Caitriona Dowd

Grievances, governance and Islamist violence in sub-Saharan Africa

What explains the emergence of Islamist violence as a substantial security threat in such diverse contexts as Kenya, Mali and Nigeria? This article addresses this question through an exploration of the strategies of governance employed by states, and how these shape the emergence and mode of collective violence. Conflict research often emphasises the specificity of Islamist violence; but these conflicts can be understood as a form of political exclusion and grievance-based violence, comparable to other forms of political violence. Further, violent Islamist groups emerge from local conditions: the areas in which groups are established share similar local experiences of governance and political marginalisation; a history of violent conflict on which Islamist militants capitalise; and key triggering events expanding or reinforcing state exclusion. These findings challenge a narrative emphasising the global , interconnected nature of Islamist violence. This article pairs data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset (ACLED) with Afrobarometer survey data and case study evidence to identify drivers of Islamist violence across three African countries.

Actor proliferation and the fragmentation of violent groups in conflict

This paper proposes a novel application of a measure of actor fragmentation drawn from electoral studies to the growing field of conflict event data. The application facilitates comparison of conflict environments over time and across cases, while enabling researchers to take account of the relative activity levels of diverse actors. Analysis of the measure suggests that a fragmentation index diverges from a simple count of active conflict agents in important instances, including in providing a more accurate measure of dominant and weaker conflict agents, capturing dynamics of escalation and continuation of conflict over time and across country cases, and reflecting the coalescence of conflict agents around dominant conflict cleavages. The findings suggest that future research may benefit from combining measures of the discrete count of groups and their relative activity levels in order to accurately capture evolving conflict dynamics.

The Effect of Farmer-Pastoralist Violence on State-level Internal Revenue Generation in Nigeria A Modified Synthetic Control Analysis Approach

Nigeria’s ethnically and religiously diverse Middle Belt has experienced recurrent eruptions of violence over the past several decades. Disputes between pastoralists and farmers arise from disagreements over access to farmland, grazing areas, stock routes, and water points for both animals and households. Although relatively low in intensity, this form of violence is widespread, persistent, and arguably increasing in its incidence. This study seeks to answer the question: How has farmer-pastoralist conflict affected state internally-generated revenues (IGR)? The literature on the effect of violence on sub-national fiscal capacity is slim to none. We use a synthetic control approach to model how IGR for four conflict-affected states – Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, and Plateau – would have developed in the absence of violence. To account for the endogeneity criticism commonly leveled at such synthetic control analyses, we then use a fixed-effects IVmodel to estimate IGR losses predicted by the synthetic control analysis as a function of farmer-pastoralist fatalities. Our conservative estimates for percentage reduction to annual state IGR growth for the four states are 0%, 1.2%, 2.6%, and 12.1% respectively, implying that IGR is likely much more sensitive to conflict than GDP. In total, the four study states of Benue, Kaduna, Nasarawa, and Plateau are estimated to have lost between US

Political Environments, Elite Co-Option, and Conflict

719,000 and US

Marginalisation, insurgency and civilian insecurity: Boko Haram and the Lord’s Resistance Army

2.3 million in 2010 US dollars, or 22–47% of their potential IGR collection during the period of intense.

Fragmentation, conflict, and competition: Islamist anti-civilian violence in sub-Saharan Africa

This article establishes a framework for understanding the ways in which subnational governance arrangements produce divergent types and dynamics of political violence. The variation in agents of governance, how a regime shapes its territorial presence and subnational relationships, structures the forms of violent conflict that emerge within and across states. We first acknowledge four distinct types of political environments based on regime depth and subnational elite authority and fragmentation. We then apply these political environment categorizations and logics to the political violence patterns, agents, and risks across key states in Africa. We find that violence across countries varies based on distinct power dynamics that emerge from relations between the central authority and subnational elites. We conclude that the organization of power determines the type and risk of conflict that affects states. Although the interaction among local governance, co-optive arrangements, and violence has been largely neglected in the literature, this article proposes an alternative and generalizable interpretation of governance across developing states, based on subnational patterns of authority. This article contributes to a growing focus on political settlements—rather than national institutions—in explaining governance stability and violence. Key Words: Africa, conflict, domestic politics, political geography.

The myth of global Islamic terrorism and local conflict in Mali and the Sahel

Abstract Recent years have seen a dramatic escalation in the levels and intensity of violence associated with the northern Nigerian Islamist group, commonly referred to as ‘Boko Haram’. The deliberate and brutal targeting of civilians has been an increasingly pronounced feature of this conflict, contributing to acute civilian vulnerability. Often ascribed to the specific ideological and ethno-religious configuration of Boko Haram, we argue that this violence is similar to that of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), tactically and in the evolution of both groups over time. In addition, violence inflicted on civilians by both groups has necessitated complex strategies of civilian navigation of insecurity risks, including the establishment of informal local security providers. Drawing on both quantitative conflict event data, and qualitative sources, we present a comparative analysis of Boko Haram and the LRA to demonstrate the importance of common strategies of group mobilisation, evolution in rhetoric and tactics, and armed state and non-state responses to insurgency, in driving violence against civilians in particular. The findings reflect the importance of shared local and historical conditions in producing violence; and placing civilian protection, and the multifaceted ways in which it is undermined, including by state responses, at the centre of peacebuilding theory and practice.

Cultural and religious demography and violent Islamist groups in Africa

ABSTRACT In spite of the shared high profile of recent Islamist attacks on civilians in sub-Saharan Africa, patterns of anti-civilian violence differ across and within violent Islamist groups, and the countries in which they are active. This research seeks to explain this variation by situating Islamist violence within the sub-national spaces in which such groups operate, and the wider conflict environment in which they choose to use, or limit the use of, anti-civilian violence. Drawing on data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Dataset, the research finds that violent Islamist groups are more likely to target civilians where they are the most active conflict agent, even when other conflict agents are active in the same spaces; but less likely to do so when they are relatively weak and in competition with other non-state armed groups. Anti-civilian violence is thus deployed strategically by violent Islamist groups, while its function as a signalling or retributive policing tool depends on the relative strength of groups in relation to actors in the wider conflict arena.