 Hi, welcome to Global Connection here on ThinkTech's live streaming network. I'm your host Grace Chang here today to talk with Dr. Steve Yarl Hansen, who is currently at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. And we'll be talking about jihadists in Africa, including the Islamic State and the situation there in Africa as far as how they're faring, whether they are gaining ground, losing ground. So I'd like to welcome Steve to our program and he's coming us live remote from Harvard. Hi, Steve. Thank you very much for having me, Grace. Yes, thank you so much for taking the time to be here. Yeah, I'm really excited to talk to you about this topic because, you know, since 1998, right, the U.S. embassies were hit in Kenya and in Tanzania and, you know, I know that the situation has been ongoing. We don't get a lot of press on this topic, I think, in the U.S. media. But we know, especially in recent years, Boko Haram's, kidnappings, some of the bombing in the shopping malls. And earlier this year, the head of U.S. Africa Command said that the Islamic State was doubling its forces in Libya. So I think it's kind of a, it seems like it's a pressing topic, but we hear a lot of conflicting things, whether they're gaining ground or losing ground in the continent. So you are an expert in the field, and so very happy to have you here to talk about this topic. So could you first tell us a little bit about yourself and your background here? No, I have conducted a lot of field studies in Africa, and especially Sub-Saharan Africa. So I traveled to Somalia from 2004 and onwards. I have been annually in Mogadishu, with the exception of 2013 and 2014. I also was a part of British military mission to Nigeria. So I had the opportunity to study Nigeria a little bit more closely, and I'm currently involved in a larger Jihadi war economy project studying Africa, but also the Levant. So I've worked with this a lot of years, and I talk to several of the leaders, especially in the Shabbab, which at times were a little bit challenging, both methodologically, but also security-wise. But I'm here, and perhaps most known for my work on the Harakat al-Shabbab, the radical group in Somalia. Yes, yes, and you wrote the book, Al-Shabbab in Somalia, right, the history and ideology of an Islamic group there. And it received quite good feedback. It was reviewed in the Economist and the Foreign Policy and received very good feedback. So currently, what would you say the situation is, and perhaps giving us a little bit of background, going back to maybe the 90s, as I was talking about, the US Embassy attacks? Yes, what you can see is you have several faces of violent Jihadists in Africa. Violent Jihadists meaning that you want to use violence to promote what you see is the religious values, basically. So you have the 90s, where you had this period when Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda established themselves in Sudan from 1991 to 1996, trying to support several smaller religious organizations at that stage. But these smaller organizations, they were very fragmented. So Al-Qaeda wasn't really a big success. Al-Qaeda was also following Sudanese foreign policies. So to a certain extent, it was kind of a puppet or a tool that Sudan used to further its foreign policy goals. So you had a close relationship between Sudan and Al-Qaeda in that period. But in 1996, Osama bin Laden moved away. And what remained in Africa since he fell out with the Sudanese authorities was more or less small networks. These networks, they were based in East Africa, and those networks were really hitting the embassies in Nairobi and Dara Salam. But this changed rapidly after September 11. Suddenly, a lot of movements in Africa exploded. Jihadists, violent Jihadist organizations increased in size and in numbers. So you will suddenly have the Bukuharam emerging in 2003. The interesting thing with the Bukuharam was that from 2003 to 2009, it was actually legal. And in some cases, even supported by the regional authorities inside the province, the Borno province, when they were active. So they had some support from the Nigerian government, which is very interesting. They were tolerated and sometimes supported to be used for political purposes. At the same time, on the other end of the continent, you had the Shabaab. Created in its first stages in 2003, 2004, in Somalia as a small network, but then riding piggyback on the Sharia courts of Mogadishu in 2006, and starting up really in 2007 as a clearly independent movement. Further north, in the west, you had also several movements in Mali. You have the Ansardin and the Mujahou who also had some connections to Al-Qaeda. And you had a local organization in Algeria who changed their name to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. So you had this period from 2000 to maybe 2012, where you had a really, really expansion of these organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. A large expansion and at the end of that period, a lot of these organizations strengthened their connection with Al-Qaeda. So in 2012, Shabaab will say that they were a part of Al-Qaeda. In the case of Mali, the Ansardin, they will have a leader that more or less married a daughter of one of the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb leaders. So he got the kind of connection with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Mujahou, they had no infamous leader, Muqtar Bel Muqtar, who was behind the Namenas attack. They attacked against the oil facility in Algeria in 2013. They called him the one-night guy. And he also had strong Al-Qaeda connections. So you had this face with a lot of... First, a lot of jihadi organizations emerging. Then secondly, several of these organizations affiliating themselves with Al-Qaeda. It doesn't mean that they were directly controlled by Al-Qaeda, but they swore out or they had close connections with Al-Qaeda. Exactly how well they were centrally controlled, it's really hard to say. But Al-Qaeda, we have to say an insight, was kind of successful in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately for Al-Qaeda, then you had the Islamic State. So the Islamic State started to emerge and started to separate itself from Al-Qaeda. So we will have 2011, 2012, 2013, where the Islamic State is consolidating in the Levant and more or less breaking contact with Al-Qaeda, declaring themselves as a separate organization. At the start, they were a part of the Al-Qaeda network, but they became separate and then declaring this caliphate and taking large territorial holdings in Syria and Iraq. What this did was basically first to turn away some of the foreign recruitment, for example, to Sheba. So in the United States, you had a recruitment channel going out from Minnesota, first to the Sheba, and this recruitment channel was more or less turned towards the Islamic State. So the ethnic Somalis in Minnesota that previously were radical, they went to Somalia, but suddenly they started to go to Syria. So it was a loss for the Sheba. In addition to that, they started to view several organizations in Africa. First, Bukoharam in the M, the leader of Bukoharam, in the M swearing allegiance to the Islamic State. So the Bukoharam then became a part of the Islamic State. Again, it's hard to say how directly controlled it was. Bukoharam was then used in relation to the Sheba. So the Islamic State produced propaganda videos featuring Bukoharam leaders and Bukoharam activists to ask the Sheba to join the Islamic State. But the Sheba never joined the Islamic State. Further north, Muhtar Bel Muhtar's group in Mali, they had a sub-commander who swore allegiance on behalf of his organization to the Islamic State. So suddenly you saw the Sheba were challenged by the Islamic State. Bukoharam seemed to be in an alliance with the Islamic State. The remains of Mujahoo seem to be also having at least one leader who swore an oath to the Islamic State. So suddenly you had a wave of Islamic State coming into sub-Saharan Africa. Right. I mean, this seems to be, I'm sorry to cut you off, but this seems to be kind of the, what we're seeing is that al-Qaeda seems to have some preeminence among jihadi groups. But now we have Islamic State here with many groups kind of pledging the allegiance, including maybe slip splintering off from existing groups like from al-Shaba forming new groups that declare allegiance. We're seeing this kind of competition. Could you talk? We have a couple minutes for a break. Maybe give us a little more of what you were trying to say continuing with that. Yes, absolutely. Because what we see now is that al-Qaeda has broken back. So you can see that al-Qaeda is actually gaining back on the various Islamic State attempts. What happened in Somalia, if I can start with that, is basically the intelligence services of the Sheba, the amniad. They hit heavily back at Islamic State sympathizers within that organization. So a lot of them were killed. A lot of them were captured. And the groups that remained free inside the Sheba, inside the Sheba areas were on the periphery of the Sheba. So there was a large group into the north led by a guy called Sheikh Mu'min, and a large group to the south who was led originally by a German foreign fighter called Müller that remained separate. But it's important to understand that these groups are relatively small. So a couple of, one month ago in October, this group in the north of Somalia captured a small city called Kandela. And it was really depicted on the CNN as the Islamic State gaining a foothold in Africa. What it was really, this city was a pirate city before. It didn't have a police force. So the Islamic State basically went in and took a city that wasn't really controlled by anybody. So it was an easy military operation. The closest garrison of the local authorities was 13 hours away. And then the Islamic State militia under Mu'min Day withdrew. So it was a propaganda show. It didn't really show strength. The propaganda videos from these groups shows very few soldiers. And the German fighter that appeared on the start, Müller, that appeared on the start of these videos of the Islamic State group in the south, he was actually killed. So he died. And the Northern leader of Sheikh Mu'min, he was in hiding in the mountains. So really what happened here was not that impressive. And what's interesting for the Sheba was that their Kenyan affiliates, Tanzanian affiliates, Al-Hijira, they declared clear loyalty to Al-Qaeda and to the Sheba. So what happened in the case of the Sheba was only small, small groups, perifero. The Sheba kept control of their own forces and they remained in solid relationships to Al-Qaeda. What happened in the Bukoharam was actually it seems like the Islamic State weakened Bukoharam very seriously. You know, Bukoharam took some hits because of a new military offensive from the neighboring countries, involving Shadyan forces, involving Nigerian forces. That defeated them a lot in the battlefield. But in addition to this, the son of the founder of Bukoharam, he declares himself the new leader of what they call the West African province of the Islamic State. And the all leader, the infamous Abu Bukhashakao said that this was wrong, that Al-Baghdadi and the Islamic States, they outsold him. They tried to take control over his organization and that this would lead to a fight and he would be prepared to maintain control of the organization. So the splits in Bukoharam, it split into two. And for now, it seems like the old part, the Abu Bukhashakao part, actually is the most powerful and they now have declared themselves against Baghdadi. Okay, that's really interesting. So it's really not, it's causing a bit of a split. And let's talk about this a little bit more after we come back from this one minute break. Thank you for that great background and overview of all of the groups throughout the continent. We'll come back in a minute and talk more with Steve Hansen about jihadis in Africa. Stay tuned. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Hi, I'm Chris Leitham with Think Tech Hawaii, and I'd like to ask you to come watch my show, The Economy in You, each Wednesday at 3 p.m. Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart, Turner, host of Sustainable Hawaii. We live stream every Tuesday from noon to 12.30. And you get a chance to hear what people are doing about sustainability in Hawaii and what the issues are impacting all of us in all the islands. Join us, please. Hello, this is Martin Despeng. I want to get you excited about my new show, which is Humane Architecture for Hawaii and Beyond. We're going to broadcast on Tuesdays 5 p.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, welcome back to Global Connections. I'm your host, Grace Cheng, here talking with Steve Hansen of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. They're at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and we're talking about the Islamic State and its situation in Africa as far as whether it's gaining ground, losing ground, and also covering this recent history of the Jihadi movements on the continent. Welcome back, Steve. Thank you. Hey, as you were saying, I mean, you gave us a great overview about all of these different movements that have kind of sprouted out in many situations. I mean, you suggested in Somalia one of the areas that Islamic State have captured was really just part of a, you know, one of the areas where the collapsed state of Somalia was not able to govern at all. So I mean, many, you know, we have many different reports in the sense of like, you know, it seems that a lot of these incidents are very sensationalized. So we have a big kind of sense that these groups are really gaining ground and expanding. I think earlier this year, the Senate had heard some testimony that there are more deaths from this kind of violence in Africa than in the Middle East. But there are other sources that say that, yeah, a lot of these groups are losing ground and as you were talking about before the break, this introduction of the rivalry between al-Qaeda and Islamic State has kind of weakened groups, splintered them and caused some internal rifts. Yeah, I think that's what's fascinating with Islamic State. You know, I won't say that they made a large inroad into Africa. In the case of Mali, where you had Mujaw entering into an alliance and creating another organization called Les Miraboutou. And in the case of Sheba, they captured small, small groups that in reality are in significance. Although some of the media tried to make them significant, like CNN talking a lot about the conquest of Candela by what they saw as Islamic State, it's a small group. If you look into their videos, sometimes it's rather pathetic, I tell you, because they will circulate the same troops over and over again to appear quite big. So you had these incidences in Mali where at best the Islamic State made small groups. And what they did in Nigeria was actually to split one of the most dangerous groups in Africa. You know, we haven't really seen the results. I think Abu Bakr Sheqqa'u will get on, Abu Bakr Sheqqa'u will get on the top of things. He will control Bukuharam, the major part of Bukuharam because Bukuharam had split before and he ended up on the top of it at that stage also. But his rival now is the son of the founder. It's Banawi who is the son of the founder. So this is going to be exciting to see. But what we see is a block of the Islamic State. You know, the Islamic State tried very hard. What they managed to do was to split up a large organization. Otherwise, it was rather peripheral. And when it comes to your second question, what is really the status of those movements now? If you look at Somalia, Shebab is actually quite stable. Shebab holds some territories. There's very bad security in the countryside so they can survive behind enemy lines because basically villages are not properly secured by the forces of the African Union. So they can go into villages, steal money, local villages, marrying off their daughters to the Shebab because they want to be safe. They can recruit people in these villages and then the Amazon will come there once a week. But Shebab will have a presence six days a week and run away when the Amazon comes and they will come back. So in one sense, they are ruling those cities anyway. So Shebab is stable and they have their eyes on Kenya. They have their eyes on Tanzania. In Kenya, the police have cracked on really efficiently at the Shebab structures. So it's little recruitment going into Somalia. But there are active Shebab cells inside Kenya. And the root causes the animosity towards the state in Kenya is not fixed. Inside Tanzania, it's a big question mark because there has been networks inside Tanzania. There have been a small group inside Tanzania who declared a kind of ought to watch the Islamic State. But it's very unclear what they really wanted. So there's something going on in Tanzania and Tanzania is not really prepared for it. But it's not something really heavy. They had an attack against the police station last year. It was very bloody. It seems like the people involved in that attack was taken out. In Nigeria, Nigeria, Bukoharam has faced a lot of problems. They have a northern Nigerian as a present, Bukohari. And Bukohari has transferred a lot of the military units into the north. You know, the Nigerians are weak because they get most of their income from the oil in the south. So they need military units in the south. But the northern president, Bukohari has taken a lot of chances and he's transferred army units to the north. In addition to that, one of Africa's most efficient armies, the Shadian army, has intervened directly, helping Nigeria, which is a kind of little embarrassing for Nigerians. It's a strong man of Africa and then it cannot help itself. The way Bukoharam seemed to have dealt with this is to pull back in face of superior forces. But also it seems like they have become more active in Niger. Niger before has been really calm when it comes to his violent Jihadists. But they are weak when it comes to their forces. They have been lenient on Bukoharam networks. Several Bukoharam members have tribal networks in that state, but it seemed to have been more active. In Mali, after the French intervention, the Islamist organizations withdraw and they reorganized and they're still active. They're far from defeated and they can hide out in the large ways of the Saharan desert. So it's really hard to defeat them. So what you can say is that for Mali and the northern part of West Africa and Somalia, it's more or less a stable situation where these violent Jihadist organizations still are powerful, but they are stable. They are not expanding. They're slightly on the defensive, but they will survive. In Nigeria, it's a little bit more complicated. They are split into two. As I said, they have major Nigerian army units fighting them. They have Chadian units fighting them. But I also dealt with Bukoharam before and they had similar crisis. They had the first crisis when they became illegal in 2009, where for the first time were banned by the Nigerian authorities. There was a big crackdown. The first leader, Yusuf, was killed by the police. They had the second crisis in 2013 when the Nigerian army organized an entirely new division and sent it north-north. I know they have another crisis, but all the time they managed to survive. So I think that's kind of interesting because I think we hear a great deal about Bukoharam because of the kidnappings of the schoolgirls and some of these other really dramatic, well, it's played up in the media quite dramatically, but that they were once a legal organization and then declared illegal. How are they different when they were legal? Did they really substantive change in terms of their objectives or was it their actions that made them be declared legal by the state? I'll tell you what, Grace. This is a very strange story. You know, Bukoharam, in its legal phase, was used by political parties in Borno as a kind of political stormtroopers. They had a lot of influence at times in regional politics to the extent that they were a part of the governmental apparatus that decided who could go to Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage or not. So they were relatively involved in politics. They had quite extreme opinions also at that stage, but they didn't attack churches, etc., etc. They were more involved in the political showdowns. What happened was in 2009, there are several sources. Some of the sources will say that the Bukoharam really planned to go violent. So they were gathering arms and preparing to go violent. Other sources say that this was actually a car accident where there was an accident. There were several Bukoharam members who drove without helmets and the police wanted to capture them. And then everything escalated. So it was a big showdown in 2009 between them and the police. But certainly they became more violent after this showdown. So the violence escalated. But you don't know if these radical trends before the showdown would have escalated as well. And that we would have seen a more violent Bukoharam anyway. But it would have taken more time at least. I think that's fair to say. And what's very important with Bukoharam, never before declaring allegiance with the Islamic State, did they declare allegiance to al-Qaeda? In fact, they never declared allegiance to al-Qaeda. Sheba declared allegiance to al-Qaeda. Hijira in Kenya declared allegiance to al-Qaeda. And in Mali, Ansardin and Mujahou that we talked about had strong connections to al-Qaeda. They didn't declare allegiance either until quite recently when parts of Mujahou did this. But in the old days, they had strong connections. They had members from al-Qaeda in the ranks. They had, as I said, in Ansardin, one of the leaders married into al-Qaeda basically. And so you've given us a list of many different groups that you've been talking about. I mean, as far as their strength, there are so many of them. So it does sound very alarming. And then we hear the affiliations being declared with Islamic State and some groups declaring we are Islamic State of this particular region, of Greater Sahara, for example. But how significance are these groups? You said some of them are very, very pitifully small. Others, are they more significant? I mean, even if they're stable, do they constitute a major threat to the security in the region? I would say that if we start in the east, the threat from the Shebab against the United States has become less, because before, they recruited a lot in the United States. But they haven't managed. No, it's the Islamic State that started recruiting. And no, even the Islamic State is declining. So in one sense, their recruitment potentially in the U.S. were stolen away by the Islamic State. But mind you, and several of their videos, they have listed potentially American targets and said that if you cannot come to Somalia, you hit in the United States. So they are encouraging attacks inside the United States. But I don't think they will plan attacks in the United States. I think their focus is regional, and they always did that. They always hit regional targets, and they prefer to hit targets in the countries that are involved in the African Union inside Somalia. But mind you, when they do this, that's tourist targets as well, and they might hit westerners when they attack those tourist targets. And there might be a likelihood that Al-Qaeda centrally or other Al-Qaeda affiliates can take advantage of Shibab infrastructure if they plan larger attacks, including Al-Qaeda in their Arab Peninsula is rather close to the Shibab. If you go to the west, if you go to Bukuharam, Bukuharam has even been more locally focused than Shibab. So they've been focused mainly on one province inside Nigeria historically. But for the last three years, you saw that they had some interest in Cameroon, and as I said, they moved into Niger to try to implement terrorist attacks in Niger, but also as a safe zone basically. Cameroon is rather weak militarily. I don't see Bukuharam attacking internationally at all. I don't think that they are very interested in it. But I do see them attacking staging terrorist attacks in larger cities inside Nigeria and Niger as well. What you see in Mali, it's slightly more serious. And I think Inamena shows that, if you go a little bit further north from Mali, you will have oil installations operated by Western oil pump. Yeah, because of the location. Wow, Steak. So we have about a couple seconds left. So I'm sorry, we don't have more time. Not enough time for this is a very big topic and really appreciate your sharing your expertise on all of these groups. Love to have you back and talk more depth. I think we talked a lot in depth already, but there's obviously there's so much more. But it seems like, yeah, a lot of the groups are not as significant as far as the scope of their reach and impact as we might see it. So thank you so much. I'm here with Steve Hansen of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. And you've been watching Global Connections and I'm your host Grace Chang. See me here next Thursday or actually next Thursday Thanksgiving. And other Thursdays at 1 p.m. Thank you so much again, Steve. Thank you.