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41. What Is Boko Haram?

Author:
Andrew Walker
Publication Date:
05-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Institute of Peace
Abstract:
Boko Haram is an Islamic sect that believes politics in northern Nigeria has been seized by a group of corrupt, false Muslims. It wants to wage a war against them, and the Federal Republic of Nigeria generally, to create a “pure” Islamic state ruled by sharia law. Since August 2011 Boko Haram has planted bombs almost weekly in public or in churches in Nigeria's northeast. The group has also broadened its targets to include setting fire to schools. In March 2012, some twelve public schools in Maiduguri were burned down during the night, and as many as 10,000 pupils were forced out of education. Boko Haram is not in the same global jihadist bracket as Algeria's al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or Somalia's al Shabab. Despite its successful attack on the UN compound in Abuja in August 2011, Boko Haram is not bent on attacking Western interests. There have been no further attacks on international interests since that time. Following the failed rescue of hostages Chris McManus and Franco Lamolinara in north¬eastern Nigeria in March 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan played up the connections between the group and international terrorism. However, links between Boko Haram and the kidnappers are questionable. It is difficult to see how there can be meaningful dialogue between the government and the group. The group's cell-like structure is open for factions and splits, and there would be no guarantee that someone speaking for the group is speaking for all of the members. Tactics employed by government security agencies against Boko Haram have been consis-tently brutal and counterproductive. Their reliance on extrajudicial execution as a tactic in “dealing” with any problem in Nigeria not only created Boko Haram as it is known today, but also sustains it and gives it fuel to expand. The group will continue to attack softer targets in the northeast rather than international targets inside or outside Nigeria. It is also likely to become increasingly involved in the Jos crisis, where it will attack Christian indigenes of the north and try to push them out. Such a move would further threaten to destabilize the country's stability and unity.Now that the group has expanded beyond a small number of mosques, radical reforms in policing strategy are necessary if there is to be any progress in countering the group. Wide¬spread radical reform of the police is also long overdue throughout Nigeria. As a first step, jailing a number of police officers responsible for ordering human rights abuses might go some way to removing a key objection of the group.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Islam, Religion, United Nations, Armed Struggle, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Africa, Algeria, Nigeria, and Somalia

42. Clean Trade in Natural Resources

Author:
Leif Wenar
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The "resource curse" can strike countries that derive a large portion of their national income from exporting high-value natural resources, such as oil, gas, metals, and gems. Resource-exporting countries are subject to four overlapping curses: they are more prone to authoritarianism, they tend to suffer more corruption, they are at a higher risk for civil wars, and they exhibit greater economic instability. The correlations between resources and such pathologies as authoritarianism, corruption, civil conflict, and economic dysfunction are evident in the list of the five major African oil exporters: Algeria, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, and Sudan. The recent histories of mineral exporters support the correlations: for example, "blood diamonds" fueled Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war, and the continuing conflict in the metal-rich eastern Congo has caused up to 6 million deaths. The phenomenon is not solely African: Burma, Yemen, and Turkmenistan, for example, are also resource cursed. Moreover, poor governance in resource-cursed countries can engender follow-on pathologies, such as a propensity to cause environmental damage both domestically (for example, through the destruction of forests) and globally (through increased greenhouse gas emissions). Most research on the resource curse has focused on the institutions of exporting countries. This essay focuses instead on importing countries, especially those in North America and Europe. I survey how the resource curse impedes core interests of importing states. I then discuss how the policies of importing states drive the resource curse, and how these policies violate their existing international commitments. The second half of the paper describes a policy framework for importing states that can improve international trade in resources for both importers and exporters.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Burma, North America, Nigeria, and Angola

43. The Many Faces of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

Author:
Mohammad-Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (“Tandhim Al Qaeda fi Bilad Al Maghrib Al Islami”, commonly referred to by its French acronym AQMI) is a reformed version of an Algerian terrorist group formed in September 1998, Al Jama'a Al Salafiya lil Da'wa wal Qital (Salafist Group for Predication and Combat, GSPC). Born in the context of the waning Algerian civil war that had raged in that country between 1992 and 1998, with an estimated 150,000 dead, the GSPC carried with it three consequential elements: the violent legacy of the civil war and its heavy toll on Algerian society; an entrenched radical Islamist identity prone to armed violence; and a design on the part of this group to not disarm and perpetuate its armed insurrection.
Topic:
Islam, Terrorism, Armed Struggle, and Counterinsurgency
Political Geography:
Arabia, Algeria, and North Africa

44. Revisiting the Resource–Conflict Link: A Systematic Comparative Test of Causal Mechanisms in Four Major Oil-Exporting Countries

Author:
Miriam Shabafrouz, Matthias Basedau, and Annegret Mähler
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
Causal mechanisms and related contextual variables are crucial to the study of the resource–conflict link, but little systematic research has been done on their exact functioning. This paper contributes to the filling of this gap by comparing four major oil exporters (Algeria, Iran, Nigeria, and Venezuela) with differing levels of internal violence. To capture the causal complexity of the resource–conflict link we created a questionnaire with some 150 variables that distinguish between resource-specific (RS) and non-resource specific (NRS) conditions. The causal mechanisms are measured by assigning pertinent RS and NRS indicators to them. Our results suggest that the role of resources may be less prominent than is widely assumed. Only three resource-related causal mechanisms provide limited explanatory value (motive at subnational level, indirect economic, and institutional mechanism) by distinguishing Venezuela—the most peaceful case—from all the others. Only a mixed mechanism that combines 13 RS and NRS (economic and geographic characteristics, identity, intergroup relations, as well as political and institutional variables, including elite behavior) conditions can explain the differences between the countries with regard to the dependent variable comprehensively.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Political Violence, Diplomacy, and Oil
Political Geography:
Iran, Algeria, and Nigeria

45. European Security Practices vis-à-vis the Mediterranean: Implications in Value Terms

Author:
Pinar Bilgin, Eduard Soler i Lecha, and Ali Bilgic
Publication Date:
08-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper analyses the implications of European security practices vis-à-vis the Mediterranean in value terms as deduced from an analysis of 'facts on the ground' and local actors' perspectives (based on interviews conducted in Algeria, Egypt and Morocco). It is argued that European security practices have had adverse implications for various security referents in the South. While it is too soon to tell whether the so-called 'Arab Spring' has been delayed or brought on by such collaboration, our research shows how Euro-Mediterranean security collaboration has rendered more defenceless the already vulnerable individuals and societies in the South and how Southern Mediterranean states/regimes and societies have become further alienated from each other following such collabo-ration. The paper also highlights how the very practices adopted by European actors to secure the Union and its values may have rendered it less secure insofar as they have had consequences for the very meaning of what it means to be 'European'.
Topic:
Security and Popular Revolt
Political Geography:
Europe, Arabia, Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco

46. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM): Implications for Algeria's Regional and International Relations

Author:
Dario Cristiani and Riccardo Fabiani
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Rebranded in 2007, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is the latest incarnation of Algerian radical Islamism. Initially focused on attacks with great political resonance against Algerian governmental and military targets, the group has progressively shifted its priorities, alongside its geographical and operational features. In the past few years, the countries of the Sahel region (Mauritania, Malì, Niger, Chad) have been increasingly affected by AQIM's actions. This geographical shift was the result both of a weakening of AQIM within Algeria, due to the tough counter-terrorist measures adopted by the regime, and of the "business opportunities" and the wider operational freedom offered by the Sahelian environment. The aim of this paper is to briefly address a series of questions concerning AQIM's "Sahelization" and its consequences for Algerian foreign policy.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and Islam
Political Geography:
Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania

47. Whither the Arab Spring? 1989 or 1848?

Author:
Robert Springborg
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The dramatic thawing of the Cold War at the end of the 1980s accompanied by the rapid democratisation of Eastern Europe served as inspiration and model for political transitions in other settings. Now the Arab world, the securitisation of which has kept it frozen in what amounts to a regional cold war long after the global prototype ended, may be entering its springtime of political freedom. Tunisia's 'Jasmine' and Egypt's 'Midan al Tahrir' Revolutions chased established autocrats from power, thus making possible new domestic political orders and substantial reorientations of foreign policies. Imitative uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, Libya and Syria have thus far resulted in widespread violence, regime retrenchments and even foreign interventions, although prospects do remain for more positive outcomes. Intermittent demonstrations in various other Arab countries, including Morocco, Algeria, Oman, Jordan and Iraq, have typically been met with limited political reforms and promises of more to come. So the region is definitely in political ferment, but whether that presages transitions to democracy à la Eastern Europe in 1989, or revanchist reconsolidations reminiscent of those that overwhelmed the 1848 liberal nationalist movements in Western Europe, remains to be seen.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Europe, Libya, Yemen, Arabia, Algeria, Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Bahrain, and Oman

48. Queers and Muslims: The Dutch Case

Author:
Gert Hekma
Publication Date:
11-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Macalester International
Institution:
Macalester College
Abstract:
For about a decade, antagonisms have been mounting between Muslim and gay men. In particular, when El Moumni spoke out against homosexuality in 2001, many politicians and gays reacted angrily. White Dutch got the feeling that Muslims did not respect or accept gays, lesbians, and women in general because of their supposedly homophobic and sexist views. That a disproportional part of the anti-gay violence can be attributed to male Moroccan youngsters has become another ground upon which to attack Muslims. Pim Fortuyn, the right- wing leader who was murdered in 2002, exploited the anti-homosexuality stance of a large portion of the Muslim religious leaders and the queer bashing attributed to ethnic minority youth, using it as a stick to beat the Muslims for their backwardness. They should not be able to sufficiently integrate in a Dutch society that is defined, in the eyes of the right wing, by its longstanding support for the emancipation of women, gays, and lesbians. Although the issue of gay-Muslim relations is continuously discussed in Dutch society and politics, the political answers have been unconvincing up until now. Rhetoric has been more important than doing something. In this article, I will first discuss the early history of the gay-Muslim debate, then the subsequent rise of antagonism since the interventions by El Moumni and Fortuyn, and finally the contemporary social and political answers on the issue.
Topic:
Islam
Political Geography:
Algeria, Netherlands, and Tunisia

49. Algeria at the Crossroads, Between Continuity and Change

Author:
Andrea Dessì
Publication Date:
09-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
Algeria is the only country in North Africa which seems to be relatively immune to the so-called “Arab spring”. Popular protests did erupt in Algeria at precisely the same time as they were enveloping neighbouring countries, but the demands of the protesters never reached a popular consensus calling for the demise of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Drawing on the country's extensive monetary reserves, the Algerian authorities have responded by implementing a series of economic and social reforms, which have further weakened the resolve and unity of the protesters. After repealing the emergency laws in late February 2011, the government appeared to have regained the upper hand, but strikes and demonstrations have continued. Algeria still faces the real prospect of future popular unrest if the government fails in its promise to enact wide ranging political and economic reforms by early 2012. Given the country's geostrategic importance at both regional and international levels, the international community and in particular the EU must do more in order to ensure that Algeria is set on a sustainable path for the future.
Topic:
Islam, Politics, and Regime Change
Political Geography:
Arabia, Algeria, and North Africa

50. Conflict Prevention through Natural Resource Management? A Comparative Study

Author:
Miriam Shabafrouz, Annegret Mähler, and Georg Strüver
Publication Date:
01-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
German Institute of Global and Area Studies
Abstract:
Natural resources are often held responsible for intrastate conflicts. As a consequence, both national and international measures to avoid the detrimental impact of resource endowments have increasingly been discussed and implemented in resource-rich countries. These measures include stabilization funds, subregional development programs, revenue-sharing regimes, and transparency initiatives. However, comparative empirical studies of the actual impact of these measures, particularly regarding their contribution to conflict prevention, are scarce. This paper contributes to the filling of this gap: combining a medium-N sample of oildependent countries and three in-depth case studies (Algeria, Nigeria, and Venezuela), we evaluate different instruments of resource management and their effects on conflict risk factors. On the one hand, the findings do not show any systematic connection between the countermeasures and a reduction in resource-related risks; on the other, the paper highlights common causal factors for the lack of implementation of resource-related countermeasures.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Development, and Natural Resources
Political Geography:
Africa, Algeria, Latin America, Venezuela, and Nigeria