Terrorism is not an unknown concept to Africa. The North and West region of Africa have been profoundly impacted by nationalist and religious conflicts, which have been attended by destructive acts of terrorism. Within this context, terrorist networks have long been established in the Horn (Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia) and along the East African coast (Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania).

In 1973, the American US Deputy Chief of Mission, George Curits Moore, and a Belgian diplomat, Guy Eid, were assassinated by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September in Khartoum, Sudan. This was the beginning of a range of extremist acts of terrorism in the region. In 1995, the Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak was attacked by Gama'at al-Islamiyya, an Egyptian terrorist group, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 1998, al-Qaeda bombarded the US embassies in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, while in 2002 al-Qaeda again bombarded simultaneously an Israel-owned hotel and airliner at Mombasa, Kenya.

One of the most tragic examples of internal terrorism in Africa was the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Hundreds of thousands innocent people of the Tutsi tribe were massacred, raped and tortured to death, by Hutu, their tribal enemies. This was an ethnic conflict which took the character of an ethnic purge and used massive terror and indiscriminating savagery towards the civilian population.

Internal and international terrorism in Africa has flourished because of abortive or weakening states in the region, which allowed financial exploitation by terrorist groups or utilization of internal conflicts to recruit natives to terrorist networks. The most prominent example of terrorist base is Khartoum, Sudan. On Sudanese soil, Muslim extremists are trained to believe in the superiority of Allah and to demand their supposedly justifiable rights by terrorist attacks around the globe.

Moreover, the incessant infuse of religious tension, economic deficiency, corruption and political instability accounted for severe forms of terrorist activity. Institutional flaws and oppressive governance have provided a societal context highly favorable to political violence and extremism from terrorist groups.

All these diverse expressions of terrorist aggression have profoundly impacted stability in Africa. The polarization of ethnic and religious identity has led to highly conflict-ridden societies, which are incompetent to develop institutional structures for non-violent coexistence in the context of religious independence and political stability. Indicative examples are Algerian terrorist groups, such as the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which over the last two decades have thoroughly destroyed much of the fundamental social foundation holding the country together. Finally, terrorism has remarkably discouraged foreign investment and tourism.

Learn more about this author, Christina Pomoni.
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