The jihadists have mastered the art of filling a vacuum. Whenever friction or turmoil weakens the fabric of a state, they step in. And when chased away, they wait on the borders, regrouping until the time is right to enter once more. The remoteness of border areas, where tribal authority has always clashed with central government, has proved attractive to jihadist groups on more than one continent. The intersection of jihadist operations and smuggling activities may give rise to rivalry, but there are also shared interests. Once they put down roots, jihadist groups may emerge as a kind of parallel state, or surrogate authority, developing clout over the local population. What helps them is that more often than not the inhabitants of the peripheries of a state tend to harbour long-term grievances borne out of the neglect of their areas by central government. They are also helped by the suspicion with which governments may sometimes view the inhabitants of remote areas, who may be different ethnically from the majority of the population, or may have ethnic links with other tribes and groups across the borders. All this explains why most of the jihadist activities that have caught the world's attention over the past few years have featured the colonisation of border areas, cross-border attacks, smuggling routes and failed central governments. Patterns of jihadist activity follow almost predictable geographical lines, and the response to these activities should examine these lines. When and where is a country with a potentially sympathetic population most vulnerable? Which borders are the most porous and least controlled by central governments? Where are the traditional smuggling routes? What tribes or local groups depend for their livelihoods on smuggling? Questions such as these must be asked by analysts trying to forecast or forestall jihadist activities. In North Africa and the Levant, jihadists have managed to move combatants around, from battlefields to training camps in the deserts of failed states or countries that are in turmoil. The Iraqi-Syrian border has been the area that has attracted the most headlines, but the Sahel-Sahara region has been just as active and links between the two battlefields are not hard to discern. When an army post in Farafra in Egypt's Western Desert was attacked in July 2014, claiming the lives of 22 soldiers, investigators found that the assailants had received logistical support from across the border. In the attack on the In Amenas gas facility in Algeria two years ago, Al-Qaeda-affiliated assailants reportedly had access to hideouts across nearby borders, both in southern Libya and northern Mali. In the Levant, the Islamic State (IS) group is believed to have received support from inside Turkish territory. Its spectacular victories have been attributed to the easy movement of men and material across the Iraqi-Syrian borders. Syrian-based jihadists have recently tried to exploit a similar situation along the Lebanese-Syrian border. IS has also had its eyes on the borders with Turkey, where the Turkish army has deployed in force to prevent IS from expanding northwards, and along the Jordanian border, where the flat and exposed nature of the topography has made any incursion too risky for the jihadists. One of the things that make border areas particularly attractive to jihadists is that political borders often follow natural barriers, such as mountain ranges. The type of guerrilla warfare most suitable for jihadist militias can make easy use of such terrain.
FOREIGN INTERVENTION: Because of the jihadist focus on border areas in impoverished or turbulent states, their presence presents a threat that local armies are often unable to deflect without foreign help. It was this that brought the French into the jihadist confrontation in the Sahel-Sahara region, and what brought the Americans to lead an international coalition in the Levant. The French intervention in northern Mali, launched in January 2013, succeeded in repulsing the jihadists, who retreated across the country's borders to fight another day. The French returned in July 2014, and Operation Barkhane, launched in cooperation with five African countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger), now involves 3,000 French soldiers and has a mandate to wage cross-border operations. In general, jihadist groups like the easy access borders can provide for lines of supply and communication. They like mountainous terrain, if available, that deters access for regular armies. They also like having a potentially friendly local population that may harbour grievances against the central government and whose conservative mindset may intersect with the stringent interpretations of Sharia law that the jihadists wish to impose. The presence of well-established smuggling routes and skills can also be a bonus for the militants. The border areas jihadists like to settle in are often known for their rugged terrain or shifting sand dunes, which make it harder for central governments to bring law enforcement into effect. An examination of the border areas connecting Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad; Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco; and Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, makes this point. Other border areas are less amenable to jihadist combatants. The boundaries between Jordan and Iraq offer militants no chance to hide from the security services of central government, as Maarouf Al-Bakhit, Jordan's former prime minister, has pointed out. But the border areas in northern Mali have proved ideal for trafficking men and weapons to jihadist movements. In the past these same areas served as smuggling conduits for organised crime groups. The sheer length of such borders also presents a problem for distant central governments. Libya, whose stockpiles of Gaddafi-era weapons have become a kind of bonanza for jihadist groups, has a total of 3,383 km of poorly policed borders. The 1,500-km border between Nigeria and Niger has provided ample room for the activities of the terrorist group Boko Haram. The Nigerian-Cameroon border runs for 1,600 km, and the Iraqi-Syrian border is 1,250-km long. With many countries in the Sahel-Sahara and Middle East having domestic problems, the ability of central governments to keep an eye on their borders has diminished. Libya, for example, now has no national army worth mentioning, leaving the country's border areas under the control of tribal and militia groups. In Nigeria, the authorities frequently have to deal with confrontations with the Igbo tribes and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta related to questions of justice and the distribution of oil resources.
SMUGGLING AND HOSTAGES: Just as IS tried to tap into the dissatisfaction of Iraq's Sunnis in its bid to seize territory in the country, Boko Haram in Nigeria has also been playing on the resentment felt by the impoverished Hausa-Fulanai tribes. A state's ability to maintain fairness among its various communities is a major defence against the jihadists. For example, Iraq could have been spared some of the worse predations by IS had the post-Saddam government been more even-handed in its treatment of the Sunnis and Shiites. Much of IS's successes in the country has been attributed to the militants making common cause with disgruntled Sunni tribes. Governments can also lose some of their effectiveness in the aftermath of political upheavals. In Tunisia, an International Crisis Group study has suggested that the country's police started having trouble controlling smuggling after the 2011 Revolution. In 2010, the Tunisian police recorded 3,650 cases of smuggling, but that figure was down to 441 in 2012, although smuggling is likely to have gone up rather than down in the period. The evidence suggests that there is a correlation between areas favoured by jihadists and those known to be hospitable to smugglers. Social and geographical settings conducive to the smuggling of arms, drugs, immigrants and commodities — as in Sinai, Syria, Turkey, Mali, and Nigeria — have often offered a comfortable milieu for militants, who need a steady supply of cash, weapons and recruits in order to sustain their wars. Before the militants gained enough confidence and expertise to seize and operate oil fields in various countries, smuggling was one of their main sources of income. One of the best smuggling routes in North Africa, for example, is the one straddling northern Mali, northern Mauritania, southern Algeria and southern Morocco. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has reportedly forged strong ties with members of the Tuareg tribes, as well as the Polisario Movement, in North Africa. In the Kufra region of southeast Libya, conflicts among the African Tebo tribe and the Arab Zuwayya have offered ample opportunities for militants to find willing allies. The Kufra region is home to successful smuggling operations that span Egypt, Sudan, Libya and Chad, according to a study by the US Institute of Peace published in February 2014. The study offers many specifics about the routes smuggling takes to transit arms, drugs and immigrants among the four countries. The Oneness and Jihad group in West Africa, which considers itself an Islamist movement, is also known to be a front for drug-smuggling operations involving Mali, Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco. Another source of income for jihadists, according to a report by the US Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is the taking of hostages. In northern Mali, militants have made money by taking and trading hostages. Jihadists often demand either cash or the release of imprisoned colleagues in return for the freedom of such hostages. Experts say that ransoms of up to 183 million Euros have been paid to free 80 Western tourists in the Sahel-Sahara region in recent years, making hostage-taking one of the main sources of funding for militant groups in Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria and Niger.
HUMAN RESOURCES: According to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a US think tank, camps run by Ansar al-Sharia groups in southern Libya attract hundreds of recruits from surrounding regions who later go on to fight in northern Mali, Syria and Iraq. Around Tindouf in southwest Algeria, not far from the borders of Mauritania and Algeria, recruiting and training centres are operated by jihadists in collaboration with the Polisario Front. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Boko Haram, Ansar Al-Din, and Oneness and Jihad in West Africa all reportedly send their prospective members for training in these facilities. It has been reported that the area running from the south of the Nafusa Mountains in western Libya to Ghadames on the Tunisian border is dominated by smugglers and AQIM operatives working in cooperation with local Tuaregs and a group known as Those Who Sign With Their Blood. The jihadists have grown adept at making common cause with local populations, especially those with long-standing grievances against the central government. One can see this phenomenon in the Sahel-Sahara region, where Ansar Al-Din, Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and AQIM have befriended members of the Tuareg tribes and made common cause with the Azwad Liberation Movement. In the Levant, IS owes much of its success to the sympathy of local Sunni tribes in Iraq, who wanted to punish the Shiite government of former prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki for its perceived injustices. In the triangle where the borders of Egypt, Libya, Sudan and Chad converge, conflicts among the Tebo, Zuwayya, and Tuareg tribes have offered jihadists a chance to play one group off against another. The former Gaddafi regime used to favour the Tebo at the expense of the Zuwayya, in exchange for the former's help in its expansionist aims in Chad. When he had to pull Libyan forces out of the Aouzou Strip in the 1990s, Gaddafi started persecuting the Tebo, who later helped to topple his regime. Although a report by the International Small Arms Survey has suggested that tribal groups in Libya remain more powerful than the jihadists, considerable jihadist presence by groups loyal to Ansar Al-Sharia has been reported in Umm Al-Araneb, Tamsa and Obari in the country's border areas. The jihadists actively train recruits and smuggle weapons across the borders, and are known to seek alliances with tribes that are willing to accommodate their goals. Negligence by central governments is often cited as the reason for the mixed loyalties in peripheral communities. Another reason is that many tribes have members living across a country's borders, making it easier for them to engage in smuggling and causing central governments to doubt their loyalty. In northern Mali, northern Nigeria, southern Libya, southern Tunisia, western Sudan, western Egypt and Sinai, local communities have complained that central governments have not shared wealth and power equitably. In 2010, Tunisian youths in the Ben Gerdane area on the Tunisian-Libyan border staged an uprising after the border was closed at Ras Jedir. The closure threatened to deny them their main source of income: smuggling across the border. Political borders often cut across clan and tribal territories, something that can pit blood ties against national allegiances. Examples can be found on the Egyptian-Libyan borders, in Sinai, on Sudan's western borders and on the northern borders of Chad and Mali. In normal times, this is mostly a cause for occasional political tensions. But in recent years the phenomenon has been complicated by the spread of Salafist or ultra-conservative Islamist doctrines among local populations. In July 2014, local people in Maan in Jordan demonstrated in support of IS. Evidence of Salafist sympathies in Marsa Matruh in Egypt can be seen by the overwhelming vote for the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Mohamed Morsi, in the 2012 presidential elections and by the low turnout in the elections won by his successor, Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, two years later.
CONFLICTS AND SAFE HAVENS: One way to irk your enemies is to create trouble on their borders. This is a fact of regional rivalries that the jihadist movements have exploited to the full. The tepid relations between Egypt and Sudan following the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt may have played into the hands of cross-border militants. The Darfur conflict in Sudan is also believed to have generated some interest in jihadist circles. The Algerian-Moroccan conflict has offered many opportunities to militant groups, and tensions between Damascus and Baghdad may have helped jihadists become established in Iraq. Border conflicts between Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon also paved the way for the rise of jihadist activities on their borders. The Small Arms Survey notes that Qatari arms shipments found their way to western Libya with the help of the Tunisian government. And even before the Arab Spring, examples abound of governments aiding insurgents in the peripheries of rival states across the Middle East and the Sahel-Sahara regions. The Gaddafi regime is known to have stirred up trouble on the borders of Chad, Egypt and Tunisia, for example, and the government of Mali before the 2012 coup is said to have collaborated with AQIM. Jihadists often use border areas as temporary safe havens. But rather than settling permanently, they hop across borders to regroup until they have a chance to strike once more. For this strategy to work, they need to stay on the good side of local communities, on whom they rely for supplies, communication and often recruits. Following the French intervention in northern Mali, for example, and the increased alertness of Cairo and Algiers to jihadist activities across their borders, many jihadists are said to have moved into Libya, presumably to rest and regroup for future battles. Mokhtar Bel Mokhtar, leader of a militant group called Those Who Sign With Their Blood, has moved from northern Mali to southern Libya. Seifallah Bin Hossein, aka Abu Ayyad, leader of the Tunisian branch of Ansar Al-Sharia, has also moved to Libya, where he is said to be in close contact with Libyan militants. Experts believe that jihadist groups operating near the southern Libyan borders also regard their presence there as temporary rather than permanent.
JIHADIST COLONIES: Another model for the jihadist presence is colonisation. In this case, the jihadists abandon their nomadic lifestyles and settle in what they declare to be an Islamic emirate or state. The best-known case of this is that of IS in northern Iraq, but this is far from being an anomaly. In northern Mali, before the French pushed the jihadists of Boko Haram across the border, they were the masters of the border area straddling Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon, with Kanama in Yoba State serving as their main centre of command. From there, Boko Haram started a campaign of conquest in Niger and Cameroon in the course of which it seized the city of Malam Fatori in November 2014. Last year, IS managed to assert its control over areas running from Al-Raqqa in Syria all the way to Al-Ramadi in Iraq. In doing so, they seized banks and oil fields, imposed taxes and generally became self-financing. Al-Nusra Front, the official branch of Al-Qaeda in Syria, also controls a considerable chunk of land near the border with Jordan. For all their doctrinal rigidity, the jihadists often seem quite flexible in their tactical objectives. If forced to abandon a location, they often do so with a minimum of casualties and then regroup in a nearby area until it is time for the next battle. This pattern sees them crossing borders, linking up with associates in neighbouring countries, smuggling in more recruits, and seeking sympathetic populations to hide among, along with convenient hideouts and training facilities. When the international intervention in northern Mali forced the jihadist groups to withdraw, the combatants fled into Mauritania, Libya and Niger. Libya turned out to be a convenient location for the jihadists. The absence of a central government provided the right environment, not to mention the role of some of the local tribes that offered support to the jihadists. Libyan extremists are also a common denominator in the jihadist movements, and Libyans serve in the ranks of IS, Al-Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria. In Syria alone, nearly 20 experienced militants from Libya are said to be serving in Al-Umma Al-Islamiyya, a group that trains combatants to fight against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. When Libya's former general Khalifah Haftar started his challenge to the Islamists in Libya, dozens of Libyan combatants returned from Syria to counter the attack. Some believe that this development is what led to the stiffer resistance Haftar's forces were confronted by in the Benghazi battles in July and August 2014. Another example of tactical fluidity is that of Oneness and Jihad in West Africa. The group, which operates mostly in northern Mali, wasted no time abandoning its positions when the French attacked in January 2013. Some of its combatants took refuge in the Ifoghas Mountains, close to the Algerian border, while others fled into northeast Nigeria to areas controlled by tribes sympathetic to Boko Haram. A third group is believed to have taken refuge in Tillaberi, a stronghold of extremist groups in western Niger.
CONTROLLING BORDERS: Governments that want to keep the jihadist threat at bay should follow a multifaceted strategy: appease local populations, especially in peripheral areas; police borders; cooperate with other governments in matters of security; ask for foreign help when needed; and prepare for what may be a protracted confrontation. Algeria has tightened security along its borders with Mali, Morocco and Mauritania. Egypt is extra vigilant when it comes to the Libyan and Sudanese borders. Niger is closely monitoring its borders with Nigeria and Mali. And Jordan is closely watching its borders with Iraq and Syria. Cooperation is also underway between Algeria and Morocco, and five African countries are pooling their resources to confront Boko Haram. In Egypt, tough security measures have been coupled with socio-economic policies designed to win over the populations of Sinai and Marsa Matruh. In Iraq, the government has been trying to react to Sunni grievances in the hope of weakening the support base of IS. Libya, Chad and Sudan held meetings in February 2012 to discuss ways of controlling their borders. Algeria and Tunisia had similar discussions in March 2012. Egypt has been talking to Sahel and North African countries about the same problem, with President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi visiting Algeria and Sudan in June 2014, and Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb travelling to Chad in April 2014. Libya's neighbours held meetings in Tunisia and Cairo in June and July 2014, respectively. Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Chad and Nigeria have also all been looking into ways to stop jihadists from using Libya as a launch pad. In February 2014, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad all met in Nouakchott to discuss the jihadist threat in the Sahel-Sahara region. If such efforts lead to the better policing of these countries' borders, this may be the beginning of the defeat of the jihadists. The writer is a researcher on African affairs with Al-Siyasa Al-Dawliya, a quarterly political science magazine published by Al-Ahram.
