Shepherds Displaced persons Militia members

Articles in the media Abdoulaye Diarra. ‘Moussa Sidibe’. l’Indépendant, 21 August 2015. ‘Attaque dans le sud du Mali: la piste de la secte Dawa privilégiée’. RFI, 13 September 2012, modified 14 September 2012 at 05:50. ‘Bakary Sambe in Le Monde: Le Mali Demeure L’épicentre Du Djihadisme Au Sahel’. Le Pays, 27 March 2017. Carayol, Remi. ‘Si les peuls basculent’. Jeune Afrique, no. 2892, 12 – 18 June 2016. Fouchard, Anthony. ‘Le Mali, sous le choc, rend hommage aux soldats tués à Nampala’. (Ségou, Mali, envoyé spécial), Le Monde, 22 July 2016 at 10 h 54. Guichaoura, Yvan & Alpha Oumar Ba-Konaré Dougoukolo. ‘Djihad, révolte et auto-défense au centre du Mali’. Le Monde, 14 October 2016 at 11 h 22; updated 16 October 2016 at 16 h 08. Keita, Ibrahim. Mali-actu, 9 July 2015. ‘Mali: Le djihadiste Bamoussa Diarra etabli son QG dans la forêt Wagadou, dans la région de Ségou’. Nord-Sud Journal, 2 May 2017. ‘Processus de sortie de crise: L’Association Tabital Pulaaku exige la dislocation de toutes les milices’. Le Démocrate, 22 February 2017.

Boukary Sangaré

12 Central Mali: Toward a Fulani question? Abstract: This chapter discusses the issue of violent extremism and radicalization in the context of the birth of a Fulani issue in central Mali, similar to the Tuareg question in the north of the country. First, we analyse the factors of community radicalization under the lens of a missed opportunity to consolidate community resilience, initiated in a bottom-up approach by Fulani nomadic pastoralists from the centre of Mali through the creation of Dewral Pulaaku. In a second step, we discuss the expansion of extreme violence through armed groups (militias and jihadist groups). This second part looks at the formalization of violence through armed groups that have territorial and social control of certain areas of central Mali. We analyse the motivations that favoured the allegiance in the Mopti Region of nomadic pastoralists with jihadist movements. Radicalization at the individual level is studied in a third step. We focus on the story of a young radicalized person to demonstrate how, at the confluence of the first two types of radicalization, young people are radicalized. At this level, certain individual factors (internalized difficulties and suffering during adolescence) specific to the personal trajectory of the individual are taken into account and contribute to the person’s choice of violence. Radicalization at the individual level is a function of the trajectory of the individual. Finally, the fourth section of the chapter is purely analytical and questions the link between Fulani pastoralists in central Mali and jihad. At this level, we wonder if peul (nomadic pastoralist) is equivalent to ‘jihadist’ in the centre of Mali. This chapter is a response to the current trend of amalgamation between Fulanis and jihadists in this area. We consider the probable existence of a Fulani question in the centre of Mali—similar to that of the Tuareg question in the north.

Introduction Armed conflicts are inseparable from the contemporary history of Mali. From independence in 1960 to the present day, Mali has passed through four Tuareg rebellions, all of them launched in the north, contesting the central power of Bamako. By the end of 1962, the first Tuareg rebellion called into question the management of power by the authorities of the first republic, a socialist regime constituted primarily of sedentary communities. The recent crisis, triggered in 2012 by the Tuareg rebels in northern Mali, gives the impression—since the signing of the agreement for peace and reconcihttps://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-012

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liation in May and June 2015—of having ‘shifted’¹ to the centre of Mali. Since mid-2015, the central region has remained the epicentre of the Malian crisis.² It has since been the scene of community confrontations, terrorist attacks, settling of scores, and banditry. The root causes of this crisis are essentially of a political, social, and economic nature. The central region, like the other regions of the north, has been subjected to transformations (social, political, environmental, etc.) for several decades. The semi-nomadic communities of central Mali are struggling to adapt to these abrupt changes. The development actions supported by the state and its partners have long favoured the sedentary communities to the detriment of nomads. The 2012 crisis exacerbated community conflicts in the area.³ It led to the appearance of new actors calling into question the state and its institutions. Before the advent of the 2012 crisis, the legitimacy and integrity of local state representatives was already questioned by some communities in central Mali. The state’s representatives at the local level were conspicuous in terms of their corruption and extortion. During the occupation, the role of the state as sole provider of justice and security to people was replaced by armed jihadist groups. Pastoralists (seedoobe or ega hoodabe)⁴ of Douentza cercle pledged allegiance to MUJAO⁵ to benefit from the protection of the latter. Access to ‘impartial’ justice—without having to spend money to gain favour with a judge⁶—delivered by MUJAO has been an important factor in the connection between Fulanis and the jihad. The presence of non-state armed groups that are able to partly replace the state has encouraged the joining of these groups by pastoralist communities.

 We relativize the use of this word since, despite the signing of the agreement, the north remains the battlefield between coalition signatories—Coordination des Mouvements de l’Azawad (CMA) and Plateforme—and between Malian armed forces and terrorist or jihadist groups.  B. Sangaré, ‘Le centre du Mali: épicentre du djihadisme?’, GRIP, Bruxelles, 20 May 2015.  B. Sangaré, ‘Le centre du Mali’.  Nomads or those practising transhumance.  Mouvement pour l’Unicité et le Jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest (‘Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa’)  In the perception of most communities, the verdict given by a judge comes from the judge’s personal decision. People think that by bribing a judge, in a conflict trial for example, one can win the case or avoid being sentenced to prison, which is considered by the Fulani nobles to be a very bad outcome. The Fulani dignitaries are accustomed to say that as long as they are in possession of their cattle, they will never go to prison. This is understood by most administrative, security, and judicial authorities, so they also cooperate and profit to enrich themselves during their stay in Mopti. There are areas in Mali, including the Mopti Region, that are described by government officials as ‘cash cows’.

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However, despite the international military intervention and the recent ‘efforts’⁷ of the Malian government in terms of defence of the territory and the security of the population and their property,⁸ the central region—previously neglected⁹ in the overall crisis management strategy of 2012 for the benefit of the northern regions—is now arousing interest from the international community¹⁰ and the G5 Sahelian countries. The numerous conferences, symposia, and political meetings currently being held in European¹¹ and Sahelian capitals to enlighten decision makers on the security issue in central Mali are a perfect illustration. It should also be noted that central Mali is a sensitive issue for the Sahel because of its geographical position and the possible connection between the armed groups of the centre and those operating in neighbouring Sahel countries (particularly in Burkina Faso and Niger). In addition, central Mali is at the heart of the military strategies of the G5 Sahel countries, and the city of SévaréMopti was recently chosen to house the G5 Sahel central command post of the G5 Sahel forces for the fight against terrorism.¹² Beyond this territorial issue, the Fulani identity is the subject of considerable study. The crisis in pastoralism facing the Sahel directly affects this ethnic group, which itself is also in crisis. The issue has now become a common concern for

 These efforts are understood differently by the population. While the efforts of the army in the fight against terrorism are praised in the south, in central Mali the army is disparaged by the Fulani nomadic pastoralists—since the army operations are most often directed against these nomadic pastoralists who would instigate the jihad movement in central Mali. We can also note the denunciation of human rights violations by the FIDH and the AMDH in their report entitled ‘Mali: Terrorisme et impunite font chanceler un accord de paix fragile’ (‘Mali: Terrorism and impunity make a fragile peace agreement falter’), Paris & Bamako, May 2017.  A ‘Plan de Sécurisation Intégré des régions Centre du Mali’ (PSIRC) was created in the first quarter of 2017 and aims to reduce insecurity through the combination of defence and security actions and development actions. The plan provides for the creation of several security posts and equipment for the defence and security forces. It also provides for the creation of poles of development through access to basic social services (schools, health centres) and trade fairs to boost the local economy. The PSIRC subscribes to the spirit of the famous words arguing that there can be no development without security and vice versa.  Adam Thiam, ‘Centre du Mali: Enjeux et dangers d’une crise négligée’, Centre pour le Dialogue humanitaire, March 2017.  Interpeace/IMRAP, ‘Portraits croisés: Analyse locale des dynamiques de conflit et de résilience dans la zone de Koro-Bankass’, June 2017. http://www.interpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/ 2017-Interepeace-IMRAP-Portraits-Crois%C3 %A9s-Koro-Bankass.pdf [Accessed 1 July 2017].  Recently several symposia, conferences, and high-level political meetings took place in Paris, Amsterdam, and Brussels on the Fulani and the crisis in central Mali.  The announcement was made during the meeting of heads of state of G5 Sahel and France in Bamako on 2 July 2017.

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the countries of the Sahel. In central Mali, the jihadist breakthrough is led by a Fulani preacher, Hamadoun Koufa, head of Katibat Ansar Dine du Macina.¹³ A few miles from the Hayré (Douentza cercle), on the other side of the border (in Burkina Faso), another movement (Ansaroul Al Islam), led by the Fulani preacher Malam Ibrahima Dicko, has spread terror through several attacks against the armed forces of Burkina Faso. The Malian and Nigerian armed forces have been the subjects recently of several terrorist attacks attributed to Nigerien Fulani, former elements of the MUJAO. This latter case is exacerbated by rivalries between Fulani communities and Daoussahaqs in the Ménaka Region. This is why we wonder about the existence of a Fulani issue in this region. Are we witnessing the emergence of a Fulani issue in central Mali like the Tuareg issue in the north of the country? What factors have favoured the allegiance of Fulani from central and northern Mali to violent extremist movements? What is feeding ethnic radicalization in this region? What is the impact of military interventions on security and the reduction of violence in the region? Why are traditional community conflicts becoming more violent and difficult to contain? Why are the institutions of local governance challenged? This chapter is divided into four sections: – Community radicalization following a lack of opportunity for resilience: the case of Dewral Pulaaku – The introduction of extreme violence by armed groups – Individual radicalization, followed by a case study of a young pastoralist from central Mali – The Fulani and jihadism in central Mali.

 Katibat Ansar Dine du Macina is the branch of Ansar Dine (of the Malian jihadist Iyad Aghaly) in the Macina area (named after the former Macina Empire). Ansar Dine du Macina is active in the Mopti Region and conducts operations in the border regions of Mopti (Segou, Timbuktu, Gao, and Sahel areas of Burkina Faso). In addition, another movement, Ansarul Islam of the Fulani preacher Malam Ibrahim Dicko from Burkina Faso, is the Burkinabe branch of Ansar Dine. Ansar Dine du Macina collaborates with Ansarul Islam to conduct large-scale operations in the area, especially since the preacher Malam Ibrahim Dicko was a member of MUJAO with the elders of MUJAO who are now engaged in jihad in the Mopti Region.

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Map 12.1: Source: International Crisis Group

Community radicalization following a lack of opportunity for resilience: The case of Dewral Pulaaku The Dewral Pulaaku Association,¹⁴ initiated by some influential Fulani pastoralist leaders from Hayré and Seeno (Mopti Region) in 2014 after the re-conquest of the occupied areas, aimed at promoting pastoralism, preventing inter- and intracommunity conflicts, and defending and protecting the rights of nomadic pastoralists. Dewral Pulaaku could be considered as an emerging civil society organization in the Mopti Region. Initially, the organization aimed to re-establish the renaissance of Fulfulde and allow Fulani pastoralists to take their destinies in hand in managing the crisis that the region is going through. Fulani pastoralists were rightly or wrongly accused of massively joining the jihadists, and during

 Dewral pulaaku in Fulfulde means ‘Fulani agreement’.

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military operations many of them were arrested, imprisoned, or reported missing. It is in this context that Dewral was born to attempt to manage this crisis within the Fulani community and to give a voice to nomadic pastoralists, who had found themselves on the sidelines of the management of local affairs for a number of years.¹⁵ Although Dewral is officially an apolitical association, it could be considered as an organization defending the political, social, and economic interests of the Fulani of Hayré and Seeno. It is essentially made up of Fulani, including seedoobé (nomadic pastoralists). Since its creation, it has been denounced by certain political elites (the Weheebe) as a jihadist organization seeking to legalize itself since its president himself joined MUJAO in 2012. In answer to the question of why he joined MUJAO, the president of Dewral Pulaaku, who is also village chief of Boulekessi (located on the Burkina Faso border), responded: When the MNLA¹⁶ occupied the area, the Tuareg made us suffer. They denied us access to pastures in the bush and prevented us from cultivating our fields, and they killed one of my cousins while also raping his wife. I had been threatened with death, and I had to flee from my home to go to Burkina Faso and then to San (Ségou Region). It was this that motivated me to identify able-bodied men in my area to get them to train in the MUJAO camps in Gao. I myself was with them in Gao. It was with the launch of [Operation] Serval that we were dispersed and we even lost a youth during the bombing by the French operation. I want to point out that we did not take up arms to attack the Malian state but to defend ourselves against our enemies. It was for the purpose of self-protection … That’s why with the re-conquest, we created Dewral Pulaaku to defend and protect the interests of nomadic pastoralists. Our association is far from being a terrorist organization.¹⁷

The creation of Dewral is strategic and seems to have been well thought out. The nomads who joined or morally supported MUJAO felt threatened by the return to ‘normalcy’.¹⁸ Threats ranged from discrimination to arrests, despite the pleas of

 See M. De Bruijn, ‘Quest for citizenship of the Fulbe (semi‐) nomads in Central Mali, Counter Voices in Africa’, Blog, June 2015. Available at https://mirjamdebruijn.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/ quest-for-citizenship-of-the-fulbe-seminomads-in-central-mali/ [Accessed 4 February 2018].  Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad, a primarily Tuareg political and military organization based in Azawad in northern Mali. It launched an armed campaign from the north of Mali in January 2012.  Interview with I. M. Dicko, Boulikessi village chief, October 2014. We also used these words in our article on central Mali published by the GRIP (Boukary 2015).  After Operation Serval, the Malian army returned. It targets the Fulani accused of being MUJAO. Amirou Boulikessi, President of Dewral Pulaaku, who knows that he has made a deal with the devil and that people want to make him pay, has taken refuge in Burkina. Then he spends time in Bamako, where state security has stopped him twice (the last time in May 2016). He goes back and forth to Boulikessi, but he never stays long. Everyone has aban-

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Fulani officials and the human rights section of MINUSMA to exonerate those who possessed weapons during the crisis. Dewral’s strategy has consisted in uniting the nomads so that they will not be confronted individually by the challenges which lie ahead. In the meantime, the tensions between the elites and pastoralists in Boni (Haïré) and Mondoro (Seeno) communes have not abated. On the one hand, the elites accuse pastoralists of being the perpetrators of attacks and targeted assassinations in the region. On the other hand, the pastoralists accuse the elites of denouncing them to the army. The multiple arrests of nomadic pastoralists by the Malian army have frustrated many among them. These arrests, tortures, and sometimes assassinations¹⁹ are perceived as abuses by Fulani pastoralists and now feed resentment toward anyone close to the state. Local political opponents in the commune of Haïré have seized the opportunity offered them by this association through its strong ability to mobilize nomadic pastoralists—who constitute an important electorate—by getting themselves elected to office in this association to thereby be able to benefit from the electorate of the nomads at future elections. The existence of Dewral is very much threatened by leadership issues. Its leaders have been arrested several times, imprisoned, and then released. Its president, after being arrested by the Defence and Security Forces of Burkina Faso in the city of Djibo, after the attacks committed by the preacher Malam Ibrahim Dicko’s Ansarul Al Islam, remained in the large prison of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso between November and December 2016 and was then released.²⁰ The Burkina Faso forces suspected him of collaboration with Ansarul and others, confusing him with the Burkina Faso preacher Malam Ibrahim Dicko. Dewral would not exist today but for the commitment of its president and his investment in it for the recognition of the right of pastoralists having taken up arms to defend themselves. Its battle aims at allowing the integration the central Mali’s

doned him, including the cattle owners who pushed him to appeal to the MUJAO and who now describe him as a jihadist.  Human Rights Watch, ‘Mali: Les abus s’étendent dans le sud du pays, les atrocités commises par les groupes armés islamistes et les réponses de l’armée sèment la peur’, Dakar, 19 February 2016. Consulted 5 March 2016. FIDH-AMDH, ‘Mali: la paix à l’épreuve de l’insécurité, de l’impunité et de la lutte contre le terrorisme’, Paris & Bamako, note de situation, 19 February 2016, 7 p. Consulted 27 February 2016.  See Rémi Caryol, ‘Mali: l’histoire du chef de village de Boulikessi, contraint de négocier avec le MUJAO’, available at: http://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/384784/politique/mali-lhistoirechef-village-de-boulikessi-contraint-de-negocier-mujao/ [Accessed 30 December 2016].

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pastoralists into the DDR process²¹ and allowing them to benefit from the peace dividends to the same degree as other communities do. Many of the organization’s members, following this missed opportunity, opted for violence as a means of resolving their differences with the state and the neighbouring communities. In this connection, A. D. argued: The only choice we have for resolving our differences with the state is the use of violence. From the very beginning of Dewral, I maintained that the state was not going to take us seriously. Do you see the result today? Violence was not our choice, but it was imposed on us by the system.

With the arrest of this Fulani leader, many of its members became radicalized and joined the jihadist movements present in the region (Katibat du Macina, Ansaroul Al Islam and Al-Murabitoune). Terrorist attacks in this area multiplied in the last quarter of 2016 and early 2017, coinciding with the incarceration period of the president of Dewral in Ouagadougou. This is why we are tempted to argue that the lack of support for Dewral’s initiatives has further divided pastoralists and deepened the sense of marginalization among them. The community resilience which was introduced with Dewral is losing momentum or even in the process of disappearing, and communities have a tendency to opt for violence as a means for managing their differences of opinion. In response to extreme violence, other communities—victims or those in search of preventive measures— organize themselves by creating their own militias. The next section will deal with armed groups and the introduction of violence into the region.

Introduction of extreme violence by armed groups Currently, there are two categories of armed groups in central Mali: armed selfdefence groups or politico-military militias; and movements claiming jihad (Table 10.1).

 DDR: ‘Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration’, part of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), one of the UN’s post-conflict peace consolidation efforts in Mali.

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Table 12.1: Armed groups in central Mali Group

Nature

Areas of intervention in central Mali

Leader

ANSIPRJ

Militia

Ténenkou, Nampalari

Oumar Aldjana

Ansaroul Islam

Jihadist

Douentza

Ibrahim Malam Dicko

FLM* or Katibat du Macina

Jihadist

Central Delta (Ténenkou, Youwarou, Djenné, Mopti, etc.)

Hamadoun Koufa

Ganda Izo de CMFPR 

Militia

Douentza, Nampalari

Ibrahima Abba Kantao

MDP

Militia

Ténenkou

Hama Founé

MUJAO or Katiba Al-Mansour**

Jihadist

Cercle of Gourma-Rharous in the Tombouctou Region and Cercle of Douentza in the Mopti region

Almansour Ag Alkassoum (Imghad Tuareg, Mali)

* Force de Libération du Macina ** MUJAO was only active in 2012 and its dislocation gave birth to several Katibas and groups linked to AQMI/JNIM and ISGS (Islamic State in the Great Sahara)

The politico-military militias are identifiable in a relatively clear way. Alliance Nationale pour la Sauvegarde de l’Identité Peule et la Restauration de la Justice (ANSIPRJ) (‘National Alliance for the Safeguarding of Fulani Identity and the Restoration of Justice’) created in June 2015 after the clashes between Fulanis and Bambara in Kareri, was directed by a young Touaro-Fulani named Oumar Aldjana.²² At the time of its creation, ANSIPRJ declared war against the Malian army by denouncing the latter’s brutality against the Fulani community in the framework of its missions to fight against terrorism.²³ In November 2016, five months after its creation, the alliance declared that it had laid down its arms and made peace with the government of Mali. It argued:

 ANSIPRJ adopted armed struggle as its mode of operation and claimed (along with some terrorist groups, notably Ansar Dine) responsibility for the deadly attacks against a military camp in the city of Nampala on 19 July 2016. Oumar Aldjana is Fulani by his mother, who is from the Central Delta. His father is a Tuareg. This is why we call him Touaro-Fulani. Oumar Aldjana is known to have a radical position vis-à-vis the state in regard to the situation in central Mali. He first became militant in the associations of young Fulani in Bamako, then took up arms. According to several testimonies, his speeches always advocated for the taking up of arms by young Fulani to get the state to listen to them.  ANSIPRJ was created to put an end to abuses against the Fulani.

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We want to pass this message saying that, for the moment, the Alliance Nationale pour la Sauvegarde de l’Identité Peule et la Restauration de la Justice has laid down its arms and that it subscribes to the logic of peace. Our alliance is part of the Processus d’Alger.²⁴ It is for the stability of Mali, for the territorial integrity of Mali.²⁵

Le Mouvement pour la Défense de la Patrie (MDP) (‘The Movement for the Defence of the Fatherland’) of the Central Delta, Hayre, and Seeno was created in 2015 to express the helplessness of the Fulanis and defend their interests.²⁶ The history of the MDP is inseparable from that of its founder, Hama Founé Diallo. Hama Founé is known to be a brave warrior. He was first a téréré (cattle thief) in the area of Ténenkou and Farimanké (bordering Mauritania). In the 2000s, he participated in the Liberian war as a mercenary. In 2012, Hama Founé joined the branch of the Mouvement National de Libération de l’Azawad based in the Nianfunké sector. He says he joined this Tuareg movement to protect the Fulani community.²⁷ As part of the search for a lasting solution to the crisis in central Mali, the government of Mali is reaching out to those who want to join the peace process. Thus, Hama Founé, with the support of some Fulani notables and officials, created the MDP and joined the Plateforme (coalition of armed movements supporting the government of Mali). However, former Fulani pastoralists and allies who joined MUJAO in 2012 and received military training in the jihadist group camps in Gao are still active in Hayré (Douentza) and Seeno (Koro-Bankass). There are also some elements that prompt one to consider this group more likely to be part of the constellation of self-defence groups. The category of groups engaged in jihadist-type fighting includes Katibat Ansar Dine du Macina and/or the Front de Libération du Macina.²⁸ This movement, whose contours are difficult to define, recruits mainly from the Fulani  The agreement signed in Algiers in June 2015 between the government of Mali and various Tuareg and Arab rebel groups. It is aimed at restoring peace and stability to Mali.  Studio Tamanani, ‘L’alliance peulh affirme-déposer les armes et adhérer au processus de paix’, 18 November 2016. http://www.studiotamani.org/index.php/politique/9649-l-alliancepeuhl-affirme-deposer-les-armes-et-adherer-au-processus-de-paix [Accessed 20 July 2017].  Since June 2016, this movement has become part of the Plateforme. Its membership allowed the 300 active combatants (primarily Fulani) claimed by the MPD to reap the benefits granted to demobilized combatants in the framework of the process of ‘Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration’ (DDR).  International Crisis Group, ‘Centre du Mali: la fabrique d’une insurrection?’, n°238, Bamako/ Dakar/Bruxelles, July 2016.  I consider Front de Liberation du Macina as a misused term. The members of the group called themselves as Mujahidine or people of the Bush (Yimbe Ladde). Finally I prefer the term Katiba du Macina to FLM. This last is an invention by anti-terrorism operations to give legitimacy to their fight in the region.

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community and is partly made up of ex-MUJAO members and followers of Hamadoun Koufa,²⁹ a radical preacher from Mopti Region who is suspected of being its leader—calling for the establishment of a model of the state in the image of the Fulani theocratic empire of Macina (1818 – 1862) under Sékou Amadou—and an ally of Iyad Ag Ghali, whom he met when both were active in the Dawa Tabligh.³⁰ Since the late 1990s, Hamadoun Koufa has, in fact, focused his preaching on the denunciation of elites, whether local authorities, marabouts, Fulani nobles, or representatives of the state, accomplices in the spoliation of Fulani pastoralists and families of low status—for example, the Diallo, who are historically victims of the Dicko noble families. It is the very presence of the state and its justice in its current form (corrupt, oppressive) which are condemned in favour of an Islamic justice recognized as equitable.³¹ It is today a member of the Jamaat Nustrat Al Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM). This objective-motivated radicalization is the driving force of radicalization in central Mali and of the rallying to Katibat du Macina. Ansaroul Al Islam (‘The Faithful of Islam’) is a jihadist movement created by Ibrahim Malam Dicko in the province of Soum (Burkina Faso) in late 2016. It conducted attacks against the Burkina Faso army at the border with Mali. At the beginning of 2017, it settled in Hayré (Douentza) and Seeno Bankass (Koro-Bankass) as a zone of refuge. Thus it had to recruit young people from among the Fulani pastoralists of this area.

Radicalization at the individual level: Extreme violence and social reconfiguration It is still difficult to establish a sociology of individuals who join jihadist movements. Several studies (ICG 2016; ISS 2016; Sangaré 2016; Thiam 2017) conducted over the past two years in Mali have shown that young people engage in movements of extreme violence for various reasons. The rallying factors differ from

 For more information on Hamadoun Koufa, see the chapter by Modibo Galy Cissé in this volume, entitled ‘Hamadoun Koufa: Spearhead of radicalism in central Mali’.  In March 2017, there was a merger of several Malian terrorist groups (Katiba du Macina represented by Hamadoun Koufa, Ansar Dine, AQMI, and Al Mourabitoune) into a new entity called Jamaat Nosrat al-Islam Wal-Mouslimin (JNIM) (‘Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims’), which since then has claimed several attacks against both the Malian Armed Forces and those of MINUSMA.  Mathieu Pellerin, ‘Les trajectoires de radicalisation religieuse au Sahel’, Notes de l’Ifri, Ifri, February 2017, p. 21.

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one youth to another, from one community to another, and from one region to another. Economic, social, cultural, religious, and defence factors are most often identified.³² According to this thesis, the ISS study maintains in its main conclusions: ‘Factors that are not economic, religious or ideological explain the presence of young people in the ranks of armed jihadist groups in Mali.’³³ Particular emphasis is placed on the issue of youth education, by Interpeace and its partners in the study on ‘the trajectories of young people toward new forms of violence in Côte d’Ivoire and Mali’. In the view of this study, the school, the family, and the community no longer agree on the education of young people, which is why many young people without educational credentials engage in extreme violence.³⁴ Furthermore, the egalitarian discourse classically carried by jihadist groups, characterized by a dilution of community identities or status differences, finds a certain acceptance among young people who aspire to change and liberation from the elitist yoke. The nomadic pastoralists of Gourma and Hayré, who have benefited from the assistance of MUJAO, seem in particular to have seen in this movement a way to protect themselves against insecurity. Nomadic pastoralists who have fallen victims to a loss of status seem to have espoused the cause of MUJAO in large numbers, while the solidarity between Seedobe and Toleebe Fulani communities, sharing the same difficulties in terms of access to land and pastoral resources, could have motivated many young Fulanis of Gourma to join the jihadist cause. The analysis of power relations in the Boni area offers interesting insight by underlining the reconfiguration of power relations, in which the area of Douentza is typical. In early September 2016, the town of Boni, bordering Seeno Mango, with large expanses of pastures, was attacked by armed jihadist groups, causing the withdrawal of the army in the neighbouring town of Douentza and then the dismissal of the Minister of Defence.³⁵ Indeed, Boni is one of the last powerful chiefdoms of the area. Boni, even at the time of the Diina (the theocratic empire of Sékou Amadou), is a town whose communities have always rebelled against

 Mathieu Pellerin, op. cit. February 2017.  Institute for Security Studies (ISS), August 2016. ‘Mali’s young ’jihadists’: Fuelled by faith or circumstance?’ Available at: https://oldsite.issafrica.org/uploads/policybrief89-eng-v2.pdf [Last accessed 2 March 2018].  Interpeace, IMRAP & Indigo, ‘Au-delà de l’idéologie et de l’appât du gain: Trajectoires des jeunes vers les nouvelles formes de violence en Côte d’ivoire et au Mali’, Rapport de recherche participative, avec le soutien financier de UNICEF, October 2016.  The same Minister returned in the government of Abdoulaye Idrissa Maiga, formed in April 2017, as Minister of Territorial Administration.

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authority. Under colonization, Boni was the main town of the canton.³⁶ The chief of Boni is as important as Amenokal in Kidal: he is the chief of the Fulani Dicko family. Boni controls the whole area because this is where all the animals of the Delta meet at a particular time of the year. The Opération pour le Développement de l’Elevage dans la région de Mopti (ODEM) (‘Operation for Livestock Development in the Mopti Region’) wanted to dig pastoral wells to look after the animals during the dry season, but the inhabitants of the town opposed this. Historically, the Tuaregs found refuge in Boni and made alliances with the city thanks to the chief of the time, recently deceased—in 1991, in particular, this Boni chief protected the Tuareg. All the large elite families (weheebe) of Hayré are allied with the state to have access to the positions of deputy or minister, according to the changes of the political majority.³⁷ Moreover, at the level of the Douentza cercle, there is a conflict of hierarchy (rivalry of nobility) between the families of Boni and the families of Diona. Each family has a senior cadre of the central administration.³⁸ The chieftaincy of Boni dominates the pastoralists of the region. Tensions between communities are now being exploited by jihadist movements.³⁹ In 2012, MUJAO sought to challenge social relations and forged an alliance with the Fulani subjects of the Dicko family to attack this family and claim their rights, particularly their farmlands. In February 2016, the son of Boni’s chief was murdered. The September 2016 attack, which ended in the kidnapping of the deputy mayor, a member of the Dicko family, can also be read as an attempt to demystify the Dicko family. The situation characterizing Boni appears to be one example of how jihadists are attempting to overturn social relations.⁴⁰  For more information on the history and power relations between the Hayré communities, refer to M. E. de Bruijn & H. Van Dijk, Arid Ways: Cultural Understandings of Insecurity in Fulbe Society, Central Mali. Amsterdam: Thela Publisers, 1995.  N. Bagayoko., B. Ba, B. Sangaré & al. Gestion des ressources naturelles et configuration des relations de pouvoir dans le centre du Mali: entre ruptures et continuité. ASSN, 2017.  Minister Moustaph Dicko is a high-ranking member of the Boni family, and Pr. Ali Nouhoun Diallo of the Diona family. They both campaign in the same political party, Adema PASJ (Parti Africain pour la Solidarité et la Justice).  If one were to believe the many testimonies collected from some of our interlocutors on the ground, the jihadists are at the root of the conflicts between different social categories. They fight for equity and equality of opportunity among the communities, which is perceived negatively by local elites that think that certain social categories are created to lead and others are created to submit to the decisions of the former.  It is difficult to affirm this since we have no access to jihadist leaders to understand their perspective on this situation. We certainly have the views of people who have pledged allegiance to jihadists for their own interests (security, protection, social recognition, etc.), but this is not enough, in our opinion, to clearly establish the position of the jihadists.

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It seems, therefore, that the category of Fulani nobles who consider that current development policies tend to call into question their ancestral power is rather sensitive to Islamist rhetoric. If the Fulani victims of cattle theft and Tuareg attacks on the border strip with Niger and in the Gourma were the first to rally to the jihadist cause, with a view to being able to get weapons and train in MUJAO camps to have an equitable balance of power with their Daoussahaq and Tuareg enemies, it was also the populations of austere religious faith among the Sonrhaï and Dogon communities who joined the MUJAO.

Case study of a radicalized youth through his biographical story The following is the story of B.D., whom we have been around since 2009 having been hosted by his family during our research in Douentza cercle. Following the occupation of his region, B.D. decided to join the MUJAO and then the Katibat du Macina. This story recounts the history of his life and his motivations for joining the jihadists during the crisis in central Mali.

The story of B.D. B.D. comes from a modest family of seedoobe (nomadic pastoralists) of Hayré (Douentza). His father has more than one wife, and B.D. is the first son (hamadi) of his father’s second wife. At a young age (in 1999, when he was only 7 years old), his father sent him to Douentza to study the Quran—a first experience in their family. B.D. attended with children from other areas at Quranic schooling in Séjour in Douentza and then Sévaré. Unlike at home with his family, B.D. had to beg to be able to eat. For more than 6 years, he learned to internalize suffering and to become tough. He learned from other cultures and speaks other languages (Bambara, Sonrhaï, and a smattering of French.) When he returned to his family in 2007, he took care of the animals of the paternal family until the outbreak of the crisis in 2012. He was considered a marabout in the clan. He had some knowledge of Islam, but it was not comparable to that of the great marabouts known in the region. His father found him a woman to marry when he was 18 years old (in February 2010). When Hayré was occupied, his family proposed by that B.D., like other young people of the region, join MUJAO. This decision came from the community, and B.D. did not have much choice. Thus, he joined MUJAO in Gao in 2012 and

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followed the military training. In two months, he completed his military and ideological training brilliantly and was assigned to Gourma and then Ansongo (Gao region). Contrary to what had been envisaged, B.D. did not return to his camp after training with MUJAO to protect his community. He had other motives: to remain longer with MUJAO to gain more experience and to return to create his own armed group—of course, to protect his community and their livestock. In January 2013, Operation Serval was launched and spontaneously put an end to this dream of B.D. He still came out of it all alive. With several other members of MUJAO, they crossed the region of Kidal to take refuge in Algerian territory. He also escaped the Tuareg armed movements that had embarked on the fight against the jihadists and took many of them prisoners of war. B.D. managed to get a job as a worker in a date field in Algeria. He worked there for almost a year until the situation calmed down at home. He was in constant telephone contact with his father. B.D. returned home in February 2015 after two years of forced migration and maintained a low profile for at least six months. His time was divided between taking care of the family animals and practising his religion (prayer, reading the Quran, and teaching Islamic books and the Quran to others). In September 2015, he again committed himself to jihad but this time with Katibat Ansar Dine du Macina. He quickly acquired a role of responsibility, given his mastery of the basic military and ideological teachings. A few months later, he became one of the pillars of this movement in his area. He visited his family once a month. Around the summer of 2016, he learned of the formation of another jihadist movement in the Soum province (Burkina Faso), neighbouring Hayré (Douentza cercle). The new jihadist movement was Ansaroul Al Islam, created by the Fulani preacher Ibrahim Malam Dicko from Burkina Faso.⁴¹ B.D. decided to join Ansaroul for two reasons: his personal knowledge of the leader of Ansaroul during his stay in Gao in 2012, and the geographical vicinity of Hayré to the province of Soum. Ansaroul intervenes on both sides of the two

 ‘In Djibo, capital of the province of Soum, Malam has been known for years. He is a child of the province and well integrated. He was born in the vicinity of Soboulé, a village north of Djibo, a few miles from the Malian border. After graduating from classical republican school and then Quranic school, in Burkina Faso and then abroad, he married the daughter of one of the leading imams of Djibo. Malam is considered a “pious” and “discreet” man. So when he created Al-Irchad, an association for the promotion of Islam, the population of Djibo approved and so did the government. In July 2012, the state gave Al-Irchad official recognition. Malam created his Quranic school and gave sermons in his mosque and on the airwaves of the LRCD and Voix du Soum, two local radio stations.’ Morgane Le Cam, ‘Comment est né Ansaroul Islam, premier groupe djihadiste de l’histoire du Burkina’, Contribution, Le Monde Afrique, Ouagadougou, April 2017.

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borders in spite of its Burkinabe origin. The notion of border is of little importance for these movements. In early 2017, B.D. decided with other young people from his region to have their own Katibat in the Hayré, inheriting the values of MUJAO, Katibat du Macina, and Ansaroul. This brigade was supposedly supported financially by a Tuareg imghad ⁴² who had long been in Arabia. Others think he is an Arab. B.D. and his companions conducted several operations against FAMa⁴³ in Hayré, Seeno, and Gourma. The latest attack, on 18 April 2017, was conducted against the Malian forces at Gourma Rharous, where they were apprehended and arrested by the French forces of Barkhane. Taken to Gao, B.D. was transferred to Bamako where he was brought to the BIJ⁴⁴ at Camp I of the Gendarmerie, before being transferred for judicial investigation to the SE,⁴⁵ where he is currently located. Like B.D., many young Fulani of central Mali are engaged in this manner in jihad. We have heard many such stories. The purpose of this biographical narrative was to illustrate with a concrete example the motivations for the engagement by the youth in violent extremist movements and to present a snapshot of a young jihadist. I know the case of two other young fulani (Y.B. and B.C.), Koranic students, who found themselves in the jihadist units in the area of Serma and Boulikessi without first wanting. They were tricked by recruiters who promised to take them to famous Qur’anic masters where they will not beg and work. They are both currently at the big prison of Bamako.⁴⁶

Fulani and jihadism in central Mali All the signs on the security situation in the central region of Mali suggest that a Fulani issue is developing in this region.⁴⁷ The Fulani community is at the heart of the crisis facing central Mali.⁴⁸ Sometimes, some people⁴⁹ advance fallacious

 A member of the second-highest level in the Tuareg social strata, one step below the nobles.  Forces Armées Maliennes, the armed forces of Mali.  Brigade d’Investigation Judiciaire.  Sécurité d’État or Direction Générale de la Sécurité d’État (DGSE).  B. Sangare, Interview with alleged jihadists at the Great Prison of Bamako. July 2018.  This Fulani issue comes in the form of the revitalization of Fulani society. The relationships of Fulani pastoralists with the state and with their own elites are now undergoing profound changes. These dynamics, according to our analysis, would lead to a society that is less rebellious and more demanding vis-à-vis its rights.  Adam Thiam, op. cit., March 2017.

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arguments and have a tendency to bandy around the following formula: Fulani equals jihadist. During military counter-terrorism operations, many Fulani nomadic pastoralists were arrested, imprisoned, and sometimes reported missing for acts of terrorism or complicity in acts of terrorism. In the large prison of Bamako, the prison guards call them jihadists. We have sometimes visited this Maison d’Arrêt et de Correction in the centre of the Malian capital to inquire about news of alleged jihadists in the context of our academic research. Most often, we are surprised to hear prison guards say: ‘You can see your jihadists only on Fridays between 8 AM and 11 AM. Come back next Friday!’ Our surprise is not related to the refusal of access to the prison but to the ‘jihadist’ label used by the guards. Are they aware that the appropriate term for this category of people is ‘alleged jihadist’, since some are there without having been presented to a judge. All the complexity of the issue is at this level. It has been proven to us on the ground and elsewhere in Bamako that dozens of people are arrested as alleged jihadists by soldiers, handed over to judges, and released for lack of evidence. Upon their release, many of these alleged jihadists, even if they are not jihadists, have become so as a result of being labelled jihadists. The tendency to seek a scapegoat⁵⁰ to become the expiatory victim for what is happening in Mopti Region is leading to disaster. Communities are in a logic of self-defence, protection, and struggle for survival. Community conflicts are multiplying and leading to dozens of victims among the Fulani, Bambara, and Dogon. The crisis in central Mali is the outcome of several years of tense relations, conflicts between communities, and injustice and poor governance on the part of the state. Central Mali is now the epicentre of the crisis in Mali. Several recent analyses of central Mali testify to this. Unlike the crisis in the north of the country, the

 More and more, we read journalistic articles tending to confuse Fulanis with jihadists. On the ground, during military operations, soldiers often accuse Fulani of being jihadists. Many people are often arrested and handed over to the law because they speak only the Fulani language or are dressed in a garb resembling that of jihadists (boubou, babouche, beard, etc.).  The theory of the scapegoat is backed by another theory that serves as a support: at the root of all violence, explains René Girard, there is the ‘mimetic desire’ (désir mimétique), that is to say, the desire to imitate what the Other desires, to possess what others possess—not that this thing is precious in itself, or interesting, but the very fact that it is possessed by another makes it desirable and irresistible, to the point of triggering violent impulses for its appropriation. The theory of mimetic desire postulates that all desire is an imitation (mimesis) of the desire of the Other. Girard takes the opposite view of the romantic belief that desire is singular, unique, imitable. The desiring subject is under the illusion that his desire is motivated by the object of his desire (a beautiful woman, a rare object), but in reality this desire is aroused, fundamentally, by a model (present or absent) that he is jealous of, desires.

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crisis in the centre is considered ‘complex’ and different, according to several analysts. Its causes are political, social, economic, security, and even religious. The complexity of the Malian crisis requires no further demonstration. Despite the signing of a peace agreement in May and June 2015, the end of the crisis in Mali is still not a reality. On the contrary, things are getting worse.⁵¹ Violence is taking hold everywhere in the country. Extreme violence and radicalization of young people are concepts in vogue in Mali. And they sell just as well to the international community. How many projects and programmes are working in the struggle against violent extremism and radicalization in Mali? With what results? Far be it from me to wish to dramatize the situation or be a devotee of pessimism, but the situation in Mali is not good. Communities seem to be losing hope in the state. The little confidence that the populations had in the state seems to be vanishing. In some communities in central Mali, the jihadist groups (Ansar Dine of Macina or FLM) constitute an alternative to the state. They swear by the name of Hamadoun Koufa and jihad. They claim to be mujahideen.⁵² Moreover, many of them have never known the welfare state. The state is synonymous with constraint for many of these nomadic pastoralists in central Mali, with whom we have been rubbing shoulders for almost a decade.

Conclusion The development of this chapter has shown us that radicalization is a reality in central Mali. It manifests in two forms: community and individual. The mismanagement of the crisis in central Mali has fostered the emergence of extremist movements. Several motivations explain the massive allegiance of Fulani pastoralists to ‘jihadist’ movements. In 2012, the search for protection and social recognition was the main motivation. Nowadays, motivations are ideological and related to questions of identity. The Katibat du Macina spreads jihad through religious and ethnic referents. Its discourse has a populist foundation. It calls for revolt to liberate Islam and

 After Operation Serval, which led to the liberation of the occupied regions, central Mali has once again become the epicentre of the crisis in Mali. The crisis has moved from the north to the centre. The remedies developed to find a solution to the so-called northern crisis—namely, the agreement for peace and reconciliation in Mali—have overshadowed the central region, even if the joining of the agreement by the Mouvement pour la défense de la patrie (MDP) of Hama Founé, a specialist in the profession of arms, found a favourable echo among supporters of the cause of the centre.  Pl. of mujahid, a religious fighter who engages in jihad.

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the Fulani community. The analysis shows that a Fulani issue is developing in central Mali, just like the Tuareg issue did in the north.

References Bagayoko, N., Ba, B., Sangaré, B. et al. (2017). Gestion des ressources naturelles et configuration des relations de pouvoir dans le centre du Mali: entre ruptures et continuité. ASSN. Bagayoko, N., Ba, B., Sangaré, B. et al. (2017). ‘Masters of the land: Competing customary and legal systems for resource management in the conflicting environment of the Mopti Region, Central Mali’. The Broker, June. http://www.thebrokeronline.eu/Blogs/Sahel-Watch-a-living-analysis-of-the-conflict-in-Mali/Masters-of-the-land Carayol, – R. (2016). ‘Mali: l’histoire du chef de village de Boulikessi, contraint de négocier avec le MUJAO’. http://www.jeuneafrique.com/mag/384784/politique/mali-lhistoire-chef-village-de-boulikessi-contraint-de-negocier-mujao/ [Accessed 30 December 2016]. De Bruijn, M. (2015). ‘Quest for citizenship of the Fulbe (semi)nomads in Central Mali, Counter Voices in Africa’. Blog, June 2015. www.connecting-in-times-of-duress.nl De Bruijn, M. E., Pelckmans, L. & Sangaré, B. (2015). Communicating war in Mali, 2012: On offline networked political agency in times of conflict. Journal of African Media Studies 7(2): 109 – 128. doi: 10.1386/jams.7.2.109_1 De Bruijn, M. E. & Sangaré, B. (2012). La zone frontalière avec la supposée ‘République de l’Azawad’. http://www.tombouctoumanuscripts.org/db/entry/la_zone_frontaliere_avec_la_supposee_republique_de_lazawad_/ (published 6 June on the site of Tombouctou manuscrits (UCT) Afrique du Sud). De Bruijn, M., Sangaré, B. & al. (2016). Mobile pastoralists in Central and West Africa: Between conflict, mobile telephony and (im)mobility. In The Future of Pastoralism, J. Zinsstag, E. Schelling & B. Bonfoh (eds), Scientific and Technical Review 35(2): 649 – 657. De Bruijn, M. E. & Van Dijk, H. (1995). Arid Ways: Cultural Understandings of Insecurity in Fulbe Society, Central Mali. Amsterdam: Thela Publisers. Human Rights Watch (2016). ‘Mali: Les abus s’étendent dans le sud du pays, les atrocités commises par les groupes armés islamistes et les réponses de l’armée sèment la peur’. Dakar, 19 February 2016. Human Right Watch (2016). ‘Mali: la paix à l’épreuve de l’insécurité, de l’impunité et de la lutte contre le terrorisme’. Paris & Bamako, note de situation, 19 February 2016. International Crisis Group (ICG) (July 2016). Le centre du Mali: fabrique d’une insurrection? https://www.crisisgroup.org/fr/africa/west-africa/mali/central-mali-uprising-making Institute for Security Studies (ISS) (August 2016). Mali’s young ‘jihadists’: Fuelled by faith or circumstance? https://oldsite.issafrica.org/uploads/policybrief89-eng-v2.pdf Interpeace, IMRAP & Indigo (2016). ‘Au-delà de l’idéologie et de l’appât du gain: Trajectoires des Jeunes vers les nouvelles formes de violence en Côte d’ivoire et au Mali’. Rapport de recherche participative, avec le soutien financier de UNICEF, Octobre 2016.

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Interpeace/IMRAP (June 2017). ‘Portraits croisés: Analyse locale des dynamiques de conflit et de résilience dans la zone de Koro-Bankass’. http://www.interpeace.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/2017-Interepeace-IMRAP-Portraits-Crois%C3 %A9s-Koro-Bankass.pdf [Accessed 1 July 2017]. Nievas, David & Sangaré, Boukary (2016). Control social y territorial del norte de Mali por el Yihadismo en un contexto de crisis. Academia Nacional de Seguridad Pública, Revista Policia y Seguridad Publica, El Salvador, Ano 6, Vol. 1: 29 – 82. Pellerin, M. (2017). Les trajectoires de radicalisation religieuse au Sahel. Notes de l’IFRI, IFRI, February 2017. Sangaré, B. (2010). Peuls et mobilité dans le cercle de Douentza: l’espace social et la téléphonie mobile en question (mémoire de maîtrise en Anthropologie). www.mobileafricarevisited.wordpress.com/publications/ Sangaré, B. (2013a). ‘Réseaux sociaux et communication en temps de crises au Mali: l’exemple des groupes de discussion sur Facebook’. ECAS 2013, 5th European Conference on African Studies, ‘African Dynamics in Multipolar World’. Lisboa: CEI, 2014. 978-989-732-364-5. p. 1918 – 1942. Sangaré, B. (2013b). Conflit au nord du Mali et dynamiques sociales chez les Peuls du Hayré. Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar, Sénégal, 2012 – 2013 (Mémoire de Master II en Sociologie). http://www.connecting-in-times-of-duress.nl/wp-content/uploads/m%C3 % A9moire-Master-2-sociologie-UCAD-Boukary-SANGARE-080314.pdf Sangaré, B. (2016). Le Centre du Mali: épicentre djihadisme? Note d’Analyse du GRIP, 20 May 2016. Bruxelles. http://www.grip.org/fr/node/2008 Thiam, A. (2017). Centre du Mali: Enjeux et Dangers d’une crise négligée. Centre pour le Dialogue humanitaire, March 2017.

Adamou Amadou

13 Central African refugee Mbororo nomads in Cameroon: Cultural hostages? Abstract: This chapter deals with pastoralists who used to be mobile for the purposes of their pasturage needs and then suddenly found themselves (im)mobilized in refugees camps. These people are known as Mbororo, both in Cameroon and in the Central African Republic (CAR). In the 1980s, they migrated from Cameroon to CAR. Their pastoral activities were prosperous, and their relationship with local farmers (mostly Gbaya) was also good. This relationship is based on the exchange of meat from the pastoralists and cassava flour from the farmers. Farmer–pastoralist conflicts were resolved between the two communities, and coexistence continued. The Mbororo integrated into the political sphere when the CAR state created pastoral communes, and some refugees we met in a refugee camp were even the mayors of such communes. Things changed drastically in 2003 when François Bozizé, ex-chief of the army, engaged in a rebellion against his mentor, President Ange Felix Patassé. As the rebels lived in the bush, they relied on the nomads for food and money, both derived from the nomads’ herds. The Mbororo were obliged to sell their animals at the rebels’ orders. In addition, the bush became a prolific avenue for the movement of weapons. With this development, bandits known as zarguina, who used to block roads to extort travellers’ goods and money, changed their technique of operation: kidnappings of children, women, and elderly became frequent and led to the loss of hundred lives and thousands of cattle. The Mbororo resisted, but with the deterioration of the political situation in CAR, they fled to Cameroon. In 2013 the events were repeated with the arrival of Séléka and then Anti-balaka, two opposing armed groups. This chapter looks at these formerly mobile nomads, now (im)mobile in refugee camps, and examines these mobile–immobile groups in their fight to preserve their nomadic culture—whether through resignation to their circumstances, ethnic associations, activism, or means which lead them to radicalization.

Introduction We’re herdsmen, as you know well. Taking care of our livestock in all seasons, in any place (co deye, co toye), is what we do best. This is our way of life! You see? When the conditions are difficult, we endure (min mounya); when they become normal again, we readjust (min

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mbo’ itina) […] But these abuses that drove us to flee from CAR are beyond all understanding (buri sembe). Our culture (dabiya) is completely destroyed. Our pulaaku¹ is stripped bare […] Living in this confinement here—we’ve never lived like this. We’ve become cultural prisoners (nder purcina). But we’re trying to secure the future of our children. They mustn’t become lost (ta be majja) …²

The above extract is from one of the first interviews we conducted with Alh Kalandi. In this account, he underlines the lifestyle of these pastoralist Fulani nomads known as Mbororo and their interrelationship with the natural environment, involving cultural and even socio-economic elements, elements that can determine their interaction with other ethnic groups (Galaty & Douglas 1990). The attachment to livestock to which he refers is a sign that, for the Mbororo, livestock rearing is not just a technical process of animal production but also a cultural and socio-economic savoir faire, a way of life (Djedjebi 2009). This way of life is characterized by mobility and spatial representations based on satisfying the pasturage needs of their livestock. To put it simply, they are people who were used to leading, one way or the other, mobile lives—until the events of 2003 in CAR made that life impossible. Now that they are living without livestock as refugees in camps, they are deprived of all their cultural reference points; and they aspire to recover them—even at the cost of radicalization. Consequently, we cut away the argument which consists in reducing radicalization to a strictly politico–religious and armed dimension, in order to understand it also in a socio-cultural aspect. Marx (1971) already emphasized this in his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of law, when he maintained that to be radical is to take things at their root. This expresses the idea of a desire to return to the origins, with or without violence. We can therefore postulate that it is true even in the context of the quest for ethnic cultural revitalization. The question here, therefore, is why Mbororo nomads hold so tightly to this ethnic culture that they ‘radicalize’ themselves at a time when everything leads one to believe they are in a phase of rupture from their culture of mobility? What is the impact

 ‘Pulaaku is a set of values considered to be fundamental and consists of certain characteristics that every Fulani must observe: discernment (hakkiilo), resignation (munyal), reserve (semteende)—these characteristics dictate the attitude of Fulani in all circumstances. The nonobservance of these characteristics is always sanctioned by public opinion ….’ [my translation]. Pierre Francis Lacroix, ‘Peuls, Fulbe ou Fulanis’, Encyclopædia Universalis, http://www.universalis.fr/encyclopedie/peuls-fulbe-fulanis/ [accessed 10 April 2018]  He is referring here to the concern about the deculturation that Fulani descendants could suffer in the future if the present generation do not preserve the culture of this ethnic group.

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of the change of ethnic culture over time in relation to forms of displacement and the occupation of new locations? Assuming the hypothesis of an interest in ethnic belonging and opportunity in times of crisis, we intend to examine the process of this ethnic radicalization of Mbororo nomads through the life stories of three of our informants, who have taken refuge in villages along the borders of Cameroon and CAR. We focus on Alh Salé, current president of the refugees from the east; Ousmanou Alihou, a refugee in Mandjou and activist for the Mbororo refugees in Cameroon; and Adamou Kalandi, president of the refugees in the village of Tongo Gandima. The space in which the Mbororo nomads in this study are found has become a theatre of armed conflict and violence. At the same time, this region has seen a proliferation of opportunities for interconnection through ethno-cultural associations. This paper analyses the triangle of mobility, violence, and radicalization, in order to understand the current situation of refugee Mbororo nomads in a process of ethnic identification. The data on which this study is based are qualitative, combining both biographical accounts and case studies from different periods of my doctoral field research work in Cameroon under the ‘Connecting in Times of Duress’ (CTD) program.³ Throughout this work, we highlight to a large extent what our informants themselves express in real-life situations, how they experience these situations, and how they handle them in relation to what constitutes their identity (Fogel 2008). Before entering into the life stories of our informants, we will first examine the Mbororo’s setbacks vis-à-vis to their mobility in CAR since 2003.

Violence and (im)mobility at the heart of the lives of Mbororo nomads What has mobilized the Mbororo nomads throughout the sub-region of Central Africa since time immemorial? Do these movements follow from their own cultural will or the various constraints they endure? In one case or another, we may wonder about their new behaviour if they are no longer able to engage in

 ‘Connecting in Times of Duress’ is a 5-year research project conducted by the University of Leiden which aims to understand the dynamics of the relationship between long-term conflict situations, hardship, governance regimes, mobility, migration, and connectivity. The project is focused on these themes particularly in some Central African countries, such as Cameroon, Chad, CAR, Congo-Brazzaville, and Democratic Republic of Congo, and also in West African countries such as Nigeria and Mali.

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this way of life—namely, daily movements (ndurngol), transhumance (dabbol or ceedol), and migration (eggol or perol). Several sources indicate that these mobility patterns characterize their identity (Dupire 1970) and always stem from their will and are decided by them. This mobility allows them to balance seasonal grazing. However, violence in all its forms (ordinary,⁴ symbolic,⁵ or warlike) has also been identified as one of the stimulating factors for the mobility of Mbororo nomads (Monénembo 2004; Crettiez 2008), and such mobility is referred to for this purpose as ‘mobility under duress’.⁶ In Cameroon’s Adamawa Region, the mobility of the Mbororo nomads was strongly influenced by multiple repressive expulsions of lamibé (sg. lamido).⁷ Moreover, the results of these forced movements were fratricidal conflicts between the different ardube (sg. ardo). During the colonial period, the German administration was to some extent in favour of the Mbororo way of life and advocated their settlement around the natronite springs (lawre)—whose control, however, was dominated by their cousins, the town Fulani that owned livestock in the bush. Later on, the expulsion of this German power from Cameroon after World War I by France and England, which proceeded to impose exorbitant taxes and form new alliances with farmers, did not make the fate of these herders in this area any easier. The post-colonial Cameroonian administration continued these expulsions, forcing the nomads to abandon the favourable pastoral areas to seek refuge in new destinations (Dognin 1981). This is what forced these wandering pastoralists to move to a new home in CAR in the early 1960s. There, they were apparently able to integrate these semi-desired/semi-forced movements into their pastoral lifestyle by adapting them to the uneven socio-ecological conditions of the envi Bouju, J. & M. De Bruijn (2008: 27– 28).  Braud, P. (2004).  According to Lassailly-Jacob et al. (1999): ‘Par mobilité sous contrainte, il faut entendre les mouvements collectifs, massifs, imposés parfois de manière brutale, tous induits par des forces d’expulsion vers un ailleurs qui n’a pas été souhaité. Cette forme de mobilité touche l’ensemble d’un groupe humain, habitants d’un même lieu ou membres d’un groupe social ou religieux’. (Tr. ‘By ‘mobility under duress’ is meant collective, large-scale, and sometimes brutally imposed mass movements, all driven by forces of expulsion to somewhere else that was not desired. This form of mobility affects the whole human group, inhabitants of the same place or members of a social or religious group.’)  In Fulfulde, the language spoken by the Fulani, a lamido is a first-degree leader. This chief reigns over an area of command called a lamidat. A lamidat is subdivided into several lawanat (each headed by a lawane, a chief of the second degree), which in turn are composed of djaourora or djawrora (each led by a djaouro or djawro, a chief of the third degree). Among the Mbororo Fulani—that is to say, the Fulani nomads of the bush—a djaouro is equivalent to an ardo. The Mbororo subgroup does not have these three degrees of chieftaincy (lamido–lawane–djawro); it is structured rather in two degrees—that is to say, from lamido we go directly to ardo.

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ronment. They have even adapted their pastoral mobility to political activities. Some have even been able to run livestock breeding communities; others have become true traditional leaders and negotiators of their cause with the State. However, the violence, which has rather increased, has also constrained them to come to a standstill since the last two Central African crises of 2003 and 2013 (Liba’a 2008). Rebellions, particularly the one led by François Bozizé,⁸ have accentuated the abuses against the nomadic pastoralists, who were victims of robberies and whose herds had to serve as food and sources of financial income for these rebels. They come to choose the most fleshy cattle in our herds and force us to either slit their throats or sell them and give them the money. Just like the zarguina [bandits] do. If you resist, they don’t hesitate to shoot you or make you suffer violence in front of your wife and children. We did it! What could we do? With the zarguina, we can fight; but the rebels have support even at government level. You see?⁹

Coming to power in a coup in 2003, the regime of François Bozizé did not condescend to look into these cases during the ten years of his reign, which was peppered with military and security crises in the bush. This situation forced the Mbororo nomads to flee en masse to neighbouring countries, particularly to Cameroon. The beginning of 2013 was no less burdensome. The arrival of the Séléka coalition, which ousted former president Bozizé, and the reaction of the Anti-balaka rather accentuated the abuses against Mbororo nomads—considered by some to be partners of the former regime and by others to be part of the same religion as the opponents and therefore to be shot down. They not only fled, but were pursued at the cost of their lives. Arriving in Cameroon, and having been forced into and confined to refugee camps, these nomads do not adapt well to this situation of immobility. It is this that gives rise to the fear of losing the reference points of their group identity (Braud 2004). Worse still, the acts of violence transmitted through social media—such as images of torture uploaded and transferred to mobile phones, which are now available to everyone—reinforce the feeling of fear and humiliation. It should also be emphasized that the refugee Mbororo nomads use the same social media and other communication tools as ethnic associations and international organizations for the (re)conquest or maintenance of their ethnic identity.

 President of CAR from 2003 to 2013.  Interview with Ardo Kalandi, 18 November 2012, on the living conditions of Mbororo people in the Central African bush in a period of serious crises.

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Mobile cultures challenged by immobility Nomads evolve in a naturally mobile world; and, as noted by Lassailly-Jacob (1999: 35), the reasons for their mobility are many: the search for good pasturage, environmental degradation and destruction, acts of violence and persecution, land use policies, and political and strategic interventions. Among all these issues, the Mbororo have modelled a specific form of migration (mentioned above) to preserve their activity and identity (Boutrais 1999). However, immobility does not exist as an alternative in their lifestyle. Their situation as refugees is therefore unusual. It is in this context that the three informants we have been monitoring since 2012 have developed. The first two live in Mandjou and the third in Tongo Gandima. They all belong to the Mbororo nomad community which took refuge in Cameroon after the two recent Central African crises, that of 2003 in the case of Alh Salé and Ardo Kalandi, and that of 2013 in the case of Ousmanou Salihou.

Fig. 1: The Mbororos arrive © Adamou Amadou

Alh Salé and Kalandi are 74 and 68 years old, respectively, and are used to nomadic life. They were born in Cameroon before migrating to CAR. Ousmanou, on the other hand, was born in CAR within the bosom of his semi-nomadic family; but he managed to combine nomadic life with Western and Arabic studies while travelling here and there with his parents. Overall, they developed in a space that allowed them to reduce nomadic mobility and insecurity in the

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bush. Kalandi and his family combined the grasslands of their herds with preventive hunting. Faced with the wild animals that devour their cows, they have developed response strategies that have allowed them, over time, to establish nomadic archery skills. On a strictly pastoral level, in the rainy season they devote themselves to the grasslands—while in the dry season, they accompany their herds in dense pasturage areas toward the lowlands of the country. Alh Salé, on the other hand, combined the grassland of his herds and political activity, although at the local level he remained ardo of the Mbororo community in Balamou. He was the Mbororo leader who not only inherited the influence of his famous cousin Ardo Maounde but was also the intermediary who maintained relations with the various regimes in regard to the causes of the nomads. Hardly any interview with him goes by without his reminding me that he met former President Bozizé to defend the Mbororo cause: ‘We went to meet him to explain our situation, but he is a good-for-nothing and he did nothing.’¹⁰ The deterioration of the political–security climate in CAR has therefore inevitably interrupted the pastoral fervour of these two nomads and forced them to return to Cameroon. Salihou joined them in Mandjou only in 2013.

Refugee Mbororo nomads in a new socio-ethnic space The case of Mandjou As noted above, Alh Salé and Saliou Ousmanou, two of our informants in this study, live in Mandjou, the chief town of the commune bearing the same name, on the outskirts of the city of Bertoua in Cameroon. To understand the complexities of the milieu in which they develop, we divide the demographic composition of this community of 50,000 inhabitants into two categories: on the one hand, there are ethnic groups; and on the other, community groups. This distinction allows us to understand the nature of the interaction that influences radical or less radical behaviour from each group in Mandjou. On the ethnic side, several groups interact, and the actions of each group are a function of their lifestyle, which certainly has an impact on others. Thus, on the one hand, we have the Gbaya and Kako, who have the same habits and customs and are for the most part farmers and hunters; and, on the other hand, we have the local Mbororo, who combine livestock and trade in livestock, food products and, in ‘Min njahi mi tawi mo. Min biiti mo yaakeedji amin, amman o nafata. Koo ko a wadi.’

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creasingly, even the collection and marketing of gold. As in CAR, the Gbaya are predominantly Christians, and the Mbororo are Muslims. The Mbororo refugees— although no longer, for the most part, maintaining livestock—are in this ethnic distinction assimilated to their local Mbororo brethren. In addition, the people of Mandjou, whether farmers or pastoralists, practise at least some mobility related to their activities. Farmers undertake movements known as seasonal agricultural migrations, in which they move from villages to farming areas. Breeders undertake transhumance in the dry season, which usually runs from December to April. As for young people, they most often head for urban centres in search of paid employment. Although, in general, these two groups live together in peace, there are occasional upheavals. These are the result of agro-pastoral conflicts and the specificities of religion and customary habits. This was the case, for example, in 2012. A conflict caused by a lively Gbaya bar next door to a Mbororo-built mosque degenerated into an all-out uprising, following arguments between supporters of both sides. The consequence of this kind of situation is the increasingly notorious ethnic radicalization of each group. Seen in this light, the Mbororo refugees find themselves in the position of allies of their brethren, the local Mbororo, since they belong to the same ethnic group. But this alliance is limited when we consider their status as refugees. And this is where the importance of the second distinction enters in. At the moment, what comes to the fore is the native community against the non-native community. Local Gbaya and local Mbororo are opposed to Mbororo refugees, who are considered as foreigners. In this case, the effort of the Mbororo refugees to demonstrate their ethnicity and therefore their ethnic radicalization proves to be more difficult. They find an answer to this by joining ethnic associations for a better rapprochement with their peers, the local Mbororo.

Ethnic associations: Factors of ethnic radicalization In Mandjou, ethnic groups each develop in a context of ethnic associations that revive the cultural peculiarities of their followers. We note, principally, the MOINAM¹¹ for the Gbaya, and the MBOSCUDA,¹² SODELCO,¹³ and AJEMBO¹⁴ for the Mbororo.

 Mouvement d’Investissement et d’Assistance Mutuelle (lit. in the Gbaya language, ‘brings together the family’), created in 1993.  Mbororo Social and Cultural Development Association.

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Local Mbororo are strongly involved in association militantism. Most are active members of MBOSCUDA and AJEMBO. These two associations advocate the revitalization of pulaaku as the ideal code of life for Fulani. If the pulaaku popularized by the Fulani ethnic associations promotes certain principles such as patience (munyal), modesty (semtende), and courage (stuusal), it also popularizes other specific factors justifying the precariousness of the living conditions of the Mbororo, which make them victims and vulnerable to the rest of the population. Thus, we can read the following on the MBOSCUDA website, part of a mission statement which can encourage a partisan living in a situation of constraint to move to one of identity withdrawal (radicalization):¹⁵ *WE BELIEVE that the Mbororo as a people have their own peculiarities common to them and, perhaps, unknown to other peoples and that this lack of knowledge of the Mbororo condition ¹⁶ has led to untold oppression, exploitation and humiliation of the Mbororo people as a social class. *WE BELIEVE that the Mbororo people’s nomadic and pastoralist way of life, pulaaku code of behaviour and emotional attachment to cattle for hundreds of years, today, make them victims of a lifestyle and culture, as well as refugees of context wherever they have settled. This has been further complicated by illiteracy, ignorance, lack of foresight and cooperation. *WE BELIEVE that it is only the Mbororo Community that can identify, examine and find possible solutions to the major problems affecting them as a people. This is more so, because they are better placed to judge their realities and needs—in a constantly changing multi-cultural world like ours—so as to avoid a confusion of values.

The founders and current leaders of MBOSCUDA believe it is the consideration of these specificities and needs of the Mbororo as an indigenous social group that has therefore necessitated the creation of an organization of the Mbororo community. It will seek to pool their potentials in order to redefine their priorities, according to their aspirations as a people, and to overcome some of the excesses of ignorance and illiteracy. It is through this distinctive identity leitmotif that MBOSCUDA tries to form in the same mould all its usual supporters (local Mbororo) and new ones who are refugees. This third group of inhabitants of Mandjou (the Mbororo refugees), although belonging to the Mbororo ethnic group, often feels itself to be a separate community. They are Mbororo nomads, certainly, but the majority of them no longer have cattle. And, considering the place that the cow occupies in the life of a herdsman, this fact in itself is a source    

Société de Développement d’Elevage et du Commerce. Association des Jeunes Mbororo de l’Est du Cameroun. http://www.mboscuda.org/index.php/mboscuda/our-mission Emphasis in original.

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of frustration. Worse still, they are forced to live more or less in a state of immobility because, as refugees, their movements are restricted and controlled by public administrations and international organizations. In short, they do not live within the same framework of pulaaku that they were used to in the bush—in fact, at a much lower level, as defined by MBOSCUDA. Does this situation of precarious identity lead them to remain in a permanent search for the socio-cultural belonging of before?

The case of Tongo In Tongo, the SODELCO association, through the influence of the local ardo, is dominant among the local population. But I noticed a lack of interest in this association on the part of the refugee population, who may be excluded upon their arrival by the locals because the control of associations also confers on an ardo a strengthening of power and sometimes financial sources of income. It should be noted that although initially the local Mbororo welcomed their refugee brothers with great pomp, upon the arrival of the international organizations—which exclusively occupied themselves with the refugees—there was a feeling of jealousy on the part of the local population whose socio-economic conditions are not much different from those of the refugees. This also has a double effect at the ethnic and community levels—and, hence, the determination of refugees to prove their Mbororo ethnicity. First, in normal times, refugees are marginalized. Because many of them no longer have livestock, they are seen by others as less than Mbororo. As a result, the Mbororo refugees, feeling marginalized, strive to demonstrate that they are Mbororo like others through their discourse and their participation in various activities organized by the Mbororo associations. On the other hand, the local Mbororo also seek to acquire refugee status, even if just to benefit from the aid of international organizations. In this direction, many have been secretly registered as refugees by agents in the UNHCR programme who are most often their parents. It is for this reason that UNHCR subsequently introduced inclusive development programmes, especially through the establishment of community fields, where local Mbororo and refugee Mbororo share the same arable land and share the benefits. Unfortunately, this programme did not last long, due in large part to the time limitation set by the partners of UNHCR.

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Journey to the heart of the lives of Mbororo refugees: Between life and violence

Fig. 2: Mobororo refugees, youth and orphelins, selling firewood © Adamou Amadou

Alh Ardo Salé: From nomad to refugee leader The severity of the abuses (bone) suffered by my family (bandiraabe am) only increase my desire to be an advocate leader of my community …¹⁷

In the life story of Alh Salé, the confrontations with the various policies of the different states (colonial and post-colonial), the abuses by armed groups against his family in CAR, and now the UNHCR (which is itself assimilated to a form of the state)—these have helped him to strengthen the hardening of Mbororos’ rad-

 Alh Ardo Salé, on the motive for his commitment to the Mbororo refugees, interview, July 2015.

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ical position. Moreover, since his childhood, he has had to submit to forced displacements because of external forces targeting his family. This oppressive and segregationist situation has contributed to reinforcing his feeling of the identity withdrawal.

Between migratory violence, immobility constraints, and ethnic leadership Aged 74, father of twenty living children and married to three wives, Alh Salé was born in 1943 in Fudong in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. His family belongs to the Mbororo Aku Ba’en clan, pastoralists of white-skinned cattle. When he was only four years old, his family was driven out by the Jafun clan of the same ethnic group, under the pretext that his family’s cattle were anarchically destroying pastures. According to him, this fact sufficiently demonstrates that there is marginalization even within the same ethnic group, and this is a reason for the awareness of ethnic attachment and thus of ethnic radicalization.¹⁸ From Fudong, the family returned to Konané, another locality in the same region. To reward them for their forced departure, the settlers named their father head (ardo) of the Mbororo community in Konané. They lived there for 14 years. In 1961, his father wanted to join some members of his family near Ngaoundéré in Cameroon’s Adamawa Region. This did not prove to be easy in the eyes of the English expatriates. Indeed, although the new authorities of the young Cameroonian administration lifted the restriction on migration previously decreed by the colonial administration, the expatriates who remained in Cameroon continued to oppose the mass departures of the nomads. This was because of the losses in tax revenues that these departures led to. Owner of a herd estimated at 1,004 head of cattle, the family of Alh Salé still managed to return to Mayo Dalle (Banyo) west of N’Gaoundéré after numerous negotiations with these expatriates. The same year, the Houya’en Fulani drove the Mbororo out of N’Gaoundéré, led by Ardo Maounde. This forced Salé’s family to change their trajectory. They returned to Gounbela (Meiganga), a little south in the Mbere Valley, via Danfili (Tibati) after a long walk. A year later, they went down to Barang, a region not far from Meiganga. The family lived there for five years, practising transhumance toward the east region of Cameroon, where it ended up returning following numerous cases of disease among their cattle in Barang. Established in the locality of Batouri, they alternately migrated between Timongolo, Bini, and Kendjou until 1976. Alh Salé, then 33 years

 ‘Nde mi numti haala man, mi hiriti acee heny’a e woodi koo sake legnol.’

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old, made the pilgrimage to Mecca. Upon his return, he crossed the border and moved to Babara (Gamboula) in CAR. The same year, he bought a pickup truck for transportation. In parallel with his activity as a cattle breeder, he ensured the transport of passengers between Babara (CAR) and Kendjou and Biti (Cameroon). He lived there for about 15 years before migrating to Mbarta under family pressure. There they joined the large family headed by the great Ardo Maounde, who is moreover his cousin. Thirthy years later, the insecurity caused by armed groups forced them to cross the border in the opposite direction. He then returned to Batoua in the Meiganga area of Cameroon, where he stayed just one month before returning to Mandjou—where he has been living as a refugee since 2005. In Mandjou, he has gradually become the undisputed leader of the Mbororo refugee community. He intervenes in all the activities that concern them. It is he who even takes the lead in the situation. His dynamism helped him to win the election, one year after his arrival, as president of the refugees of the East Region ahead of three other candidates. Nowadays, it is he who registers new refugees and who defends them when there is a clash between them and other people or the local authorities. He is responsible for managing the potable water pump, a rare commodity in this locality. He has also become a member of MBOSCUDA, the influential association of Mbororo in Cameroon. In short, he has become a key negotiator between UNHCR, the local authorities, local chiefs, and Mbororo refugees.

Ousmanou Salihou: An ethnic activist Since I started this work in civil society, my desire to defend the rights of my community has only increased. I’m getting more and more involved in this sense, because they are too marginalized because they haven’t been to school. Everyone is mistreating them.¹⁹

As soon as he finished secondary school in 1998, Ousmanou began to campaign in civil society for the interests of the Mbororo Fulani because, according to him, they are very marginalized. ‘As they don’t go to school, everyone exploits them.’ In 2005, he created an association: Association des Jeunes Peulhs de la Centrafrique (AJPC). Shortly after, he said that by gaining power, he would better defend the rights and interests of his community. So he became representative

 Excerpt from the interview with Ousmanou Alihou on his life story, 22 July 2014, during our field research. Original speech in Fulfulde mixed with French: ‘Depuis que mi nasti kuugal société civile do, haadjanko leegnol am do besda. Mi do besda djingango be ngam, be djawaama macine nde be njangaayi. koo moye do yarnabe bone.’

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for minorities in the party of ex-president Bozizé,²⁰ while at the same time running a small business to support his needs, since his parents no longer had any livestock. At the beginning of the Central African crisis in 2013, he participated in intercommunity dialogue to ease tensions. Unfortunately, the attack by Anti-balaka in early December 2013²¹ worsened things for him. People were fleeing for the capital Bangui; and his association, although lacking financial means, had to accommodate approximately 450 families with the help of the Comité Catholique contre la Faim et pour le Développement-Terre Solidaire (CCFD),²² which granted him financial assistance for this purpose. On 18 December 2013, faced by the deteriorating situation, he had to evacuate part of his family to Cameroon, another part (his mother and his nephews) to the Sudanese border, and another part to Chad. He remained until December 2014, when his CCFD partners strongly advised him to leave the country because they could no longer ensure his safety. They asked me to borrow one of the trucks that supplied them with food from Cameroon. The driver and I agreed to meet at a particular location. I waited for him by the side of the road with my two suitcases, and we left with an MUNISCA²³ escort. There were several Anti-balaka barricades on the road. At each checkpoint, it was the agents of MUNISCA who got down to negotiate with the Anti-balaka. Often, they gave them money to let us pass. We arrived in Bouar around 8 PM and spent the night there. We still had about 150 km to reach the Cameroon border. But in the morning, the MUNISCA agents said they couldn’t continue. Their mission stopped there. The truck driver and I continued. At that time, the Cameroonian soldiers drove back Central Africans who wanted to enter the country. At the border crossing, they took down my two suitcases and arrested me. I lied to them, saying that I was Cameroonian and that I was just going to meet my truck and my driver. He gave them 10,000 FCFA and they let us pass. From there, we entered Garoua-Boulaye, the first city in Cameroon. I spent the night there; and the next day, the CCFD partners took me to Bertoua where I joined my family, whom they had welcomed and settled in a refugee camp.

Settled in Mandjou village, and together with one of his former colleagues, Ousseini Wadjiri—at that time a refugee in Chad—he created a platform of Mbororo organizations for the Central African sub-region with representative offices in

 Convergence Nationale Kwa Na Kwa (KNK).  See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-25216351  The Comité Catholique contre la Faim et pour le Développement-Terre Solidaire was the first development NGO in France. Recognized as a public service in 1984, the association received the official label Grande Cause Nationale in 1993 and has the status of consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).  United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in CAR, begun in April 2014.

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N’Djaména and Bertoua. With the support of CCFD, they worked with refugees in Chad and Toktoyo in eastern Cameroon. At present, he has become sub-regional representative of this platform. He ends his remarks with this statement: ‘I don’t intend to stop on such a good path.’

Ardo Kalandi: From nomad to defeated warrior These last years haven’t been easy years for us. In CAR, we had to defend ourselves against the groups that plundered our cattle. We couldn’t hold out. Now that we’ve arrived here, we feel obliged to continue to defend ourselves to preserve even our dignity.²⁴ ²⁵

Ardo Adamou Kalandi was born around 1950 in Kalandi near Meiganga (capital of the Mbere department, in Adamaoua Region of Cameroon). From his childhood until now, he and his family have spent time travelling back and forth between this region, eastern Cameroon, and western CAR. From Kalandi village they migrated to Bougarga (CAR). About three years later, they were forced by native farmers to turn back at Fada (Meiganga, Cameroon). From there, they came to engage in transhumance in Tongo (East Region, Cameroon), their current place of refuge. Then they were again forced to cross the CAR border for the umpteenth time to settle in Mbaboua (CAR), where they lived for about 30 years. Until then, Ardo and his family lived together. But the events that were to follow radically changed their lives. Ardo tells us that initially he did not worry too much about insecurity (fitina walano). The situation was manageable. There were not too many armed bandits (jargina duudaye), and the grazing was wonderfully abundant (ladde yamre). Suddenly, rinderpest hit the cattle during a dry season.²⁶ It ravaged almost all of their livestock. They were therefore forced to settle temporarily where they were. Only the youngest went on transhumance. On top of this gruelling epidemic, the armed bandits intensified their attacks and mischievously changed their tactics of aggression. From being simple sporadic bandits along the roads where they ambushed motor vehicles, they gradually  An allusion to the identity to be preserved even in the new conditions of being ‘immobile’ nomads and without livestock.  From an interview with Ardo Kalandi on the living conditions of Mbororo refugees in Tongo, November 2013.  Rinderpest was an infectious viral disease in cattle and other animals. Mortality rates often approached 100 per cent if animals were not treated immunologically. In June 2011, following a global eradication scheme begun in earnest in the 1990s, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization declared that the disease was finally eradicated.

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became kidnappers of children in the breeders’ camps (walde). In the beginning of these security troubles, he and his peers mounted a fierce resistance to these highwaymen (hallube or jargina) to defend their livestock and the lives of their families. Armed with their arrows, they formed themselves into self-defence groups and led expeditions against the attackers all the way to the end. Ardo Kalandi acted in Mbaboua as a leader of his family, whose core was composed of his four brothers and himself, while Alh Salé was the leader in the Balamou village group, as he made clear to me. Given the lack of telephones in those days or the unavailability of network coverage in their camps, each group that received information about the presence of, or an attack by, criminals in the surroundings sent an informant to the other team so that they launched their offensive jointly. Periodic markets were also places to exchange information and plan expeditions. If a group was caught off guard by an attack of bandits, it defended itself according to its ability to retaliate (be kapda tane; ‘they just managed’). Over time, they gained enough experience and became drivers of convoys of transport cars, approved by the municipalities. ‘The bandits, knowing our warrior spirit, even avoided our encampments at a given moment.’ In 2003, however, the political climate at the highest level of the state degenerated, and living conditions again deteriorated. In the countryside and in the bush, the rebels led by François Bozizé were now confused with jargina, and the jargina often thought Ardo Kalandi’s men were rebels. Cattle became the main sources of provision for all the attackers. It is the most easily saleable and consumable product. Little by little, Ardo Kalandi’s family felt the vice tighten around them. Everyone was fleeing. Depending on the circumstances, some took to the road on foot with the few head of cattle they had. Others borrowed used cars. They fled to Tongo in Cameroon. At present, some of them are still receiving assistance from UNHCR, while the majority have been de-listed from the list of aid recipients even though they remain legally refugees. They survive thanks to agriculture, but especially the practice of small trades such as the sale of bows and arrows, mats they make themselves, firewood, and cassava flour made by the women, as well as motorcycle taxis and transfer of communication credit by the youngest.

From self-defence to self-identification Upon their arrival in Tongo, Ardo Kalandi was appointed president of the refugees by his peers. He found his childhood friend Ardo Haman, who was the Mbororo chief of the locality. Welcomed and assisted in the beginning by their local Mbororo cousins, the good communal conditions quickly turned to ten-

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sions. On the one hand, although Mbororo themselves, Ardo Kalandi’s family, like all local refugees, became pseudo subsistence farmers and petty traders. We’re without cattle herds. We’re now almost immobile because we face police harassment just for a small trip. We feel marginalized even by our own ‘brothers’.

They find themselves forced to defend their ‘mbororoku’ ethnic identity at the same time as taking up their status as refugees. On the other hand, the other local populations consider them as simple invaders because they are obliged to share cultural spaces with them. To assert themselves, the Mbororo refugees in Tongo take advantage of periods like International Refugee Day to exhibit Mbororo art objects and dances, in order to demonstrate that they remain Mbororo—in short, to assert themselves and exist as Mbororo nomads.

Radicalization takes different forms Through these three case studies, we realize that more than ever the connection between violence, mobility,²⁷ and Mbororo nomads ends up in radicalization, which in our study is nothing more than a matter of ethnic belonging. Although formerly their mobility was a strategy to overcome pastoral problems, today, in the Cameroon–CAR border areas, this has been accentuated by the violent acts engendered by the recent politico–security crises in CAR. In fact, the Mbororo refugees along the Bertoua–Garoua-Boulaye axis²⁸ use the construction of a dynamic ethnic identity as a survival strategy: they are refugee Mbororo nomads who, over the centuries, come and go on both sides of the borders of CAR and Cameroon. Analysing the narratives, we notice that violence leads to, or imposes, the choice for a life of mobility. In the case of Ardo Salé, as for our other two informants, it is now evident that nomadism imposes itself on nomads more often than it voluntarily offers itself (Angeras 2010). Moreover, and in times of crisis, ethnic leadership turns out to be an opportunity to position oneself within the community so as to at least maintain one’s ethnic identity. The story of Ardo Kalandi teaches us that the nomads, constrained under certain circumstances, apparently have no other recourse except to violence, which itself generally ends by en-

 In recent years, these have become rather dispersions or forced mobilities.  Bertoua and Garoua-Boulaye are two towns along the Cameroon–CAR borders. Bertoua is the capital of the eastern region, and Garoua-Boulaye is the main town of the district just on the border.

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gendering further acts of violence—and/or resignation. Salihou’s trajectory demonstrates that in a time of (post)crisis, individuals see ethnic membership in identity groups as a source of protection, a source of inspiration and—as in the case of Ardo Alh Salé—an opportunity to assert oneself. In short, we must consider the context of the new environment. If by fleeing they found the same environment they had left behind, they would be less radicalized. And if their cattle heritage remained intact, they would also have less concern for cultural adaptation.

Conclusion This paper has highlighted the process of ethnic identification of refugee Mbororo nomads. Over time, nomads have been able to adapt their way of life according to this culture of mobility to satisfy their pastoral activities. But the deterioration of the security climate in their space has also changed the situation. Mobility is becoming more and more restricted. However, the constancy of the influence of violence on their culture of mobility has ended up by transforming them into a group of people in never-ending flight, who withdraw into themselves to create and recreate their ethnicity. Finally, this withdrawal was the consequence of the deprivation of a way of life that has always required a symbiosis among them. In a difficult time, when a herdsman loses his herds owing to natural calamities or through pure misfortune, solidarity (wallinde) always reveals itself as an essential element. In other cases, they temporarily convert to farming while waiting to build up their herds again. Each one of them depends on the other for the good management of pasture: first in the search and identification of common pastoral space, then in the cohabitation in this space where the sharing of a common life is governed by ethnic elements. These elements, such as pulaaku, are already an ancient and ancestral construction within the Fulani population in general—and among Mbororo nomads in particular—and nowadays it is revived by associations such as AJEMBO, and MBOSCUDA. And for the Mbororo refugees, it has also become a point of reference distinguishing them more and more from other people. With other groups, they maintain relations of exchange. They produce meat, and the animals fertilize the soil used by farmers, and in return the farmers provide them with food. But when this possibility shrinks, as is the case in the refugee camp, it pushes them to withdraw into themselves. This is also linked to a trend in Cameroon and international society that is forging refugees as a group in their own right.

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References Angeras, Anais (2010). Du nomadisme contemporain en France avec les saisonniers agricoles qui vivent en camion. Université Lyon 2 – Master 2 Recherche Spécialité Dynamique des Cultures et des Sociétés. Bouju, J. & De Bruijn, M. (2008). Violences structurelles et violences systémiques. La violence ordinaire des rapports sociaux en Afrique. Bulletin de l’APAD no. 27 – 28. Boutrais, J. (1999). Les éleveurs, une catégorie oubliée des migrants forcés. In V. Lassailly-Jacob, J.Y. Marchal & A. Quesnel (eds), Déplacés et réfugiés (pp. 27 – 49). Braud, Philippe (2004). Violences politiques. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Crettiez, Xavier (2008). Les formes de la violence. La Découverte, coll. ‘Repères Sociologie’. Djedjebi, T. (2009). Pastoralistes et la ville au Bénin: livelihoods en questionnement. Leiden: African Studies Collection. Dognin, R. (1981). L’installation des Djafoun dans l’Adamaoua camerounais: La djakka chez les Peul de l’Adamaoua. Colloques Internationaux du C.N.R.S.No 551. Contribution à la Recherche Ethnologique à l’Histoire des Civilisations du Cameroun. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Dupire, M. (1970). Organisation sociale des Peul. Paris: Plon. Fogel, F. (2008). Altérité et migration: quelques réflexions sur des parcours africains. In R. Jamous & R. Bourqia (eds), Altérité et reconstruction de la société locale: cultures en miroir (pp. 83 – 94). Montreuil: Aux lieux d’être. Galaty J. & Douglas, M. (1990). The World of Pastoralism: Herding Systems in Comparative Perspective. New York: Guilford Press. Lassailly-Jacob, V. (1999). Migrants malgré eux. Une proposition de typologie. In V. Lassailly-Jacob, J.Y Marchal & A. Quesnel (eds), Déplacés et réfugiés (pp. 27 – 49). Lassailly-Jacob, V., Marchal, J. Y. & Quesnel, A. (eds) (1999). Déplacés et réfugiés: la mobilité sous contrainte. Paris: IRD editions. Liba’a, N. (2008). De la mobilité à la sédentarisation: gestion des ressources naturelles et des territoires par les éleveurs Mbororo au nord du Cameroun. PhD Thesis in Geography, Université Montpellier 3. Marx, Karl (1971). Contribution à la critique de ‘La philosophie du droit’ de Hegel. Aubier-Montaigne. Monénembo, Tierno (2004). Peuls. Roman, Paris: Editions du Seuil. Web site: http://www.mboscuda.org/index.php/mboscuda/our-mission

Part III Pathways out of radicalization

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14 Islam and radicalization in Senegal: A response in female preaching Abstract: Senegal is witnessing a reconfiguration of its religious space, with an increase in the importance of Islamic reformist and neo-brotherhood¹ movements(Mvango 2014)—and an impressive development of Wahhabi associations, a movement of radical Islam that rejects any interpretation of the Quran. In this context of religious radicalization, women preachers are attempting to make their own contribution to the reconfiguration. In light of a number of cases of individuals in their neighbourhoods and surrounding areas who volunteered to go to the jihad in Syria, the preachers decided to integrate the issues of radicalization and jihad into their sermons. This paper reviews the radicalization situation in Senegal and the involvement of women preachers as a response to this radicalization. It is based on a comparison of the biographies of two women belonging, respectively, to an Islamic reformist association of Salafi tendency and to the neo-brotherhood movement.

Introduction Since the attacks in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and Grand-Bassam (Côte d’Ivoire), Senegal, which has never been the victim of terrorist acts on its soil, has increased security at sensitive locations. Many observers note that conservative or even radical versions of Islam are gaining ground in West Africa, particularly in Senegal. Indeed, in this country, there is a reconfiguration of the religious space with the rise of Islamic reformist and neo-brotherhood movements—and with an impressive development of Wahhabi associations, a movement of radical Islam which rejects all interpretation of the Quran (Mvango 2014). In this context of religious radicalization, women preachers are attempting to make their own contribution to the reconfiguration. In light of a number of cases of individuals from their neighbourhoods and surrounding areas who volunteered to go to the jihad in Syria, the preachers decided to integrate the issues of radicalization and jihad into their sermons. To analyse these new forms of feminine visibility in a context of religious radicalization, we will compare two women’s biographies in the space of preach Sufi https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-014

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ing in Senegal. These are two preachers belonging, respectively, to an Islamic reformist association of Salafi tendency (Jamaatou ibadou Rahman) and to a neobrotherhood movement such as the dahira ² Moustarchidina Wal Moustarchidaty. After having provided an overview of Islam and radicalization in Senegal, our aim is to explain the choice of the women preachers’ contribution and their positioning in this field of preaching—which has long been reserved for men—and to analyse their discourse in the context of the Islamization of radicalism,

Islam and radicalization in Senegal In many countries with established secular values, the religious visibility of the current youth stands out markedly in the public space. Senegal is far from escaping this trend. Religious commitment has today become a fact of society in Senegal. Young people, both male and female, are increasingly involved in this development, claiming and demonstrating their commitment. A study conducted by an American polling organization, cited by Ousmane Kane at his conference in Dakar in 2015, stated that Senegal occupies the first place. After a whole series of studies and inquiries across the world on the importance of religion in the lives of people— when they get up in the morning or when they go to sleep at night, the place that religion occupies in their lives—there is no country which surpasses Senegal in terms of the number of people affected by it and in terms of the depth …³

In Dakar, the attraction to religion is seen in the proliferation of religious movements (Muslim and Christian). The religious effervescence that has characterized the Senegalese capital in recent years owes much to the strategies of ‘visibility’ associated with the forms of religious activism: banners, posters, signs, large street rallies, the involvement of the media, images, photographs, wearing the veil, etc. (Faye, 2016). However, it is important to note that this increased religiosity is not new. In fact it is a religious revival, a return to religion after the glory days of the great left-wing ideologies, which saw a decline in religious activity among the youth from the end of the 1960s until the middle of the 1980s (Ndiaye 2007). Indeed, the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s saw a profound change in the religious landscape in Senegal, notably with the presence of re A traditional Quranic school in Senegal. Daara is not a Wolof word; it means ‘home’ in Arabic. The purpose of such schools is to teach the Quran and the principles of Islamic religion.  Cheikh Guèye, a geographer in charge of forecasting and strategies at the Executive Secretariat of Third World Countries; interview at the offices of Enda Tiers Monde, Dakar, June 2016.

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formist Islamic movements and neo-brotherhoods. It was this that led to a pluralistic Senegalese religious field, one that is distinguished by the dynamism of the brotherhoods (Fall 2015). Long considered as ‘the paradise of marabouts and brotherhoods’ (Coulon 1983), the traditional religious space in Senegal, since the beginning of the 1980s, has undergone a reconfiguration due, in part, to the emergence of ‘neo-brotherhood’ trends in the Sufi orders (Samson 2005) and to the rise of Islamist reformist movements of more or less Arab inspiration. If the first trend seeks to build a new leadership within the brotherhoods’ space, the second is constructed by defining the modalities and the aims of its faith and its action outside these brotherhood organizations (Bodian & Camara 2015). Thus, in this process of reconfiguration of the Senegalese religious space, we are witnessing the development of an impressive number of Wahhabi associations, a movement of radical Islam advocating a strictly literal interpretation of the Quran (Mvango 2014). Many observers have noted that conservative and even radical versions of Islam are gaining ground in West Africa, particularly in Mali, Nigeria, Niger, and Senegal. Other analysts believe that the financial and doctrinal penetration of Salafism—‘a fundamentalist school of thought advocating a return to the original forms of Islam’—associated with the propaganda of militant groups threatens the stability of the country. The question is whether the Islam of the brotherhoods, challenged since the 1970s and 1980s by movements that consider it impure, will remain a bulwark against all forms of extremism and violence (Sambe 2016). This question takes on particular importance when we know that ‘West Africa is particularly vulnerable to terrorism and the financing of terrorism’ and that Senegal is not exempt from this general evolution—because many young Senegalese have been reported among the ranks of the so-called Islamic State [ISIS] in Libya.⁴ According to a 2016 study by the Timbuktu Institute,⁵ 8.3 per cent of young people (14 women and 11 men between 18 and 35 years) say they are ready ‘to join a group that defends the cause of a more radical Islam’. According to some sources, they would be among 10 – 30 young Senegalese fighting in Libya.⁶ Most of these are currently in the Sirte region, the stronghold of the Islam-

 B. Roger, ‘Terrorisme: ces Sénégalais qui ont rejoint l’État islamique en Libye’, Jeune Afrique, 27 January 2016.  An African think-tank that works extensively on issues of religious extremism, peace, and security on the African continent. See http://timbuktu-institute.org/  Les facteurs de la radicalisation et les perceptions du terrorisme [‘The factors in radicalization and the perceptions of terrorism’]. http://scd.rfi.fr/sites/filesrfi/etude_sur_les_facteurs_de_radicalisation_et_la_perception_du_terrorisme_chez_les_jeunes.pdf [Accessed 10 June 2017].

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ic State organization, in the heart of the Libyan chaos. This shows that—increasingly and in a worrying way—jihadist ideology is seducing young Senegalese.

Senegal facing a jihadist threat In today’s world, radicalism is one of the driving forces, whether we like it or not. Since the attacks in Ouagadougou and Grand-Bassam, Senegal has strengthened security at sensitive locations and arrested several suspected jihadists. Senegal, like all other countries, is at risk even if it remains a tolerant and very open country. Indeed, it is a country that brings together different kinds of ethnicities, its inhabitants are welcoming, and as a result it is nicknamed ‘the country of téranga’. ⁷ All foreigners integrate easily regardless of their origin. At this stage, it is important to remember that Senegal has several assets when faced by the terrorist threat. This is the existence of a rapprochement between the Islamic organizations and the brotherhoods. All the brotherhood organizations attend Gamou and Magal,⁸ provide assistance, and so on. Indeed, ‘the brotherhood and Islamic organizations are found in the same unified contexts’.⁹ And, finally, while some people can be in brotherhoods and others are in Islamic organizations, they are related by their kinship or marriage or their sense of belonging together. We can think of it as a force, which through the combination of all these factors also makes Senegal an exception. However, it is clear that in addition to these assets, we also have several challenges in the face of radicalism. Aside from the development of the Wahhabi movement (radical Islam), we also find in Islamic organizations which are reformist in general individuals or radical groups marginalized or excluded from these organizations who more or less attempt to find an opening through the Rassemblement Islamique du Sénégal (RIS).¹⁰ And without doubt it would be these

 Téranga is a Wolof word usually translated as ‘hospitality’.  Gamou is a festival celebrating the birth of the Prophet. The Great Magal of Touba is the commemoration of the departure into exile of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba to Gabon. This religious festival, celebrated in Touba, dates from the birth of the brotherhood in the 19th century. Etymologically, magal is a Wolof term meaning ‘to pay homage, to celebrate, to glorify’. The Great Magal festival consists in giving thanks to God.  Sheikh Guèye, interview, June 2016.  Founded on 12 April 2009, the Rassemblement Islamique du Sénégal (RIS – Al Wahda) is a movement that brings together Islamic organizations with long experience in the field at the national level. Born in a particular context characterized by a dispersion of Islamic forces, the RIS has initiated a vast movement of unification of the various associations around the concept of radical reform.

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marginal groups that could be tempted by attacks or by the actions of Islamic radicalism. In addition, we note the existence of two systems: francophone, having more opportunities, and arabophone, having fewer opportunities. Indeed, the Senegalese administrative system offers few opportunities to ‘non-europhone’ intellectuals for professional integration (Kane 2003). One realizes that this system creates frustration—and these frustrated individuals may be tempted by jihadist actions, because there is a strong economic element in the motivations of potential candidates for jihad. Studies¹¹ confirm the existence of a widely accepted link between youth unemployment and their involvement in the groups concerned. The studies show, however, that the situation is more complex than it appears. Unemployment, broadly understood, is one factor among others within a category of economic determinants that includes, in particular, poverty, difficulty in providing for basic needs, and a lack of prospects. In addition, it is important to add another factor to these challenges. Several thousand students are enrolled in Quranic schools in Senegal, which are run by marabouts and follow unsupervised education in institutions with unknown sources of funding. And finally, one notes an increasing number of people who consider that the francophone elites who have long ruled the country have failed, and these people are demanding an Islamic alternative (Sambe et al. 2016). The minority discourse favourable to jihadism is nonetheless present in many spheres of Senegalese society, particularly in the urban peripheries among the youngest populations. Even if there is a creeping religious radicalism, the Senegalese do not yet seem to perceive it very clearly, considering that the country does not present the same characteristics as Mali and that the brotherhoods will always protect Senegal against this kind of situation (Sambe et al. 2016)—because brotherhoods are still widely regarded as bulwarks against extremist influences. The great marabouts like Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, Maodo Malick, etc. have really conquered the hearts of their disciples in such a way that the latter will not walk away from them easily. It will not be easy to corrupt people or to set up another form of belief, because the brotherhood system is rather old and carries across several generations. And this is a very solid obstacle for combating this radicalism. If you look at the Mourides, they organ-

 Note d’analyse 89, August 2016, Jeunes ‘djihadistes’ au Mali: Guidés par la foi ou par les circonstances, Institut d’Etudes de Sécurité (ISS), www.scidev.net/afrique-sub…/pourquoi-jeunesrejoignent-groupes-armes-Mali.html [Accessed 3 February 2017].

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ize the Magal and they recite all the time the khassida ¹² of Serigne Touba. The Tijanis undertake wazifa ¹³ in mosques; the Layenes likewise, the Talibés of Baye Niasse, etc. So I think that the tarîqas can help in the struggle against radicalism.¹⁴

This perception is based on a belief in the character of the Senegalese, naturally non-violent and incapable of adhering to ideologies advocating violence—even if we note the self-immolations of disaffected young people in front of the gates of the presidential palace during the Wade era and at the beginning of the mandate of Macky Sall, and the scenes of violence before the presidential election of 2012, which seem to have quickly passed out of memory. In less than a month, Senegal has also never recorded such numerous and violent murders. This sudden wave of deadly violence began precisely on 25 October 2016, when a Chinese man named Chung Hung Chen was murdered with 16 stab wounds by Papa Souleymane Sagna in Hann Marinas.¹⁵ These facts attest to the existence of signs of a profound change in society, especially in relation to violence in general.

Macky Sall, a follower of the brotherhoods The brotherhood movement is an essential characteristic of Islam in Senegal. From the colonial era until the years of independence, state power in Senegal under the regimes of the presidents Léopold Sédar Senghor and Abdou Diouf has always maintained privileged links with maraboutic power. With the accession to power of Abdoulaye Wade, politicians continued to maintain relations with religious figures. And President Macky Sall has not broken with this tradition; indeed, he showed his belonging to the brotherhoods from his election (photographs of his visit are displayed in the halls of brotherhoods). Today, he  Qaçidas does not come from Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba. This term originates in Arabic literature, particularly in one of its components called ‘aroud, which refers to prose and versification. Through language corruption, we confuse qaçida, which refers to the unity of prose, and qaçayid, which is the plural of qaçida.  The wazifa is one of the most important rites of the brotherhood founded by Sheikh Ahmet Tidiane Cherif more than a century ago. The practice of wazifa, like wird (repeating the name of God) and lazime (repeating a set of invocations), is compulsory for any believer who has received permission from a certified dignitary. This liturgy has its source in the very essence of the Tijania brotherhood. This is traced to the Prophet Mohamed, who instituted the rites.  A young, 27-year-old Muslim woman, BAC + 4 level, financier in a company; interview May 2016, Dakar.  Choquant: 25 Octobre 2016 – 23 Novembre 2016: Huit (8) Meurtres enregistrés, https://senepeople.com/2016/11/23/choquant-25-octobre-2016 – 23-novembre-2016-huit-8-meurtres-enregistres/ [Accessed 24 March 2017].

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continues to display his attachment by frequenting the brotherhood mosques at Friday prayers, by the opening of infrastructures in, and regular visits to, the religious towns. This confirms the integration of maraboutic power in Senegal’s political system, because the democratic and public space is strongly coloured by religion. In an interview with the journalist Moustapha Foyré Sow, the historian Mamadou Diouf described the Senegalese political system and the role of religious leaders in this system: Religious leaders have always played a role in Senegalese political life. This is the way our political system works. Marabouts have been an integral part of our political system since the colonial period. And our political system has always been a combination of often conflicting interests. We remember the role already played in 1968 by El Hadji Serigne Falilou Mbacké¹⁶ and many other marabouts in the appeasement of political tensions in our country. In fact, the marabout system is the double of the state in that marabouts also have interests in this system. They have power equivalent to that of the politicians.¹⁷

In the face of the terrorist threat, arrests can create resistance In Senegal, the case of Imam Ibrahima Sèye, sentenced to one year in prison for ‘apologizing for terrorism’ by a court in Kolda, was widely discussed the media. He was arrested in the company of a dozen people, including several imams, in October 2015 for ‘proven affinities with AQIM’ (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). Another suspected and intercepted jihadist is 28-year old Abdou Aziz Dia, known as Abou Zoubaïb. He was arrested in the Gouye Mouride Alwar district of Rufisque, as reported in Le Populaire. ¹⁸ He had been actively sought for a month by the Senegalese security services. According to a police source, he allegedly had connections with sleeper cells and had established branches in the sub-region at the time of the interrogation that followed his arrest. Phone chips

 Serigne Mouhamadou Fadl Mbacké (1888 – 1968) was the second khaliph of the Mourides. He succeeded Serigne Mouhamadou Moustapha Mbacké. He is the son of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, the founder of the Mouride brotherhood.  Interview by M. Foyré Sow of M. Diouf, http://www.lesoleil.sn/imprimertout.php3?id_rubri que=837, cited in an article entitled ‘Est-t-il possible de séparer politique et religion au Sénégal? Le Président Senghor et les chefs religieux’ (2013), published at http://banta-guewa.over-blog. com/2013/11/peut-on-s%C3 %A9parer-religion-et-politique-au-s%C3 %A9n%C3 %A9gal-parbanta-wague.html [Accessed 23 March 2017].  Daily newspaper in Senegal.

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and videos attesting to his status as a member of a terrorist cell were discovered at his residence. Abou Zoubaïb was transferred to Dakar to the premises of the DIC,¹⁹ where an anti-terrorist unit was set up for the purposes of the investigation.²⁰ The case of Imam Alioune Badara Ndao, imprisoned for events related to terrorism, brought a reaction from the League of Imams and Preachers of Senegal, which demanded a rapid holding of his trial, more humane treatment, and the application to this religious guide of the principle of the presumption of innocence. President Macky, faced with his alleged jihadists, paid a heartfelt tribute to the khalifas and dignitaries of the Sufi Muslim brotherhoods in Senegal and warned these guardians of the faith against the perils of the extremism that henceforth threatens the Sahelo-Saharan region and West Africa. And in front of representatives of the khalifas of the Sufi brotherhoods and Cardinal Theodore Adrien Sarr, Archbishop of Dakar, he emphasized that ‘our references in Islam are perfect for us; we have nothing more to receive from anyone coming from elsewhere’ (2013).²¹ The attitude of President Macky Sall to this terrorist threat seemed to us to be reactionary. Our leaders have a duty to reduce it, to contain it, and to treat it so that it is no longer able to represent a major or strategic threat. And to do this, an entry into contact with these alleged jihadists is fundamental. This contact means not only establishing close monitoring (either surveillance or on file) before an arrest for more information about them but, with a concern for social cohesion, establishing a dialogue and meeting for discussions (to reduce this hatred) with these marginal groups. This is to avoid reproducing the same pattern as Nigeria has done with Boko Haram. Often called ‘democrazy’ (crazy democracy) because of the social and cultural unrest that characterizes it, Nigeria has produced a monster: Boko Haram. In its beginnings, 12 years ago, it was merely a religious protest movement attempting to fill the void created by the neglect of progressive parties. But the Nigerian government has ended up transforming this sect into a geopolitical issue, the active ingredient of an attack–retaliation cycle as spectacular as it is deadly. In fact, the political apparatus

 Division des investigations criminelles.  ‘Terrorisme: Le présumé djihadiste, Abou Zoubaïb arrêté à Rufisque’, http://www.setal.net/Terrorism-The-presume-djihadiste-Abou-Zoubaib-arrete-a-Rufisque_a51520.html [Accessed 22 March 2017].  For more on this, see http://www.atlasinfo.fr/Senegal-Macky-Sall-rend-hommage-aux-confreries-soufies-et-met-en-garde-contre-les-perils-de-l-extremisme_a38079.html#LjydfJgPuYvt00wB.99 [Accessed 19 March 2017].

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contributed to radicalizing the sect born in the north-east of the country in the early 2000s, which it repressed with ferocity.²²

Female preaching in the face of radicalization Before talking about the involvement of female preachers in the fight against radicalization, we thought it necessary to address the reasons for their engagement in preaching.

Reasons for women’s involvement in the field of preaching Since the beginning of the 1990s, we have been witnessing a new visibility of women in Islam in the field of Senegalese preaching. In fact, beginning in this period, female preaching through the medium of radio began with an invitation from male preachers. An analysis of the positioning of this study’s two targeted preachers in this religious field reveals the same orientation. It is justified by divine recommendations. Indeed, the preachers specify that Islam recommends one to call, to engage in da’wa: God asks us to pass on, to remind people of the principles of Islam to help them be on the right path. There is a hadith of the Prophet, who says: ‘The best of you is the one who learns the Quran and who teaches it’ [who transmits it] and that it is necessary to transmit the divine message, whether it is a verse or a hadith.²³

Aisha²⁴ is cited as a reference in the field of female preaching. The role played by Aisha during the time of the Prophet strengthens the legitimacy of the women’s action in the religious field through preaching. It is important to note that after the death of the Prophet, Aisha became one of the most outstanding scholars of her time according to the unanimous opinion of the Muslim community throughout history. Therefore she was—as much

 Le Monde diplomatique, April 2012, ‘Frustration sociale et violence confessionnelle au Nigeria: Aux origines de la secte Boko Haram’, pp. 8 – 9, https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2012/04/ VICKY/47604 [Accessed 21 March 2017].  Interview with FBD at her residence, 2 March 2017.  Aisha was one of the wives of the Prophet. She was the daughter of Abu Bakr, first caliph after the Prophet’s death, and was an important figure in the early history of Islam.

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for the Prophet’s Companions and for scholars as for ordinary mortals—a reference, if not the reference par excellence, in the religious field at all levels: Quranic, traditions of the Prophet, and fiqh (Muslim jurisprudence).²⁵ Moreover, the aim of these women preachers’ discourse is based on the construction of an Islamic society in which the woman is at its heart. Indeed, they share the idea according to which women are at the centre of the process of construction because it is the woman who forges, supports, and trains the members of the community (men and women) to be good members. So the role of the woman in society is to be ‘a constructor’. This is what prompted S. Dayan-Herzbrun²⁶ to argue that women owe it to themselves rather to be reproducers of children first, but also of mores, customs, tastes, and objects by which the link of the community with the past is established.

Membership of a real brotherhood but without display The preachers are from religious families obedient to brotherhoods. This is why, even if the targeted preachers belong to the Salafi and neo-brotherhood movements, they claim to be brotherhood members. You know, it was the Ibaadou²⁷ who brought me up, the so-called diama-atou ibaadou rahmaane, but I really love Baye Niasse. My father is a grandson of Mame Sheikh Ibrahima Fall; my mother is Ndiassane; but I love Baye Niasse and Mame El Hadji Malick, which means I’m closer to the Tijanis.²⁸ I’m a Tijani because I took the Tijani wird in 1986, and I’ve been practising this wird ever since. But I’m a moderate Tijani; in other words, I’m not a fanatic. I know the teachings of El Hadji Malick, Serigne Bamba, Sheikh Ahmed Tijani—that is, those of the different tarîqa. ²⁹ And I work with all tarîqas, which is why my belonging to this tarîqa is not displayed, not visible. Sheikh Ahmed Tijani told us to measure the actions of the tarîqa ac-

 Aïsha, épouse du Prophète où l’Islam au féminin, www.asma-lamrabet.com [Accessed 11 March 2017].  Dayan-Herzbrun (Sonia), 2009, ‘Féminisme et nationalisme dans le monde arabe’, in La recherche féministe francophone: Langue, identités et enjeux, Paris, Editions Karthala, pp. 243 – 253.  A reformist group of Muslims in Senegal ‘who advocate religious activism in daily life. They are critical of the traditional Sufi orders and aim to establish a new religious leadership in the community.’ E.H.M. Sy Camara & M. Bodian (2016) Contemporary Islam 10: 379. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11562– 016 – 0360 – 8 [Accessed 21 January 2018].  Interview with ZFS at her Daara Internat, 14 February 2017.  A school or order of Sufis, such as the Mevlevi, Tijani, Mouride. A tariqa has a specific, recognized line of descent, some of these lines extending back many centuries.

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cording to the sunnah. ³⁰ If these actions do not appear in the sunnah, it is necessary to make a choice between the teachings the Prophet and the sheikh. In my case, of all the teachings I know, the Prophet’s teachings are my references—while I respect the other teachings.

Their belonging to a brotherhood is not ostentatiously displayed by most of these preachers. This membership is explained solely by the fact that it is inherited, most often from parents. ‘I’m Tijani because my parents, who educated me, come from this brotherhood.’³¹ However, it is important to note that this membership is not necessarily reflected in their actions, because being closer to the reformist movement favours the Quran and the sunnah as ideological supports—insofar as the Prophet and his teachings remain their source and reference. This shows that their positioning, be it neo-brotherhood or reformist, in this religious field as well as their involvement in the face of radicalism remains the same, The Ibaadou movement doesn’t prohibit tarîqas. When this movement was created, a call was made to all the Islamic brotherhoods. Baye Lahat [son of Sheikh Ahmadou Bamba, founder of the Mouride brotherhood] said to the leader of the movement—to Amir Malick Ndiaye, who died—that if he was young, he would accompany us during the activities of the movement. Those who often exceed the words are not part of the Jamaatou Ibaadou Rahman, because his members understand well. But those who do not understand, who say big words about the tarîqa …³²

This affirmation shows the preponderant place in the religious space in Senegal occupied by the brotherhoods. In addition, it is important to note that the Jamaatou Ibadou Rahman (an Islamic movement of Salafist tendency) constitutes a common space for both preachers. If the one has always belonged to this movement, the other (from the neo-brotherhood) attended the Jamatou Ibadou Rahman via her school curriculum. The latter was an opportunity for learning preaching techniques. And we saw that almost all the great teachers were on the side of Jamaatou Ibaadou Rahman. They opened a school with the name Jamaatou Ibaadou Rahman. I attended this school, and we did the da’wa [the call to Islam] as a subject. From time to time, we would go on ourouges [outings] to the markets, the trains, and the garages to engage in the da’wa with people. It was at this stage that I learned preaching. I was in a Dahira Aba-

 The record of the teachings, sayings, and actions of the Prophet.  Interview with ZFS at her Daara Internat, 14 February 2017.  Interview with ZFS, at her Daara Internat, 14 February 2017.

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bacar Sy.³³ It was from this dahira that the Moustarchidines³⁴ were born, and we gave sermons every Thursday evening, for three to four years. One day when I was teaching at Faidherbe camp school, Serigne Moustapha Sy³⁵ challenged me to leave to further my religious activities and studies in Dakar—because of my commitment to the work. When I got to Dakar, I was with the Moustarchidines, and it was with them that I learned how to do the lectures. We had a women’s committee unit in which we were asked to prepare topics for lectures. I also taught in this committee. I trained quite a lot of women members of this committee. The first lecture I gave was at the Kennedy School in 1982– 83. Thanks to Moustapha Guèye, I gave a lecture at the party house in Dakar on ‘Women and Islam’. And it was from these lectures that I entered into the field of preaching. Afterwards, Moustapha Guèye invited us onto the radio [RTS]. He corrected us the same as did Rawane Mbaye—all my themes that I had to present. There is also Mbarkhane Diop and Rawane, who sent me to the library to do research, which helped me a lot.³⁶

Perception and commitment of women preachers regarding religious radicalization The term ‘radicalization’ has emerged in recent years (Ragazzi 2014) to designate a social process, one of whose most dramatic aspects is the enlistment of people—or rather of young people (male and female)—in the Islamic State group, either by their departing for Syria or by their committing of terrorist attacks. Counter-communication is a response, direct or indirect, to extremist propaganda.³⁷ In this context, preachers attempt to make their contribution. Faced with some recent cases, from their neighbourhood and surrounding areas, of people who volunteered to go on jihad in Syria, the preachers decided to integrate the issue of radicalization and jihad into their sermons—to limit the number of young candidates but equally to reduce the number of mothers living in pain after the loss of a child. To do this, they organize awareness sessions in neighbourhoods on these issues, in the daara, and during their sermons. ‘Yes, we talk to young people to  Named after Seydi Ababacar Sy, leader of the Tijani in Senegal from 1922 until his death in 1957.  A neo-brotherhood movement which emerged from the Tijania fold at the end of the 1970s.  Moral leader of Dahiratoul Moustarchidina wal Moustarchidaty.  Interview with ZFS, at her Daara Internat, 14 February 2017.  Brie, G. & Rambourg, C., 2015, Radicalisation: Analyses scientifiques versus usage politique, synthèse analytique, Dossiers thématiques, Ecole Nationale d’Administration Pénitentiaire, ENAP/CIRAP.

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make them aware. Above all, what is very bad is religious abuse [religious extremism].’³⁸ There must be a balance in religion, because Islam is a religion of the golden mean. Therefore, young people who go on jihad do not know their religion. Jihad is the struggle with the body and the soul. And one has to start with oneself. When the Badr³⁹ Muslims had won the battle, they were jubilant; but the Prophet told them that this fight was only against enemies; there remained that of their soul. The soul that drives you to steal, to commit adultery, to defile yourself and defile your society: that’s jihad […]. So the Prophet advises to struggle against oneself to be on the right path.⁴⁰

Thus for these preachers, jihad is quite simply struggling with the body and the soul in order to be and to remain on the right path.

References Aïsha, épouse du Prophète où l’Islam au féminin, www.asma-lamrabet.com [Accessed 11 March 2017]. Bodian, M. & Camara, E. H. M. Sy (2015). Les religieux musulmans dans l’amélioration du débat public sur la bonne gouvernance au Sénégal. In A. Seck, M. Kaag, C. Guèye & A. S. Fall (eds), Etat, Société et Islam au Sénégal: un air de nouveau temps? (pp. 113 – 139). Khartala. Brie, G. & Rambourg, C. (2015). Radicalisation: Analyses scientifiques versus usage politique, synthèse analytique. Dossiers thématiques, Ecole Nationale d’Administration Pénitentiaire, ENAP/CIRAP. ‘Choquant: 25 Octobre 2016 – 23 Novembre 2016: Huit (8) meurtres enregistrés’. https://sene people.com/2016/11/23/choquant-25-octobre-2016 – 23-novembre-2016-huit-8-meurtresenregistres/ [Accessed 24 March 2017]. Coulon, C. (1983). Les musulmans et le pouvoir en Afrique noire. Paris: Karthala. Dakaractu (2016). ‘Emprisonné pour apologie du terrorisme – Les imams et prédicateurs du Sénégal réclament la libération d’Imam Ndao’. 29 October 2016. http://www.dakaractu.com/Emprisonne-pour-apologie-du-terrorisme-Les-imams-et-predicateurs-du-Senegal-reclament-la-liberation-d-Imam-Ndao_a120802.html [Accessed 20 March 2017]. Dayan-Herzbrun (Sonia) (2009). Féminisme et nationalisme dans le monde arabe. In La recherche féministe francophone: Langue, identités et enjeux (pp. 243 – 253). Paris: Editions Karthala.

 Interview with FBD at her residence in Dakar, 2 March 2017.  The Battle of Badr, also known as the invasion of Safwan, took place on 17 March 624 and was the first successful battle of the Muslim Arabs. The battle was against the Quraysh tribe that had forced the Prophet into exile in Medina.  Interview with FBD at her residence in Dakar, 2 March 2017.

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Interview by M. Foyré Sow with M. Diouf (2013). http://www.lesoleil.sn/imprimertout.php3? id_rubrique=837, taken from the article ‘Est-t-il possible de séparer politique et religion au Sénégal? Le Président Senghor et les chefs religieux’. http://banta-guewa.over-blog.com/2013/11/peut-on-s%C3 % A9parer-religion-et-politique-au-s%C3 %A9n%C3 %A9gal-par-banta-wague.html [Accessed 23 March 2017]. Fall, A. S. (2015). Les usages des liens confrériques religieux dans l’économie sénégalaise. In A. Seck, M. Kaag, C. Guèye, & A. S. Fall (eds), Etat, Société et Islam au Sénégal: un air de nouveau temps? (pp. 47 – 71). Khartala. Faye, M. N. (2016). La religion au contemporain. Du sens de la visibilité religieuse de la jeunesse au Sénégal. PhD Thesis, UCAD. Kane, O. (2003). Intellectuels non europhones. CODESRIA, Document de travail, Dakar, CODESRIA. Le Monde diplomatique (April 2012). ‘Frustration sociale et violence confessionnelle au Nigeria: Aux origines de la secte Boko Haram’. pp. 8 – 9. https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2012/04/VICKY/47604 [Accessed 21 March 2017]. Mvango, P. A. (2014). Radicalisation islamique au Sénégal. http://www.ihsnews.net/radicalisation-islamique-au-senegal/ [Accessed 17 June 2017]. Ndiaye, A. I. (2007). Le fait religieux dans l’espace universitaire. In L’Afrique des associations: entre culture et développement (pp. 117 – 28). Dakar, Crespo-Karthala, Sénégal. Note d’analyse 89 (August 2016). Jeunes ‘djihadistes’ au Mali: Guidés par la foi ou par les circonstances. Institut d’Etudes de sécurité (ISS), www.scidev.net/afrique-sub…/pourquoi-jeunes-rejoignent-groupes-armes-Mali.html [Accessed 3 February 2017]. Ragazzi, F. (2014). Vers un ‘multiculturalisme policier’? La lutte contre la radicalisation en France, aux Pays-Bas et au Royaume-Uni. Les études Du Céri, Paris: CERI-CNRS. Roger, B. (2016). ‘Terrorisme: ces Sénégalais qui ont rejoint l’État islamique en Libye’. Jeune Afrique, 27 January 2016. Sambe, B. et al. (2016). Les facteurs de radicalisation: perception du terrorisme chez les jeunes dans la Grande Banlieue de Dakar. Timbuktu Institute African Center for Peace Studies. Samson, F. (2005). Les marabouts de l’Islam politique le Dahiratoul Moustarchidina Wal Moustarchidaty, un mouvement néo-confrérique sénégalais. Paris: Karthala. ‘Terrorisme: Le présumé djihadiste, Abou Zoubaïb arrêté à Rufisque’. http://www.setal.net/Terrorisme-Le-presume-djihadiste-Abou-Zoubaib-arrete-a-Rufisque_a51520.html [Accessed 22 March 2017].

Meike J. de Goede

15 Legacies of political resistance in Congo-Brazzaville Abstract: This chapter looks at the legacy in Congo-Brazzaville of anti-colonial resistance by the Matsouanists, a religious sect that, through its acts of resistance, has developed a reputation as a troublemaker. Through this stigmatization, members of the sect have become social outcasts, distrusted by the regime as well as by the broader society in Congo. The chapter reflects on the construction of the stigma of the Matsouanists and its reproduction in present-day Congo. Following the life history of Anicet Massengo, spiritual leader of L’Eglise Ngunza Matsouaniste, the essay describes the efforts of one group of Matsouanists to liberate themselves from this stigma by aiming to de-validate the historically constructed truths on which the stigma rests. The temple of the Eglise Ngunza¹ Matsouaniste is located in the heart of the lively Bacongo township of Brazzaville. Its door is always open; people can walk in to pay their respects or to have a chat with a representative of the church. A notice board on the outside wall gives information about the hours of service, contact persons, and activities, such as a summer camp for children and religious education programmes. During Sunday prayers it is busy and lively in the temple: many people, including lots of children, sing and dance, accompanied by the pulsing rhythms of percussion instruments. Although the atmosphere is joyful, the Matsouanists are a troubled community with a painful history. For decades they have been stigmatized as irrational and headstrong troublemakers, who resist the legitimate authorities and refuse to respect their civil duties. It is a stigma that has developed since the colonial period and continues to haunt Matsouanists in Congo today.

I am greatly indebted to Anicet Massengo for the open discussions we have had in preparation for this paper. The research for this essay was enabled by the generous funding of the Gerda Henkel Stiftung for the project ‘Legacies of Independence: Post-Colonial Silencing of Anti-Colonial Resistance in Congo-Brazzaville’ (AZ 14/V/16).  Ngunza is the term for ‘prophet’ in the Congo Basin’s messianic tradition, a traditional African religion. Simon Kimbangu, Kimpa Vita, and André Matsoua are considered as prophets in the Ngunzist tradition. The inclusion of the term Ngunza in the name of the church firmly establishes the Matsouanist religion in a deeper Congolese traditional belief system. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-015

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Anicet Massengo is the spiritual leader of the Eglise Ngunza Matsouaniste in Congo-Brazzaville. Massengo is a 59-year-old man with a friendly smile who instantly makes one feel genuinely welcome. He is calm and takes up his role as spiritual leader in a father-like manner; he is a good listener and he is there for people when they need him. As leader of L’Eglise Ngunza Matsouaniste, he strives to liberate the Matsouanists of his spiritual community from their stigma. ‘We are a religious movement, not a political movement,’ he says. Massengo and his community maintain distance from the political history of the movement. The history of the Matsouanists is politically still very sensitive in Congo. It is ignored and not spoken about in the public domain. Initially I was struck by this silencing through which the history of the Matsouanists is kept out of official Congolese historical narratives and which denies the Matsouanists recognition for their contribution to the struggle for independence and the suffering they faced as a consequence. Over time, however, it occurred to me that the Matsouanists themselves also practise silencing. In order to liberate themselves from their stigma as troublemakers, Massengo’s group explicitly maintains distance from the political history of the movement, as well as from the traumas that are linked to this political history. The history of the Matsouanists in Congo-Brazzaville is thus subject to a double practice of memory work (Fabian 2003: 490): both aim to remember and forget, albeit for different reasons. Consequently, both remember and forget in their own ways. This essay reflects on the construction of the stigma of the Matsouanists, its reproduction in present-day Congo, and the efforts of one religious community to liberate themselves from this stigma. *** The stigma of the Matsouanists today goes back to the history of the followers of André Matsoua (after whom the religion is named), who started the Associals Amicale des Originares de l’Afrique Equatoriale Française (Amicale for short)—an association in defence of equal rights for colonial subjects in 1926. After his imprisonment for swindling in 1930, his followers maintained a campaign of passive resistance in which they—through (what seemed to be) political apathy—expressed strong political awareness and became the most important resistance movement of French Moyen-Congo (Sinda 1972: 188 – 197). After Matsoua died in prison in 1942, the movement did not cease to exist, nor did a new leader step up to continue the campaign of collective passive resistance. Instead, his followers now considered Matsoua a prophet who had died for the cause of the liberation of African people. Their political resistance would from then on be framed in a messianic religious discourse (Andersson 1958; Balandier 1966: 196 – 225; De Goede 2018, forthcoming). From then on, ‘the

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Matsouanists’, as they would now be known,² were no longer a group of unruly colonial subjects. They had become ‘religious fanatics’ who had God on their side and were totally immune to worldly attempts using plain reasoning, legal measures, or punishment to stop their religious radicalization (De Goede 2017: 200 – 202). The French colonial administration struggled with this group of people that they were unable to contain and discipline. They considered Matsoua’s followers a group of people that used ‘every opportunity to manifest their determination to maintain an attitude of resistance and bad temper’ (ANOM 5D127, 26 September 1933). The new religious discourse was in effect a matter of persisting in this attitude, albeit in a different discursive domain. Faced with this stubborn resistance, the French response was violent and repressive. Saving neither cost nor effort, the French kept the movement under close surveillance, and the Sûreté was kept busy until the end of colonial rule in French Equatorial Africa. Matsouanist leaders were imprisoned or sentenced to forced labour. Some even received the death penalty. Whole families were placed under house arrest in Chad and Oubangui-Chari (Central African Republic) to keep them as far away as possible from Brazzaville. Chiefs that resisted were replaced by more malleable ones, and police and gendarmerie executed punitive expeditions against Matsouanist villages. After one such raid, where pregnant women were beaten up, the mayor of Brazzaville received a letter signed by ‘the Balali’,³ in which they expressed their anger over the events and asked him, ‘do you no longer need the children?’ (ANOM 5D127, 25 August 1933). The news of the death of Matsoua was clouded in so much mystery that his followers were convinced that the French were using a new strategy to bring an end to the movement by lying to them. The Matsouanists considered it ‘a comedy’, one that they would not fall for (ANOM 5D203, 27 May 1947). The fear instilled

 The term ‘Matsouanist’ and ‘Amicalist’ are often used interchangeably; however, they have a significantly different meaning. While an Amicalist was a member of Amicale as a political movement, a Matsouanist is a follower of Matsoua as a prophet. The two partly overlap, particularly in the years after Matsoua’s death when many (although not all) Amicalists became Matsouanists. It is in this period that the distinction between Amicalist and Matsouanist is difficult to make. While recognizing that it simplifies the ambivalent and fluctuating loyalties and belief systems of both Amicalists and Matsouanists, I will refer in this chapter to followers of Matsoua after his death in 1942 as Matsouanists, whereas I will refer to his followers before his death and his deification as Amicalists.  The term ‘Balali’ is a French corruption of the term ‘Balari’. The Lali did exist, however, as a small sub-group of the Bembe in the region of Mouyonzi. Despite this error, the supporters of Matsoua adopted the term ‘le peuple Balali’ and not ‘le peuple Balari’ in their correspondence with the authorities.

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in the Matsouanists through violent repression strengthened them in their conviction and thus had the inverse effect: Matsoua became a black prophet, offering Africans an authentic, sovereign discursive space that could not be interfered with by the French (Balandier 1966: 216; Bastide 1972). It was a further withdrawal from colonial society into a parallel social imaginary (Kouvouama 1999). Instead of curbing the movement, constant repression fed the Matsouanist myth, a myth in which suffering found a place as an essential part of the struggle for freedom and the road to salvation. Informed by Christian glorification of the Passion of Christ, the messianic discourse that emerged after the death of Matsoua in 1942 gave meaning to the hardship Matsouanists were faced with (De Goede 2018, forthcoming). Suffering features very strongly in the symbolism and liturgies of the Matsouanist Church (Sinda 1972: 240 – 249). The result of these dynamics of violence and resistance was an ever-increasing mutual disengagement and a zero-sum approach from either side. Although the Matsouanists alone were considered the radicals and thus the problem, the polarization was the outcome of the actions and reactions of both parties simultaneously. A second key aspect of the stigma that has historically developed around the Matsouanists concerns the ethnification of the movement. Because Amicale had a majority of supporters among the Kongo-Lari from the Pool district and Brazzaville’s Bacongo township, the French were quick to label the agitation among Matsoua’s followers the ‘Affaire Balali’, thus equating every Lari (‘Balali’) to a follower of Matsoua, and every follower of Matsoua to a Lari. This meant that all acts of anti-colonial resistance committed by ethnic Lari, or even by people living in the Pool district, were attributed to Amicale, including acts that on closer inspection seem unlikely to have been the work of Amicale—for example, the plot to derail the Congo Océan train (ANOM 5D203, 24 April 1945), or the callout to Nazi Germany to invade French Equatorial Africa (AEF) and take it over from the French (ANOM 5D203, 24 November 1945). The culprits in these cases did not frame their acts in terms of Amicalist resistance, nor has it ever been proven that Amicale resorted to acts of violence. And with regards to the Nazis, Matsoua’s followers were convinced that Matsoua was fighting alongside De Gaulle to liberate France (Sinda 1972: 227– 230), and they had donated a large sum of money and 3,000 volunteers to join the troops of France Libre (Duriez 1950: 41; ANOM 5D203, 2 September 1939). Despite these acts of loyalty toward the colonial occupier in times of need, being Lari meant that one was by definition suspect. It even went so far that every Lari employed by the French authorities could be sacked preventively (ANOM 5D203, 23 March 1945), despite the fact that the Kongo-Lari had since the early days of colonialism been the main source of collaborators in the French colonial enterprise in AEF.

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What started as colonial anger toward the Matsouanists transformed into popular anger in the run-up to independence in the late 1950s. The rise of Fulbert Youlou, a Lari from Pool himself, first as mayor of Brazzaville, then as prime minister and later as president, divided the people of the Pool. Youlou presented himself as Matsoua’s successor who would complete Matsoua’s mission (Youlou 1955). While some supported Youlou, many Matsouanists refused to because they respected only Matsoua as their legitimate leader and found the coming political independence insignificant. Paradoxically, the Matsouanists with their roots in an anti-colonial resistance movement rejected independence as true liberation and became political and social outcasts in the new, independent Congo. Popular anger toward Matsouanists finally resulted in violent clashes after the elections of June 1959, when the Matsouanists had not voted for Youlou. In the months before, the Matsouanists had been prevented by other Congolese from using market places, roads, or public water supplies because they refused to pay tax and thus did not contribute to a common effort. The resistance of the Matsouanists against the colonial occupiers was, in the run-up to independence, understood as a resistance to a liberated, independent Congo. For three days, Youlou’s supporters ransacked and demolished houses of Matsouanists in Brazzaville, stripped men naked, beat them, and humiliated them. Women were brutally violated. Being faced with such extreme violence, a few hundred Matsouanists finally gave up their resistance. Others persisted and were placed in an empty factory building in another part of the city. Officially, it was a measure taken in the interest of their safety and public order. In effect, it removed the Matsouanists from public space in the capital. After six weeks they were dispersed to the north of the country, where many remained for the rest of their lives (De Goede 2017). Massengo was only a few months old when he and other Matsouanists were temporarily placed in that empty factory building, together with his father, mother, and elder brothers and sisters. He has no direct recollection of the events. However, his mother has amply spoken about their experiences to her children—about her deep conviction that they had all ‘suffered for Matsoua’. Conditions were dire due to a lack of food, sanitation, and medical care, while many people were injured from the violent attacks. Massengo’s mother often told her son that she never accepted any of the help offered—neither from the government nor from other people that offered water and milk for her baby. ‘She preferred to let me die for the cause than to accept help. And she was proud of it,’ he says with a forgiving smile. ‘She fought for the well-being of humanity, which for her was a higher cause than the well-being of her child.’ Despite the family’s initial conviction, for which they had already suffered so much throughout their lives, the Massengo family decided to end their resistance

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instead of being faced with deportation. They chose to give new meaning to their religious convictions, which would enable them to live a peaceful life. Jean-Louis Kinata, a Matsouanist who had also been held in the empty factory, offered a different vision of the future for the Matsouanists. Kinata was leader of one of many sub-groups among the Matsouanists. The Matsouanists have since the early days after Matsoua’s disappearance been fragmented into different groups, without a single overall leader. Despite these differences, they were surprisingly unified in their preferred methods of resistance. In the late 1940s, Kinata’s group separated from the group led by Jean Maboundou over differences of opinion on matters of the management of the church. Kinata was badly injured himself from the violent clashes with the Youlou supporters in Brazzaville and the gendarmes in their place of captivity. He argued that another way would be possible, that there could be a place for Matsouanists in Congolese society. On the evening before the other Matsouanists were deported and when others died in the stampede, Kinata decided to leave with his group, perhaps foreseeing that this would not end well. He convinced the Massengo family and the others of his group to change their tactics without giving up on their beliefs and to step away from this vicious cycle. They returned to Bacongo and reintegrated into Congolese society. While the others that persisted in their resistance considered Kinata and those that joined him to be traitors to the cause and weak in the face of repression, Kinata’s decision was an important first step in the de-radicalization of the movement, as well as a first step to finding a way to remain true to religious convictions in a less confrontational manner. The concession Kinata and those that joined him were able to make de-escalated the conflict for their group. It was a hard decision to take. The refusal to pay taxes and to register for an identity card had for long been an important instrument of resistance of the Matsouanists. It had become highly symbolic of their struggle and their conviction that Matsoua’s return on Earth was imminent. Even up until today the Matsouanists are remembered for these acts, as people that refuse to contribute to the community. What Kinata realized was that this principle no longer served a purpose in a Congo that was becoming independent. He argued that standing for Matsoua’s ideals does not have to be confrontational now that Congolese people had their freedoms guaranteed by the new independent constitution. Kinata’s decision to make a concession effectively separated the religious from the political side of the movement, and it allowed the Matsouanists of Kinata’s group to practise their religion without being persecuted for political reasons. A few years later, his church was officially recognized as a religion in Congo. Massengo believes that Kinata saved not only the lives of the individual Matsouanists that left with him that day, but also the Matsouanist religion as

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a whole. Those that were deported have not established new Matsouanist communities in the places where they were sent to, nor did the religion gain a foothold on the ground. What remains of them today in the north is little more than a vague memory of those troublesome people that were sent away from Brazzaville, whereas in Brazzaville several rather small, secretive, and marginal groups of Matsouanists exist besides Massengo’s church. Kinata gave the Matsouanist religion a new vision that enabled it to be part of Congolese society rather than outside it. As opposed to other, more secretive branches of the Matsouanist religion, the temple of L’Eglise Ngunza Matsouaniste in Bacongo township is visible and accessible to everybody. It is named after Kinata, while Massengo has become the spiritual leader of this ‘moderate branch’ of the Matsouanists. Not surprisingly, like any other faith, the Matsouanists are not immune to religious rivalry. More orthodox groups of Matsouanists consider Massengo a con and argue that his church has nothing to do with ‘real Matsouanism’. However, although Kinata’s group of Matsouanists has indeed been free to practise their religion like others are in Congo, this does not mean that the stigmatization has been overcome as well. This remains an issue in Congolese society today. The negative image of the Matsouanists as political troublemakers is heavily influenced by their assumed mystic powers. In casual conversations with nonMatsouanists, people have often warned me that Matsouanists are dangerous. Although the Matsouanists’ faith in Matsoua as a prophet is ridiculed, they are feared as powerful mystics who have direct contact with the ancestors. Shortly after Matsoua’s death, his followers started gathering at night in the woods, claiming they were speaking with Matsoua (ANOM 5D203, 11 October 1945). Among the Matsouanists are many spirit mediums, and, still today, spiritual leaders invoke Matsoua at night and converse with him. The village of Makana in Pool district became infamous for ‘Air Makana’, a small mystic bamboo aircraft that was allegedly used by Matsouanists to transport people to and from ‘the other world’. But these suspicions and fears of the Matsouanists are shared not only by an uninformed population. When I wanted to visit a camp of the Matsouanists in Brazzaville together with a Congolese scholar, he told me we could not approach the camp but had to stay at a distance. ‘You cannot take pictures. It’s dangerous; it’s a mystical place,’ he said. He was visibly frightened and wanted to leave quickly. As is often the case, fear and respect go hand in hand in the spiritual world. Despite widespread distrust, people also secretly come to the Matsouanists for treatments. The Matsouanists in Mpissa recall that when, during the war of 1998, southern political leader Bernard Kolélas prayed with a group of Matsouanists in their camp in Brazzaville, government forces came the next day and killed all Matsouanists present in the camp, because they feared that

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the Matsouanists had given power to Kolélas. Only a few survived (Author’s interview, Mpissa, August 2016). Similarly, a diarrhoea epidemic in Djambala was blamed on the Matsouanists who had resided there since their deportation in 1959. When rebels attacked the town in 1998, the population again held the Matsouanists responsible and they forced them to leave (Author’s interview, Djambala, January 2017). In short, the Matsouanists still have a very negative reputation in Congo. People make insulting jokes about the Matsouanists, smirk at my interest in them, or even warn me off by arguing that the Matsouanists are dangerous. Rather than being remembered for their brave anti-colonial resistance, the Matsouanists are remembered for their persistent troublemaking—against colonial authorities, against Congolese authorities, and against the community too. Their chosen tactic of resistance, to refuse to pay tax and not register for identification, angered other Congolese in the run-up to independence. People felt that Matsouanists did not want to contribute to the community and had turned their backs on the project of independence. This stigma still follows them around today: the Matsouanists are generally not trusted—they are troublemakers. Massengo once told me, ‘When something happens, it always ends up being our fault.’ That the trouble made by the Matsouanists in the past was in fact passive, non-violent, and against colonial occupation is forgotten. Even more so, that the Matsouanists fell victim to excessive state and communal violence is also forgotten. The image of troublemakers that reject authorities is remembered—the broader context to give meaning to the resistance is forgotten. Subsequent post-colonial regimes have been unsympathetic to the Matsouanists and have been unwilling to recognize their roots in Amicale as an important social movement in colonial Congo, one that stood up for the rights of African people. In Congo today there is no political space for any positive memory of Matsoua, Amicale, or the Matsouanists. This state of affairs is aggravated by the entanglement of the inherited stigma with contemporary political contestation in Congo. Colonial perspectives on different communities in Moyen-Congo and their way of governing them have had an effect on the longue durée of Congolese politics. The country is deeply divided between north and south, so much so that even the capital city has only a few mixed parts of town where northerners and southerners live together. This is symptomatic of a deeply felt distrust among northerners and southerners that also has its roots in colonial framing. The French considered the northerners as barbaric and less civilized. The people from the south were much more open to French influences and to collaboration. The north is still seen as backward by people from the south. Added to this, in the run-up to independence, the candidate for political leadership from the north, Jacques Opangault, was a socialist.

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The French heavily invested in securing the powerbase of their favourite, the southern candidate Fulbert Youlou (Bat 2015: 72). Since 1968 the country has been under different northern-led governments (with a brief interlude in 1992– 1997, when the country was ruled by a southern-dominated regime). Ever since Congo became independent, subsequent regimes have maintained the north– south division. While the Matsouanists have turned their backs on politics since the 1950s and have continued to remain disengaged from politics, the French unfortunate equation of Matsouanist with Lari has continued in the public understanding, particularly in the northern part of this deeply divided country. The Matsouanists are still caught up in these extremely volatile north–south relations. One of the distinguishing differences between the north and the south is the prevalence of messianic religious practices among the peoples of the south—Kimpa Vita, Simon Kimbangu, Simon Mpadi and, indeed, André Matsoua are all part of the same cultural tradition among the Kongo, to which the Lari of the Pool are ethnically closely related. None of the historical (or current) messianic movements have gained a foothold in northern parts of the country. The recent crisis in the Pool in 2016 – 2018, in which government troops were hunting down the re-emerged Ninja rebel movement (OCDH 2017: 37– 45; Amnesty International 2016), is only the latest example of how southern messianism is considered a political threat. The leader of the Ninjas, Pasteur Ntumi (‘messenger’ in Lari), claimed to be a prophet and thus framed his rebellion during the 1998 – 2003 civil war in the Pool in a similar messianic discourse. Although Matsouanists are not actively being persecuted or attacked today, in the eyes of many the conflict once again confirms that the Lari-Kongo and their messianic practices are a source of trouble. The Matsouanists, as the oldest, best known, and historically most important messianic movement in the country, are by implication held responsible, because they practise the same messianic discourse and originate in the same ethnic group and the same geographical region. The Matsouanists are the face of, and thus represent, a problem that is more widely shared by the Lari-Kongo. People effortlessly describe how the current conflict in the Pool district is a repetition of historical episodes of resistance by the Matsouanists, even though the Matsouanists have nothing to do with it. ‘They are complicated people, they are born that way,’ was the explanation of one informant in northern Congo, in which ‘they’ simultaneously refers to Matsouanists and Kongo-Lari from the Pool district. This is particularly acerbic considering that this is a group of people that has tried to stay clear of politics in the country, not to get involved, not to vote, and not to support any party or leader. They have never taken up arms and have never supported a rebellion. For as long as there is political distrust

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and conflict in the country, they will be held responsible. In Massengo’s words, ‘It’s like I have a label on my forehead, saying “guilty”.’ *** Massengo wants to liberate the Matsouanists from this label. He wants to show the Congolese that Matsouanists are good people too, just like anybody else. They adhere to a different religion, but that does not make them different as human beings. He wants to make the church grow not through zealous missionary work and converting people, but by changing the reputation of Matsouanism from that of a recalcitrant movement to that of a warm and welcoming community that partakes in the community. He thus aims to combat prejudice and build bridges between Matsouanists and non-Matsouanists, between Matsouanists and state authorities, and between people from the south and people from the north. Among the different Matsouanist sub-groups, the main dividing line is the rapport with the state, with authorities, and with the wider (non-Matsouanist) Congolese community. Whereas some remain extremely secretive and do not want to have any contact with the authorities or with people that are not members of the group, L’Eglise Ngunza Matsouaniste has chosen the opposite perspective. It welcomes everybody, Matsouanists and non-Matsouanists, Congolese and foreigners, and engages with social issues that go beyond dogmatic ideology. Following Kinata, the religious interpretation by Massengo’s group has deconstructed the politico–religious ideology of Matsouanism as a messianic sect and separated the political from the religious. The church is religious and does not take a political position. The political vision of Matsoua is reinterpreted and given new meaning and relevance in the context of contemporary Congo. Massengo has gone back to the roots of Matsoua’s vision. Key concepts of Matsoua’s ideology, such as emancipation, equality, and general human well-being, are still very important objectives to strive for, but this does not have to be a political struggle, nor is resistance a necessary means to achieve it. For Massengo these are ideals that one can strive to achieve in daily life, without turning them into a political project. Massengo often refers to a prophecy by Matsoua, who said that one day black and white people would live in the same neighbourhoods and eat as equals at the same table. This is about equality, mutual respect, and emancipation of African people from the subservient social position they had under colonialism. Massengo sees this realized in his daily life now, in his work in the private sector in Brazzaville, and also when we meet, talk, laugh, and share a coffee. ‘I take pleasure from the pain and suffering we have experienced in order to have achieved Matsoua’s ideals,’ Massengo says. The disengagement from political framing of social ideals is essential for Massengo’s project of de-stigmatization. The political history of Matsoua remains

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a political bombshell in Congo. The name and ideals of Matsoua remain a potentially strong force for political mobilization in the south and are thus treated with suspicion by the current northern regime. Southern political leaders have throughout history all used this to win support in Pool district (Kolélas 1990; Youlou 1995; see also Kouvouama 1988; Gruénais et al. 1995). If Kinata and his successor Massengo had decided to continue to fight for political objectives in the name of Matsoua, the church would not have received official recognition as a church, and it would without doubt have been crushed. Another way through which Massengo’s group explicitly steps away from politics is through the church statutes. The Eglise Ngunzist Matsouaniste is the only branch of Matsouanism that has statutes. They clearly state that the church is apolitical and that it is forbidden for everybody, whether leader or member, to make any political statements in church. The statutes also underscore that its members are obliged to fulfil their civic duties—that is, pay tax and obtain an identity card (Textes Fondamentaux, Art. 10 and 19). This seemingly awkward requirement exemplifies that the church rejects the Matsouanists’ former practices of resistance and that there can be no mistake that the Matsouanist Church is no longer a tool for undermining the legitimacy of the government or the state. To seal this statement that the Matsouanists no longer reject the authorities, Massengo invited the First Lady to pray at his church one Sunday in 2003—she accepted the invitation. It is a recognition, albeit perhaps merely a symbolic one, that Massengo is proud of. However, despite this recognition, Massengo is very anxious not to overplay his hand. The temple of the Eglise Ngunza Matsouaniste in Kinkala (capital of the Pool) is in desperate need of funding to complete the building. The church leaders have decided that they will not ask for support from the authorities; they feel they have to do it themselves. It is a subtle reminder of the violent clashes in 1959, when the Matsouanists were violently prevented from using public works such as roads, marketplaces, and public water taps, since they had not contributed to them because of their refusal to pay tax. Even though the Matsouanists pay tax like everybody else, they feel uncomfortable asking for support from public means, as if they are still not entitled to do so. Massengo prefers not to dwell on the past and to focus on the religious aspects of Matsouanism while maintaining distance from its political history. ‘The past is the past. We have to move on,’ he says. ‘God did not put our eyes in front of our face to look backward. We should look forward.’ Every year, a summer camp for children is organized. One hundred and fifty children between the ages of 4 and 16 from Brazzaville and the wider Pool district come to the temple in Bacongo for a long weekend of singing, dancing, and religious education. It intro-

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duces the children to ‘what it means to be a Matsouanist’ in terms of core values, and it contributes to community building among children as well as parents. For Massengo this is an important feature of the ‘new’ Matsouanist community he is building. It implies the deconstruction of the myth of suffering as the necessary fate of Matsouanists. This myth has long functioned as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it still does so for other Matsouanists groups. While Matsoua and his generation, as well as the generation of Massengo’s parents and grandparents, have suffered, Massengo believes that this does not have to be the selfchosen fate of Matsouanists today. Massengo adds, however, that 90 per cent of the membership of the church today does not come from such old Matsouanist families as Massengo himself does. The road he has taken with his religious community indeed allows the group to grow and attract new members. In other words, the traumatic legacy of the period 1930 – 1959 is not the family legacy of this new generation of Matsouanists. Massengo also insists that his direct family (father, mother) have never been part of Amicale. The family joined the Matsouanist religion in the mid-1940s for purely religious reasons. Before then, they were not Amicalists but practised the traditional Ngunzist religion and accepted Matsoua as a prophet sent by God to liberate them. He thus also deliberately maintains distance from (at least part of) the problematic past. *** Radicalization is a process in which people harden in their position and through which they disconnect from society’s norms. While we often easily equate radicalization with violence and terrorism, the radical position of the Matsouanists in the colonial era in Congo was a passive and explicitly non-violent one. The Matsouanists responded to repression and state violence with a simple but very stubborn refusal to cooperate. This paper has argued how this historical ‘radicalized resistance’ of the Matsouanists has transformed into a stigma that Matsouanists still carry with them in Congo today. What is fascinating to see is how the historical stigma of the Matsouanists, which emerged in a very different socio-political context and was actually initially created by French colonial occupiers, has been transformed in response to current-day societal challenges. As such, it contributes to the reproduction of political contestation between north and south and the image of the Pool as the core of all political resistance in Congo. The stigmatization thus contributes to the implicit legitimation discourse of the current military intervention in the Pool, even though the supposed rebel activities of the Ninjas that triggered this intervention still remain unconfirmed. This paper has focused on efforts to de-validate the historically constructed ‘truths’ on which this stigma rests. Rather than deconstructing the historical stigma and its application in the present, in pursuit of a more just and forgiving un-

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derstanding of the past, Massengo has chosen to counter the stigma by developing a discourse that focuses on well-being. While the Matsouanists may have been radical in their non-violent resistance in the past, this paper has shown how difficult it is to liberate oneself from subsequent stigmatization as troublemakers, as people that refuse to contribute to the community, and as powerful mystics that should be feared. While it was a very difficult decision to offer resistance in the first place, it is even more difficult for the Matsouanists to win back the trust of others, of society at large, and to become accepted members of the community again. Massengo is an optimist who rightly emphasizes what has been achieved in terms of the formal recognition of the church, symbolic recognition by those in power, a growing religious community, and the realization of Matsoua’s ideals. However, he also knows that Matsouanists are still marked as guilty—that label is still on his forehead.

References Amnesty International (2016). Republic of Congo: Air strikes hit residential areas including schools. 18 April 2016. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/04/republic-of-congo-air-strikes-hit-residential-areas-including-schools/ [accessed 26 Mach 2017]. Andersson, Emphraim (1958). Messianic Popular Movements in the Lower Congo. Uppsala. S.I. s.n. ANOM (Archives Nationales d’Outre Mer), 5D127, 25 August 1933, Anonymous letter to Mayor of Brazzaville. _____, 26 September 1933, Report by Governor of Moyen-Congo to Governor General of AEF. _______, 5D203, 2 September 1939, ‘Les Balalis Offrent un Régiment de Volontaires à la France’, Copy from Journal A.E.F, No 18. _______ ______, 23 March 1945, Lettre Confidentielle, Governeur Générale AEF André Bayardelle to Governeur du Moyen-Congo. _______ _______, 24 April 1945, Lettre du Chef du Departement du Pool au Gouverneur du Moyen-Congo. _______ _______, 11 October 1945, Proces Verbal d’Audition, Brazzaville. _______ _______, 24 November 1945, Chef du Département du Pool à Monsieur le Gouverneur Général, direction des Affaires Politiques et de la Sûreté. _______ _______, 27 May 1947, Proces Verbal de mise à la disposition de Monsieur le Procureur General de République du nommé Koussakana Prosper, demeurent a Poto-Poto pour ‘Propos Anarchistes’, Gendarmerie Nationale. Balandier, Georges (1966). Ambiguous Africa: Cultures in Collision. London: Chatto & Windus. Bastide, Roger (1972). Préface: Les Christ Noirs. In Martial Sinda, Le Messianisme Congolais et ses Incidences Politiques: Kimbanguisme, Matsouanisme, Autres Mouvements (pp. 9 – 13). Paris: Payot. Bat, Jean-Pierre (2015). La Fabrique des ‘Barbouzes’. Histoire des Réseaux Foccart en Afrique. Paris: Nouveau Monde.

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De Goede, Meike (2017). Objectivation, amnésie coloniale et histoire de la déportation des Matsouanistes de Brazzaville (1959). Les Temps Modernes, No. 693 – 694, Guerres africaines de la France: 1830 – 2017. L’empire des armées: 195 – 220. De Goede, Meike (2018). Becoming a prophet: Messianism as reality of duress in French colonial Congo. In Conflict and Society – Advances in Research 4(1): 199 – 214. Duriez, M. J. (1950). Étude du Balalisme. Paris: Centre des Hautes Études d’Administration Musulmanes, Section Islam Afrique Noire. Fabian, Johannes (2003). Forgetful remembering: A colonial life in the Congo. Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute 74(4): 489 – 504. Gruénais, Marc-Éric et al. (1995). Messies, fétiches et lutte de pouvoirs entre les ‘grands hommes’ du Congo Démocratique. Cahiers des Études Africaines 35(137): 163 – 193. Kolélas, Bernard Bakana (1990). La Philosophie Matswaniste et le Pouvoir Politique. Paris: La Pensée Universelle. Kouvouama, Abel (1988). A chacun son prophète! Politique Africaine (31): 62 – 65. Kouvouama, Abel (1999). Imaginaires réligieux et logiques symboliques dans le champ politique. Rupture 1: 76 – 92. OCDH (2017). Republique du Congo: Une Gouvernance par la Terreur e le Mepris des Droits Humains. Rapport annuel sur la situation des Droits de l’Homme 2016. Brazzaville: Observatoire Congolais des Droits de l’Homme. Sinda, Martial (1972). Le Messianisme Congolais et ses Incidences Politiques: Kimbanguisme, Matsouanisme, Autres Mouvements. Paris: Payot. Textes Fondamentaux de l’Église Ngunza Matsouaniste, Brazzaville (n.d.). Youlou, Fulbert (1955). Le Matsouanisme: une grande étude. Brazzaville: Imprimerie de Brazzaville.

V4T, G Hip Hop, Africulturban

16 ‘Give the Youth a Voice’: A reflection on the Rencontres V4T@Dakar, 15 – 18 November 2017

Abstract: The book ends with a report on the events at Rencontres V4T@Dakar, where we worked on the theme ‘radicalization’ with youth in the city neighbourhoods. The disciplines represented at V4T included academics, journalists, activists, and artists. Participants engaged in debates and created works related to the theme with video, slam, and rap, which are published on the website of V4T (www.voice4thought.org). The photographs reflect the activities organized during the meetings. This report also presents an opening toward a policy discussion.

Rencontres V4T@Dakar From 15 to 18 November 2017, Voice4Thought (V4T), an artistic–academic foundation (www.voice4thought.org) that uses the digital environment to connect people and make unheard voices heard, hosted a series of meetings (‘rencontres’) and activities in Senegal: ‘Rencontres V4T@Dakar’. The goal of the festival was to get people from West and Central Africa to meet, interact, and discuss relevant and current issues around the theme of radicalization. Debates, panels, slam and rap concerts, graffiti, and photography and design workshops were organized as forums for discussion and expression, especially for the youth. Not only were these young Senegalese the main target group of the rencontres, they were also at the centre of many of the discussions about radicalization. The workshops that were given—such as slam, rap, film, and DJ-ing—were geared toward the idea of ‘writing from the neighbourhood (quartier)’. One of the workshops was organized around the participation of two UN Youth Delegates of the Netherlands, who prepared a session on the UN charter for the participation of youth. For more information and impressions of V4T@Dakar, see www.voice4thought.org/blog. V4T@Dakar subscribes to the general objective of V4T to ‘bring the academy to the street’ and to produce a shared knowledge about urgent issues such as radicalization. V4T aims to discuss contemporary issues, which are too often discussed in forums about people instead of discussing the issues with them. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110623628-016

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Why is such a meeting important? West and Central Africa have increasingly become part of the region called the insecurity belt, where supposedly al-Qaeda-affiliated and other groups have become important players in increasing violence. Insecurity is high in the region. Boko Haram, MUJAO, and Hamadoun Koufa are names circulating in international reports, on Facebook, and on YouTube. The circulation of radical groups and their actions—also through new media—refers to a relatively new situation that can be described as one of lawlessness and one that is characterized by an absence of the state, a situation that has prompted especially a discussion about increasingly ‘violent’ radicalization and extremism in the region. Apparently, many young people feel attracted to these new players and join their ranks. Such developments are evaluated in mainly negative terms by observers. Of course, on the one hand, we do not deny how cruel the acts of these radical groups can be; but, on the other hand, we should also question why these groups exist in the first place and whether the interventions—militarily, socially, and in discourse—affect and/or push these young people in ways that we would rather avoid. In light of these new developments in the region, V4T@Dakar, in an attempt to explore radicalization, researched what exactly this radicalization entails and also whether there is a possible positive outcome to be gained from these recent developments. All events during V4T@Dakar were intended to discuss this situation and particularly to discuss how society and the youth can countervail the violent and negative influence that radicalization seems to have. The starting point was that radicalization per se is nothing new and that it may even involve positive power for social change. The central question of V4T@Dakar was this: What is society’s responsibility with regard to increasing radicalization of the youth, and what might be the solution(s)?

The Rencontres V4T@Dakar landscape Rencontres V4T@Dakar was not situated in the conference rooms that are usually used for such discussions. The chosen locations for an alliance between academics, artists, journalists, and citizens were in two popular neighbourhoods¹

 The two neighbourhoods, Pikine and Guédiawaye, have a total of 2.6 million inhabitants. They are built on top of former lakes, and each rainy season, flooding is part of daily reality. This means that houses are difficult to maintain in good order. In these areas it is difficult to find services of the

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and in the university quarter. We give special thanks to the Dutch embassy in Dakar, which offered the space of the ambassador’s residence for a discussion with the youth, adding a dimension of linking youth to policy and decision makers. The presence of international guests also made V4T@Dakar relevant beyond Senegal’s borders. Guests, artists, academics, and journalists came from Benin, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and the Netherlands. They all participated in workshops, concerts, and discussions and collaborated with Senegalese actors. Throughout the events we reached out to the Senegalese academia and international NGOs (they were present especially at the opening panel and artistic presentation at the IFAN Museum,² but some also visited the concerts in the banlieues). Moreover, we made a particular effort to reach out to the youth in the peripheral neighbourhoods through the workshops as well as trainings, and especially during moments of sharing and creating. During V4T@Dakar a debate on radicalization was fostered, and listening to the stories from the different neighbourhoods informed the debate in fresh and alternative ways. V4T@Dakar gave a voice to those who are normally not heard. Through the creation of a blog/ report on the website of V4T, these voices will continue to inspire discussions (see www.voice4thought.org). It should be noted here that in this ‘landscape’, considerable room was created for the voice of the youth in peripheral neighbourhoods. It is also important to note, however, that the young invitees to the festival were often themselves originally from poor families in both rural and urban peripheries. These backgrounds are important for the way they observe their society today. In general, they all share an emotion of abandonment, of rupture from the state and from their rulers—rulers who do not seem to be really interested in the future of the youth. The youth in Dakar discussed radicalization as a development that has not yet reached their lives. By this they meant radicalization in the form of violent acts and terrorism. Indeed, Dakar—and Senegal in general—is less touched by these developments than other areas. But this did not make the discussion any less relevant. On the contrary, the confrontation with the stories of other at-

state that go beyond tax collecting and perhaps some basic electricity and water availability. There are hardly any services for the youth, no culture houses, no playing grounds, no good roads. The state schools do not suffice in these neighbourhood, and good schools are increasingly private and expensive.  The IFAN Museum is housed in a beautiful old (colonial) building. It is a space where Senegalese culture is presented. At the time of Rencontres V4T@Dakar, the museum held a exhibition on radicalization, and Senegalese artists exhibited their art on the topic. Hence the debate and art performances that were held for the rencontres were very welcome. It also made the rencontres part of the month of urban culture, which was also initiated by the museum.

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tendees at the festival made the Senegalese youth reflect on the processes of radicalization; and it also helped gear the discussion toward other forms of radicalization that could be seen as forces in society for social change. How was it possible to create this exchange and also generate such rich insights from the festival? The peripheral quarters in many cities of West and Central Africa are indeed forgotten areas—often not well connected, either through roads or ICT, and with very limited availability of public services. In Dakar the situation has changed a little through the creation in these quarters of cultural youth centres, which were initiatives of the youth themselves and not in the first instance of the state.³ V4T has been working with these centres to be able to reach out to the youth in such neighbourhoods. Without these centres and the enthusiasm of the people (youth) working there, V4T@Dakar would not have been possible. The visit of the ambassador of the Netherlands to the Dalifort centre and the exchanges at the ambassador’s residence have given an important impetus to the youth. In concrete terms, the youth in Dalifort are now working on a follow-up in the form of a publication of slam and in the development of a theatre; G Hip Hop is searching for means to be able to bring Senegalese youth to the Netherlands. The leaders of these centres also hope that V4T rencontres can be developed for other cities in Africa. IFAN Museum and Dalifort/Africulturban/Guédiawaye Hip Hop share the conviction that knowledge should be shared with those about whom the knowledge (or discourse) is created. To do so, they search for participatory organizational models. The result of Rencontres V4T@Dakar was a new incentive to develop collaborative projects in the future. The recommendations that follow are also the ideas that were discussed in the evaluative meeting with the different organizations that participated in the rencontres: G Hip Hop, Africulturban, Dalifort, and Voice4Thought.

Organization of alternative voices During V4T@Dakar, alternative voices were heard through slam (urban poetry), painting, graffiti, filming and photography (‘show us your quarter’), debates, and simply being together. These different activities are united under the label ‘Hip Hop’ or urban cultural expressions. In addition to their general cultural  There is, however, as was explained by the initiators of G Hip Hop and Africulturban, a policy of the Senegalese state to stimulate these centres with some funding. Apparently, the state recognizes the importance of Hip Hop and of urban culture as an expression and possibility through which to foster developments for the youth.

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and entertainment aspects, these activities also yielded valuable insights in relation to the objective of understanding and responding to radicalization.

Slam From the texts written in the slam workshop, it became clear that nostalgia for one’s own neighbourhood with its difficulties and struggle has become part of youth identity. This is also true for the young people who have been able to go to school and whose parents more or less pushed them into the world of intellectuals and academia. They maintain a discourse in which they voice the disparity between the world of their youth and their aspirations today. This is a voice that we should take very seriously, because these youth are the future leaders and spokespersons in their communities.

Rap The rap concerts were overwhelmingly well attended. The texts were very much engaged with the theme of the rencontres. Rap music in West Africa is what it should be: a music of protest and social and political engagement. It unifies the youth in a shared understanding of the world. But just like slam, it is also part of a conscientization of the youth through its texts, and through the ‘movement’ that it represents. The Hip Hop and cultural centres are in themselves nodes of youth conscientization, and their attraction for the youth make them wonderful avenues through which to exchange ideas and contribute positive and constructive influences.

Painting Children in Dalifort painted the V4T logo. They enjoyed the activity, and while doing so they asked questions: ‘What are we doing?’ One young boy came up with a new name for the centre—‘Voice4Dalifort’ Giving voice to very young children is an element that is often overlooked. We think this needs to be built into these types of rencontres, but it also raises the possibilities of organizing rencontres in primary and secondary schools. These children are confronted every day with problems at home, with garbage in their streets, with overfull classes at school. They are conscious that the world can be different, and they need to be able to express and develop their ideas.

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Another painting exercise was the collaboration between two artists from Senegal and Chad, who created a graffiti painting in Dalifort. This painting will remain in place and tells its own story about radicalization.

Filming and interviewing in the neighbourhood Through the filming and interviewing in the neighbourhoods, the young and future ‘citizen’ journalists encountered the story of themselves but phrased in different ways. For instance, they noted the fear of parents for the direction in which they see their youth going. These voices also revealed a deeper problem in the neighbourhoods: the rupture between the generations. This is nothing new, but it is potentially explosive in a society/community where hope takes rather a form of desperation, and where the only ways forward seem to the youth to be linked to migration.

Leaders’ debating The rencontres at the IFAN Museum gave a platform to some other voices: those of the leaders in the communities today. Fadel Baro and Fou Malade, founding members of Y-en-a Marre, have already demonstrated their leadership. Their ideas about alternative education and giving more voice to the youth are realistic and substantial. The leading figures in academia, such as Boukary Sangare (Mali) and Selly Bâ (Senegal), made a clear plea against the interpretation of the situation of the youth as hopeless, and against militaristic answers to the problem of radicalization. They made a plea for a more careful listening to the voices of the youth, embracing a formula in which alternative ways to produce and disseminate knowledge, such as arts and journalism, are used to reach out to the youth and also to incorporate them in the debate. The UN youth representatives made a special attempt through the organization of an exchange/workshop with youth in the centre. This was an exchange on laws and rights, a high-level debate that was brought to the neighbourhood. Young people who already had taken on leadership roles were the ones who attended these meetings. There is a great need for such discussion and exchange forums.

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Discussions: Learning from each other During the debates in Guédiawaye Hip Hop and Dalifort, an important element was the sharing of itineraries by those who are today rather successful. Here an emphasis on initiatives and creativity of the youth themselves came to the fore. The youth who were invited to take up the microphone told ‘success stories’. These youth are radical in their own way, just like their counterparts who opt for migration or for joining gangs or other violent actions. Through this positive approach of using radical energy for a different development path, we can begin to formulate answers to the problems of the Sahel.

Lessons learned and possible future paths The different actions and interactions during the Rencontres V4T@Dakar certainly opened new perspectives and also ideas for alternative ways to address the present-day situation in the Sahel.

Discussing concepts and their use with instead of only about the youth What we learned during the Rencontres V4T@Dakar was that we talk too much about the youth that radicalize, without sufficiently listening to them. This is the first lesson we have to take into our practice of policy and decision making: attempt to come as close as possible to the groups about whom we talk. These voices, of course, appear in research reports and in consultancy reports, where they form part of the ‘survey group’ or where their stories figure as ‘vignettes’—but they themselves never speak in the discussions around these reports. V4T@Dakar tried to provide such a platform. We certainly did not succeed 100 per cent. The connection between more academic-oriented institutions and cultural centres was not a natural process and can still be better developed. The strong side, however, was how various ways of expression were offered that reached out to different categories of youth. During the rencontres, the opening ceremony was a moment where they all met. From these encounters with the youth and their own productions, what became quite clear is that the youth in Dakar are occupied, first and foremost, with poverty and the lack of prospects.

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The importance of (regional) exchange #Africaisnotacountry: The fact that ‘Africa is not a country’ is clear also with regard to radicalization and security issues. There will never be one appropriate measure for all in finding solutions to the problems we relate to radicalization. The exchanges among and with invited artists and journalists from various countries in West and Central Africa made this point especially clear. The initiative of V4T to bring together young people, who already have reached a certain point of activism and who have a noticeable influence in their own societies through their expression in arts, journalism, or academia, highlighted this point. They discussed differences between their countries. They made lucid statements in their poems and drawings, and as such they highlighted differences and commonalities. What they shared is that radicalization as a point of departure in discussions about youth should not be linked only with the negative connotation of violence and radical religious ideas, but that there should be more room for the radical contribution of innovative youth. These are the youth that the invitees themselves represent. They do and want to play a key role in their societies to address the youth, who risk becoming radicalized in a negative way. We have to address this group of young radical innovators in our policy attempts. The exchanges also made clear how different Dakar is from the other cities the invitees came from. They were impressed by the initiatives in the neighbourhoods where we held the activities, and also by the attitude of the local government officials. On the other hand, they shared in the poverty and marginality debates. The Malians (who are confronted with severe radicalization), the Chadians (who live under an oppressive regime), the Cameroonians (who are in a struggle against their president on a daily basis), the Ivorians and Beninois (who have relatively peaceful countries but large urbanization issues)—all regard Senegal as a relatively peaceful country with a government which is listening to the youth. What we learned from V4T@Dakar is that regional exchange is important— and that in the development of policies, it is necessary to pay attention to regional diversity (which is not always the case).

Understanding mindsets and contexts of radicalization Radicalization is seen as a development in an individual. It has a psychological component. Understanding the youth mindset(s) is therefore one way to understand how radicalization toward violence is possible. However, every individual develops in a particular context. The context of the youth in many parts of urban and rural Africa is that they are faced with a less than bright future. At the same

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time, the context is not one only of misery. Understanding the context and the perception of this context is key to understanding violence and radicalization. Hence, if radicalization has individual and socio-economic-political contextual sides, it is in these two aspects of the social world that change can be effectuated. During the festival and exchanges, we were able to capture these two sides; more importantly, through the different workshops on ‘writing the neighbourhood’, the youth themselves became aware of these developments. The Rencontres V4T@Dakar was thus a way of promoting self-reflection and understanding of possible pathways to the future. When we help make youth aware of the environment in which they live and what the possible itineraries are, their thinking is clarified and they can choose responses that will have practical and beneficial consequences. This was done during V4T@Dakar.

Awareness-raising In relation to the other aspects, awareness-raising is particularly important. It is important that people become aware of possible risks. Opening debates in the quarters that are considered the centres of radicalization with both the older and younger generations is part of this awareness-raising and understanding of radicalization. For this, the combination of panel discussions and informal meetings in an atmosphere of conviviality and trust was important. But the discussions that were facilitated during the rencontres also went beyond this. For example, radicalization of young people has become a subject of discussion in the quarters where V4T was held. The visit of the Dutch ambassador to Dalifort gave energy to the youth to start to work on new projects. Theatre and slam poetry will be worked on to include more youth into the debate about radicalization.

Radicalization is energy to be used for positive action The discourse on radicalization is too much entangled with violence, terrorism, and youth. We need to change this into a discourse on entrepreneurship, positive energy, creativity, and possibilities. Radicals are part of society, and they have been an important force in positive social change. Radicalization is a force in all societies that releases a lot of energy that can be turned into positive and not just negative directions. There is a need for more positive forces, of which Africulturban, Guédiawaye Hip Hop, and Dalifort are good examples.

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Forgotten youth: Taking into account the heterogeneity of youth One of our policy targets is the youth in Africa, who make up at least 60 per cent of the population. However, these youth are not a homogeneous group. The differences between youth in wealth, in education, and in initiative need to be taken into account in our policies. In the workshops that were organized during V4T@Dakar, it was clear that a more educated and already less forgotten youth were participating. These youth can become the teachers of the ‘forgotten’ youth.

The use of artistic forms in education There is a huge school drop-out rate among the youth in the urban peripheries. These youth do not lack intelligence; however, if they do not learn skills that will allow them to live in dignity, they will tend to flee into migration or turn to criminal acts. Art is an excellent way to voice the concerns of these youth, and to be used by them. The V4T@Dakar formulae with the different workshops suggest alternative models for such expression: education in workshops in relation to arts, writing, film, photography—which can also be forms of citizen journalism—are skills that will help the ‘forgotten’ youth to express themselves and even to have dignity and the force to earn a living based on these skills.

Access to alternative schooling One of the great problems for a large part of the youth who mostly live in peripheral regions is that they are not considered by the state. Rupture from the state is a missed opportunity, as this rupture prevents them with their energy from being ‘conscious’ citizens and part of society. The present-day situation of schooling does not fill this gap. Alternative vocational schooling is necessary. V4T@Dakar was a mini-example of such a school: a mobile academy where skills were taught in fine-tuned courses of one or maximum two weeks in which the youth learn to think about their situation and also learn about alternative ways to create jobs against all odds. A lobby for vocational schooling should be created at the level of the governments. This space is now increasingly occupied by international NGOs, who fund for short periods and mainly have contact with the highly educated youth (the leaders of the centres) and rarely with the ‘forgotten youth’. The risk of rupture between these leaders and their background is real and should be avoided.

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The peri-urban neighbourhoods can profit much from alternative forms of education: creating a green environment, for example, and cleaning a neighbourhood are actions that can be enveloped in alternative forms of teaching and collaboration. Such actions are already undertaken by individuals at cultural centres such as G Hip Hop. From these examples, this kind of activity could be up-scaled.

Concerts as a means to reaching out V4T@Dakar reached different groups of youth in the neighbourhoods concerned, both the already more educated and the ‘forgotten’ youth. The concerts were a very important means to reach the ‘forgotten’ youth. Concerts should be used as platforms also to launch discussions. Hip Hop, and within it rap, is a genre that has the power to entertain and create awareness at the same time (see the article that appeared on Oneworld.nl).

Permanent structure and ICTs to maintain and facilitate exchange V4T@Dakar also created a moment where decision makers on different levels— NGO, state, national, and international—met with the ‘real’ problems in the neighbourhoods by attending the artistic expressions and citizen journalist projects that were realized. This should be developed further. The development of a more permanent ‘structure’ (it can be a soft structure) to facilitate these encounters is important. The role of ICTs as a tool to facilitate, inform, and reach out should be further explored. Youth, also forgotten youth, are very much acquainted with and attracted to these technologies.

Knowledge and factual information A final point to be made is that there is a lack of knowledge about what is really happening in the peri-urban quarters in Dakar and other large cities in West and Central Africa. The stories about the quarters, among others about radicalization and criminalization, are not always based on facts. The young people in Dakar made a plea for better information. This could be part of the products they can make from their own quarters: providing accurate and current information

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to policy makers so that the latter can base their policies on ‘real’ facts. This could be linked to the ‘schooling’ project proposed above.

Room for youth creativity In general, there should be more space and venues/activities for the creativity of the youth to express itself. During the meeting of V4T@Dakar at the Dutch embassy, we were impressed by the many wonderful ideas of the young people from Guédiawaye and Pikine. They presented their projects for greening their environment, their DJ projects, the songs they make, the ideas they have about schooling. This is probably the most important thing to do as soon as possible: to link all these young people together in their projects and facilitate exchange among them. Foremost is to unite youth in common forums and provide contexts for them in which to share ideas. It is likely that they have the solutions for their fellow youth who do not really know where to go and who currently envisage only migration, crime, or violent radicalization. For further impressions, visit the blog at http://voice4thought.org/category/ren contres-v4tdakar/?order=asc

List of Authors Souleymane Abdoulaye Adoum obtained his PhD in History in 2017 from Leiden University, the Netherlands. His dissertation is entitled ‘Communication et violences au Tchad: le cas du Moyen-Chari et du Guera (1900 – 2010).’ Before coming to Leiden, he obtained an MA in International Relations in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Adamou Amadou has an MA in visual anthropology from Norway (Tromsø), an MA in Law and Political Science from Cameroon (Ngaoundéré University), and works as a magistrate in the High Court of the north of Cameroon. He has longstanding experience with and interest in studying the Mbororo in Adamawa and eastern Cameroon. He is also part of the research group ‘Connecting in Times of Duress’, headed by Prof. Mirjam De Bruijn. He is currently conducting PhD research at Leiden University on the (im)mobile Mbororo nomads–refugees from the Central African Republic in Cameroon, with a focus on their struggle to maintain and adapt their culture in the refugee camps in the east of Cameroon in times of conflict. Selly Ba is a Doctor of Sociology at UCAD, a specialist in Gender and Religion in Senegal, and associated with several research programs. She is the author of a number of articles and a collective publication on gender allied to political, religious, migratory, and security themes. She advises the Centre des Hautes Etudes de Défense et de Sécurité (CHEDS) in Dakar on gender and security issues. Her most recent publication (January 2017) focused on Muslim women’s preaching in Senegal. Dr Sali Bakari received his doctorate in 2015 from the University of Maroua on the theme ‘Dissemination of Small Arms and the Problem of Security in Chad 1979 – 2007’. His research focuses on security issues in the Sahel region of Chad. He is a teacher at the Higher Institute of Education Sciences, the Ecole Normale Supérieure of N’Djaména, the University of N’Djaména, and the King Faisal University of Chad. Jonna Both obtained her PhD in Anthropology in 2017 from the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She was a post-doctoral researcher at the Institute for History at Leiden University and at the African Studies Centre Leiden. Currently she works as a researcher at Rutgers in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Her research interest concerns young people growing up in the aftermath of conflict in Uganda, the Central African Republic, and Chad. Modibo Galy Cissé was born in Diafarabé (Mali), attended Quranic and classical school simultaneously until 1996, and then moved to Bamako to continue his studies. He obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in 1999 and a Master’s Degree in Sociology four years later, both at the University of Bamako, and a DEA (Master’s II) in Anthropology of Development in 2013 at ISFRA, Bamako. A research assistant in the project ‘Anthropology of Water’ (2009 – 2010), Modibo has conducted many studies and participated in several courses, including one at Columbia University (USA) in 2011. A PhD student at Leiden, he is working on insecurity in the Central Delta.

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Mirjam de Bruijn is Professor of Culture and Identity in Africa at the African Studies Centre Leiden, and Professor of Anthropology and Contemporary History of Africa at the Institute for History, Leiden University. Her research concentrates on the interrelation between crisis/conflict, communication (and communication technologies), and society. She was/is director of several externally funded research programmes, including ‘Mobile Africa Revisited’ (2008 – 2013) and ‘Connecting in Times of Duress’(2012 – 2018). She is also a researcher in the programme ‘Nomads facing change, political mobilisation in the Sahel’; www.nomadesahel.org (2016 – 2019). In 2015 she became director of the foundation Voice4Thought. This foundation develops models of knowledge production and dissemination through a digitally enabled working environment, to ‘bring the academy to the streets’ (www.voice4thought.org). Meike J. de Goede is Assistant Professor of African History and Anthropology at the University of Leiden, specializing in the political history of Central Africa. She holds a PhD in International Relations from St Andrews University. Before joining the University of Leiden, she served as a practitioner in the areas of development and democratization and worked for a long time in the DRC. She is currently conducting research on the history of messianism and political resistance in Congo-Brazzaville. David Ehrhardt is Assistant Professor in International Development at Leiden University College, where he teaches development studies and African politics. He conducted his doctoral research at Oxford and uses mixed-methods fieldwork to study issues ranging from religious politics and interfaith conflict, to citizenship, inequality, and conflict resolution, primarily in the context of northern Nigeria. David’s articles have been published in journals such as African Affairs, Contemporary Islam, and Social Sciences and Missions, and he is the co-editor of the volume Creed and Grievance (James Currey, 2018). Currently, David’s research interests are hybrid governance, conflict resolution, and African religion. Didier Fonong-ta Lalaye (a.k.a. Croquemort) made his artistic debut in literature and has won several awards with his news in Canada, France, Cameroon, and Chad. A former rapper of the Kartel Noir group, absorbed in his medical studies, he decided to turn his back on music— until he heard the Grand Corps Malade for the first time in Paris. This prompted him to update his texts and adapt them to slam. He has released two albums to date (2011 and 2015), which have been successful and won several prizes. In addition to leading news writing workshops, poetry, and children’s literature, he provides training in slam writing and gives concerts. He is Director of Festival International N’Djam s’enflamme en Slam (FINES), now in its fourth edition, and President of the Africa Cup of Slam. A medical doctor, a graduate of the University of N’Djaména, and currently a PhD student at the University of Utrecht, he has set up an innovative project in his country to combat neglected diseases in rural areas. This project has received more than five awards and made him the Young Francophone of the Year in 2016. His combined activities have earned him invitations to more than twenty countries around the world. Inge Ligtvoet is a PhD candidate at the Institute for History, Leiden University. She is currently working on a dissertation on youth’s aspirations and duress in south-east Nigeria, for which she conducted 14 months’ fieldwork in Enugu and Calabar between 2013 and 2015.

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Walter Gam Nkwi holds a PhD from the University of Leiden. He has published books, articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and in encyclopaedias. He is currently Secretary General in the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at the University of Buea and also a Senior Lecturer there in the Department of History, Faculty of Arts. Loes Oudenhuijsen holds a master degree in African Studies from Leiden University. Her award winning master thesis was on the position and ways of LGTB in Senegal. In 2015 she conducted a survey on the use of ICTs and social media in Enugu, Nigeria. She combined her quantitative research with a brief ethnographic study of the pro-Biafra protests that were taking place while she was in Nigeria. Dr Hoinathy Remadji received his PhD in Anthropology from Martin Luther University HalleWittenberg. His thesis was published as Pétrole et changement social au Tchad (Karthala, 2013). He is a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at N’Djaména University and Director of the Center for Research in Anthropology and Human Sciences (CRASH) in Chad. This research also addresses migration, security and conflict, and food security issues. He has conducted multiple studies on these themes within the framework of the UNDP, USAID, G5, and EU studies. He is the coordinator of the research program funded by Volkwagen Stiftung: ‘The translation of alternative modes of governance in the African context: Local and international civil society initiatives for the governance of the extractive sector in Chad’. Boukary Sangaré is a PhD student at Leiden University. He has been working in the Sahel region since 2009. His research on mobile telephony among Fulani nomads in central Mali was part of his MA programme for Bamako University and his ResMa (MA II) for the University of Cheick Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. Today he is one of the most renowned anthropologists on the subject of central Mali, and especially on the Fulani and their plight during the conflicts of 2012 and the troubled situation thereafter. Boukary has been part of several consultation missions in the north of Mali and has published various reports and articles on the region. He is currently teaching at the University of Letters, Languages and Social Sciences of Bamako (Mali). Dr Bart Schuurman is an Assistant Professor at Leiden University’s Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA) and research coordinator at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), both of which are located in The Hague. His research focuses primarily on understanding the processes that can lead individuals toward—and away from—involvement in terrorism. Djimet Seli is a historian, communication scientists, and anthropologist. Of Chadian nationality, he studied at the primary, secondary, and high school of Bitkine and Mongo (Chad), then at the universities of N’Djaména, Yaoundé (Cameroon), and Leiden where he obtained his PhD. Since 2013, he has been teaching and conducting research at the University of N’Djaména. His work focuses on ICT issues, barriers to accessing immunization services for nomadic populations in southern Chad, and factors of radicalization and violent extremism in the western regions of Chad. Dorrit van Dalen specializes in Africa as a journalist and in Islam in Africa as an academic. She obtained a PhD from Leiden University in 2015.