Terrorism and Violent Extremism in Africa
Released: 2016-07-14T00:00:00

Introduction: Violent Extremism in Africa

Increased terrorist activity by groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria has raised the international profile of African-based Islamist terrorist groups, but violent extremism is not a new phenomenon on the continent. In the 19 th century, local insurgent leaders fought to establish Islamic states in areas that are now in Nigeria, Guinea/Mali, and Sudan. In the 1990s, Algeria fought a decade-long war against Islamist insurgents after the military canceled election results favoring an Islamist political movement, resulting in as many as 200,000 deaths. Also in the 1990s, Sudan hosted foreign extremists, including Osama bin Laden, after an Islamist regime came to power there in a coup. Al Qaeda's bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and subsequent attacks demonstrated the group's reach and ability to recruit from Muslim communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Extremist groups in Algeria and Somalia later affiliated with Al Qaeda. Religiously inspired terrorism in Africa is not limited to Sunni Islamist groups. One of Africa's oldest active terrorist groups is the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Central Africa—unlike many of the violent extremist groups operating on the continent today, it originated out of a messianic, localized interpretation of Christianity and traditional beliefs.

Foreign fighter flows from the continent, primarily from North Africa—first to Afghanistan and the Balkans, then to Iraq, and now to Syria, Iraq, and Libya—have long been of international concern. While a majority of these fighters have come from the Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, and Mauritania), smaller numbers have come from Somalia, Sudan, and Kenya, among other countries. Foreign fighter flows to Somalia, including from the United States and other Western countries, have reportedly decreased since 2012 but remain a security challenge. U.S. federal prosecutors have brought several U.S. citizens to trial for seeking to join the Somali Al Qaeda-linked group Al Shabaab.

The pace of high-profile extremist attacks on the continent has intensified in recent years. Terrorist incidents have ranged from mass casualty bombings, deadly sieges, and attacks on international facilities, to kidnappings, assassinations, and public executions. Most of the victims have been African, but several U.S. citizens have also been killed in such attacks. Assaults on prominent soft targets such as the Westgate Mall in Kenya and hotels and restaurants frequented by foreigners appear to be on the rise, heightening concerns among foreign governments about the security of their citizens traveling or working in Africa. Suicide bombings have become an increasingly common tactic, most notably for Boko Haram, which frequently uses women and children as attackers. A Somali-American man became the first known American suicide bomber in 2008, in Somalia for Al Shabaab. (Several other U.S. citizens who joined Al Shabaab have also reportedly died in Somalia.) In February 2016, Al Shabaab demonstrated its ability to conceal a bomb in a laptop computer that was detonated by a suicide bomber onboard a Somali airliner. (It detonated before the plane reached cruising altitude and thus did not destroy the aircraft.)

In 2015, U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper reported to Congress that "Sunni violent extremists are gaining momentum and the number of Sunni violent extremist groups, members, and safe havens is greater than at any other point in history." He reiterated that message in 2016. U.S. officials warn of growing fragmentation within the "terrorism landscape," made up of an increasingly diverse array of groups in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Africa, described by Clapper in 2014 as "a hothouse for the emergence of extremist and rebel groups," has drawn increasing attention as groups in Nigeria and Somalia have expanded their reach and lethality, and as new North African groups have emerged. Some Africa-based extremists have affiliated with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS, aka ISIS or ISIL), but many appear to operate autonomously. Transnational groups appear to see opportunity in Africa—the cover of Dabiq , the Islamic State's English-language magazine, proclaimed in 2015: "Shari'a Will Rule Africa."

In the 2015 assessment of the DNI , most Sunni violent extremist groups "place a higher priority on local concerns than on attacking the so-called far enemy—the United States and the West." Nevertheless, some African groups have attacked Western interests in Africa, and U.S. officials view some groups, like Al Shabaab, as potentially capable of inspiring or carrying out attacks in the United States, despite a primarily regional focus.

There has been comparatively greater international focus on violent Islamist extremism occurring in, and emanating from, the Middle East, South Asia, and North Africa, but in recent years the death toll from violent Islamist terrorist attacks in Sub-Saharan Africa has rivaled that of other regions. This report seeks to provide some context for current terrorism trends in Sub-Saharan Africa and a discussion of some key issues for Congress.

Context

Conflicts proliferated in Africa in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. In the early 2000s, conflict and political instability appeared to be easing, with a landmark peace agreement in Sudan and the end of long-running conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and Angola. However, in recent years political violence has again been on the rise in Africa, and violent Islamist extremist groups are among its most deadly perpetrators. Eleven groups based on the continent are now designated by the State Department as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs); nine have been listed since 2013 (see Appendix A , and see Figure 1 for the areas in which they are active).

Some Africa-based groups sought to rebrand themselves as part of the Islamic State organization in 2015, while others remain independent or are affiliated with Al Qaeda. ( Appendix B provides brief group overviews.) Al Qaeda affiliates, including Al Shabaab and the Algerian-led Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, may view the Islamic State as a rival for recruits and resources, or may differ with its ideology or tactics. By some accounts, the Islamic State's audacious tactics may have spurred rival groups to conduct a recent spate of high-profile attacks in West Africa.

The Global Terrorism Index 2015 (GTI), compiled by a nongovernmental organization, illustrates that violence by non-state actors, although concentrated in a small number of countries, is spreading and becoming more deadly. Nigeria's Boko Haram was identified as the world's deadliest terrorist group for civilians in 2014, outpacing the Islamic State, to which it pledged allegiance in 2015. Together, the two groups were responsible for half of the GTI-recorded global deaths from terrorist acts in 2014. That year, GTI reports that Nigeria witnessed the largest year-to-year increase in terrorist deaths ever documented in any country. Somalia has also faced a significant uptick in attacks since 2011; 2014 was its deadliest year for terrorist incidents. Most attacks were claimed by Al Shabaab, which ranks among the five deadliest terrorist groups.

The rise in Islamist extremist violence coincides with an increase in the lethality of political violence generally on the continent. Overall conflict fatalities have risen since 2011, and 2014 was the deadliest year for violence in Africa since 1999. Such violence has driven mass displacement—almost 17 million people, many fleeing conflict, are currently displaced in Africa, either internally or as refugees (see Figure 2 below). While violence levels in Africa are still below post-Cold War highs, with instability increasingly limited to a small number of countries, conflict-related fatalities in those countries are surging.

Civil war still plagues parts of Africa, notably Sudan, the home of the continent's largest displaced population, and South Sudan, where by some estimates more than 50,000 people have been killed since December 2013. Political protests in Africa periodically turn violent, sometimes marked by repressive responses from state security forces. Across the Sahel region, contests over resources and political representation fuel intercommunal conflict, including between herding and farming communities, notably in Nigeria and Sudan, but also in Mali and Côte d'Ivoire.

Despite notable economic progress in some countries and a popular narrative in recent years of "Africa rising," African countries continue to dominate the Fund for Peace's Fragile States Index —only 6 of the top 25 most fragile states in the 2016 Index are not in Africa. The four most fragile states—Somalia, South Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Sudan—have been plagued by conflict and instability for decades. More than half of the countries in Africa have seen worsening state fragility indicators in the past decade. The Global Peace Index ranks South Sudan, Somalia, CAR, Sudan, and Libya among the top 10 least peaceful countries (the Democratic Republic of Congo or DRC ranks 12 th and Nigeria 15 th ).

Religious extremism sometimes overlaps with other forms of political violence, and in some cases, armed Islamists have leveraged local insurgencies to expand their influence and establish safe havens. DNI Clapper has argued that:

No single paradigm explains how terrorists become involved in insurgencies. Some groups like ISIL in Syria and al-Qa'ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in Mali have worked with local militants to incite insurgencies. Others, like Boko Haram, are the sole instigators and represent the primary threat to their respective homeland's security. Still others, including al-Shabaab, are the primary beneficiaries of an insurgency started by others. Finally, other groups, such as core al-Qa'ida, have taken advantage of the relative safe haven in areas controlled by insurgent groups to build capabilities and alliances without taking on a primary leadership role in the local conflict.

Sub-Regional Dynamics

East Africa: Al Qaeda and Al Shabaab

Al Qaeda operatives and other violent Islamist extremist groups have had a presence in East Africa for two decades, although the extent of their operations has varied over time. Al Shabaab emerged in predominately Sunni Muslim Somalia in the early 2000s amid a proliferation of Islamist and clan-based militias that flourished in the absence of central government authority. Al Shabaab drew support across clans, promoting a vision of uniting ethnic Somali-inhabited areas of Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somalia under an Islamic caliphate. Some of its founding members reportedly trained and fought with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and known Al Qaeda operatives in the region were associated with the group in its formative years.

Al Shabaab held significant territory in south-central Somalia, including the capital Mogadishu, in the late 2000s, until a U.S.-backed African Union (AU) military force gained momentum against the insurgency in 2011-2012. Additional troop contributions have since allowed troops from the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) and the nascent Somali government to reclaim further territory, though their forces remain stretched. Al Shabaab continues to wage a violent campaign against the Somali government, the AU mission, and international targets in Somalia; it has taken advantage of security gaps to reinfiltrate rural areas that AMISOM has been unable to hold. It has also threatened the countries participating in AMISOM and conducted deadly attacks in Djibouti, Kenya, and Uganda. Al Shabaab activity in Kenya has increased significantly in recent years; the group has killed hundreds of Kenyans in attacks since 2012.

Al Shabaab's ability to recruit abroad and the presence in Somalia of foreign fighters, among them U.S. citizens, have been of significant concern to U.S. policymakers. Its ties with other terrorist groups, most notably Al Qaeda and its Yemen-based affiliate, and its threats against international targets also elevate its profile among extremist groups on the continent and have made it a target of direct counterterrorism operations by the United States and other Western countries. In confirming the U.S. strike that killed Al Shabaab's leader, Ahmed Godane, in September 2014, Obama Administration officials cited his oversight of "plots targeting Westerners, including U.S. persons in East Africa," and suggested that the strike responded to an "imminent threat" to U.S. interests in the region. The tempo of U.S. air strikes in Somalia, sometimes premised on protecting U.S. military advisors in the region, increased in 2015-2016.

North-West Africa: Group Proliferation and Fragmentation

Armed Islamist groups have proliferated in North and West Africa since 2011, amid political upheaval in the Arab world, governance and security crises in Libya and Mali, and an Islamist insurgency in northern Nigeria. Many of these groups appear primarily focused on a domestic or regional agenda, but some have targeted U.S. or other foreign interests in the region and some may aspire to more international aims. North Africa is also a prominent source of foreign fighters for Al Qaeda-linked groups and the Islamic State organization in Iraq, Syria, and Libya.

The oldest continuously active transnational Islamist terrorist group in the region is AQIM, which grew out of Algeria's 1990s civil conflict and began to carry out attacks in West Africa's Sahel region in the early 2000s (prior to its affiliation with Al Qaeda in 2006-2007). More recently, it has sought ties with extremist groups in Tunisia and Libya. The group, which has long exhibited internal tensions, has spawned a number of offshoots and splinter movements in recent years. These include Al Murabitoun, led by longtime AQIM cell commander Mokhtar Bel Mokhtar (who is Algerian), along with several Malian- and Mauritanian-led groups.

The countries of the Sahel are among the world's poorest and face complex security challenges, including ethnic conflict and separatism, banditry, and organized crime. They also have a history of poor governance and military intervention in politics. While violent Islamist ideology does not appear to have been embraced by most Sahel residents, it likely resonates with certain marginalized populations, as do the financial resources wielded by AQIM and other groups.

In North Africa, numerous reports suggest that Libya has become a hub for regional terrorist actors, and Tunisia has faced increasingly large-scale attacks by individuals who reportedly trained there. Political institutions in Algeria and Morocco have remained comparatively stable, but both countries have claimed to have broken up domestic and transnational terrorist cells and regularly express concern about spillover. Libya and Algeria are home to groups whose pledges of allegiance to the Islamic State have been publicly accepted by IS leadership.

Nigeria and the Lake Chad Basin24

Particular conditions in northeast Nigeria gave rise to Boko Haram, which is responsible for a far higher level of deadly violence than any other violent Islamist group in Africa. Key factors include a legacy of overlapping intercommunal and Muslim-Christian tensions in Nigeria; perceived disparities in the application of laws and access to development, jobs, and investment in the north; and popular frustration with elite corruption and other state abuses. Nigerian forces' at times heavy-handed response to Boko Haram since 2009 has reportedly fueled recruitment in some areas. The reported erosion of traditional leaders' perceived legitimacy among local populations in northeast Nigeria and northern Cameroon may also have contributed to the group's ascendance. The shrinking of Lake Chad, once one of Africa's largest lakes and now described by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization as an "ecological catastrophe," has exacerbated tensions among communities in the area that Boko Haram has reportedly sought to exploit.

Boko Haram's ideology encompasses a worldview that combines an exclusivist interpretation of Sunni Islam—one that rejects not only Western influence but also democracy, constitutionalism, and more moderate forms of Islam—with "politics of victimhood" that resonate in parts of Nigeria's underdeveloped north. Some of Boko Haram's fighters have reportedly been drawn into the group by financial incentive or under threat. The State Department has identified various dynamics limiting the Nigerian government's response to Boko Haram, including a lack of coordination and cooperation between Nigerian security agencies, security sector corruption, misallocation of resources, limited requisite databases, the slow pace of the judicial system, and lack of sufficient training for prosecutors and judges to implement anti-terrorism laws.

Boko Haram has expanded its operations beyond Nigeria's borders in recent years, in part due to increased military pressure within Nigeria. Lake Chad's islands and waterways, Nigeria's vast Sambisa Forest, and the remote Mandara Mountains along the Nigeria-Cameroon border have proven effective safe havens for Boko Haram fighters. The group has drawn some of its membership from neighboring countries, though there are no reliable public estimates of the number of non-Nigerian nationals in the group. Boko Haram has operated in northern Cameroon since at least 2013, and it began a series of cross-border attacks into Chad and Niger in early 2015 when those countries deployed troops into Nigeria in an effort to roll back its territorial gains. The election of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 helped ease tensions among the neighboring countries affected by Boko Haram, and donors have sought to support an integrated regional force to counter the group. Nevertheless, lingering mutual distrust, a lack of military interoperability in the region, and, possibly, an emphasis on military rather than civilian governance initiatives continue to constrain the response.

Libya28

The presence and strengthening of IS supporters in Libya have become matters of deep concern to regional and international security officials. By some estimates, the conflict in Syria has attracted thousands of young Libyans since 2012, and some observers link the rise of IS-affiliated groups in Libya to the return of some of those Libyan fighters in 2014. U.S. military officials estimated that the Islamic State had approximately 3,500 fighters in Libya in late 2015, but in mid-2016, senior U.S. officials estimated that figure had grown to as many as 5,000 to 8,000, among a much larger community of Libyan Salafi-jihadist activists and militia members. Reports suggest that Sub-Saharan Africans are among IS-Libya's fighters. Some have allegedly been lured by financial incentives, while others may be driven by ideological or personal motives. In February 2016, CIA Director John Brennan told the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence that Libya was "the most important theater for ISIL outside of the Syria-Iraq theater, they have several thousand members there, they have absorbed some of the groups inside of Libya, including Ansar al Sharia that was very active prior to ISIL's rise." Military operations against the Islamic State by Libyan militia forces had succeeded in reversing some of the group's gains as of mid-2016. Nevertheless, unresolved political disputes among Libyans and some Libyans' hostility to foreign military intervention limit options available to the United States and other concerned outsiders.

Drivers of Violent Islamist Extremism in Africa

Paths toward radicalization among Muslim communities in Africa vary. Many studies on the roots of radicalization focus on the interplay of socioeconomic factors with others, such as patterns of state and social bias, state security responses to minority groups, concerted extremist recruitment efforts, and individual psychological characteristics. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which has commissioned various studies on factors affecting conflict and violent extremism, has identified both structural "push" factors and "pull" factors in individual radicalization and recruitment, along with "enabling" environmental factors, such as weak governance. Studies furthermore point to the importance of "individual level" messaging, social networks, and person-to-person contacts. Insofar as violent Islamist extremism is a form of armed conflict, USAID posits that conflict

is driven by key actors in society… who actively mobilize people and resources to engage in acts of violence on the basis of grievance, such as a group's perception that it has been excluded from political and economic life. […] Illegitimate and ineffective institutions can drive dysfunctional patterns of fragility and stress.

The State Department's top Africa official has testified before Congress that violent extremist groups are "focusing their recruitment efforts where there is a lack of economic opportunity, political and social alienation, poor governance, corruption of elites, and lack of accountability for abuses by security forces," and are exploiting such weaknesses in their propaganda. If these dynamics are significant factors in extremist recruitment in Africa, they may highlight a need for more inclusive, responsive, effective, and accountable governance by local authorities, particularly those with whom international actors seek to partner to counter extremist groups.

Socioeconomic Factors

Poverty alone is not a sufficient explanation of individual recruitment or group prowess in a given location; indeed, "structural" explanations of terrorism may underestimate the power of individual decisionmaking and ideology. Extremist groups, however, often seek to exploit perceptions of disproportionate economic hardship or exclusion due to religious or ethnic identity. Groups like Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, and Mali's Ansar al Dine have successfully used victimization narratives to recruit and elicit support, manipulating perceptions of societal discrimination against Muslims or specific ethnic or regional communities. Such narratives sometimes seek to highlight disparities in access to jobs or government investments (in services and infrastructure) in areas where aggrieved communities reside. Recruits may be motivated by both grievances and the prospect of material/financial benefits from extremist group membership. Feelings of marginalization, relative deprivation, and frustrated expectations stemming from a lack of job opportunities in many African countries may make some youth more susceptible to extremist recruitment, in addition to boredom, idleness, and thrill-seeking impulses.

At the macro level, impoverished countries rarely have sufficient state revenues for effective policing and border control, which may allow non-state actors to flourish. A lack of means can undermine social services and create incentives for corruption, which armed groups—including extremists but also other insurgents—can exploit as a grievance and as a means to subvert law enforcement. For example, extremist groups as well as separatists have flourished in Somalia and Mali in areas where the state has been unable or unwilling to provide security or access to justice. A lack of state services may foster a vicious cycle, fueling violence in areas that thereby become uninhabitable for government officials, deepening the local sense of isolation and deprivation. Across the continent, corruption and impunity are seen by a majority of Africans as increasing. Some extremist groups, such as Al Shabaab, deliver social services and provide justice in areas where they operate, enabling them to build support and legitimacy among locals.

Cultural and Political Factors

As elsewhere, Muslims in Africa have been increasingly exposed to extremist religious ideologies, and the concept that the West is attacking Islam may push some toward extremism. Al Qaeda and Islamic State messages play to this perception, comparing Western or Western-supported interventions in Muslim countries like Somalia and Iraq to the military campaigns of Christian crusaders in the Middle Ages or to brutal colonization campaigns in Africa by European powers in the 19 th century. Al Shabaab's narrative of fighting against America and its purported Christian "proxies" in East Africa on behalf of Islam resonates among some in the region. Some East African Muslims also perceive domestic counterterrorism efforts to be part of a Western conspiracy against Muslims. In North and West Africa, AQIM and Al Murabitoun propaganda often centers on anti-French messaging, playing to post-colonial sensitivities. France's deployment since 2013 of thousands of troops in counterterrorism operations in the region may provide fodder for the Islamist critique.

Some analysts suggest that political factors, such as repression, gross human rights violations by state security forces, and public perceptions of government corruption and impunity, may fuel grievances that provide motivation to support or participate in violence. According to the USAID Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism , "governments that engage in gross human rights violations are particularly prone to pushing individuals into terrorist groups." Abuses by Nigerian security forces in the northeast may have played a role in driving some recruitment and initial acceptance of Boko Haram by certain local communities. Similarly, Al Shabaab has sought to foment a domestic insurgency among Kenyan Muslims against a backdrop of that community's historic grievances and a domestic anti-terrorism campaign fraught with serious human rights abuses that some describe as "collective punishment." In a survey of 95 Kenyans associated with Al Shabaab, 65% identified the Kenyan government's counterterrorism strategy as the most important factor that drove them to join the group. In some cases, including in Kenya, violent extremist groups may in fact seek to provoke violent responses from the government in order to fuel support from targeted communities. The extent to which the United States is seen by local communities as an "enabler" of government actions—potentially due to its relationship (real or perceived) with state security forces—may complicate U.S. counter-extremism efforts.

The International Response

In addition to various country-specific responses to terrorist threats on the continent, African countries have established several multinational mechanisms to address certain regional extremist threats, including AMISOM, the Regional Cooperation Initiative for the Elimination of the Lord's Resistance Army (RCI-LRA), an AU-led military intervention in Mali in late 2012 (subsequently re-hatted as a U.N. operation), a multinational joint operations center in southern Algeria known as the CEMOC, the Lake Chad Basin Commission's Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) to counter Boko Haram, and a separate, nascent effort to create a joint military force among five West African countries known as the "G-5 Sahel." Eleven countries participate in the AU-backed Nouakchott Process on the Enhancement of Security Cooperation and the Operationalization of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) in the Sahelo-Saharan Region. The AU's African Center for the Study and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT) in Algiers, which is led by an AU Special Representative for Counterterrorism Coordination, provides a forum for centralizing information on terrorist activity and supporting African counterterrorism strategies. These initiatives reflect recognition of the need for greater cooperation among affected states, although participating countries' capacities vary, sometimes significantly, as does the degree of political will for increased coordination.

Overall, African-led responses to terrorist threats remain constrained by limited resources, institutional weaknesses, conflicting political agendas, corruption, sensitivities over domestic sovereignty, regional rivalries, and uneven engagement among affected states. These challenges have undermined various continental efforts, including the AU's Protocol on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism, which did not enter into force until 2014, a decade after its adoption (several key countries, including Kenya, Nigeria, and Somalia, have yet to ratify it). Also in 2014, the African Union's Peace and Security Council issued a framework for preventing and combating terrorism and violent extremism in Africa, building on previous decisions taken by the AU to enhance cooperation and coordination against these threats and calling for a range of specific actions by AU member states and the AU Commission. As of January 2016, only nine countries had signed the AU's 2014 Convention on Cross Border Cooperation, and only one—Niger—had ratified it. Other AU efforts include a Model Anti-Terrorism Law, which provides a blueprint for domestic legislation in line with AU policy. According to the Africa-based Institute for Security Studies, only roughly one-third of African countries have counterterrorism legislation that comports with the AU recommendations, however, raising questions about the extent to which some governments rank the threat a high priority.

Various donor initiatives, including multi-donor trust funds and regional or bilateral assistance, aim to address African resource and capacity constraints. The European Union's African Peace Facility (APF), for example, provides funding for AMISOM salaries and certain operational costs. The EU has also provided support for regional security responses in Mali and against the LRA. (The EU has provided more than €2 billion for such initiatives through the APF since 2004, including roughly $300 million in 2015.) The EU also fields military and police training missions in Mali, Niger, and Somalia.

Some countries, including the United Kingdom (UK), France, the United States, Turkey, Morocco, and Algeria, provide training and equipment bilaterally to African partners to support counterterrorism efforts. The UK, for example, announced its intention in December 2015 to deploy up to 300 military personnel to build Nigeria's capacity to counter Boko Haram, augmenting its existing intelligence, training, and advisory support to the country. Turkey, a key donor to Somalia, has signaled its intention to establish a military training center there. And France, which launched Operation Serval in Mali in 2013, deploying more than 4,000 French forces to repulse Islamist insurgents, transitioned to a new operation, Barkhane, in mid-2014, under which some 3,500 French forces work with African counterparts to address jihadist threats across the Sahel region (see Figure 1 ).

The African Union, the United Nations, and various donors are engaged in discussions to enhance the sustainability of African-led peace support operations, including those with a potential counterterrorism component. (The U.N. Support Office in Somalia is unique in its mandate to provide support to a regional operation; to date, the Security Council has been reluctant to consider support through assessed U.N. contributions for other African-led missions.) AU Member States have notionally committed to gradually covering 25% of the AU peace and security budget (largely funded by donors) by 2020, but financing details remain unclear. Donor deliberations on U.N. support for future Security Council-authorized AU missions continue.

The U.S. Response

The United States engages in a range of efforts, both military and civilian, to prevent and deter terrorism and to strengthen security and stability in Africa. The Obama Administration's 2015 National Security Strategy identifies "violent extremists fighting governments in Somalia, Nigeria, and across the Sahel"—along with other ongoing conflicts in Africa—as "threats to innocent civilians, regional stability, and our national security." Consistent with the Administration's National Strategy for Counterterrorism , its Strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa (issued in 2012) indicates a goal of "disrupting, dismantling, and eventually defeating Al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents in Africa," in part by strengthening the capacity of "civilian bodies to provide security for their citizens and counter violent extremism through more effective governance, development, and law enforcement efforts." Deepening security partnerships and building African military capacities is a separate, related aim under the same objective of advancing peace and security. As the President described in his 2014 foreign policy speech at West Point, while "not eliminat[ing] the need to take direct action when necessary to protect ourselves," building partner capacity has been a growing key theme in his Administration's counterterrorism strategy. In its FY2017 budget request, the Administration indicates that its regional counterterrorism partnership efforts in Africa seek to deny terrorists safe havens, operational bases, and recruitment opportunities.

Efforts to Build Regional Partners' Military Capability

Current U.S.-led regional counterterrorism efforts include two multi-faceted interagency efforts: the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership (TSCTP) in North-West Africa and the Partnership for Regional East Africa Counterterrorism (PREACT). TSCTP includes military and police train-and-equip programs and border security initiatives, justice sector support, counter-radicalization programs, and public diplomacy efforts. It is led by the State Department's Africa Bureau, with USAID and the Department of Defense (DOD) implementing components and playing a role in strategic guidance. PREACT, modeled on TSCTP, is a smaller initiative that is part of a broader array of counterterrorism-related assistance efforts in East Africa, many of them bilateral. Some TSCTP and PREACT programs seek to encourage regional cooperation through multinational training events, while other TSCTP and PREACT assistance is provided to individual countries. DOD, for its part, conducts regional operations in which U.S. military personnel work with their local counterparts to improve intelligence, regional coordination, logistics, border control, and targeting (see below). Other U.S. regional security initiatives, such as the State Department Bureau of Counterterrorism's Regional Strategic Initiative (RSI), overlap with these program s and seek to cover some gaps, including in the Lake Chad Basin area.

A large portion of all U.S. security assistance to Africa seeks to help counter terrorism. The largest share in the past decade has supported African forces fighting Al Shabaab in Somalia. Cumulative U.S. funding for AMISOM (which has both counterterrorism and stabilization aims) has totaled almost $2 billion. More recently, the United States has allocated more than $400 million in security assistance (most of it since 2014) to the Lake Chad Basin countries to counter Boko Haram. The Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) account is the primary State Department vehicle for counterterrorism assistance for African militaries, provided under the bilateral budget for Somalia and through regional programs such as TSCTP and PREACT (respectively about $20 million and $10 million annually in PKO funding), as well as others. Training and related support for African law enforcement entities is provided through the State Department's Anti-Terrorism Assistance (ATA) program, funded under the NADR (Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining, and Related Programs) account, and through the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) account, among others. Some African partners, North African countries in particular, have also sought to enhance their counterterrorism capabilities through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, and several have received U.S. excess defense articles (EDA).

Congress has also granted DOD a number of authorities to conduct security cooperation activities with foreign forces. As overall DOD counterterrorism assistance spending has grown, DOD funding for security assistance in Africa surpassed that provided by the State Department for the first time in FY2014 and has continued to rise. In the past decade, DOD has notified Congress of over $1.7 billion in planned counterterrorism training and equipment for African counties, of which Kenya, Uganda, Niger, and Tunisia have been the top cumulative recipients. The Administration's new Counterterrorism Partnerships Fund (CTPF), authorized in the FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act ( P.L. 113-291 ), is contributing to a significant expansion of AFRICOM's counterterrorism capacity-building programs. In addition to almost $235 million in regular "2282" (i.e., 10 U.S.C. 2282, global train-and-equip for counterterrorism purposes) funding for AFRICOM's programs, DOD allocated almost $80 million in CTPF-funded train-and-equip assistance under 2282 in FY2015 to support efforts in the Sahel-Maghreb, Lake Chad Basin, and East Africa regions. Planned CTPF funding for Africa in FY2016 totals $375 million and the Administration has requested $450 million for FY2017. Additional DOD counterterrorism funds are likely be allocated to African countries under 10 U.S.C. 2282 and other authorities.

U.S. program officers and policymakers have faced challenges in seeking to implement both State Department and DOD "partner capacity-building" programs in Africa, such as when host-government preferences for certain types of assistance do not match U.S. assessments of what is needed. Postcolonial sensitivities over sovereignty and access may inhibit the extent of host government interest in receiving U.S. training—as in Algeria and Nigeria. Many areas of Africa where extremist groups operate are marked by the absence of effective host-government counterparts with whom to partner, and in many countries political elites may be more concerned about other security threats (e.g., ethnic separatism) than violent Islamism. In some countries—such as Libya and Somalia—even central government authority is contested.

The House Armed Services Committee has expressed concern (in H.Rept. 114-537 ) with the ability of some African countries to absorb, sustain, and responsibly manage the equipment provided through these train-and-equip programs. The committee has urged DOD to invest some CTPF resources in programs to build the institutional capacity of such partner forces. Such efforts could complement or be part of the Administration's new Security Governance Initiative (SGI), which also is aimed at building the capacities and addressing the shortcomings of security sector institutions and related government oversight mechanisms. Each of the six SGI partner countries (Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Tunisia) faces terrorism threats, to varying degrees.

The Administration's new African Peacekeeping Rapid Response Partnership (APRRP), which seeks to build rapid deployment capabilities in six key African peacekeeping troop contributors to respond to crises (with an annual budget request of $110 million), is not specifically focused on counterterrorism but could enhance the contributions of several top African counterterrorism partners, notably Uganda and Ethiopia, to stability operations in Somalia or elsewhere.

Military Operations

U.S. Africa Command's Theater Campaign Plan for FY2016-FY2020 identifies five key lines of effort for the U.S. military in Africa: (1) neutralize Al Shabaab and transition the mandate of the AMISOM to the Somali government; (2) degrade violent extremist organizations in the Sahel-Maghreb and contain instability in Libya; (3) contain Boko Haram; (4) interdict illicit activity in the Gulf of Guinea and Central Africa; and (5) build African peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and disaster response capacities. Protecting U.S. personnel and facilities and securing U.S. access is characterized as an "enduring task" in the plan. The approach of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), as outlined in the plan and in the command's 2016 Posture Statement, emphasizes counterterrorism cooperation with African "partners" and international allies (e.g., France and the United Kingdom), as well as with U.S. civilian agencies.

The U.S. military has periodically taken direct action against terrorist threats in Africa, primarily in Somalia but also more recently in Libya, and has interdicted several suspected terrorists and extremist group interlocutors. The Administration broadened its justification for direct U.S. military action in Somalia in 2015, indicating in a notification to Congress consistent with the War Powers Resolution that its operations in Somalia were carried out not only "to counter Al Qaeda and associated elements of Al Shabaab" (as previously reported), but also "in support of Somali forces, AMISOM forces, and U.S. forces in Somalia." The United States has not deployed combat troops to Somalia, but it does have U.S. military advisors in the country providing support to African partners. The United States has also provided logistical and intelligence support to French military counterterrorism operations in the Sahel since 2013.

More often, U.S. military personnel play an indirect role in regional counterterrorism efforts, providing training, equipment, logistical support, intelligence, and in some cases, advisory support to partners on the continent. DOD describes "building partner capacity" (BPC) among African states to counter terrorist threats as a critical component of its strategy in the region.

A long-running contingency operation, Operation Enduring Freedom-Trans-Sahara (OEF-TS; funded annually at over $80 million), which supports TSCTP, does not limit its focus to counterterrorism, according to DOD's FY2017 budget request. Rather, it focuses on "overall security and cooperation" by "forming relationships of peace, security, and cooperation" among countries in the region. In East Africa, Operation Enduring Freedom-Horn of Africa (OEF-HOA) has a different scope, supporting activities at the U.S. military's only permanent base in Africa, in Djibouti; Special Operations Command operations in the Horn of Africa (and Afghanistan); and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) operations in the region. Other ongoing operations include the deployment, since 2013, of up to 350 U.S. military personnel and surveillance assets to Niger and, since October 2015, of up to 300 U.S. military personnel and surveillance aircraft to Cameroon, to conduct ISR operations within Niger and throughout the Lake Chad Basin region, respectively. DOD has also provided logistics and advisory support to African forces, primarily from Uganda, to counter the Lord's Resistance Army in Central Africa since 2011. DOD may provide support (up to $85 million globally) to African forces (including irregular forces or non-state groups) supporting counterterrorism operations in which U.S. special operations forces are engaged via Section 1208 of the FY2005 National Defense Authorization Act ( P.L. 108-375 ), as amended. Recipients and funding levels are classified.

Countering Violent Extremist Recruitment and Ideology

While the bulk of U.S. development aid to Africa aims broadly to contribute to increased peace and security, good governance, and improved social and economic development, a subset of programs have a specific counter-extremism component intended to prevent radicalization and undermine the attraction of extremist ideologies and organizations. The focus of these programs ranges from building awareness among affected communities of drivers and indicators of radicalization or countering extremist narratives to promoting community-led interventions. USAID's Guide to the Drivers of Violent Extremism emphasizes the importance of distinguishing among drivers that contribute to recruitment into violent extremist organizations, to community support for or tolerance of their activities, or to an enabling environment conducive to their operations. Many studies stress that counter-extremism programs should be designed with an understanding of country and community-specific contexts in which radicalization occurs.

Some relevant programs are aimed at fostering opportunities among at-risk Muslim youth for employment and positive social interaction, while others are focused on the political and economic inclusion of minorities and marginalized populations. Others aim to spread "tolerant" religious interpretation by working with imams or other community leaders. Some programs have a geographic focus (e.g., northern Nigeria or the Kenyan coast). USAID guidance stresses the need for community involvement, when possible, in identifying and implementing projects, taking into account a potential mistrust of outsiders' intentions. The State Department also seeks to encourage African governments' participation in countering violent extremism (CVE) efforts—including through a series of CVE summits, two of which have been hosted by Kenya and Mauritania—and has supported programs that aim to strengthen African law enforcement capacity to counter extremism, including in prisons.

The State Department and USAID both oversee CVE programs in Africa, including those funded through TSCTP and PREACT. USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) also implements CVE-related programming in Niger and Nigeria (having completed CVE-related programs in Tunisia and Mali) and recently launched a new Somalia program. In 2015, the White House announced its intent to provide at least $40 million in FY2015 for CVE in East Africa alone. The FY2017 State-USAID budget request includes more than $43 million for CVE efforts specifically located in Sub-Saharan Africa, more than one-quarter of which would focus on Nigeria. Africa may also benefit from some portion of the $75 million in CVE funds that the State Department has requested to be managed by its functional bureaus on a global basis.

Some U.S. public diplomacy and messaging initiatives also seek to counter violent extremist organizations' recruitment and financing efforts by countering extremist narratives. Such efforts aim to undermine terrorist groups' credibility among local populations, targeting a variety of audiences, including both "key influencers" such as community and religious leaders, and vulnerable populations. They may sometimes be implemented discreetly or indirectly, aiming to counter victimization narratives and communicate U.S. or host-government respect for Islam and indigenous customs. Voice of America's Hausa, Somali, Swahili, and French-to-Africa Services provide news programming to areas affected by terrorist groups and broadcast discussions with Muslim scholars and experts. In early 2016, the Obama Administration created a new Global Engagement Center, based in the State Department's Public Diplomacy Bureau, to coordinate all U.S. government communications activities directed at foreign audiences to counter terrorist messaging and influence.

Countering Terrorist Financing and Mobility

The Treasury Department leads U.S. efforts to detect, track, and prosecute those involved in terrorist financing, coordinating with international partners, including those in Africa. A number of Africa-based groups and individuals are designated for financial sanctions under Executive Order 13224, pertaining to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The State Department coordinates U.S. assistance efforts to strengthen the ability of foreign partners to detect, investigate, and combat terrorist financing through its Counter-terrorism Financing (CTF) program and related initiatives. Such efforts are often conducted by or in collaboration with other federal agencies. The CTF program has supported the establishment of financial intelligence units (FIUs) across Africa. Resident Legal Advisors (RLAs) posted at several U.S. embassies in Africa provide training to prosecutors and other technical expertise to countries in the region. In congressional testimony in May 2016, State Department officials highlighted their intent to significantly increase capacity-building for law enforcement, judicial, and other criminal justice sector institutions in Africa through FY2016 CTPF funding.

The U.S. government maintains a range of watch lists, including the Terrorist Screening Database and the No Fly List, to limit terrorist mobility. The State Department also provides assistance to improve foreign governments' watch listing capabilities through the Terrorist Interdiction Program (TIP), a global initiative created in the aftermath of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings to provide countries with a system for identifying and apprehending suspects who might attempt to flee after a terrorist attack. Under this program, the U.S. government provides select partner nations with a computer system known as PISCES (Personal Identification Secure Comparison and Evaluation System) to facilitate immigration processing and to exchange information with State Department officials on suspected terrorists attempting to travel through their countries. The PISCES system is operational at seaports and airports throughout the region.

Issues for Congress

A Balanced Approach to Resource Allocation?

As this report describes, as the level of activity by terrorist groups in Africa has increased in recent years, U.S. security assistance for counterterrorism purposes has grown significantly. Despite some increases in U.S. funding to build police and law enforcement capacity in Africa, the overall increase in security assistance has been overwhelmingly channeled through military train-and-equip programs. In examining these trends, Members of Congress may wish to examine whether the relative allocation of resources for military, law enforcement, and justice sector assistance matches the nature of the threats and gaps on the continent. With terrorist attacks on soft targets increasing, are African police, investigators, and prosecutors sufficiently trained and equipped to respond? Questions may also be raised about the balance between security and development or good governance spending in countries vulnerable to violent extremist recruitment—particularly given that terrorist groups seem to flourish in countries with serious governance shortfalls. Some critics contend that the current U.S. counterterrorism approach in Africa is "lopsided," potentially over-focusing resources on security responses that could, in some cases, further destabilize some countries and exacerbate regional instability.

Members may also weigh the allocation of resources to other lines of effort in Africa, such as the enforcement of travel and financial sanctions against terrorist actors and the allocation of military intelligence-collection assets. A number of Africa-based groups and individuals are designated under U.S. and multilateral sanctions regimes, but public indications of enforcement actions are few compared to terrorist actors in other regions (who may well be more vested in the global financial system). With regard to intelligence collection, successive commanders of AFRICOM have testified to Congress that intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets allocated to the command remain insufficient to carry out its mission.

Direct Intervention vs. Building Partner Capacity

Interagency actors have reportedly disagreed at various times over whether to approach Africa-based extremist groups through direct military interdiction and targeting, or through a strategy of building African partner countries' security capacity (in the near or longer term). In select cases, the United States has applied both approaches. The Administration has described Al Qaeda's affiliates in Yemen and Syria as its "most capable" branches and the Islamic State as the "preeminent global terrorist threat"—suggesting that groups based primarily in Africa present a comparatively lower degree of threat. Still, the Administration has publicly announced the deployment of U.S. military forces to several African countries, including to the Lake Chad Basin countries to help counter Boko Haram and to Somalia as advisors.

To date, the United States has acknowledged carrying out direct strikes targeting terrorist actors in Somalia and Libya, but not elsewhere on the continent. Given the U.S. military's overwhelming capacity and the existence of various obstacles to sharing intelligence with partner states, direct strikes are arguably the most dependable method of targeting specific terrorist leaders. However, they require significant resources, raise potential legal questions about the use of military force overseas, and have the potential to spark backlash among local populations. Moreover, while strikes may be successful at degrading a group's capabilities or disrupting its decisionmaking, strikes without follow-up efforts on the ground to clear and hold territory may have only a short-term impact. Some observers contend that such strikes also potentially make U.S. citizens a greater target for terrorist groups. Calculations about the threat level as well as the legal and political environment in a given country may all play out in decisionmaking on where and when to conduct strikes.

Partner capacity-building activities, meanwhile, aim to empower other governments to counter terrorism with a lower expenditure of U.S. resources and risk, but they also provide less control over operations and may not be effective in the short run (or at all, in some cases). Their relative success depends on many variables, not least of which is whether U.S. and partner government interests align. In some cases, such interests may diverge over time—recent statements from Ugandan officials suggesting that they may end their involvement in the counter-LRA mission and AMISOM, for example, highlight the limits of the United States' ability to rely on partners for success. (Ugandan forces are widely viewed as the most capable in the counter-LRA effort, and they are the largest troop contributor in Somalia.) Additionally, some analyses of counterterrorism partnerships in Somalia suggest that while the United States and its partners in AMISOM may share a common foe, the objectives and actions of Somalia's neighbors (all of which are AMISOM troop contributors) may, in some cases, undermine other U.S. aims and create risks for the country's long-term stability. Various other factors can affect the impact of capacity-building efforts, including partners' domestic political situations or resource constraints.

U.S. train-and-equip programs, which often involve the presence of U.S. uniformed military personnel within the host country, are also not devoid of political sensitivity or backlash potential. Further, when partner forces' counterterrorism efforts result in civilian casualties or abuses, local perceptions of state authorities may turn negative, undercutting efforts to delegitimize the extremists' cause. This may be the case in Somalia, where negative local perceptions of AMISOM have anecdotally increased in recent years, in part due to reports of misconduct and civilian casualties, but also apparently based on perceptions by some Somalis that neighboring countries are using AMISOM to further their own objectives.

The Administration does not recognize any geographic limitations on its legal authority to use force in counterterrorism operations against what it considers to be Al Qaeda-linked groups, nor in its ability to deploy U.S. military forces to "work closely with host governments to help them combat extremism within their own country." Debate about the legality of U.S. counterterrorism strikes against targets not clearly linked to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, nevertheless persists, and the Administration's recent justifications of strikes in Somalia for "self-defense" and "in defense of" African partner forces contribute to the debate. As the U.S. military increasingly deploys personnel as trainers and advisors to counterterrorism partner forces on the continent, questions surrounding the legal authority for strikes "in self-defense" absent explicit congressional authorization may become increasingly relevant. Congress may further seek to engage the executive branch on its determinations about the relationship between African groups nominally allied to either Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, which the Obama Administration has also interpreted as a legal target for U.S. military action under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF, P.L. 107-40 ).

Coordination and Oversight Challenges

The range of legal authorities under which counterterrorism funding is appropriated and the many programs through which such funding is obligated may create particular challenges for both interagency coordination and congressional oversight. With regard to TSCTP, for example, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that shortcomings in interagency coordination may limit the program's effectiveness. In addition, country-specific spending figures are not routinely reported to Congress for regional security assistance programs, including TSCTP, PREACT, and some DOD BPC activities, and such spending is generally not reflected on a country-specific basis in State Department and DOD congressional budget justifications.

Funding and responsibilities for CVE programs are also spread among multiple offices, including the State Department's Counterterrorism (CT) and Africa Bureaus and USAID, as are efforts to counter terrorist messaging. The Administration has reportedly taken steps to improve monitoring and evaluation of these efforts, but mechanisms for coordination among these offices may not be uniform. A new Department of State and USAID Joint Strategy on Countering Violent Extremism , released in May 2016, seeks to build on a pledge made in the Administration's 2015 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) to enhance preventative efforts. The strategy identifies coordination points within the State Department and USAID, though the respective roles of the various implementing offices remain to be seen, at least publicly.

The lack of country-specific funding data may inhibit congressional oversight of the scale, scope, and balance of U.S. engagement and assistance on the continent. It may also inhibit efforts to examine whether U.S. efforts to counter terrorism and extremism in Africa strike the appropriate balance between support to African militaries and law enforcement or justice sectors, between government-to-government programs and community engagement, or between programs that seek to prevent radicalization versus those that seek to contain its impact. Limited access to funding data may also obscure U.S. policy dilemmas. For example, in response to Burundi's political crisis, during which state security forces have been implicated in grave human rights abuses, the Administration has announced the suspension of some in-country security assistance programs, but Burundian military forces continue to receive U.S. equipment and logistical support as part of their deployment to AMISOM in Somalia. Funding for the latter is not reflected in the Burundi bilateral aid budget, yet many experts assert that the military's continued participation in AMISOM (which notably provides troops with increased salaries) may be the preeminent source of U.S. policy leverage vis-à-vis the Burundian government.

In recent years, Congress has required the Administration to submit various reports and strategy documents related to efforts to combat terrorist groups, including in Africa. The FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA, P.L. 113-291 ) required the Secretary of Defense to submit to congressional committees "a strategy to counter the growing threat posed by radical Islamist terrorist groups in North Africa, West Africa, and the Sahel." The FY2016 Consolidated Appropriations Act ( P.L. 114-113 ) required a report "on United States counterterrorism strategy to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat the Islamic State, al-Qa'ida, and their affiliated groups, associated groups, and adherents." The House version of the FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act ( H.R. 4909 , Subtitle E, §1249) would require the Secretary of Defense to submit a "strategy for United States defense interests in Africa." The House Armed Services Committee report on H.R. 4909 requests DOD to respond to a series of "concerns" with regard to BPC programs, including "the capacity of nations to absorb and sustain assistance"—specifically referencing U.S. support to Somali armed forces. Successive NDAAs also specify substantive requirements for executive branch congressional notifications for DOD-administered counterterrorism aid, such as global train-and-equip programs.

The Senate version of the FY2017 NDAA, S. 2943 , seeks to streamline DOD's "patchwork" of security cooperation authorities and improve transparency and congressional oversight of those efforts. It does not, however, address the various authorities vested in the State Department that are used to support counterterrorism efforts, nor the relationship (and relative balance of funding) between State Department and DOD-funded programs.

Human Rights Considerations

Several top U.S. counterterrorism partners in Africa rank "Not Free" on Freedom House's "Freedom in the World" Index, including Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Mauritania, and Uganda. The State Department's own annual human rights reports regularly raise concerns with security force abuses in many African countries considered security cooperation "partners." Further, local militaries reportedly continue to play significant roles in politics and governance in several top U.S. security partner countries, including Ethiopia, Mauritania, and Uganda.

The United States has taken measures to limit the potential for U.S. security assistance to be associated with abusive foreign governments and security forces through policy determinations and legal restrictions on aid. However, such restrictions are sometimes criticized by those who argue that continued engagement is more likely to positively influence behavior. Alternately, some argue (though not often publicly) that the overarching goals of such assistance—for example, counterterrorism, or the extension of state authority in ungoverned spaces—may in some cases outweigh certain human rights concerns. In countries where security force abuses have been identified as a possible push factor for radicalization, this debate becomes more complicated, particularly if the United States prioritizes maintaining counterterrorism cooperation based on U.S. national security concerns.

Among the legal restrictions enacted by Congress are the so-called "Leahy laws," which prohibit the provision of U.S. security assistance to foreign security force units that have been credibly implicated in gross violations of human rights. Through provisions in annual appropriations measures and other legislation, Congress has also prohibited foreign assistance to governments that overthrow elected governments through military coups d'état, and has enacted various other country-specific legal provisions related to security assistance and human rights concerns. The Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA, P.L. 110-457 ), as amended, for example, restricts military assistance for certain purposes, and the licensing of Excess Defense Articles (EDA) and Direct Commercial Sales (DCS), to countries implicated in the use of child soldiers. Five of the eight countries currently implicated in the use of child soldiers are in Africa.

Democracy and Fragility Trends among African CT Partners

U.S. policymakers and observers continue to debate the relationship between U.S. security assistance, state fragility, and democracy in Africa. Democratic trends in Africa have raised concerns as U.S. security cooperation on the continent has grown. From Burkina Faso to Burundi, a number of incumbent African leaders have taken steps to extend their terms in office, often prompting mass protests and, in some cases, violent responses from security forces. Executive branch officials often justify the provision of security assistance by arguing that U.S. military professionalization programs have a positive impact on democracy and human rights. Measuring this impact is challenging, however. Moreover, such a premise may be questioned, given democratic backsliding in several top African recipients of U.S. security assistance, such as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Policymakers and observers regularly debate the extent to which security assistance should be wielded as a source of policy leverage—that is, whether to suspend assistance in an effort to force a change in behavior on the part of undemocratic regimes. Whether or not the withholding of U.S. assistance creates a compelling incentive for political change, however, is also debatable and may be highly case specific.

In cases where U.S. security assistance is provided to Africa's fragile states, governments may face difficulties in absorbing and sustaining it. A recent RAND study suggests that U.S. officials face a major policy dilemma in Africa, where "the countries that are most in need of assistance are usually the ones least able to make positive use of it." That study, which assessed quantitative and qualitative research on the impact of security assistance in fragile states, found significant overlap between "countries of concern" in Africa (i.e., countries with low scores on indicators of state reach) and the United States' key counterterrorism partners (TSCTP and PREACT partner countries). In these countries, U.S. policymakers may face a dilemma as they seek to prioritize both near- and longer-term objectives, and may weigh whether approaches to addressing near-term goals like countering terrorism might inadvertently have a negative impact on longer-term goals like stability and development, or limit attention and resources to addressing other drivers of conflict.

Outlook

Given current trends, congressional attention to violent Islamist extremism in Africa appears likely to continue, along with debate over the best way to confront the phenomenon. Congress may weigh the relative merits of various tools through which it can help shape U.S. counterterrorism policies and efforts in Africa, such as the appropriation of foreign aid resources, including for programs to build security capacities, to counter violent extremist propaganda and financing, to stabilize and rebuild liberated areas, or to promote more accountable and inclusive governance. Congress may also seek to prioritize through legislation certain activities over others and may examine benchmarks or metrics for success in counterterrorism efforts, including through the possible enactment of new or altered reporting requirements or through other oversight activities. Consideration of geographic or temporal limits on or expansions of the legal authority to use military force may also factor into future congressional deliberations.

Appendix A. Foreign Terrorist Organizations in Africa

Appendix B. Terrorist Group Profiles