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LONDON. – Despite recent defeats at the hands African armed forces, jihadist groups are penetrating sub-Saharan Africa at an alarming rate, threatening states ill-prepared to deal with a complex social and security challenge, say Western and African officials and researchers.

The Islamic radical groups, which include Isis, Al Qaeda affiliates and home-grown movements such as Boko Haram, threaten the rising continent, posing unique challenges for policymakers and officials of shaky governments struggling with limited resources.

“The extremists are inside the community,” Bineta Diop, an official of the African Union, told The Independent along the side-lines of The Atlantic Dialogues, a conference in Marrakech last week organised by the Policy Centre for the New South, a Moroccan think tank.

“They provide public services where the state has failed,” she said. “They bring water, sanitation, education. They provide opportunities to young people they don’t otherwise have. There is a need to address the basic elements of human security and not leave it to extremists.”

African troops backed by the Western intelligence and security forces have beaten back Somalia’s Al Shabaab movement and have made strides against Boko Haram in Nigeria as well as militant groups in Mali.

But in some ways, the militant groups have expanded their presence. Networks of Islamist militants now influence a vast area within Africa, drawing on contacts and resources from the Middle East and Europe, with radical groups exploiting ungoverned spaces throughout the continent.

“The same catalysts that are out there as far as lack of strong governments, lack of government services, lack of opportunities, where folks can come in and radicalise,” US Major General Christopher Craige, a commander of Stuttgart-based Africom, told a group of journalists at a briefing along the side-lines of the conference.

“Europe, Africa, and the Middle East now so connected. Not just because of modern media devices, but because of travel.”

Statistics show that terrorist incidents in the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe fell last year, while sub-Saharan Africa held steady, suggesting a shift in resources towards the continent by militant groups.

“Everything is going south,” said Rida Lyammouri, a researcher at the Policy Centre for the New South, describing militant groups’ expansion Mali and Burkina Faso. “It continues to go south. It’s very alarming. The conflicts have spread.”

Extremist groups infiltrating sub-Saharan Africa often take a different approach to those drawing recruits and supporters in European or Arab cities seeking glory or infamy.

Scholars increasingly find it useful to distinguish between radicalisation in urban spaces such as in Europe, or along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa, and rural spaces such as in Mali or rural Nigeria, where radical global aims become fused with local grievances. Countering violent extremism in each venue also requires different approaches.

“The militant groups in Mali and other places can easily find social empowerment by connecting to tribes or ethnic groups, and make common interest with the community” said Mostafa Rezrazi, president of the Moroccan

Lyammouri, who spent a number of months in 2013 and 2014 conducting research among radicalised villagers living along the Niger River in Mali, found that militants often began infiltration by co-opting local leaders and offering help with agriculture and other services.

“It’s more than just radicalisation or ideology,” he said, in a presentation to former diplomats, researchers, and journalists.

“Some of the youth joined did it for money, some joined for ideology. Some joined because they had no other option,” said Lyammouri. “There was no state. The groups were providing services that the state wasn’t providing.”

Eventually, the villages began to shun the state instead of begging for services, renaming their towns from local languages for Arabic equivalents, and choosing not to interact with non-radicalised towns. Local leaders were dispatched to Ghana or Ivory Coast to study conservative forms of Islam, and return to preach.

“They had a more conservative radical ideology and imposed some extremist ways of life,” said Lyammouri. “Most of the communities were not educated – couldn’t read or write – and were not able to challenge the preachers.”

Why and at what point such communities or individuals within them choose to cross over into violence remains a question. One factor is the spread of violent messages via the Internet. But perhaps more important are the mistakes made by governments that prod Islamist groups into violent resistance against the state.

When the French arrived in northern Mali to fight extremists in 2013, the Malian army accompanying them committed atrocities that continue to haunt relations between the state and the locals.

The Islamist militant group Ansar al-Islam emerged in Burkina Faso after the armed forces committed atrocities. Even Boko Haram in Nigeria turned to systematic violence only after their supreme leader was summarily executed by security forces following a messy 2009 confrontation.

Even more so than in Europe, Africa’s prisons are threatening to become incubators of radicalism as ordinary prisoners sometimes caught up in dragnets by police are warehoused in harsh conditions with hardened jihadists seeking out recruits.

African governments also sometimes commit needless blunders that damage their own anti-radicalisation aims. In an effort to stop the spread of Boko Haram, the Nigerian government cut off the road to Chad Lake, destroying the livelihoods of fishing communities, and making them susceptible to the group.

Burkina Faso at one point sought to ban public prayer by Muslims, while Chad passed a law after a suicide bombing banning women from wearing face-covering Islamic garb. “These kinds of moves create a lot of anger in toward governments,” said Mr Lyammouri.

“The militant groups have built a trust with the communities that’s hard to break, that took a decade to build,” he said. “It’s going to take more than a decade to break that, and have communities gain some trust in the authorities.” – The Independent (UK)