Violent Extremism in Africa – Anouar Boukhars

Presentation from Session 3 of our Emerging Security Sector Leaders Seminar.

Violent extremism continues to be one of the most significant challenges to peace and security in Africa. What makes this state of affairs particularly frustrating is that despite the extraordinary sacrifice and enormous number of lives and resources that Africans and their international partners have devoted to countering and preventing it, many violent extremist groups (VEOs) have still been able to flourish and expand their reach. Even in theaters where they were described as vanquished or in their final throes, VEOs remain a threat.

To generate new results in the struggle against violent extremism, policy makers, security officials and practitioners must rethink existing assumptions and methods. This necessity of reexamining and replacing failed methods and paradigms is immediately evident in the emerging consensus among multiple African stakeholders that preventing and countering violent extremism requires population-centric strategies that include communities and build partnerships among a wide range of actors. To defeat extremists, security forces must therefore adapt their methods to carefully cooperate with local authorities, including service providers, traditional leaders, community defense groups, and civil society organizations. This is a testament to the growing recognition of the peril of treating community-oriented approaches to preventing, mitigating, and countering violent extremism as a distraction—instead of a necessary, strategic complement—to traditional security approaches.

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