A terror group affiliated to Al-Qaeda attacked Côte d’Ivoire weeks back. The same had happened in Mali earlier on. Those West African countries have joined Nigeria, Cameroon and Niger in feeling the impacts of religious extremists. Issues have arisen in the aftermaths of the attack on Côte d’Ivoire. France moved in and promised to station a rapid response force in the country. Government officials in Côte d’Ivoire thereafter reverently rubbed their hands together and said, Merci. What could a country that hardly breaths except France says so do? Nigeria is in a different class though. Nigerians who aren’t known to have regard for skin colour are furious that French imperialism is alive next door. But it’s also said that Al-Qaeda has used the attack to show it’s alive, like the Islamic State. I wonder though if Côte d’Ivoire plans to go to sleep because the French have come. This is important in a situation where West Africa has become a choice playground for two terror groups that have their origin outside the region.
Al-Qaeda terrorist network became more popular worldwide following the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. Lately we also know IS. Everyone had said IS pushed Al-Qaeda into oblivion. Then Côte d’Ivoire happened, and an Al-Qaeda affiliate claimed the credit. Some assert that the attack means Al-Qaeda wants to demonstrate it still has presence in West Africa. Meanwhile, Al-Qaeda and IS have their roots in the most unstable region in the world, the Middle East. But how did we end up with Al-Qaeda and IS struggling to outdo each other in the use of violence to attract attention worldwide? The removal of President Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq has been blamed, although I have a different perspective. It had been stated that the vacuum Hussein left was filled by a branch of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, which was initially loyal to Osama bin Laden. The Iraqi branch fought American forces until the latter left the country. It became stronger thereafter, spreading to Syria where a civil war had begun in 2011.
The establishment of the Islamic State in Iraq had provided an umbrella for several jihadi organizations. Like Al-Qaeda, it had waged a terrorist-guerilla campaign against the US forces in Iraq. ISI became stronger after the US left. With the outbreak of war in Syria, ISI established a branch in the country. There was disagreement between ISI and its Syrian branch. An unintended outcome was a rift between ISI and Al-Qaeda in Iraq. This led to the establishment of the Islamic State in Iraq and Greater Syria. Since then, winning military battles against President Bashar Assad in the Syrian civil war became a test of which of the two groups was stronger. With its major successes here, ISIS announced the establishment of an “Islamic State”. ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, headed it. This further heightened the talk that IS had taken over from Al-Qaeda.
Meanwhile, diverse extremist groups in different parts of the world claim affiliation to either of these two. Boko Haram in Nigeria is one. Al-Qaeda in the Mahgreb is another. There is Al-Shabab in Somalia as well.
The West, including France that wants to proffer solution to terror attacks in Côte d’Ivoire, has been making efforts to eliminate these terror groups. How the U.S is unwilling to fight on ground in Syria, but lobs missiles from the air is well-known. Since President Barack Obama had come to office promising to bring American soldiers out of Iraq, this was understandable. America’s approach to combating terror has been two-pronged however. White House works to win over the Muslim world through friendship, even as its security forces continue to eliminate Al-Qaeda and IS leaders wherever they are found. I find some aspects of the effort to befriend Muslims strange and interesting, and a few have actually proved to be sources of embarrassment to the US government.
Under President Bill Clinton, for instance, the most prominent and politically connected Muslim leader in America, Abdurahman Alamoudi, was the means by which much of U.S. government’s outreach to Muslims was pursued after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Alamoudi was asked by the Clinton administration to train and certify all its Muslim military chaplains. He was also appointed by the State Department in 1997 as a goodwill ambassador to the Middle East. Not long after, the government realised that Alamoudi was a major fundraiser for Al-Qaeda. The strange part was that it wasn’t as if the government had been completely unaware of Alamoudi’s activities and affiliations. In 1993, an informant had told a government security agency that Alamoudi regularly channelled payments from Osama bin Laden to Omar Abdel Rahman, the sheikh who was convicted of authorizing terror attacks against important facilities in New York.
Under George Bush, invitation was issued by the National Counterterrorism Centre to Yasir Qadhi for the purpose of speaking on de-radicalisation at a conference in 2008. By this time, one of Qadhi’s students in Houston had been captured by Kenyan forces while he was fighting for Al-Shabaab. Other students from Qadhi’s AlMaghrib Institute programme had become famous terrorists, including Nigeria’s Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab (the Christmas Day underwear would-be bomber), who had attended a two-week Al-Maghrib training session in Houston. When at one stage, President Obama hosted an annual event to commemorate Ramadan, his invitees included Mohamed Magid, head of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic Society of North America. Magid sat at the front table near Obama; yet he was one of the leaders of organisations known to propagate jihadist ideology.
Why did I make these references? To show that even the countries at the forefront of fighting Al-Qaeda and IS are prone to errors, and they aren’t untouchable. We know that terror attacks had taken place in the US in spite of precautionary measures taken. There were attacks on France. Lately, it was made known that Belgium didn’t make the most of the information supplied to it about possible terror attacks until they happened in Brussels. Against this background, France wants to station rapid response anti-terror forces in Côte d’Ivoire. This gives citizens of Côte d’Ivoire a sense of security, no doubt. But is this the ultimate approach to the matter?
It’s accepted that military approach alone won’t obliterate tendency towards terror and the groups that want to use it to achieve their aims. For terror groups continue to attract foot soldiers. There are reasons they do. The other day, a 15 year old Australian girl was charged to court for wiring money to IS. Males and females from other Western countries travel to submit themselves to Al-Qaeda and IS forces. West Africa isn’t left out. Citizens collaborate with outsiders. Al-Qaeda’s terror attack in Côte d’Ivoire is a sign that citizens of the country collaborate with outsiders. This may happen again if citizens continue to collude with outsiders, no matter how many soldiers France stations in the country.
Where then is the solution to the threat posed by terrorist cells in Côte d’Ivoire? One, Côte d’Ivoire needs to pay attention to the messages going out from preachers to impressionable religionists, the same thing Nigeria is doing at the moment, especially in Kaduna State under Governor Nasir el-Rufai where religious leaders are expected to be responsible for their messages more than before. Secondly, and here I may sound pessimistic; as nations and as people, we have to dig trenches. For the battle against groups that use religion to justify violence is going to be a long drawn-out one. Reason? Mentalities have to be changed. It takes almost 20 centuries of its existence for Christianity to fully imbibe the mentality that religion is about persuasion, not the use of arms. (Remember armed crusades to Palestine in the Middle Ages). Islam is in the fourteenth century of its existence. It means we have to look forward to a few more centuries, waiting for generations raised on a different diet. For the moment, the best that can happen is manage the situation in which we find ourselves. The US security agencies once stated in their assessment that it would take a long time to overcome Al-Qaeda, IS, and their offshoots. I concur. For Al-Qaeda and IS are ideas. Ideas aren’t wiped out with the use of arms as the French make it seem to the people of Côte d’Ivoire.
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