from mainstream society. Its adherents reject the traditional interpretation of the lesser jihad as a collective struggle of the Muslim community, determined by officially recognized religious and legal authorities, and define it instead as a personal one, to be determined by each individual as he or she sees fit or by self-described clerics. From the early 1970s until the mid-1990s, jihadis generally targeted local secular and Muslim regimes that they deemed impure (the “near enemy”), with the goal of overthrowing them and Islamizing state and society from the top down. However, from the mid-1990s, a small minority began to focus on distant impious or non-Muslim regimes (the “far enemy”), heralding the emergence of global jihad.
Western commentators often overlook these distinctions, failing to differentiate between jihadist factions and frequently merging Islamism and jihadism under the misleading rubric of “Islamic terrorism.” Some erroneously deem both movements a threat to Western societies and argue that both must be opposed in an open-ended war on terror and an effort to restructure the Muslim world. Policies based on this misunderstanding have tended to result in increased hostility and an even greater threat to the West.
A jihadi is a militant Muslim activist who opposes the secular sociopolitical order at home, and Westernization and globalization more broadly, and who engages in armed struggle to establish an Islamic state. The term is not synonymous with mujahid, which refers to a person engaged in any of the three forms of jihad. The term jihadi (jihadist, adjective) was coined in the early twenty-first century by militants who self-identified as such. Jihadis who focus on local struggles against purportedly impious Muslim or secular regimes constitute the majority of this minority faction, while those who focus on distant or non-Muslim regimes—the so-called global jihadis—are a tiny minority of the minority movement.
Islamic terrorism is a commonly used but misleading term that associates religious doctrine with terrorist activity. Islamic fundamentalism, radical Islamism, and political Islam are not equivalent to Islamic terrorism. Muslims who engage in terrorism and claim religious justification for these activities constitute a minuscule minority of Muslims worldwide, and their actions are strongly condemned by the majority. Although these violent extremists deploy the language and symbols of religion to justify their actions, their turn to terrorism was often inspired by social, political, and economic grievances rather than by religious beliefs. This study rejects the use of the term Islamic terrorism as both inaccurate and dangerous. Violence that targets civilians for political reasons is described as “violent extremism” or simply “terrorism.” In some instances, “Muslim extremist” is used to distinguish violent actors who claim to be operating on behalf of their Islamic faith from other violent actors.
Conclusion
Political, economic, and social instability in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries brought renewed attention to the African continent. Employing new justifications for their actions, foreign powers and multilateral institutions challenged the centuries-old principle of national sovereignty and claimed the right to intervene to restore stability, protect civilian lives, and combat terrorism. Although some of these interventions reestablished law and order and saved civilian lives, others left conflicts unresolved and laid the groundwork for future strife. Misinterpretations and distortions of Islam, which influenced external actions in the war on terror, often had devastating consequences for civilians. Chapter 3 introduces the major foreign actors involved in African conflicts after the Cold War, including extracontinental powers, neighboring states, multilateral state-based organizations, and nonstate actors associated with international terrorist networks.
Suggested Reading
Suggested readings relevant to specific countries follow chapters 4–11. The works listed below provide general overviews or are pertinent to multiple African countries.
African economic crises that began in the 1970s sparked many of the continent’s political crises. The following works provide contrasting views of the origins of these crises and their solutions. For an insider’s critique of the role of the IMF, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization in promoting global inequality, see Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002). Nicolas van de Walle, African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979–1999 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), argues that the internal dynamics of neopatrimonial African states rather than external impositions were primarily responsible for the postcolonial economic crises. David Sahn and colleagues contend that the policies mandated by international financial institutions did not harm the African poor, but neither were they sufficient to reduce poverty. See David E. Sahn, ed., Economic Reform and the Poor in Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); and David E. Sahn, Paul A. Dorosh, and Stephen D. Younger, Structural Adjustment Reconsidered: Economic Policy and Poverty in Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, Africa’s Odious Debts: How Foreign Loans and Capital Flight Bled a Continent (London: Zed, 2011), focuses on capital flight from Africa and the role of foreign debt in the current crises.
Post–Cold War political crises in African states are considered from diverse perspectives. Books on the failure of state institutions written from Western political science perspectives include I. William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States: The Disintegration and Restoration of Legitimate Authority (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Robert I. Rotberg, When States Fail: Causes and Consequences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Robert H. Bates, When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). A critique of Western theories of weak, fragile, troubled, failed, and collapsed African states and the ways in which Western powers have responded can be found in Charles T. Call, “The Fallacy of the ‘Failed State,’” Third World Quarterly 29, no. 8 (2008): 1491–1507. Diverse views are offered in the collection edited by Leonardo A. Villalón and Phillip A. Huxtable, The African State at a Critical Juncture: Between Disintegration and Reconfiguration (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
Jean-François Bayart, Stephen Ellis, and Béatrice Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), examines the role of the state in the plunder of resources, privatization of armies and state institutions, and involvement in global criminal networks. Patrick Chabal and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as Political Instrument (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), shows how African political actors have manipulated ethnic and regional tensions and used the ensuing disorder to obtain and maintain power. William Reno, Warlord Politics and African States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1998), considers the destruction of bureaucratic state structures of revenue collection, policing, and provision of social services in post–Cold War Africa and their replacement by warlords whose goal is to plunder economic resources rather than to mobilize citizens. Pierre Englebert, Africa: Unity, Sovereignty, and Sorrow (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2009), argues that states have failed to protect their citizens yet continue to endure because they offer benefits to regional and national elites.
A number of works provide a deeper understanding of post–Cold War conflicts in Africa. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), explores the causes of increased ethnic violence in the 1990s and the reasons the international community failed to stop it. William Reno, Warfare in Independent Africa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), focuses on African internal conflicts, including anticolonial movements, reformist rebellions, and warlord-led insurgencies. David Kilcullen, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), offers an overview of the interactions of local insurgencies, international movements, and the global war on terror. Several edited collections examine diverse insurgencies and civil wars. Paul D. Williams, War and Conflict in Africa, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Polity, 2016), assesses
