Global Jihadist Research Articles

The Jihadi Insurgency in Cabo Delgado: Ideology, Protagonists and Causes

Based on fieldwork interviews with the internally displaced Muslims from the regions affected by the insurgency, such as Palma, Mocímboa da Praia, Macomia, Quissanga and others, this article unpacks the context, ideology and protagonists that gave rise and afforded sustenance to the insurgency in Cabo Delgado. After providing an overview of the historical trajectory of Islam in Mozambique, the article presents the ideological and historical underpinnings of the contemporary global jihadi movements, expanding into Africa and Mozambique. The article argues that for jihadism to take roots in any place, there should exist militant protagonists and the grievances that serve as emotional entry points for recruitment. Thus, the article examines the processes by which jihadi protagonists emerged in various communities and the grievances they articulated in order to provoke the insurgency against the State.

Paratexts as gatekeepers in online global jihadist translation – The narrative of a blog-based Arabic translation of Dabiq

Translation has played a pivotal role in disseminating global jihadist propaganda online from the declaration of global jihad in the late 1990s to its recent manifestation in 2014 with the emergence of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This paper contends that paratextual frames have a significant role in mediating the ideologically charged messages of global jihadist to diverse communities and when contexts change. The article investigates the gatekeeping function of paratexts within a blog-based Arabic translation of ISIS’s English magazine Dabiq (AZIZ8178 2016a). Drawing upon narrativity (Somers & Gibson 1993; Bruner 1991; Baker 2006a), the translations published in a blog, AZIZ8178, are scrutinized to explore the paratextual interventions that frame translated narratives. The results pinpoint a deliberate selection of articles for translation that aligns with the shifting circumstances faced by ISIS on the ground. Moreover, AZIZ8178’s Arabic version of Dabiq is shown to construct a narrative centered on identity, emphasizing internal conflicts and divisions within contemporary Arab communities. It is posited that AZIZ8178’s paratexts familiarize ISIS radical doctrines within the socio-political fabric, potentially inciting fanaticism among the targeted Arabic-speaking audience. The visibility and autonomy of the translator become evident in the paratextual elements of signatures and footnotes, eliciting his jihadist stance.

Zawahiri’s General Guidelines and the Collapse of Al Qaeda’s Levant Network

This article addresses the factors leading to Al Qaeda’s continued fragmentation and the collapse of its efforts to create a jihadi state in the Levant. It does so in two parts. First, we look at Al Qaeda’s development of its far enemy strategy that deviated from past jihadi warfare strategies. Second, we examine Al Qaeda’s dysfunctional response to the Arab Spring. The protests untethering of Mideast states and its inflammation of sectarian tensions accelerated Al Qaeda’s transformation into a fractured network committed to localized (increasingly sectarian) insurgencies. After bin Laden’s 2011 killing, Zawahiri in September 2013 released his General Guidelines for the Work of Jihad to tie Al Qaeda’s branches localized insurgencies to a wider struggle against the Zionist-Crusader dominated world order.1 He failed to do so. Upon exploring jihadism’s splintering into three discordant factions represented by Al Qaeda’s far enemy focus, ISIS sectarianism and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) localized insurgencies, this article concludes that this development has led to an ineffective but dangerously resilient global jihadi movement. Key words: Jihadism, extremism, sectarianism, insurgency Received: 2022-12-17 Revised: 2023-01-15

A theory of jihadist beheadings

Why do some jihadist organizations engage in beheadings while others do not? Although beheadings have become a signature tactic of the contemporary global jihadist movement, I show that most jihadist groups perpetrate few or no beheadings and only a minority have adopted beheading as a consistent part of their repertoire of violence. Such variation exists even among ideologically similar ‘Salafi-jihadist’ groups, suggesting that ideology alone cannot explain why such violence occurs. Instead, I argue that the use of beheadings is shaped by a combination of local strategic context and transnational ties. Beheadings are strategically useful to jihadist groups engaged in insurgency as a means of deterring civilian collaboration with the enemy, demoralizing enemy combatants and attracting foreign recruits. But the use of beheading is also costly for such groups, notably because of its tendency to alienate potential civilian supporters. Whether or not particular jihadist groups use beheadings depends largely on whether they can afford to ignore these costs. Jihadist insurgents who control significant territory are less sensitive to civilian attitudes because of their ability to obtain support through coercion and are therefore more likely to perpetrate beheadings. The use of beheadings is also shaped by transnational ties: organizations that seek formal affiliation with transnational jihadist networks are more likely to calculate that the benefits of using extreme violence to attract transnational support outweigh its costs. I test this theory using an original dataset of over 1,500 beheading events perpetrated by jihadist organizations between 1998 and 2019.

Transitivity and critical discourse analysis on a testament: A woman’s involvement in jihad

While a plethora of scholars have explored a growing body of research on women’s involvement in Jihad, there is still a paucity of studies addressing it using the hybridity of transitivity analysis and critical discourse analysis. The present study examined a testament left by an Indonesian woman involved in what she fallaciously called ‘Jihad’. To collect the data, the document analysis was adopted, meanwhile, Halliday and Matthiessen’s transitivity analysis (2004) and Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (2003) were employed to analyze the data. The findings demonstrated that the experience of the woman’s involvement in jihad was described by the dominant use of material process verbs (59.4%), followed by relational process (19%), mental process (13.5%), and verbal process (8.1%). The transitivity analysis showcases that the testament is not an average text with a religious message or instructions to deal with the left property; instead, it contains a message of the Salafi Jihadist ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which might put people’s lives in peril. The five core teachings of ISIS encapsulate the message of ideological teachings, including jihad (struggle in the context of religious war), takfiri (ex-communication), al-wala’ and al-barra’ (loyalty and disavowal for the sake of God), tauhid (unitary oneness of God), and tahkimiyah (the rule of God – both religiously and politically). The study findings implicate that we must raise awareness of all kinds of testaments left by the jihadi woman because these testaments may contain a global jihadist doctrine. With this in mind, we will not be easily persuaded to join a Salafi jihadist organization.

Jihadist Ideological Conflict and Local Governance in Mali

In West Africa’s Sahel region, franchises of global jihadist groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda proliferate. So far, the dynamics of jihadist groups in the Sahel have predominantly been studied through analyses of the material and strategic dimensions of the struggle. Curiously, little attention has paid to how religiously-informed worldviews inform their expansion. Drawing on the concept of “epistemic worldviews”, this article explores how local leaders of al-Qaeda and Islamic State franchises frame their fight. It argues that transnational jihadist ideology matters; both for how different jihadist groups compete to mobilize new followers as well as for how they implement new models of jihadist governance. Contributing to ongoing debates about the transnationalization of jihad, the article shows that in the intra-jihadist contestation between the groups in Mali, global jihadist concepts are negotiated, contested, and constituted by the groups as they go along. Thereby global jihadist ideology comes to provide both a cause and an effect of contestations and conflicts between the expanding jihadist groups in the Sahel.

US Special Forces transformation: post-Fordism and the limits of networked warfare

Abstract The last two decades have witnessed a rapid rise in the use, size and capability of many western Special Operations Forces (SOF). A response to the global jihadist threat, the growing presence, prominence and technology-enabled lethality of SOF in conflict zones has resulted in increased scholarly attention. Some have argued that their rise is indicative of important and ongoing changes in the character of war itself. One of the most influential of these works is Steven Niva's study of the transformation of US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Task Forces in Iraq. Niva argues that JSOC (more accurately its Task Force 714 Command Headquarters, henceforth TF714) was forced to adopt a networked organizational structure to counter Al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI). For Niva, this transformation provided evidence of a shift towards ‘counter-net’ and ‘chaoplexic’ forms of warfare conceptualized by Bousquet in this journal. This article uses new primary and secondary sources to critique these claims. It argues that although a network approach was an important part of TF714's transformation, it was only one part. Instead, JSOC's transformation is more accurately understood through a post-Fordist industrial framework of the centralization of management control and the simultaneous decentralization of decision-making; the integration of core and periphery forces; outsourcing; and a network approach to knowledge. From this analysis, it argues that post-Fordist, rather than network or chaoplexic theory, best describes even the most networked military organizations in the twenty-first century, and that more broadly, fully networked warfare is unlikely given the frictions associated with the coming ‘binary’ battlefield.

Afghani crisis and the threat of Islamist extremism in Tajikistan

This article examines terrorist organizations that pose a threat to Tajikistan and analyzes their activities, media products and recruitment campaigns within the context of the Afghan crisis. Particular attention is paid to the rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the transformations that occurred during their year in power. It considers not only transformations in Afghanistan itself, but in the global jihadist movement as a whole. Expert interviews gathered during field research are also analyzed. The data collected during the field study are analyzed in addition to databases and academic papers already available in the public domain. Based on the data mentioned above, this article assesses the level of threat posed by various terrorist organizations and the possible prospects for the situation. It also examines the existing laws in the sphere of religious policy in the Republic of Tajikistan and their application. It examines how extremists adjust their recruitment campaigns and how it is reflected in their discourse. The article also reveals the peculiarities of relations between various extremist organizations that are active in Tajikistan or are composed of Tajik citizens and are involved in fighting in other countries. In addition, it investigates which organizations Tajik citizens are more likely to join and what determines their choice. The results of the article contain conclusions for each organization considered in accordance with the results of the study that has been conducted. These findings contribute to existing studies on extremism in general and on extremist activity in Tajikistan in particular against the background of the Afghan crisis. Therefore, it brings new arguments and perspectives to the existing academic debate on this topic.

Social Ties and Jihadist Participation: A Mixed-Methods Approach to the Differential Recruitment of Radicalized Youth in Spain

ABSTRACT The relationship between social ties and jihadist participation has garnered substantial attention from terrorism scholars. However, further research is needed to understand what specific properties of interpersonal bonds influence terrorist involvement and how they operate. Drawing on social network theory, the current study tests the effects of the type, number, and strength of interpersonal ties with jihadist activists in explaining the occurrence and absence of individual engagement in jihadist activities. For that purpose, this paper analyzes the social links of 23 youths involved in terrorism and 21 youths who, despite their attitudinal affinity with jihadism, did not take part in such actions. Combining quantitative and qualitative data and methods of analysis, the study found empirical evidence that participation in jihadism is affected by the number of connections between young people and the global jihadist movement. It also found partial support for the relationship between tie strength and jihadist involvement. However, it rejected the assumption that the type of social tie influences participation.

Online Jihadi Storytelling: The Case of Najm al-Din Azad

Despite great interest in the importance of “narrative” to the global jihadi movement, research on actual examples of jihadi storytelling has been very limited to date. In this paper, I discuss the phenomenon of jihadi storytelling, specifically in digital contexts, focusing on the case study of one storyteller in particular: “Najm al-Din Azad”, a Saudi jihadist who tweeted and blogged a collection of “Tales of the Heroism of the Mujahidin” while participating in the Syrian civil war.

A Renewed Al-Qaeda: Strategizing for a Comeback

Al-Qaeda, the premier global jihadist terrorist entity having its footprints in more than 60 countries and responsible for perpetrating the world's hitherto biggest terrorist attacks of 9/11, appears to have adopted a strategy of working in tandem with local Islamist-jihadist groups. This may be regarded as a strategic shift from directing and masterminding international terrorist attacks to collusion with its associated networks, such as Al-Shabab in Somalia and the Taliban in Afghanistan, and promoting local jihadists in Yemen, Sinai, Syria, and West Africa. Al-Qaeda‟s local chapters such as Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) are also working alongside local Al-Qaeda linked Islamist groups. It appears as if Al-Qaeda no longer subscribes to the approach it adhered to during the times of its former Emir Osama Bin Laden and has substantially re-crafted its strategy under Ayman al-Zawahiri.

India’s Foreign Fighter Puzzle

Since its rise in 2014, Islamic State (IS) has attracted more than 30,000 volunteers to take part in the conflicts raging in Syria and Iraq. Despite a large presence of more than 160 million Muslims in India, not more than a hundred people have travelled abroad to join IS. This article attempts to explain the low participation of Indian Muslims in foreign conflicts. Drawing on existing literature and interviews with academics, government officials and members of the Muslim community across India, this article demonstrates that insurgency movements such as the Afghan Jihad in the 1980s, Indian government actions, and other factors such as logistical issues, family structure, ideological opposition and racism in IS ranks have collectively played a role in preventing Indians from taking part in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts. This article is valuable given the low level of literature pertaining to Indian Muslims and their absence from the global jihadist community.

Prospects for global jihadism in Southeast Asia

The article examines the relationship between local and global radical Islamist movements in the countries of Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. The author set out to determine the reasons for the attractiveness of the rhetoric of modern global jihadist movements for the local population in remote regions of the world. The study showed that the ideology of jihadism is based on a return to identity, the main pole of which is religion. After examining the origins of radical Islamist movements in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, the author concluded that the Afghan War was the impetus for their development. The purpose of this study is to find common and distinctive characteristics of the situation with Islamist radicalism in each of the countries of the region. Analyzing the situation in Indonesia, the author concludes that the priority for local groups is local goals, and the issue of armed jihad has split the Indonesian Islamist movement into a moderate and radical wing associated with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. The article traces the evolution of secular power in Malaysia to the institutionalization of political Islam, starting in the 1970s. The author argues that the grows of the Islamization in Malaysia led to the fact that the modern religious and ethnic discourse of the country as a whole was prepared for the perception of the ideology of radicals when ISIS appeared in the region. The author found that the jihadist movements in the Philippines are motivated by the separatist conflict, they pursue local goals and use the rhetoric of global jihad to stimulate the struggle and intimidate opponents.

Extremism as a threat to the national security of Somalia

Al Shabaab is the largest militant organization fighting to oust the Somali government and the foreign military presence supporting it.1Al-shabab seeks to control the country in order to establish a society based on its rigid interpretation of Shariah law. Although based in Somalia, Al Shabaab also conducts attacks in neighboring countries, notably Kenya. Al Shabaab emerged as an independent organization around December 2006 after breaking away from the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), for which it had served as the military wing. Since the late 2000s, Al Shabaab has had close ties to Al Qaeda and other external extremism groups and has sought to frame the Somali struggle as part of a global jihadist movement. The group has engaged in bombings, suicide attacks, and armed assaults, especially against Somali government targets, private civilians, Christians, diplomats, foreign troops, and nongovernmental organization or aid workers .

Last Words of Abubakar Shekau: A Testament in the Politics of Jihadi Extraversion

The last audio put out by Nigerian jihadi leader Abubakar Shekau before his death is a rare source, distinct from his usual public propaganda. Addressed to internal jihadi audiences, it sheds light on a number of key aspects, from the events that led to his death to the political economy of plunder, a key issue in Shekau’s jihad. Its most interesting takeaway, however, is about the relation between a local jihadi organisation and the global jihadi structures of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. It illustrates Shekau’s complex and ultimately unsuccessful strategies of extraversion—using the appeal and resources of global jihad while trying to contain its demands.

Bytes not waves: information communication technologies, global jihadism and counterterrorism

Abstract Rapoport's conceptualization of the last, religious wave of four global waves remains highly influential. But it, and other typologies, have placed too little emphasis on the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the evolution of global jihadist activities. This article makes two new contributions by developing both a new ICT-based typology for understanding jihadist evolutions, and by focusing on successful attacks. Our central argument is that ICTs’ impact on global jihadism has facilitated dramatic transformations of its strategy, organization and tactics since the 1990s, and that these can be understood as four overlapping iterations. ‘Jihadism 1.0’ describes the hierarchical, top-down directed and overseas financed and trained terrorist organizations that conducted iconic attacks at the turn of the millennium. Jihadism has since evolved into ‘Jihadism 2.0’ and then ‘Jihadism 3.0’. Jihadism 2.0 recognizes that a number of smaller, coordinated attacks can have a global impact. Jihadism 3.0 is inspired terrorism that has no links to the central terror organization, utilizing individuals and crude tactics. Finally, jihadism is evolving toward ‘Jihadism 4.0’, or cyberterrorism. We argue this typology provides a useful basis for scholars and practitioners to conceptualize the ICT dynamics influencing global jihadism, and these may be applicable to other global terrorists. The conclusion analyses how counter-terrorism services can respond to these evolutions and charts areas for future research.

A Struggle for Power: Al Nusra and Al Qaida in Syria

Relying on interviews with members of the organization, the article argues (contrary to the prevailing view) that Al Nusra never split from Al Qaida and even more so from the global jihadist movement. Instead the leadership of Al Nusra was locked in a power struggle with Al Qaida over the control of jihad in Syria and possibly even over the future of Al Qaida itself. Efforts to unify the Syrian opposition, even those limited to jihadist groups, failed also because of the leadership of Al Nusra kept trying to co-opt other opposition groups, rather than forming alliances with them.

How radicalizing agents mobilize minors to jihadism: a qualitative study in Spain

ABSTRACT In the context of the global jihadist mobilization triggered by the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2012 and the subsequent emergence of Islamic State, child and adolescent recruitment has reached unprecedented levels in Spain. Between 2013 and 2019, 44 jihadists were arrested in this country due to their involvement in the indoctrination and recruitment of individuals below 18 years of age. How did they carry out the mobilization of minors in support of global jihadism? Adopting a qualitative approach guided by grounded theory methods to address the question, this article relies on evidence collected mostly from primary sources (police reports, criminal proceedings, court hearings, as well as semi-structured interviews with police experts and front-line practitioners). The results indicate that their radicalization strategies varied as a function of the existence of previous personal ties between the recruiter and the minor; the age of the minor; and the environment in which the process unfolded. The interaction of these three factors generates the outline of three different formulas used in Spain for jihadist indoctrination of underage youth: one unfolds within the family milieu, another within the immediate social environment and a third via cyberspace.

THE RISE AND FALL OF ISLAMIC STATE: CURRENT CHALLENGES AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

The Islamic State (IS) is one of the most prominent transnational terrorist jihadist organizations. In 2013 and 2014, IS was able to control large swaths of Syria and Iraq, roughly the size of Britain, and announced the establishment of what it called the “Caliphate State”. The organization was defeated militarily through a long war on the Iraqi and Syrian fronts. Many local, regional and international parties participated in this war. In October 2019, IS's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was killed in a US raid at his safe house in the Syrian province of Idlib. This article will discuss the reasons of the rapid expansion of the IS, analyze the sources of its strength and assess the repercussions of its military defeat and death of its leader on its ability to survive, as well as foreseeing its future.The main conclusion of the study is that the military defeat of IS and the death of its leader does not in any way mean the end of IS and its takfiri ideology at least in the medium term. The historical record of jihadist terrorist organizations confirms that many organizations were able to adapt and maintain their continuity after the death of their leaders, as was the case with al-Qaeda after the death of Osama bin Laden in 2011. Also, IS is not a centralized, hierarchical organization, but a global terrorist jihadist network, with many affiliates, sleeper cells and supporters deployed in many countries of the world. This enhances the chances of IS's continuity, even if its structure has disintegrated in both? Syria and Iraq. Moreover, the current situation in the Arab world looks worse today than it was before the Arab Spring, which provides a suitable environment for the continuation of the IS and other jihadist terrorist organizations in the region. The IS may have weakened but it will not die easily.

ÁFRICA E AS AMEAÇAS À SUA SEGURANÇA

This essay begins by addressing the security context in Africa and the structural violence that is felt throughout the Continent. Later, it addresses the main threats that are manifest in such a differentiated space, emphasizing that in the current context it seems to be the fragility of the States the greatest threat, incapable of guaranteeing their inhabitants the ultimate ends - security, justice and well-being. Despite the failure of the state, people continue to live in these spaces, having various forms of social organization, which subsist and compete with other state structures, in the collection of taxes, in the use of force and also having different forms of social responsibility over the populations they control. The second threat emphasized in the essay, is one of those social structures that seek to impose itself in several geographic spaces: global subversion, which today is materialized in the two main factions of the global jihadist movement (al-Qaeda and Daesh), which seek the conquest of spaces and power also in Africa, using not only political mechanisms, but also, and when necessary, violent actions. Finally, a spectral analysis of other security threats in Africa, whether natural, such as climate change and pandemics, or man-made, such as organized crime and piracy, is presented.