Thread by @VincentFoucher

I definitely agree, @judithverweijen. So let me try and reflect a bit about policy and knowledge re: global jihad and African franchises based on what I have learnt from the #BokoHaram field...

https://twitter.com/judithverweijen/status/1412724007208734724

As the title of your paper makes clear, your preoccupation with the insistance on the global jihadi connection of the (former?) ADF has to do essentially with policy, not with knowledge.

I share that concern: reductio ad jihadum is very dangerous indeed, & states should not be given a free pass just because their enemy is jihadi or has jihadi connections. Jihadi draw their strength from the unfair and abusive nature of states and of the global system.

This is what should be fixed to address the jihadi challenges and states should not be encouraged to brutal CT ops (to be fair, I find the P3 states quite aware and sometimes careful & pushy about human rights in African CT, to be fair).

And yes, all violence is not jihadi. The states can be extremely abusive, and there can be some violent local games as well (I can't say I have seen much of these in the BH context, but DRC does look that way).

But should we not try to have a position that is both sound in terms of policy and accurate in terms of knowledge (or lack thereof)? Can't we acknowledge that there are mounting clues of connections while insisting that this is not all there is to it?

I don’t think we are doing ourselves a favour by making definitive assertions about the nature of the global jihadi connection (strong/weak/just propaganda) in a context where the truth is we don't have access to the kind of data that could allow us to answer one way or another.

I started work on #BokoHaram in 2016, soon after Shekau’s baya to Baghdadi. The dominant trend among academics, who shared the same policy concerns as you and I, was to dismiss the connections as sheer propaganda. Nice policy/knowledge fit.

The truth is, it was then very difficult for academics to know anything one way or the other. Many scholars claimed it was all a maneuver by the forces of empire.

Some of these claimed that the supposed former BH associates they interviewed in jail had not mentioned connections. But jail interviews suck, and so many people were jailed for wrong reasons then, and it's not all insurgents who know about international linkages.

But now is different… Now, we talk to former BH associates who have been through so-called “deradicalization” programmes. They admit to their past involvement. They feel free to talk. Some of them were mid-level or closely connected to the exchanges between the IS and ISWAP…

And now we learn that the IS/ISWAP connections were not just cosmetic. There were some real things circulating. Advice and guidance - religious, military, organisational. And some money, too, though transfers were often scuttled by the security services. crisisgroup.org/africa/west-af…

When you talk to these guys, they all say IS input was decisive in transforming the ISWAP machine. Eventually, it made ISWAP, the challenger at the time of the split of 2016, into the dominant faction. So much so that it eventually crushed Shekau, forcing him into amaliya.

Let me just put a few quotes from a recent interview...
Q: Was Islamic State giving advice for the attacks or not?

A. For attacks, they gave us advice. Indicated a number of cars. They told us not be a lot in each car, so that we did not lose too many fighters when a car was his. And also for the houses. Dig holes to hide when a jet comes. Underground holes. We succeeded so much with this.

Q: What is the most helpful advice they gave?
A. They said that you have to be friends with the awam [non-affiliated Muslim civilians]. You have to go give condolences. You have to visit them and explain.

Q: Nobody had that idea in JAS before?
A. No. We did not have that idea. We were saying they [the awam] are not Muslim.

Of course, the dissenters of 2016 dissented precisely because they had their own doubts about the Shekau way and were looking for a way out of his ultra-violent model.

There were endogenous forces for change (though one of their inspirers at least, Aliyu Qaid, had been exposed to global jihad before, training with GSPC in the Sahel in the 2000s). But there is no doubt that the IS played a part, even from a distance.

And so my sense is that we do not have access to the kind of ADF sources that could really help answer the question at issue. I wonder what we’ll find when we’ll finally have that kind of access. Until we do, let’s beware of being too affirmative one way or the other.

Then again, I am not saying Iscap is necessarily the same as Iswap.