Secure Communities: Stopping the Salafi-Jihadi Surge in Africa

Key Points

• The next Salafi-jihadi terror threat to the West may originate in Africa. Insurgencies linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State have formed, re-formed, spread, and grown entrenched on the continent over the past two decades. As Salafi-jihadi groups mature, they gain capabilities that they can marshal toward both local and international goals. Counterterrorism interventions have failed to secure communities, allowing Salafi-jihadi groups to capitalize repeatedly on conflicts and grievances to establish and expand their presence.
• Africa is an increasingly important theater for geopolitical competition. The same conditions that benefit Salafi-jihadi groups also create openings for malign actors like the Russian Wagner Group. US policymakers should treat community security like public health, as a service provided to civilians that benefits Americans and Africans alike and helps maintain the world order that undergirds US freedom, safety, and prosperity.
• An approach focused on securing communities should not require intervening everywhere at a large scale, but rather smart investments in preventive action and refocusing counterterrorism responses. The United States should work with African partners to develop policy approaches for preventing Salafi-jihadi insurgencies from forming whenever possible and containing or rolling them back when necessary. These approaches will require changing the focus and risk tolerance of US security policy in Africa while reforming interagency coordination to facilitate this new approach.

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View the interactive graphics: "At-Risk African States" and "Salafi-jihadi Capabilities in Africa."

Executive Summary

Insurgencies linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State are maturing and expanding in Africa, increasing the likelihood that the next Salafi-jihadi terror threat to the West will originate on the continent. Africa-based groups and networks have only been responsible for a small number of terror attacks in the West. However, their predominantly local and regional focus to date does not preclude a future pivot toward transnational attacks. Some Africa-based groups have already plotted transnational terror attacks, and organizational and individual incentives will push jihadist groups and leaders to leverage the capabilities and resources they have acquired in Africa toward global goals.

At the same time, Africa is an increasingly important theater for geopolitical competition. The same conditions that benefit Salafi-jihadi groups also create openings for malign actors like the Russian Wagner Group. The erosion of democratic norms and a rules-based international order benefits Beijing and Moscow. These countries help autocrats surveil and suppress their populations, and this suppression contributes to chronic insurgencies by removing peaceful options for aggrieved populations to seek restitution.

Salafi-jihadi insurgencies’ development follows a familiar and often tragic arc even as local dynamics vary. Political disruptions and conflicts create windows of opportunity for jihadists to establish themselves, sometimes with the benefit of funding or expertise from a larger Salafi-jihadi organization. Security forces’ reactions often worsen the preexisting local dynamics and stoke an insurgency that gives the jihadists greater leverage. States’ efforts to recapture legitimacy often further destroy it, and their foreign backers’ counterterrorism efforts can reinforce this long-term deterioration in the pursuit of short-term security imperatives.

Countering the Salafi-jihadi movement hinges on establishing or extending governance in communities. The difficulty and urgency of this task depend on the maturity and form of the Salafi-jihadi threat. At-risk areas—where the Salafi-jihadi threat is nearby or suppressed—have different requirements than areas in which a Salafi-jihadi insurgency is already emerging or established. Several Salafi-jihadi insurgencies have recently crossed into more lethal categories and are in the process of maturing further.

An approach focused on securing communities should not require intervening everywhere at a large scale, but rather smart investments in preventive action and refocusing counterterrorism responses. The United States should work with African partners to develop policy approaches for preventing Salafi-jihadi insurgencies from forming whenever possible and containing or rolling them back when necessary. These approaches will require adjusting the focus and approach of US security policy in Africa across agencies to increase analytical capability, expand diplomatic presence, reform foreign aid and security assistance, and shape the information space.

These recommendations are ultimately subordinate to re-centering from a counterterrorism approach to a community-security approach. Until the US government adopts an approach that recognizes the role that community security plays in sustaining and spreading the Salafi-jihadi threat, there will be a continual need to prune Salafi-jihadi groups using military and intelligence tools and intermittent costly interventions. Meanwhile, instability that benefits other malign criminal and state actors will remain and spread. Policymakers need to reframe cultivating security as analogous to cultivating public health—as a service provided to civilians that benefits Americans and Africans alike and helps maintain the world order that undergirds US freedom, safety, and prosperity.

Introduction

The US government is erring by leaving its Africa security policy on autopilot. The continent has never been a top priority for American leaders, nor will it realistically become more important than East Asia or Europe in the foreseeable future. However, security trends in Africa should be causing more alarm in Washington than they currently are, even as supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion and deterring Chinese aggression remain the primary focus.

Africa is home to more than 1.2 billion people—among the world’s fastest-growing and youngest populations—but several of its regions suffer from overlapping security crises, including expanding insurgencies, rising terror threats, and poor or deteriorating governance. This environment creates opportunities for malign actors, like the Kremlin-linked Russian mercenary outfit Wagner Group, to profit from conflict. Salafi-jihadi groups, including al Qaeda and the Islamic State, contribute to and benefit from this same instability, and the terror threat from Africa is real and growing.

The current political and policy discourse gives Western policymakers little incentive to recognize, much less prioritize, new Salafi-jihadi terror threats.¹ These threats bring to mind unending and resource-intensive counterterrorism and counterinsurgency campaigns—exactly the distractions that the US should avoid in a new strategic environment shaped by geopolitical competition. But this framing assumes a now-outdated framework for how to combat al Qaeda and IS. Instead, policy responses need to focus on severing the ties between Salafi-jihadi groups and populations and especially on preventing these ties from forming in the first place. The goal is community security—defined as a community’s access to legitimate, responsive governance and its freedom from existential threats.

An approach focused on securing communities does not require intervening everywhere at a large scale, but rather investing in preventive action and refocusing counterterrorism responses. The US government already has organizations that should be well suited to helping partner countries build community security, particularly the Department of State and US Agency for International Development (USAID), which have often been relegated to supporting roles during more military-forward counterterrorism efforts.

The need is both urgent and long-term. Salafi-jihadi groups in Africa are maturing and gaining capabilities that they will direct toward more attacks, including overseas.² At the same time, jihadist insurgencies are spreading to new countries, contributing to instability that feeds other malign actors, like Wagner Group.³

The US should realign resources toward community security while recognizing that preventive approaches—and winning the governance competition—will yield gradual and often understated results. But the rewards are potentially bigger than even stanching the spread of the Salafi-jihadi movement. Cultivating community security is a public good that does more than helping communities live free from violence and securing Americans at home and abroad. It also reduces instability, which benefits US adversaries and global criminal organizations, and strengthens partnerships to bolster the US position in an increasingly competitive world.

Read the full report.

View the interactive graphics: "At-Risk African States" and "Salafi-jihadi Capabilities in Africa."