A few days ago, I had the opportunity to deliver a lecture on security and geopolitical dynamics in West Africa and the Sahel at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania.
The lecture was delivered remotely from Accra, Ghana, with many of the participants (drawn largely from the ranks of Lt. Colonel and above) joining online because of the snowstorm that had hit the area.
Like the lecture I delivered to last year’s cohort, this session was interactive, with participants asking important questions and making thought-provoking statements. Among the participants were several military officers from different countries.
And so what?
One of the key questions that emerged was whether the activities of armed non-state actors currently wreaking havoc in the Sahel and creating unprecedented insecurity should be classified as insurgency or terrorism. An officer from a North African country specifically sought my opinion on the matter.
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Designations are important in security parlance and in the political discourse surrounding the mitigation of insecurity. Certain labels, such as “Islamic Fundamentalism,” have, over time, become politically incorrect to use.
In response to this important question, I stated that while the terms insurgency and terrorism can be (and often are) used interchangeably to serve different purposes, it is critically important to first classify the nature of the actors and their objectives before assigning the appropriate designation.
The Sahel hosts groups that are legitimately seeking autonomy or independence from central governments. This is particularly true of moderate Tuareg groups that have long called for the independence of northern Mali. Having been ignored and with talks suspended, these groups have resorted to armed struggle. These are separatists.
There are also groups that do not seek independence per se or autonomy, but rather demand inclusion within existing political systems. We see an example of this dynamic in Niger following the coup. These groups can also be described as rebels.
More dangerously, there are groups that have sworn allegiance to organisations internationally recognised as terrorist groups. JNIM and its affiliation with al-Qaeda, as well as ISGS and ISWAP and their links with ISIS, fall into this category.
While all these groups employ insurgency strategies and tactics to achieve their goals of undermining state authority through asymmetric warfare (and can therefore be described as insurgents), those linked to major terrorist organisations, or designated as such due to their ideology, objectives, and indiscriminate attacks, should be classified as terrorists, and their actions as terrorism.
In conclusion, while JNIM and other ISIS franchises may be using insurgency methods to pursue their objectives, they are, fundamentally, terrorist organisations that engage in terrorism.
Owusu is an international relations and security analyst
