UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI
CONCEPT PAPER
FOR THE SYMPOSIUM
ON
“COUNTERING TERRORISM: IN SEARCH OF A GRAND AFRICAN STRATEGY”
JOINTLY ORGANIZED BY:
INSTITUTE OF DIPLOMACYAND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES (IDIS), UNIVERSITY
OF NAIROBI
AND
AFRICA POLICY INSTITUTE (API), NAIROBI
MAY, 2015
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Project Overview
The Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies (IDIS) at University of Nairobi in
partnership with the Africa Policy Institute (API) will hold a one day symposium on countering
terrorism: A search for an integrated Strategy in Nairobi on April 30, 2015. Because of the tight
planning and execution schedule, short time available for planning and execution, this will be a
‘flash symposium’ to landscape the state of knowledge, strategies and policy responses to
terrorism and violent extremism. The symposium is planned against the background of the brutal
upsurge of terrorism globally in 2015, which started with the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris on
January 7, 2015. It also comes hard on the heel of the massacre of 148 students at the Garissa
University College in Northern Kenya in early April. The new wave of terrorism has sharply
turned the spotlight on the effectiveness of existing strategies, response mechanisms and the role
of actors at the community, national, regional and international levels in countering violent
extremism. Globally, the symposium comes in the wake of the three-day Conference on
“Countering Violent Extremism” in Washington in February 17-19, 2015. Policy perspectives
and options from the meeting will feed into the upcoming conference on “Countering Violent
Extremism in Africa” scheduled to take place in Nairobi at the end of May, 2015. It is hoped that
these debates and processes will enrich bilateral consultations between Kenya and the United
States of America during President Barrack Obama’s visit to Kenya in July 2015. Invariably,
security will form a key agendum in bilateral meetings as well as the 2015 Global
Entrepreneurship Summit, an annual conference that connects entrepreneurs with business
leaders, international organizations, and governments.
New Face of Terrorism
The attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in America on September 11, 2001
unveiled terrorism as the foremost threat to global security in the 21st century. Moreover, the
series of well-coordinated suicide attacks by 19 members of al-Qaeda who hijacked four aircrafts
and killed a total of 2,996 people revealed the new deadly face of terrorism: the suicide
campaign and indiscriminate violence on a massive scale. The extremism of these attacks and
the new face of terrorism as mass murder has radically changed scholarly and policy debates on
actions and strategies to combat terrorism at the national, regional and international levels.
The founding of Boko Haram in Nigeria in 2002 and of the Al-Shabaab Islamist group in
Somalia in 2006 ushered in a new phenomenon of ‘homegrown terrorism’ to haunt Africa’s
fragile democracies and states. Although Africa had experienced terrorist attacks since the 1960s,
terrorism was always perceived as an external affair and the continent as ‘collateral damage.’
However, the ferocity of Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab as ‘indigenous’ terrorist groups which
have collectively killed more than 10,000 people between 2009-2014 has raised questions about
the efficacy and efficiency of existing counter-terrorism mechanism, fueling the search for an
integrated (grand) strategy to combat the growing menace of terrorism in Africa. That is the
purpose of this project jointly organized by the Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies
(IDIS) and the Africa Policy Institute (API).
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The difficulty in providing a binding definition for the term terrorism becomes clear from the
statement, 'One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.'1 Certainly, the concept and face
of terrorism has changed significantly over the years since it first appeared in 431 AD in Ancient
Greece and early Roman Empires.2 However, although there is no one agreed upon definition of
terrorism, it is widely used to refer to violent acts (or the threat of violent acts) for the purpose of
creating fear or terror and advancing political, ideological, economic, or religious goals. One of
its salient characteristics is its deliberate targeting of non-combatants or innocent civilians and
utter disregard of their safety.
As a concept, terrorism is politically loaded, emotionally charged and has a controversial history.
Historians note that the Jewish extremist group, Irgun, in Palestine (1940s), the Viet Cong in
South Vietnam (1950s-1970s), and the IRA in Northern Ireland from the 1960s were either
‘terrorist’ or ‘liberation’ groups. It all depended on who was judging them. In Africa, the
colonizers labeled all liberation movements such as the Mau Mau in Kenya as ‘terrorist.’ In
1987-8 the UK and US governments, openly taking sides with the Apartheid Government in
South Africa, controversially labeled the African National Congress (ANC) as a ‘terrorist’
organization and its leader, Nelson Mandela, as a ‘terrorist’.Notably, because terrorism has no
legally binding criminal-law definition, strategies to combat it also extend beyond the realm of
the law.
Also controversial is who a terrorist is. Terrorism as unlawful violence and war is widely
associated with the activities of non-state actors or politically motivated groups. Today,
terrorism is unduly equated with Islamism or jihadism. This conceptualization of terrorism
ignores shades of non-Islamic organizations or individuals involved in terrorism. Uganda’s
Lord’s Resistant Army is a Christian fundamentalist terrorist group. Yet, terrorism is not a
preserve of non-state agents. States have often been accused of perpetrating ‘state terrorism’.
Scholars aver that “terror is often at its bloodiest when used by dictatorial governments against
their own citizens.”3Terrorism is not identifiable with a specific ideological tendency. A broad
array of political organizations displaying right-wing or left-wing tendencies, nationalistic or
religious groups, revolutionaries and ruling governments alike have deployed terrorism to further
their objectives.
Adam Roberts, “The Changing Faces of Terrorism”, available at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/recent/sept_11/changing_faces_06.shtml, retrieved April 19, 2015.
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Prasoon, P. The Merchants of Terror: Vol. 1 Terrorism: Past, Present and Future, (Cipra Books, 2006).
Adam Roberts, “The Changing Faces of Terrorism”, available at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/recent/sept_11/changing_faces_06.shtml, retrieved April 19, 2015.
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Framing a comprehensive counterterrorism strategy demands a clear understanding of the
motivations and causes of terrorism. Obviously, terrorists are not a homogeneous group, their
roots are diverse. This, therefore, calls for nuanced theories, concepts, causal factors, and models
to understand terrorism. Terrorism has been viewed through the lenses of political theories of
collective violence such as anarchism, philosophical theories of religious-based terrorism and
fascism or more recently "Islamic Fascism" that best describes the agenda of contemporary
radical Islam. But the phenomenon is more complex than simple theories, reflecting the multiple
inter-locking causes and contexts of terrorism.
September 11 may be traced to violent responses to rapid expansion of globalization as a system
of interconnectedness of humanity in a globalized 21st Century world. As its downside,
globalization has inspired the upsurge of politics of identity, various forms of cultural and faith
based fundamentalisms resulting in multiplication of conflicts. This sets the context to what
Huntington terms “Clash of Civilizations,”4 manifested in the rise of violent reactions by militant
religion (political Islam) to such global trends as intense secularization, modernization, or
Westernization.
Moreover, the terrorism enterprise is also thriving on the expansion of modern communication
technology, the liberalization of movement of people, goods and services across territorial
borders, the attendant emergence of the enchanted “global village” and the rise of ‘Global Civil
Society’5 as part of a mushrooming industry of non-state actors seeking to be major players on
all key issues affecting the global community. Although terrorism has not known any
boundaries, or made distinction between the rich and poor or the weak and the strong states, it
has thrived better in ‘ungoverned’ spaces or areas where the state has collapsed like Somalia or
has been engulfed in civil war like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Libya.
Even in relatively stable states like Kenya, Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria or Uganda, porosity of
physical boundaries, availability and proliferation of illicit arms and light weapons and proxy
wars (Ethiopia versus Eritrea) have given terrorist groups such as Al-Shabaab a regional and
global reach. In this context, at both the level of analysis and praxis, non-state actors have
become key players in terrorism action either as perpetrators, agents of counterterrorism or
victims of terrorism.
Despite depictions of the world as a ‘global village’, in large measures, strategies to combat
terrorism have reflected the state-centric character of international system. A series of 12
international conventions drawn up between 1963 and 1999 to guide action against terrorism
have been of limited practical use. The new face of terrorism as mass murder has significantly
changed the global environment in favour of more concerted counter-terrorism efforts at the
regional and global levels. But there is need for a grand strategy bringing together both state and
non-state actors and counter-terrorism approaches reconciling both state-centric and human
security perspectives of security.
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Huntington, S.P. The Clash of Civilisations and The Remaking of World Order, (Simon and Schuster, 1996)
Anheier, H. et. al.(eds) Global Civil Society (2001) New York, Oxford University Press, & Hoge Foreign Affairs
Vol. 87 (April 2008), No.2:2
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The Symposium’s Policy Relevance
This symposium draws from the perspectives from a three-day Conference on “Countering
Violent Extremism” in Washington in mid February 2015. Inspired by the massacre of 148
students at the Garissa University College in Northern Kenya in early April, the meeting brings
into sharp focus the efficacy of existing strategies and rapid response capacity by the state as
well as the role of diverse actors at various levels. Perspectives and policy options from this
‘flash symposium’ will feed into the upcoming conference by the Kenya Government on
“Countering Violent Extremism in Africa” in May. They will also inform bilateral meetings
during President Barrack Obama’s visit to Kenya in July 2015. Obama’s trip will build on the
August 2014 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit where Kenya was among the invited sub-Saharan
countries, which highlighted the need to improve security as a pre-requisite for economic
growth.
Objectives
The overarching objective of the project is to identify and critically examine the existing
strategies for combating terrorism; their efficacy and areas that require improvement; as well as
the governance environments that may influence the terrorist trends in Africa.
Specific objectives include:
1. To examine and assess the current counter terrorism dynamics, landscape, trends,
risks of terrorism in Africa.
2. To discuss ways of harnessing information technology to improve national, regional
international cooperation for counter-terrorism efforts.
3. Identify local, regional and international stakeholders for counterterrorism efforts
examine the effectiveness of existing collaboration in policy-making;
4. Discuss the various approaches for combating terrorism and their relevance to
transformation of security landscape in Africa.
and
and
and
the
5. Propose the core pillars of an integrated counter-terrorism strategy for Africa that is all
encompassing and includes both state and non-state actors.
Methodology
The project takes the form of a high-profile one-day symposium bringing together academic
experts on terrorism, senior government officials from various sectors, including the security,
counter-terrorism, legal, governance and foreign affairs dockets, representatives of foreign
missions, UN and other international agencies, civil society think-tanks and religious leaders.
Also invited to the meeting is the media to highlight the event for the purpose of the public. The
symposium will be underpinned by a project concept note, which outlines the problem, concepts,
objectives and issues to guide the meeting. No full or complete papers are expected at this stage
from invited presenters. However, they are expected to submit an abstract of no more than 250
words and a short bio (100 words). Full papers will, however, be expected thirty (30) days after
the symposium. Papers meeting the standards of peer reviewers will be published as part of a
special issue of a relevant journal. Together with a conference report produced by a rapporteur,
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these papers will form the basis of a concise and policy oriented briefing outlining the key issues
and pillars of an integrated counter-terrorism strategy to be shared with policy makers.
Key Thematic Issues
The symposium will focus on issues drawn from the following thematic areas:
Theme 1: Issues, concepts and mechanisms for counterterrorism in Africa
 Concepts, &Typologies of terrorisms
 Causes and trends of Fundamentalism and radicalization in Africa.
Theme 2: Existing Mechanisms for counterterrorism in Africa
 Policy, legal and institutional frameworks of counterterrorism.
 Terrorism and Africa’s evolving Peace and Security Architecture.
Theme 3: Actors and identities in Counterterrorism Action
 State agencies in Counterterrorism
 Civil Society in Counterterrorism
 Public participation in Counterterrorism
 Gender Dimension of counterterrorism
Theme 4: Pillars of Africa’s Integrated (Grand) Counterterrorism Strategy
Participants
Participants to the one-day symposium will be drawn from all sectors involved in the debate on
combating terrorism. These include:
o Academic experts (including students)
o senior government officials from the security, counter-terrorism, legal, governance and
foreign affairs dockets;
o Representatives of key foreign missions/Diplomats;
o Regional African Institutions (IGAD, EAC, COMESA, AU)
o UN agencies and other international agencies;
o Civil society think-tanks;
o Religious leaders/scholars (Christians and Muslims).
o Media personalities.
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