 Good afternoon. My name is Salvador Forquilla. I am a researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Studies based in Maputo, Mozambique. So, first of all, I would like to say many thanks to the organizers of the conference for the invitation and thanks also to the speakers, the four speakers, for their valuable insights on the topic of this panel. I've structured my intervention in two moments. I will start by giving a very brief and general comments on the four presentations we had this afternoon. And I will then move to the second moment by bringing some insights to the topic of this panel, particularly the links between armored groups and local populations based on the work we have been developing on armored conflict in northern Mozambique. The four presentations we had provide a very interesting analytical framework to understand the dynamics of the armored groups in terms of territorial control, their persistence over time, but also dynamics of DDR programs, the way armored groups use violence at the early stage of their existence and inter-communal violence. So, there is a kind of difficult and it's clear in the presentation of Janet, the difficulty of making distinction between the types of new-formed armored groups, political or criminal, is in many ways challenging not only for states, but also for researchers. Perhaps this is the reason why most of the armored groups at the early stage are seen as criminals without any agenda and therefore simply bandits, criminals. And this was the case for example of some liberation movements under rebel groups in Africa, including Mozambique, if we think of Frelimo, Rinamo or the armored groups that we have in northern Mozambique, at the beginning they are called criminals, bandits, etc. etc. So, as a result, many states seem to underestimate the real nature and implications of new-formed armored groups and some of them managed to develop into well-structured groups with social biases. And this takes me to the second moment of my intervention, so the discussion on the links between armored groups and local populations asking the following questions. Why and how armored groups manage to advance on the ground and build a narrative that mobilized certain groups in a society? Which factors are likely to help armored groups to spread territorially? So, in order to address these questions, it's important to take into account two main aspects that come from the literature and have high importance from policy point of view. The first aspect has to do with people who join or support armored groups. Those people whose poverty, misery, frustration and fragility are exploited by armored groups are not necessarily criminals at the moment they join in. They are ordinary people, very often living at the margin of the state with the feeling of social, political and economic exclusion and no basic service at all. These people live at the margin of the state as a result of the type of political institutions that have been put in place and the way these institutions function, which produces and reproduces marginalities. As very often, they don't get any service from the state, no education services, no health services, no water and sanitation service, for example, so the state becomes literally meaningless in their everyday life. Therefore, the development of some armored groups and the way they evolve on the ground to some extent has a lot to do with the state building process and dynamics. Taking the example of current armored violence in northern Mozambique, evidence on the ground suggests that the insurgents at its early stage seem to have developed in areas and among population groups marginalized by the state, mobilizing in particular young people in rupture with the state, but also in rupture with the traditional society in so far as they adopt the fundamentalist practice of Islam. The literature on civil war in Mozambique shows how Rinalmo, the former rebel movement, mobilized local cleavages in its favor. In this regard, it seems that in northern Mozambique, at the early stage, Mozambique was facing some kind of dynamics which characterized the civil war in the 80s, which means the arrival of an armored group, bringing discourse of opposition to established order, acts to accelerate social discontent under radicalized socio-political cleavages, some of them historical, which already existed locally. And this allowed Al-Shabaab, this armored group operating now in northern Mozambique, so this allowed Al-Shabaab to find a certain support from more marginalized sectors, particularly young people who in some cases solved what little they had and went to join the group. And thanks to this support, Al-Shabaab was able to set up an efficient network of logistical and information gathering formed by young people divided into small groups inserted into the communities. In addition to logistical support, these youth undertook surveillance and keep the insurgents informed about the movement, for example, of the defense forces in the area, a fact which played an important role in launching Al-Shabaab military operations. Therefore, just as happened with Rinaumu, the former rebel movement in Mozambique during the civil war in the 80s, in northern Mozambique Al-Shabaab has managed to some extent to penetrate into the social fabric of the local communities, which has allowed the group greater mobility on the ground and efficiency in military operation. The second aspect that needs to be taken into account in the context of questions related to the links between armored groups and local populations has to do with internal conflicts in a society. In order for the armored groups to develop and engage in a large-scale scale violence, they mobilize internal conflicts that exist already. In many cases, these internal conflicts are social, political, economic, religious, ethnic, linked to the process and dynamics of state building in post-air, particularly in Africa. These aspects I have mentioned take me to two important issues related to armored groups. The first one is recruitment. In this regard, I would like to ask at least three questions. Why social segments are primarily targeted by armored groups for recruitment purposes? Why are these social segments targeted? How are they recruited? And which segments are we talking about? And the second important issue has to do with the reintegration of the former fighters, the so-called DDR programs. And the question here is how to build meaningful DDR programs based on the root causes of the conflicts and the nature and dynamics of the armored groups. How to maximize research findings in order to have contextualized and meaningful DDR programs. So let's start with recruitment. The growing literature on extremist armored groups of Jihad nature agrees in considering that the recruitment process is not uniform as there are differences in the way different Jihadist groups recruit. For example, Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab from Somalia they have different recruitment strategies and reflecting very often the political configuration of the countries where they operate. In the case of the insurgency in northern Mozambique, for example, evidence from research shows that the advance of the insurgency made use of the dynamics of external and internal migration. This created a vast network of recruitment for Al-Shabaab which has been facilitated essentially by porous borders with Tanzania and by fishing activity on the islands of Cab Delgado coast. In this regard, the border dynamics between Mozambique and Tanzania and the internal migration of young fishermen from Nampoula coastal area to Cab Delgado have expanded the recruitment network of the Al-Shabaab allowing it to increase its ranks and consolidate its actions on the ground. Therefore, in its early stage Al-Shabaab has managed to make use of local social, economic, political and religious dynamics for recruitment purpose, focusing on various aspects such as local religious division within Islam, ethnic divisions, mobilization of anti-state or anti-frelimo narrative, microcredit schemes to boost small business for future recruits, promises of employment in the Cab Delgado fishing sector or in mining and other activities, for example, in Niasa and the other locations. So finally, to conclude with regard to reintegration of the former fighters, I think it's crucial to have a solid knowledge not only of the root causes of the conflict to be addressed, but also a solid knowledge of the contextual dynamics of the armed groups whose fighters need to be disarmored, demobilized and reintegrated. Thank you very much. Thank you Salvador and we have now a little bit more than we have around 17 minutes for questions and I would like to start in the room and then somebody helps me go open online. I guess we use the microphone please here and then gentlemen in the back, yeah please. Thank you everyone. You're all very brief. My name is Oliro Ohamaki. I have two hats. I'm a senior fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and I'm also a senior advisor at the Peace Center Foreign Affairs. First question to Austin. I used to serve in Afghanistan myself and there was a lot of debate about the control that Taliban had throughout the years and it was a hot topic obviously. You didn't talk about influence because as we know the point is that in the case of Afghanistan the Taliban controlled very little actually the heartlands and then the government the cities and the district centers but the Taliban controlled I mean sorry had exerted a lot of influence over the territory and it grew throughout the year so maybe if you can talk a bit about you know the vast fluid gray zone about influence. Thanks. Then the second point to Tarila. Fantastic paper also. Fascinating case study. Just one question. What were the conditions allowing or pushing the Nigerian state to engage with the armed groups and begin the DDR process because I think that's that probably was very crucial and may may apply to other settings so that would be interesting. Thirdly to Janet. How conflicts start. Also fascinating topic indeed. You did not say anything about the role of conflict entrepreneurs because we know for example in the case of Mali Jamaat and Nusratul Islam Muslimin Jainim the al-Qaeda affiliated group carried a lot of activities in Mali and they sort of played between the conflict of the pastoralists and agriculturalists so I mean where do these conflict entrepreneurs figure in your research because I mean that's you know these guys usually are the ones that stir up trouble and the question is that if you don't have conflict entrepreneurs entering the stage would the conflicts basically peter out I mean just they would not you know flash the question and finally to Daniel also fascinating topic. Can you open a bit the your final slide on the sort of interplay and the continuum between the local and the national level stuff. I mean it sounded very interesting that you what you talked about but I didn't quite get the gist of that so if you can open up a bit thanks. Thank you let's take a few more questions and then I'll give the floor so remember this there was the gentleman in the back. The second presenter on the on the paper titled Rethinking Intercom and Violence in Africa. I would like to correct some impression by the presenter that in Nigeria the state see the rural violence as a relationship between the communal bandit and the vigilante. Here I would like to say that conflict in the north west is dynamics and it can be traced across different contours which feed into one is done up in the sense that if you go to certain part of the north west which he has used as his case study Kaduna in particular the conflict there is about ethnic issues which is coming up. When you move out of Kaduna state which within the same region and you go to another state which is Sanfara. Sanfara state the conflict there is not about ethnic it was about crisis of interest and it was from the crisis of interest it generated into ethnic issue between the few landings or which we call the others and the farmers and from there it now turned into what we have a rural bandit bandit or unbandit now that turned into kidnapping and some other issue that has to do with conflict. So it was not issued the the vigilante were part of community resilience used by the community when they noticed that the government is weak and can the government is not capable or the state is not capable to face their bandit so the vigilante has to come in as a community police to save the community member from the attacks of the bandit. So it was then when it now turned into bandit and the vigilante. Then my second comment which goes to the last presenter when he is talking about recruitment and how does the group increase their their their hammers you I would like you to go deep into some of the strategy used to recruit there are some people for example he made mention of Boko Aram insurgents in Nigeria there are some people who are actors who are a member of Boko Aram but they do not join the group not because of vulnerability in time of livelihood but because they do not have option the knee protection and the state cannot provide the necessary protection so they have no option than to join the Boko Aram and they not serve as informants living within the society but they are not informant to the Boko Aram. So there are some people that joined bandit or rebel group not because out of their own wish or because they but they look at the state as fake to protect them and the knee protection and therefore they believe that their protection can only come from the bandit. Thank you. Thank you and one more question from this side. Yes the lady there by the wall. Can everyone hear me? Thank you so much for really interesting panels. I'll just pick out one or two things but there's so much to talk about. Janet I'm really excited about your work in this space and I absolutely agree with you having spent a lot of time in the GTD. I think there's also the issue of not just the data sets themselves and how they're created but also how they're used frequently researchers cut out groups that only have a certain number of attacks as being serious bonafide groups but it distorts this problem that you're talking about even more significantly. I wondered if you could maybe give us a little bit more on sort of capacity versus interest of these emerging groups and what we can tell from what we can see or not see in them because that's always really quite difficult and I also wondered if you considered sort of two other hypotheses that come out of the sort of criminology literature and some of the literature more on sort of small underground terrorist groups but for the sort of gang literature on sort of social processes in groups and the value of external violence both for team building training etc so that might be of interest and then also for small underground terrorist groups when they're trying to determine if they actually could transition to something larger like a social movement and they're trying to see if they have larger support outside the community and attacks sometimes allow them to see if the community responds in different ways so I wondered if those had any resonance for you or were considered and then Trella I would love to hear more about how you would envision particularly given you know DDR has has transitioned pretty significantly and how we think about breaking social bonds between commanders and the people that that operated underneath them but how you see those relationships potentially being transformable into something positive both politically and economically for societies and so we can program more effectively so I'd love to hear your thoughts on that particular topic thank you thank you excellent questions I will now ask our speakers and discuss them to answer answer all the questions that that that were directed to you and try to be as brief as possible so that we can have another round and then you can continue the discussions over coffee but yes Dan please it's okay great thank you uh so I'll take the first question first um so it okay the it's not the visuals not on the the slides anymore but what um that's kind of getting at is having three different types of conflicts so kind of revenge attacks which is the most distant from from the kind of state state and military elites then a kind of intermediate kind of category where you might have kind of local power struggles between say a governor or officials of that type of level um and then finally um kind of elite proxy wars where uh those very close at the heart of state power or attached to it in some kind of way uh use different religious to help settle their scores and so one of the things that I want to kind of emphasize with that is the the visual that I showed there that would be how I would characterize the situation in 2021 but it would look different now okay so the groups would have moved into different places some some conflicts would have disappeared others new ones have appeared in in parts of unity and upper Nile state and likewise if we were to roll the time back to 2020 it would look different still but what I think would happen is you would see in the main group militia groups forming as a result of kind of elite contests then drifting away and then being kind of ensnared or recaptured back in uh and thank you uh for the uh the the gentleman talking about uh Kaduna and Zamfra uh yeah I'd very much agree especially your characterization of a crisis of interest I think that's that's very much on point I'd say that's quite compatible with what I was arguing uh and I think the the kind of the the way in which groups can kind of change um can move from one uh one form to another and are often that that trajectory is mediated by a set of interests I think is is one of the things I'm hoping to kind of capture with that thank you thank you Diana and then over to Tarilla thank you thank you very much for both questions first what were the conditions pushing the Nigerian states to engage the AM groups and I return to the to the argument actually it's that the the logic of power at the time of the conflict so in 2009 AM groups especially the leaders have become quite powerful in relation to oil production but also in the rural politics of the country and AM groups uh political leaders leaders of AM groups were able to influence electoral outcomes in communities and Nigerian elites recognize that if this is allowed to continue that they will be completely displaced by these AM groups from that region recognizing that and also in relation to oil the elite consensus was to reach out to these AM groups and to recruit them actually to to mobilize them into some kind of form of political agreement that allows them to benefit from from from the political process and also the oil industry and the outcome of such an agreement or such a process is one that reinforces this logic of power that sustains the conflict in other ways um I hope that responds to the question and the second question on how to envision the transformation of the relations between leaders and followers like AM group leaders and honorifices this is actually the for me in my research and also reflecting on DDR globally is probably the most difficult part of DDR programs it's not necessarily people always question or say reintegration programs fail indeed that is quite obvious the question is that why do we have the link between why well how do we explain the mobilization outcomes we are we know a lot about reintegration outcomes but we do not know so much about the mobilization which is to the link these fighters from their leaders so what we see is that due to the political economy of peace itself one in that places the AM group leaders at the center of the mobilization that we sustain these networks so if you will ask me that from my own experience how do we design better programs I will I will say that you need to refer back to what our colleague has mentioned about the categorization of conflict and groups so which individuals are much more tied to their leaders which are victims of conflict which are members of AM groups some are victims which were forcefully recruited those that were forcefully recruited those that joined as a result of hunger so we in summary actually just for the sake of time is that we need to better understand recruitment in desire to enable us design effective demobilization programs yes be respectful of time and please comment on the strategies of recruitment and and I fully agree with the comment and as I mentioned during my presentation the strategies of recruitment depend very much on local context and and and dynamics so the most excluded social economic and and political groups they are the most important targets of recruitment and this is the case in in in many armoured groups if you look at Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab in Somalia even Al-Shabaab in Northern Mozambique so of course some people joining because they are forced to join others they joining because they don't have choice because and they see these armoured groups as an alternative as an opportunity and others they joining because they want to join special at the early stage of the armoured groups thank you thank you then uh Janet and Austin two minutes each for you please Janet okay great thanks thanks for your questions and I'll I'll be brief but please do follow up by email or I'm happy to follow chat on zoom so great questions about conflict entrepreneurs and capacity first interest and I'll just say I think I agree with the spirit of both of where these questions are coming from and and what I presented today is is part of a broader theory of rebel group formation in the book and I agree with the first questioner's characterization of like so so communities the world over have a broad range of social cleavages and I I do think that these dynamics of rebel reformation tend to be sparked they tend to start when there is a one or a few conflict entrepreneurs they come together and do make a decision to violently challenge the state right and we don't get to observe what their ultimate goals are in these early phases right but I do believe you know they're the sort of a range of what their goals or ends in mind they they have as they get started and some of them you know we may think are normatively justified and others not um and but the point here is that for outside observers it's just very hard to understand what's going on and to distinguish um whether they have political aims or or criminal more economic ones and um and so I do agree that this this starts when these conflict entrepreneurs try try things out and and in the book I didn't highlight in the presentation but um I do have a theory where the dynamics between rebels and civilians is very important this epica goes a lot of what Salvador was actually saying in his comments and the rebels are very interested in using violence in a way that crafts narratives that are propagated through the community about who they are what they want and how competent that they'll be and that's important for their survival in these nascent stages um and it's it's an important piece of how they're using violence in this small way to test out you know not only their operational environment in terms of the the capacity of the state but also how the community respond to them how the extent to which the narratives that they're sort of propagating through their rumor networks may or may not resonate with the state um excuse me with the civilians local community in ways that might mobilize the community on their behalf or may um cause them to to reject them so I do think it's more of an interest issue in terms of how they're using violence so I'll leave it there but look forward to continuing the conversation perhaps uh by email or by zoom I'll stand over to you sure so uh yeah no this isn't this is an excellent comment um you know Afghanistan is a case where uh there is a key differentiation between zones of influence and zones of control um and I think that that is also you know theoretically relevant in a number of other cases so what the what this measure picks up you know if you were to to go back to the slides and look at the time series it's actually pretty flat up until the the sort of final drawdown and in at the end of 14 the biggest drawdown at the end of 14 and then there's a the physical territorial control begins to take off but I do think that there is there are ways to think about measuring influence which are separate from territorial control one of which is curfews especially in the use of of the cell network and so we have this information as well and we're planning on incorporating that so thank you great points much uh it's clear that this is a topic that really merits a conference of its own I noticed there were many many questions that were there was no time to have them now but please continue seek each other up and continue over the coffee break thank you very much