Overcoming ambiguities in war on terror mechanisms in Africa: Acknowledging Africa is not a country

Abstract

This article critically examines the major shortcomings in multi-country security investments in East Africa during the war on terror. It argues that these investments have not only failed to adequately recognise African contexts but also falls short of recognising the agency of local communities in counterterrorism efforts. Drawing on critical terrorism and security studies, as well as excerpts from interviews with practitioners in Kenya, the article identifies gaps in the prevailing approach that treats Africa as a unitary entity and critiques the notion of universality of knowledge ingrained in these interventions. By taking a decolonial perspective, the article challenges some prevailing constructions about Africa, linked to the war on terror, as the source of this notion of universality of knowledge. By highlighting the connection of counterterrorism strategies to coloniality and the systemic exclusion of subaltern voices, the discussion suggests that a more contextually informed approach is a precursor to envisioning Africa positioned beyond the war on terror.

Introduction

This article provides a critical analysis of counterterrorism efforts in Africa over the past two decades. Specifically, it explores two key aspects that help to better understand the complexity of this issue. First, it discusses the strategies employed in Africa, which are often influenced by the global war on terror (GWoT). The article argues that these strategies often make the mistaken assumption that Africa is a homogeneous region – as if it were a single country– and, hence, susceptible to terrorism. The study thus contributes to the ongoing debate on the need to detach counterterrorism initiatives in Africa from colonial influences such as foreign aid that fail to consider contextual diversities. The article also highlights the challenge of using a narrow perspective to understand the diverse African contexts, which can be attributed to historical and contemporary dominance by the United States (US). The US has historically exerted considerable political power over Africa, as well as in other regions in the Global South, including Latin and South America and numerous Asian countries.¹

This article contends that the dominant approach to countering terrorism in Africa not only fails to achieve its intended goals but also undermines trust between researchers and the communities they study. This lack of trust is problematic, as it hinders the production of local knowledge that is essential for effective counterterrorism strategies.² The international community’s tendency to view Africa as a homogeneous region susceptible to terrorism perpetuates this mistrust and undermines local ownership of counterterrorism efforts. This fallacy about Africa’s susceptibility to terrorism can be traced back to historical colonial continuities that have shaped African contexts in the past two centuries. Counterterrorism programmes, mostly funded by the Global North, are often exploited as capitalist commodities in the Global South, while the developed world shifts its focus to other global security matters. This exploitation of Africa as a resource highlights the need to address significant ambiguities in the knowledge production systems for counterterrorism investments.

The article suggests that for future programming and scholarship, a more nuanced understanding of African communities and the recognition of their diverse experiences and needs are necessary.³ By acknowledging and valuing such diversity, counterterrorism efforts can be more effective and tailored to the specific contexts of each country – which are intrinsically different from others. This issue is particularly important in the East African context, where counterterrorism programmes are rarely guided by local knowledge and expertise.

The article, thus, calls for a shift away from the dominant, homogenising approach to counterterrorism in Africa. Instead, it emphasises the importance of involving local communities in the development of counterterrorism strategies and recognising the diverse realities of African contexts. This approach will lead to more effective and sustainable counterterrorism efforts in the region.

In short, I argue that the international approach to countering terrorism in Africa has been flawed and ineffective. These efforts have relied on misguided and often discriminatory strategies that do not take into account the unique circumstances and capacities of African countries.⁴ Additionally, they have failed to prioritise the rights and needs of local communities affected by terrorism. Instead, there is a need for counterterrorism strategies that are tailored to the specific contexts of African countries, respect the rights of individuals, and involve local communities in decision-making processes.

Theory, method, and scope

A reassessment of terrorism as a security threat and its impact upon security policy and scholarship in Africa must navigate through an analysis of globalisation. This entails an examination of the Western process of knowledge production and exchange which constructs the world as a ‘global village’ and considers Africa as one homogeneous context in both scholarship and interventions for counterterrorism. According to Afolabi, globalisation ‘has been dominated by a biased Eurocentrism and Western-centric knowledge production paradigms and platforms’.⁵ This bias defines the changing fortunes of terrorism and counterterrorism as subjects of both ‘political and scholarly salience’ in Africa.⁶ Some African scholars, such as Mbembe, contend that many post-colonial societies in Africa have experienced a ‘grey’ and somewhat ‘murky’ articulation in the literature.⁷ This can be associated with the period of the war on terror decades, where ‘virtually all facets of knowledge production’⁸ about terrorism and counterterrorism are more of the same colonial paradigm that Africa has experienced for centuries.

This article uses Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s articulation of the theory of decoloniality as a venerable ‘political and epistemological movement’⁹ to liberate post-colonial states and the academy from the global bondage of coloniality. According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni, decoloniality is ‘a way of thinking, knowing, and doing’. Building on this conceptualisation, pioneered by Gatsheni and Mignolo, Global South scholars like Oando and Ilyas have noted that the process of decoloniality is not a smooth way, but ‘it is rather a fragile move’, as the scholars dare ‘to engage in debates and contentions that define the paradox between the knowledge systems of the global North and South’.¹⁰ More challenging is the paradox in the universality of knowledge that cuts across the decolonial turn. However, the duo argue for a transformative approach in the analysis of counterterrorism strategies funded by foreign agencies in the Global South and call for epistemic decolonisation. The call for epistemic decolonisation is highly relevant to academia but also in the programmes supported by donor funding in Africa. Such a theoretical approach is thus grounded in the radical theorising of decolonisation in the production of new knowledge, inclined towards fully recognising the knowledge of counterterrorism which is Indigenous to African contexts. According to Oando and Ilyas:

decoloniality emerges from evidence in post-independent scholarships that work towards reconstructing the relationship between the colonised and the colonisers by overcoming naivety in the fear of returning to ‘a romanticised’ pre-colonial past. Therefore, this concept of decoloniality is … a form of ‘fundamental rethinking’ and redoing of how knowledge is produced, taught, and disseminated in terrorism research to usher a new dawn of a decolonial turn.¹¹

Subsequently, an argument against the prevailing strategies of counterterrorism, while envisioning a period beyond the war on terror (WoT), acknowledges the existence of a unique opportunity in local capacities that are worth considering in knowledge production for the future of counterterrorism in Africa.

This article also builds on the critical work of Achieng’, Oanda, and Jackson, which declares that ‘terrorism studies as a whole’, and the process of making steps beyond the war on terror, must ‘acknowledge the colonial roots of the field’.¹² Hence, a peek into the future of terrorism studies ought to ‘diversify voices’ in terrorism scholarship and aim to reconstruct the existing approaches by taking ‘concrete steps towards a more decolonised’¹³ global agenda and a reconstruction of the racialised response mechanism to terrorism.

The analysis in this article also engages with Gunning’s approach to deconstructing coloniality in the regional strategies for counterterrorism.¹⁴ Drawing on ideologies developed by Mignolo and Walsh around coloniality and modernity, Gunning discusses an underlying ‘colonial matrix of power’ that exists across studies of terrorism, also ‘recognising that colonialism is constitutive of modernity and current power relations’ between nations. On the other hand, this article underscores that both the ‘actors and actions’ constituting terrorism vary by time and space.¹⁵

While considering Gunning’s ‘overlapping hierarchies’ in the geopolitics of counterterrorism, this study adopts an understanding taken by Jackson¹⁶ that, fundamentally, ‘terrorism is a social fact, rather than a brute fact, because deciding whether a particular act of violence constitutes an “act of terrorism” relies on judgements about the context’. This includes a basic recognition that the changing circumstances and intentions of violent actions take on a series of social, cultural, legal, and political processes of interpretation and labelling.¹⁷ Using a case study of the multi-country interventions, such as the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the ‘Partnership for Regional East Africa Counterterrorism’ (PREACT), both of which are heavily funded by the US, the analysis highlights some of the key ambiguities in the WoT.

Drawing on earlier observations by Moosavi, the discussions in this article are further framed around the assumption that an emerging ‘decolonial bandwagon in the Global North’¹⁸ creates a looming risk of ‘reproducing colonisation’ in future counterterrorism interventions, through continued Western domination in the knowledge production space. In this regard, Ilyas advocates for a radical departure from the past through epistemic decolonisation, beyond academia, in the Global South.¹⁹ It is on this basis that this article alludes to the importance of contextual knowledge being considered in the design and implementation of counterterrorism strategies. Contextualising the process of doing counterterrorism thus becomes the premise for an alternative approach to the prevailing [mis]conceptualisation of terrorism and of Africa based on geographical (colonial) state boundaries.

The methods employed in gathering evidence for the article are predominantly qualitative. While the discussions are primarily derived from the literature on CTS, articulating gaps in terrorism studies touching on Africa, which have beenpublished over the past two decades, the analyses are reinforced by excerpts from interviews with peace practitioners in Kenya. The analysis of terrorism and counterterrorism is thus understood in the context that human history exhibits repetitive but distinct patterns, and that strategies should depend on how the patterns are substantially ‘shaped by human experiences in a cycle nuanced in competing values’.²⁰ I explore the situation of violent conflicts and threats of terrorism, before tackling the quest for transformation in the strategies for counterterrorism.

Contextualising contemporary strategies for counterterrorism is, therefore, informed by a reassessment of terrorism as a security threat and its impact upon security policy and scholarship. Chukwuma posits, for example, that ‘much work has been done to explore counter-terrorism strategies and initiatives in Nigeria, but there is (still) very little research around the framing of the counterterrorism approach and the implications thereof’.²¹ The scope of discussions are thus limited to exposing the gaps in counterterrorism strategies and how they are linked to contrasting contexts defined by cultural values and identities, salient religious beliefs, and differences over sacred values.²² I suggest that these factors are profoundly distinct among community groups across the African continent, and also unacknowledged in the Western methodologies which have been used over time.²³

Complementary evidence from secondary sources, as well as ‘using process tracing as the method of analysis’,²⁴ also provides insights from systemic interventions in the war on terror. These help to highlight the changing fortunes of terrorism as an issue of political and scholarly salience. In the next section, therefore, I discuss how the challenge of terrorism has manifested in the East African region, before discussing the interventions which display the two sets of ambiguities associated with the WoT. The final section envisions some prospects for exploring the nature of counterterrorism priorities within social policy, while pointing to the continuing resonance of ‘terrorism’ in discourses around violence in international politics. The conclusion to the article then discusses the opportunities for subaltern actors and voice in the local African contexts within broader global contemporary security concerns.

In a nutshell, as proposed by Gunning, the discussions herein envisions a situation beyond terrorism as an opportunity for decolonising perspectives that challenge long-standing WoT strategies which are ‘embedded in [Western] elite knowledge production’.²⁵ The discussions further explore some aspects of deconstruction and subsequent reconstruction of ‘interventions for counterterrorism based on a framework derived from an African indigenous knowledge landscape’.²⁶ The structure of discussion is intentional in its considered broad ‘engagement with the subaltern’²⁷ for counterterrorism strategies, in particular to address new concerns related to growing attention to new areas of apprehension such as cybersecurity and the ungoverned use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. Finally, the article explores ways of incorporating diverse aspects of Indigenous knowledge and the recognition of non-traditional security issues by analysing ‘where things could go and how to find a different path’, most of which ‘requires a fundamental rethink’ of what the new face of counterterrorism in Africa would look like.

The terrorism threat and WoT interventions in East Africa

While global concerns about terrorism have arguably started to take a back seat, the challenge of terrorism continues to raise much anxiety in East Africa. It continues to heighten concerns about the survival of fragile states, and the respective policies which have been developed, often with support of Western allies, to strengthen their capacities in the security sector.²⁸ The East Africa region continues to experience a raft of violent conflicts and ‘terroristic’ violence that has remained cancerous over the past two decades. In his address to the ‘Peace and Security Council of the African Union’ on 26 September 2015, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda outlined the severity of security and terrorism in the region, stating that ‘out of the 53 African countries (members of the African Union), there have been civil wars and terrorism threats in about 10 countries’.²⁹ This resonates with an observation made by Oando and Achieng’³⁰ showing that the Horn of Africa (HoA) region has been experiencing waves of violent conflicts ranging from civil wars to terrorism. The situation means that the East African region remains ‘one of the most militarized zones in Africa’.³¹

According to President Museveni’s speech, it is evident that 5 of the 10 countries affected by violent conflicts are Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Sudan. All five countries are part of the East Africa region also known as ‘the Greater Horn’, a ‘political construction’ bringing together several countries along the Indian Ocean coast, which adds South Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya into the fold.³² This group of countries is also part of an amorphous political formation known as the Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD).³³ Conflict researchers at the African Union confirm some commonalities and varying complexities in the region regarding the spread of conflict. For example, Elowson and Albuquerque point out that:

Eastern Africa encompasses several conflict complexes, with major regional dimensions. These include interstate, intrastate, and non-state conflicts, alongside one-sided violence against civilians. The region also suffers heavily from humanitarian emergencies … while struggling with massive refugee flows and the world’s largest population of internally displaced people. What complicates the security situation further is the profound climate of mistrust, enmity and rivalry that characterises relations between states in the region.³⁴

While political conflicts have affected almost all the countries in this region, civil wars and terrorism have also been common.³⁵ The varied forms of violent conflicts have a ‘direct connection [to] such crises in Africa created by the unhealthy competition between [the] international political systems’.³⁶ Nonetheless, the most reported activities of terrorism have been linked to the political instability in Somalia, which has led to the Horn of Africa being seen as ‘the hub’ of terrorism experienced in neighbouring countries.³⁷

According to Mutahi and Ruteere,³⁸ Somalia has been the most troubled zone of terrorism since the early 2000s, when Al-Shabaab emerged as a violent group waging war against the defunct regime and gaining control of much of the country in 2006. Most of the region’s terrorist attacks have taken place in Somalia, but Al-Shabaab fighters have also claimed responsibility for multiple cross-border attacks, including attacks in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.³⁹ The threat of Al-Shabaab’s violent activities is conventionally acknowledged, but Ingiriis raises the pertinent issue of an imminent gap in response mechanisms, arguing that:

[Al-Shabaab’s] internal dynamics have not been thoroughly investigated. Although both localized and globalized, Al-Shabaab’s roots are rarely contextualized further than the 2000s. The emergence of insurgency activities perpetrated and perpetuated by militant and militaristic Islamic groups, such as Al-Shabaab, need to be seen not as a unique phenomenon but [as] a form of mimicry of past insurgency activities.⁴⁰

The disquiet raised by Ingiriis, and alluded to by Romaniuk et al.,⁴¹ suggests that much of the literature about ‘terrorism and counterterrorism’ in the East African region has ‘focused on the strategic and operational policies of major Western states with minimal attention on how terrorism has been a truly global phenomenon and how others have responded to this threat’. This not only demonstrates how Western perceptions of terrorism in East Africa have dominated the prevailing conceptualisation, but it also points to a gap in knowledge about the evolution of terrorism from and beyond Al-Shabaab.⁴²

Noting that an understanding of Al-Shabaab has not been contextualised beyond Somalia also limits the analysis of interventions beyond the ‘traditional ideologies’ of the West, which leave a gap in clarity about terrorism in different countries in the past two decades. Jackson further describes this gap as ‘an implicit value-laden tendency to try to determine worthy and unworthy victims of violence’;⁴³ in this case, virtually every violent event is pointed towards the Somalia community – in the name of Al-Shabaab.⁴⁴ This implies a lack of understanding about the term terrorism as defined by the local residents in each different context of the East African region. The misunderstsnding renders the local experts on terrorism to remain ‘intelligible to Western academe’⁴⁵ to determine what constitutes terrorism based on Global North-centric frameworks.⁴⁶

The challenge then arises that terrorism is seen to exist only in situations defined by the designers of the concept of the GWoT.⁴⁷ This is a precursor to a ‘related but not inconsequential problem [which] lies in the normative implications of actually legitimising and thereby encouraging [some] forms of violence’.⁴⁸ In an interview, a local practitioner in Kenya alluded to the challenge of conceptualisation, arguing that,

Interventions for counterterrorism fail to accommodate the spirit of genuine partnership between actors at different levels. Interventions can work better if it takes the model of the traditional three cooking stones, which take collective responsibility, and actively involving different groups like the state, communities, NGOs, and religious leaders is inevitable. This should be based on their capabilities to bring change. (Interview #19, with female practitioner in Northern Kenya)

This voice articulates disquiet from the beneficiary groups concerning a collaborative approach, consistent with the concept of hybridity, which would emerge ‘in both scholarly and policy domains’.⁴⁹ At the national level, the participant’s voice expresses the desired collaboration between the international and community level. The East African region has faced an evolving security challenge over the past three decades, with several complex violent conflicts.⁵⁰ Some of these conflicts have been associated with terrorism, in terms of the prevailing social constructions, while some forms of violence are alternatively classified as ‘internal armed conflicts and resources-based conflicts’.⁵¹ Notwithstanding the difference between the many forms of violence, it is notable that,

[A] solution to this misconception lies in recognising that it is the instrumentalisation of the victims as a means of communicating with an audience that characterises terrorist violence, not the identity (civilian or military, combatant or non-combatant) of the direct victims of the violence.⁵²

The different forms of violent conflicts have been largely constructed by the states in the East African region as the threat of terrorism.⁵³ This common construction explains in part how interventions for ‘violence reduction’ became ‘a shared goal’ for the East African countries and a major priority for the Western donor community.⁵⁴ Notably, most cross-cutting interventions for peace undertaken by state and non-state agencies over the past two decades are actually broad-based counterterrorism programmes designed by the US and UK for Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda.⁵⁵ Most the interventions are founded on the WoT campaign applied to Africa.

It is within this scramble for violence reduction that major ‘institutional structures’ of the West invested in ‘the decolonial debate’⁵⁶ argue for these strategies to be seen as politically correct.⁵⁷ Faloyin, for example, reminds us that although the multiple conflicts in Africa are most often presented by the international media as threats in the GWoT, it must be contested that ‘Africa is not a country’,⁵⁸ and outside actors should not design homogeneous interventions across many African nation-states as if they are one social unit. He attempts instead to create:

A portrait of modern Africa that struggles to push back against harmful stereotypes to tell a more comprehensive story – based on all the humanity that has been brushed aside to accommodate a single vision of blood, strife, and majestic shots of savannahs and large yellow sunsets.⁵⁹

According to Faloyin, arbitrary national borders established by the colonial authorities already pose a significant challenge for the interventions to yield any positive outcomes, because they outrightly fail to harness local knowledge, local ownership, and, ultimately, local paradigms. These failures result from the fact that colonial divisions split many ethnic groups into different territories, and so some boundaries are hardly recognised by local communities, making it quite difficult to have a common understanding about the problem of terrorism and the war on terror strategies in local contexts.

In the next section, the article delves into a case study of one of the most dominant interventions during the war on terror that has shaped donor engagement in the East African region. This is the US-funded ‘Partnership for Regional East Africa Counterterrorism’ (PREACT). In this intervention, the two ambiguities that are claimed to perpetuate colonial continuities are discussed in more detail. Other broad-based interventions led by the United Nations and continental or regional blocs, which borrowed so much from the PREACT model, are also briefly discussed to demonstrate the influence and historical dependency on the WoT. The case of PREACT, therefore, provides insight into state-led initiatives that homogenise Africa.

A case of PREACT as a [colonial] model of counterterrorism in East Africa

The choice of PREACT as a case study among the most prominent counterterrorism programmes in Africa is made in terms of funding volume, length of intervention period, and number of countries covered by a single programme.⁶⁰ PREACT interventions aim to build the capacity of both military and civilian actors in relation to ‘how best to do counterterrorism’.⁶¹ Specifically, the programme is a ‘multi-year, multi-sector initiative to build the long-term capabilities of East African partners to contain, disrupt, and marginalize terrorist networks in the region’. The same activities that are designed for implementation in Tanzania are also planned for Somalia and Kenya as the core countries of focus. However, 10 other countries are covered by the programme – Burundi, Comoros, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Seychelles, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda – without acknowledging the diversity of understanding and experiences of terrorism that exist in each country.

It is thus evident that activities of this strategy are designed to employ a ‘top-down approach’, where the funding agency – USAID – ‘controls all aspects of the programme’. The agency, however, grossly falls short of outlining the possibility that a ‘complex set of knowledge exists [or can be] developed around specific conditions of populations and communities indigenous to a particular geographic area’ of the respective countries.⁶² The failure to recognise that terrorism in the East African region is unique to its geographical settings demonstrates some lethargy in acknowledging how the problem itself is influenced by ‘contextual’ religious, cultural, and ethnic value systems.⁶³ Failing to account for such diversities leads to a ‘misprioritisation’ and misidentification of the terrorism problem and a matching mitigation approach that contradicts local understandings of the problem.

This ignoring of the unique context is the result of an over-reliance on the Western (American) experience, whereby US military experts assume the overall duty to build capacity of the local military groups and communities. Such lack of understanding can directly contribute to escalating threats and lack of support by local communities.⁶⁴ This approach also reveals colonial continuities that have been adopted by East African states, such as using terror to counter terrorism, a strategy inherent to the GWoT.⁶⁵ From this perspective, PREACT may be seen as abetting state terrorism, including the use of targeted killings and refoulement of Al-Shabaab suspects in Kenya and Somalia.⁶⁶ This is a crucial problem with the war on terror that must be taken into account in any global strategy beyond the period of terrorism.

However, a larger issue is not just how US dominance influences local strategies, but how African states are overly reliant on global support for counterterrorism. This raises the question of whether local actors, including states, are aware of the emerging global shift towards situations similar to the Cold War polarities. A prevailing assumption made by local actors in counterterrorism strategies, whether interventions are carried out by individual states or regional blocs, is the belief in the universality of knowledge across multiple countries treated as a single entity. This assumption underlies the military approaches of the war on terror, which has been perfected by AMISOM and local programmes designed by regional blocs.

While it may be tempting to assume that the same Somali ethnic community in Kenya and Ethiopia has a unified understanding as other communities in the respective countries, regarding terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab, the reality is more nuanced. Other communities in these countries, even those sharing a national context with the Somali ethnic group, may not view the group in the same way. For example, the Borana community in Kenya may have more cultural similarities with the Borana community in Somalia and Ethiopia than with other communities in Kenya.

This highlights the importance for actors involved in counterterrorism efforts to recognise that knowledge production about terrorism and counterterrorism in East Africa cannot simply rely on the colonial boundaries of states. Rather, it requires a deep understanding of the unique dynamics between different ethnic communities and their relationship with terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab. Tuck connects the assumed doctrine to the culpability in practice posed by the military approach to counterterrorism based on Western imperialism:

Military doctrine on stability operations reflects predominantly a ‘planning-school’ approach. Consciously or unconsciously, this approach assumes [that] rebuilding the capacity of weak or failed states is a matter of preparation and technique. It is about planning, inter-agency cooperation, and a whole-of-government approach. It assumes success is a matter of the right principles and the right techniques. It reflects a rationalist, problem-solving approach. Military doctrine on stabilization reflects Western liberal assumptions on how these operations should be conducted.⁶⁷

This assumption that Africa can be treated as a uniform entity when it comes to counterterrorism efforts is flawed and perpetuates stereotypes about the continent. The approach ignores the diverse identities and Indigenous knowledge systems that exist within Africa. Instead, counterterrorism efforts need to be informed by a deeper understanding of the unique dynamics and histories of different regions and communities.⁶⁸ In fact, the colonial legacy of knowledge production in Africa has privileged certain perspectives and excluded others. This has led to a limited understanding of the complexities of terrorism and counterterrorism in the region. It is crucial to challenge these colonial narratives and move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to African problems.⁶⁹

Nonetheless, while Indigenous mechanisms and local solutions can play a significant role in addressing terrorism, they should not be viewed in isolation. Historical context and global knowledge networks are also important factors to consider. By recognising the interplay between Indigenous knowledge and broader knowledge systems, more effective and context-specific counterterrorism strategies can be developed.⁷⁰ It is thus increasingly obvious that the design and execution of the WoT in Africa have eliminated local ownership of the programmes, as well as perpetuating Western domination of the knowledge production system in the scholarship and practice of counterterrorism. Hence, exploring the prospects beyond the WoT creates an opportunity to reconstruct the intervention domain and interrogate the scope of research to expand the space for local voices in Africa. The next section presents what the next steps may look like in the global shift from terrorism to the great power contest.

Interventions in the East Africa region based on the PREACT strategy

Using the same script as the PREACT programme, states have frequently chosen to participate in regional economic community (REC) formations in order to mitigate violent conflicts in the East African region. Examples of such RECs include the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the East African Community (EAC).⁷¹ Unlike the EAC, which brings together Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, the IGAD bloc has been the most focused and effective regional organ undertaking state-led political interventions and humanitarian support to prevent violent conflicts.⁷² For instance, IGAD’s ‘specialized institutes’ create interventions through the ‘Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism and the Security Sector Programme’, as ‘guided by the Peace and Security Strategy’ of 2010.⁷³

However, despite the great efforts made by IGAD as a bloc, Royster observes,⁷⁴ as later noted by Oando and Achieng’,⁷⁵ that ‘no single country finances’ the logistics or contributes to the funding for these interventions. The result is that the economic blocs only provide a platform for Western donors to lead the design of what would work for the countries, collectively or individually.

Insights from interviews conducted in Kenya confirm a disconnect between the local- and Western-designed initiatives, pointing to local fears of ‘Western control’ through the interventions. The disconnect reveals an existing narrative about possible mistrust and disconnect in the local context. A practitioner in Nairobi working on a US-funded project noted that:

Most of such interventions are not sustainable because they are fully dependent on donor funding such that when the funding stops the interventions also stops. The intention is very suspect. What meaningful change can we achieve in a community with such interventions? (Interview #15, Government officer in Nairobi)

Based on such concerns raised by practitioners, it is indicative that the interest of funders may cause panic or lead to more vulnerability of the beneficiaries due to mistrust. Such fears are confirmed when much of the information gathered through the donor interventions is used as part of intelligence collection by the funding states. Ilyas cautions in this regard that the foreign funding regimes may prioritise their own hidden interests, which are often included as conditions to the financing agreements and which may not necessarily be consistent with the interests of the countries involved.⁷⁶ The circumstances of subtle interests attached are likely to subject the grant recipients, being African states, to subordination because they are likely to lose full ‘command of their own territories’ to the Western countries providing the financial support.⁷⁷ This leads to imbalanced engagement in counterterrorism that further poses the biggest challenge of the exclusion of the subaltern, because it diminishes the involvement of Indigenous mechanisms and the subaltern voice.

The imbalance thus gives a free pathway for Western ‘elitism and universalisation [that is already] embedded in much scholarly knowledge’ about terrorism and counterterrorism. Given that subaltern voices may not have much prominence in Western-controlled research (and publications), it is very likely that strategies developed in the subnational contexts of East Africa then suffer unhealthy relegation and remain seen as ‘informal practices rooted in pre-colonial customs’.⁷⁸ Thompsell, therefore, refers to this situation of subordination as creating space for the intentional agenda to ignore ‘earlier sources of information’ about Africa, in the justification of colonialism and ‘anti-Africanness’ that becomes the gist of ‘the capitalist logic of coloniality’ in counterterrorism.⁷⁹ Similar predicaments have faced counterterrorism strategies by the African Union,⁸⁰ as witnessed in the challenges that faced the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).⁸¹

In some cases, individual countries like Kenya and Ethiopia made frantic attempts to design their interventions based on their experience of attacks by terrorist cells. Kenya, for example, made a unilateral decision in October 2011 to deploy forces into Somalia to counter the increasing invasion and insurgency of Al-Shabaab militants into its territories.⁸² This was in response to an estimated 409 cross-border attacks by the terrorist group between 2005 and 2017.⁸³ The Kenyan intervention was designed and planned not only on the PREACT model; practitioners believed it was a true copy of the American invasion of Iraq in 2001, which in practice quickly ‘degenerated into [an unpopular] costly and bloody counter-insurgency campaign’.⁸⁴ Similarly, it did not take long before the Kenyan invasion suffered regrettable consequences, as described by Anderson and McKnight.

The Kenyan [forces] progressed to within five kilometres of Afmadow five days into the invasion, where they later linked up with Madobe’s Ras Kamboni forces and the Somali National Army (SNA) in early November, but it would be several months before they finally wrenched the town from Al-Shabaab control. There is little information on casualties and costs of the operations, with the Kenyan press preferring upbeat coverage of the war in the early months. However, estimates suggest that the first five months of the campaign cost the Kenyans $180 million, and that more than 50 Kenyan soldiers may have been killed. The Ethiopians, also circumspect in declaring losses in their struggles against Al-Shabaab, have acknowledged heavy casualties.⁸⁵

It is clear that Kenyan Defence Forces made a very aggressive insurgency into Somalia believing in their military superiority over the local resistance in Somalia, but this could proceed only for five kilometres. In addition to the visible drawbacks, Kenyan forces suffered multiple mortalities following ‘blowback’ from the unpopular invasion. The drawbacks from this invasion later evolved into adverse ethnic and religious tensions in Kenya’s internal politics, already troubled by negative ethnicity and mistrust.⁸⁶ It was after the invasion, for example, that Islamist extremists skilfully exploited ‘local political quarrels’ to execute numerous attacks in Kenya, while citizens struggled with coming to ‘terms with the fact they are at war’.⁸⁷ Clear concerns were raised by Kenyan peace practitioners from the joint platform of civil society and state agencies, who shared their dilemma as follows:

The problem we have is that programs, by Government and Civil Society, are mostly designed for us by the funding countries, which always prioritise military support based on their own conditions. We therefore become spectators where we should be the lead actors. The design of these programs is, therefore, never in line with the realities on the ground. (Interview #20; Programmes Manager with an International Non-Governmental Organisation (INGO))

It can be deduced from this interview that some interventions serve more the interests of the wider military schemes and international politics than the interests of local communities. Consequently, local peace actors struggle to cope with the tensions. One can then conclude that the WoT has helped the international community more to ‘control security and intelligence’ among African countries than to serve the immediate need for peace at the local level.⁸⁸

Despite these immense challenges, multi-country interventions continue to be adopted by Western donors in the war against terror. For instance, despite facing monumental difficulties in the direct invasion of Somalia, Kenyan troops were eventually admitted into the UN-led AMISOM programme. However, AMISOM itself, which may initially seem to have been an African-led intervention by neighbouring countries, is no different from the IGAD interventions, fitting perfectly into a pseudo-imperialist international counterterrorism system.⁸⁹ In this arrangement, neighbouring countries only contributed troops, while funding and command remained in the hands of Western countries.⁹⁰ From 2009, this UN mission remained part of protracted international campaigns that unfortunately led to multiple unintended casualties in the neighbouring East African countries.⁹¹ As noted by Okolie-Osemene and Okolie-Osemene, it is truly unfortunate that these joint approaches by regional military groups actually exacerbated the violence⁹² linked to the Al-Shabaab threat, rather than reducing it.⁹³

Epistemic contestations against the WoT

There are various criticisms within local scholarship regarding the WoT. Some scholars argue,⁹⁴ for example, that the counterterrorism strategies adopted in this context are heavily influenced by a colonial mindset, particularly from the perspective of white conservatives. The conservative Western scholarship and intervention design are criticised for overlooking the needs and interests of local communities, instead perpetuating a narrative that Africa is a chaotic and violent continent.⁹⁵ While tracking the changing status of terrorism, a great contention to these constructions is that:

the process of knowledge production [in Africa] has been muddled, supplanted, and ultimately made subservient to orthodox Western … structures of colonial authorities. The global political economy of knowledge production [during the war on terror] has [only] consigned indigenous knowledge to being regarded as traditional, unscientific and value-laden.”⁹⁶

Gitau, for instance, raises concerns about donor-funded counterterrorism strategies as having been developed in a dependency mode, using deceitful constructions of a homogeneous African society for whom counterterrorism knowledge is externally created.⁹⁷ This illustrates how the WoT has treated the entire African continent as an entity that waits to be supported through policy formulation and intervention design. But a worse notion that exists through the counterterrorism agenda in Africa is the creation of an ‘image of a suffering African poor’ who can be easily induced into terrorism.⁹⁸ This false construction has often led to a universal victimisation of young people in Africa due to the unknown fear of a bulging youth population on the continent. The perception construes a colonial-centric state being used as an excuse to generally profile local citizens as suspects, ‘to legitimize a discourse of humanitarianism’.⁹⁹

Gitau’s reservations, therefore, depict the first ambiguity that emerges from the WoT strategies, which also claim to uphold human rights in the global arena¹⁰⁰ while they are, in contrast, embedded in collective ‘military’ enforcement of discriminatory practices. In Kenya, for example, some of these colonial and discriminatory practices include unwritten laws on mandatory screening in all public places, including in government buildings.¹⁰¹ While the excuse for such interventions is based on the preventive agenda against unknown threats, the mandatory screening has caused much discontent locally for exposing citizens to collective trauma and ‘a collective identity’ of guilt. Furthermore, major ethical concerns have been raised among African scholars such as Ndaka and team¹⁰² regarding the management of the massive data collected at the security screening points, given the growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI).¹⁰³

An epistemic dilemma arises further from the capitalist relationship between states, where the powerful states of the Global North make a uniform package of international aid on counterterrorism to African countries through the supply of security equipment, following liberal economic logic.¹⁰⁴ This kind of aid for peace and security support to Africa informs reservations in this article regarding continuing imperialism embedded in capitalism through the WoT.

Adams, for example, observed in the most explicit manner that successive US administrations have consistently provided ‘security’ aid to Africa for counterterrorism in the form of weapons and training for militaries for over 25 years, spending billions of dollars.¹⁰⁵ The support has primarily been provided to enhance intelligence and military operations aimed at countering terrorist activities throughout the continent. In addition, the US military’s regional command for Africa set up operational military bases and dispatched forces to African countries such as Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Guinea (in West Africa), Somalia and Djibouti (in East Africa) and Chad (in North Africa). Adams contends that:

Ostensibly the goal of all these military efforts has been to strengthen the ability of African militaries to prevent and defeat terrorism and, secondarily, to build or strengthen democratic governance. [However,] The Times, which has reported on these efforts, rather uncritically, for two decades, acknowledges that there are more terrorists than ever in these countries [which received aid].¹⁰⁶

Adams argues further that the acknowledgement by the Times of the failure of the counterterrorism measures is ‘an understatement’. Instead, it is indicative that, further to the increased number of terrorists and terrorist organisations in many countries, some of the very military forces trained and armed by the US have since taken over governments through unprecedented coups d’état in the last three years.¹⁰⁷

The concern here is not about incidents of state instability and coups in Africa, but an observation about the capitalist imperialism inherent to counterterrorism, which is in turn based on a uniform construction about Africa. This confirms that historical ‘solutions’ to violent conflicts designed by profiteering entities are not necessarily undertaken to solve particular ‘problems’ of conflict, but rather, some complex problems – such as terrorism – evolve to become susceptible to being intentionally exaggerated or (mis)conceptualised.¹⁰⁸ This happens when prescriptive, tailor-made solutions are sought as an opportunity for enhanced diplomatic relations between the West and Africa.¹⁰⁹ The possibility of turning counterterrorism strategies into a business opportunity links to the charges laid against global capitalist systems¹¹⁰ which treat Africa as one big market for foreign aid in security hardware and capacity building. This can also explain the magnitude of possible malevolence behind some innovations by firms which are involved in the war on terror.¹¹¹

The probability of capitalist exploitation is increased by the asymmetrical and superior–inferior relationships between the West and African countries, as described by Afolabi,¹¹² in which virtually all facets of knowledge production in Africa have been dominated by the West. While the African community is conditioned to using the security hardware, the suppliers are primarily focused on the returns on investment and not necessarily on the welfare of the local citizens. It is in this discourse of exploitative relations that ‘the concept of capitalism implied in this perspective’ offers a selective privilege of domination by the ‘Western friends’ of Africa ‘over other social relations’.¹¹³ This hidden pursuit of self-interest, rarely declared in interventions for counterterrorism, poses a potential threat of (re)producing a new and biased political structure, akin to other forms of political and epistemic domination by the West.¹¹⁴

A second ambiguity in the African counterterrorism discourse is closely related to the first and is connected to what Thompsell¹¹⁵ refers to as a ‘misleading and disingenuous’ answer to the construction of Africa as a dark continent. In a way, such a claim assumes that Africa is in some sense a homogeneous society – in the sense of a country – which European scholars and polity might not have known much about.¹¹⁶ This generalisation leads to characterisations of Africa by the West ‘as a global security threat; a continent that is unsafe, dangerous, and emblematic of environmental, biological, and terrorist threats to the rest of the world [since] the post-September 11 world’.¹¹⁷ Thompsell argues further that Western leaders purposely affirmed such generalisations and ignored ‘earlier sources of information’ that were factual about Africa in order ‘to justify colonialism and anti-Blackness’.¹¹⁸ Smith, furthermore, questions ‘the epochal claim that the terrorists’ attacks of 9/11 changed everything’¹¹⁹ in the global security system, and which are claimed to have created Africa as an entirely dangerous continent.¹²⁰

The broader challenge is that although scholars have engaged with some of these deceptions over the past two decades, they unfortunately are endorsed by the grant makers in the design of counterterrorism strategies based on the WoT. This unilateral endorsement is what constitutes a sense of coloniality, whereby regions of Africa affected by terrorism are classified as ‘ungoverned spaces’.¹²¹ This raises a pertinent concern as to whether Africa is constituted by the WoT strategies as a country or as a homogeneous geo-space in relation to counterterrorism. This question informs the hypothesis that the WoT shapes its image of Africa through what is constructed (said, written, and shared by the media) in the West, and the ‘strategic silences’ within unproven discourses delimiting how actors in counterterrorism can theorise about Africa’s heterogeneity.¹²² The silences are also perpetuated by African scholars and politicians who prefer embracing, uncritically, knowledge produced through the ‘enlightenment reason and Euro-North American-centric modernity’.¹²³

Consequently, this article questions the two sets of constructions behind these ambiguities to explain ‘what the War on Terror leaves behind in Africa’. These ambiguities in contemporary strategies for counterterrorism are associated with strategies developed in the WoT. An impending complexity lies in the reassessment of old and new security challenges, which relegates global attention on terrorism to a diminishing importance.¹²⁴ While the global powers are embroiled in the looming spectre of great power nuclear threats,¹²⁵ with the Ukraine–Russia war being the current axis of contention, African leaders remain ensnared in the ambiguities of the WoT as a major source of foreign support for national security infrastructure.¹²⁶ An emerging dilemma in the presumed fortunes of terrorism within global security consciousness, therefore, reveals continuation of the liberal state-building paradigm. Hence, envisioning what the ‘war on terror’ leaves behind must engage with the past by reviewing the liberal WoT strategies that are dependent on democratisation processes, economic system interventions, capacity support through security sector reforms, and the broad-based foreign aid for establishing numerous instruments for transitional justice.¹²⁷

Beyond the WoT: Prospects for Indigeneity

Examining Africa’s position beyond the WoT offers the prospect of overcoming two significant challenges: ambiguity about the past, and the future of terrorism. The ongoing WoT initiatives, which still exist in many countries, present a dilemma that needs to be totally abandoned. Hence, this article envisions interventions by African actors with no reliance on foreign support. This implies that African political leaders must shift from being consumers of information regarding the changing dynamics of power between the East and the West and instead become knowledge producers. By going beyond the war on terror, Africa has the opportunity to critically examine how colonialism has influenced its own theories and to confront the power imbalances between the countries that provide financing and those that benefit from it.¹²⁸ Through this introspection, Africa can develop the potential for emancipation not only by identifying and addressing the underlying divisions, but also redesigning independent pathways free from the legacies of the WoT. This can commence from harnessing the methodologies based on Indigenous knowledge of local communities in developing home-grown solutions.

The re-emergence of the East–West axis, similar to the Cold War, through the WoT in foreign interventions is another important issue to consider when designing a new trajectory in the peace and security architecture. The strategies don’t have to fall within the polarity of the two hegemonies but may instead provide an alternative source of global knowledge based on Africa’s pre-colonial experiences. It has become clear that the most significant interventions in Africa have always involved support by countries like the US, the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and the former colonial powers. These interventions have entangled themselves in numerous African conflicts.¹²⁹

African countries, therefore, have an opportunity to regenerate their own strategies based on the African knowledge base. Schmidt argues that both the GWoT and the Cold War have led to a significant increase in foreign military presence in Africa. This trend must change for an alternative African approach to emerge. The increased presence of foreign powers has only resulted in conditional foreign support for repressive governments in Africa, which is not in the best interest of the local citizens. If this power contest continues, it is likely that dominant foreign interests will re-emerge in many African countries without recourse. Unfortunately, these foreign interests may not align with the interests of the local citizens but result in continued exploitation. Instead, they are more likely to alter the dynamics of peace and the security architecture in Africa, potentially leading to intra-country conflicts with devastating effects on the African people.¹³⁰

This article suggests that African leaders must take an active role in shaping the future of global politics and not remain as ‘loyal recipients’ of political ideas from the West. It is important for them to recognise the role of subaltern voices in shaping national ideology within the broader international framework. This requires an expanded space for Indigenous knowledge, both as part of global knowledge systems on counterterrorism, and as a pathway for Africa to overcome the lingering effects of colonialism.¹³¹ To move beyond the war on terror, Africa must undergo a radical paradigm shift that liberates its people from the underlying imperial structures of knowledge production and fosters self-determination.¹³² This means confronting the structures that perpetuate colonialism in both theory and practice, including the over-reliance on Western knowledge production. Instead, African countries should prioritise the expansion of Indigenous knowledge in counterterrorism efforts and shift their focus beyond the problem of terrorism itself.

By incorporating Indigenous knowledge in the local agenda for counterterrorism, Africa can construct a more holistic understanding of geographical space. This recognises that the continent is not simply a natural background, but a product of historical events and civilisations built on diverse socio-cultural blocs. This recognition should open up new prospects for Indigenous knowledge in shaping Africa’s future beyond the war on terror.¹³³

Conclusion

Africa’s position in the geopolitics beyond the WoT requires a reimagining of knowledge production and a shift away from reliance on Western perspectives. To achieve a more inclusive and equitable future, African leaders must actively reconstruct a vision that incorporates Indigenous knowledge in the peace and security architecture and be prepared to challenge the hegemony of Western ideologies. There is a need, therefore, for African countries to consider self-financing and designing their own home-grown programmes, leveraging their local expertise. By contesting methodological platforms that inhibit African solutions and amplifying the voices of Indigenous communities, Africa can reclaim its agency and bring stability to regions like Somalia without begging for support from the West or East.

Based on evidence from PREACT and other transnational strategies informed by the WoT approach, it is notable that international interventions for counterterrorism have often failed to accurately capture local realities and have not produced the desired outcomes. Therefore, it becomes more crucial for Africa than ever before to adopt transformative interventions that do not view the continent through the lens of colonial state boundaries but rather recognise the diverse contexts and contributions of Indigenous actors. Incorporating Indigenous knowledge in the new dispensation will not only provide a favourable alternative to the WoT, but it will also promote mutual accommodation of subaltern knowledge, social justice, and a comprehensive approach to addressing the multifaceted dimensions of violent conflicts in the continent.

Reviving traditional structures lost to colonialism may also provide opportunities for protecting African communities from epistemic exclusion and exploitation. This article argues that by taking a step towards shaping the future of global politics through the inclusion of Indigenous knowledge, African countries are likely to overcome the lingering effects of colonialism and ultimately achieve self-determination. This paradigm shift is essential for Africa to move beyond the WoT and to chart its own path towards a more equitable and sustainable future.