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| Title: | Briefing: the myth of global Islamic terrorism and local conflict in Mali and the Sahel |
| Authors: | Dowd, Caitriona Raleigh, Clionadh |
| Year: | 2013 |
| Periodical: | African Affairs: The Journal of the Royal African Society (ISSN 1468-2621) |
| Volume: | 112 |
| Issue: | 448 |
| Pages: | 498-509 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Sahel Mali |
| Subjects: | rebellions terrorism Islamic movements |
| External link: | http://afraf.oxfordjournals.org/content/112/448/498.full.pdf |
| Abstract: | In the wake of the rapid escalation of the conflict in Mali, analyses and articles seeking to make sense of the situation and its actors have proliferated. Nevertheless, political figures, policymakers, and researchers continue to fall back on simplistic narratives in their attempts to explain the intensification of violent Islamist activity in the region. Without a finely tuned understanding of diverse groups - their structures, objectives, and modalities of violence - analysts risk recycling dangerously misleading narratives about Islamist violence in Africa and its consequences. This briefing draws on empirical evidence of violent Islamist activity, strategy, and structure to highlight the differentiated nature of groups operating in the Sahel region and further west. It contends that violent Islamist groups emerge in and are shaped by distinct domestic contexts and issues, a feature that is obscured by a totalizing narrative of global Islamic terrorism. In turn, leaders seek to cast opposition threats as extreme and associated with Al-Qaeda in order to locate the blame for violence elsewhere, away from poor records of governance, State capacity, and representation. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
