Double deficit of 'development' and 'democracy' as 'enabler' of violent extremism

"Without peace, development is not possible.” This is how a senior UN official, Cihan Sultanoðlu, Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Europe and the CIS (RBEC), prefaced her remarks during an international conference on “The Role of the Youth in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism” in Istanbul, Turkey, on October 20-21, 2016.

This epitomises the prevailing wisdom in international development agencies and governments that generally views the double deficit of “development” and “democracy” as the “enabler” of violent extremism.

In this context, Africa is on the tornado’s path, caught between two historic trajectories that are poised to collide.

On the one hand is the phenomenon of youth bulge, a stage in post-colonial development where many Africa countries have made tremendous success in reducing child mortality through relative progress in medical care and technology, but the fertility rate of the continent’s mothers remains high. About 40 per cent of the population in Africa is under 15 years, and nearly 70 per cent is under 30.

On the other hand is the proliferation of radical ideologies and movements as a mortal threat to African societies.

Since the opening of the 21st century, the number of deaths from terrorism have spiked from 3,329 in 2000 to 32,685 by 2014, 78 per cent of the deaths occurring in just five countries — Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria.

TRAGIC IMPACT

The impact of these violent movements on global peace is tragic. They have shattered what international relations scholars have christened as the “Long Peace” based on “Cold War stability” and post- Cold War democratisation. The “Long Peace” made possible the rise of countries such as China into superpower status.

This link between peace and development was canonised by the influential thesis, “Development is freedom,” which won Professor Amartya Sen, the Indian economist and philosopher, the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

Indeed, the development-freedom nexus inspired the devolution system in Kenya, hailed by the World Bank as a “quiet revolution” because of its immense potential to empower youth in historically marginalised and under-developed parts of Coastal, Rift Valley and NorthernKenya. Here, cross-border management initiatives are replacing conflict with development cooperation and sharing within and between previously rival communities across national boundaries.

Also driving the thinking on strategies to curb violent extremism is the idea that democracies seldom fight each other.

The democratic peace theory has fuelled the false belief that democracy produces peace. The truth is that democracy comes from peace; it does not produce it. Indeed, as political scientist, Eric Gartzke, aptly remarked, “democracy alone among domestic political systems requires peace as a prerequisite”.

Democracy is neither producing peace nor serving as an effective counterforce to violent extremism. The dichotomy between “good” (liberal) and “bad” (illiberal) democracies is beginning to resonate in Africa. Researchers argue that in “good democracies”, losers in political contests accept results, preferring defeat to the use of force or violence.

IN JEOPARDY

But where losers take up arms to enforce political success, democracy is in jeopardy. Certainly, were Donald Trump to reject the results of the November election, America’s democracy would be in jeopardy.

Fuelling the crisis of democracy and violent extremism is what Nigerian scholar, Peter Eke, theorised as the existence of “two publics in Africa” instead of one as in the West.

One is the “native sector” the primordial space of customs, moral obligations and notions of “ethnic citizenship.” The other is the “Westernised sector” as the amoral civic public were notions of rights and “civic citizenship” dominate.

Because of the existence of the two publics, the elite competing for state power lack critical consensus or compatible interests and are torn between pursuing the visions of “ethnic citizenship” and those of “civic citizenship”. As a result, losers in elections have refused to accept defeat on peaceful terms, instead retreating to ethnic spaces to reassert their political interests.

The dual crisis of development and democracy in Africa’s ethnically divided societies is emboldening the extremists to radicalise to violence.

Understanding the space of violent extremism is key to effectively countering the ideologies and strategies of extremists.

The sphere of violent extremism has two actors. One set of actors are the “owners of the war”, a tiny but determined group that controls the ideologies and the infrastructure of extremism as propagandists, planners, ideologues, recruiters, funders and who radicalise, recruit and incite young people to violence.

NOT SEAMLESS

The “owners of the war” are not seamless. In recent years, they come in four shades: International networks (al-Qaeda and ISIS); syndicates or cells of international networks (‘al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’ or AQIM); homegrown extremists (al-Shabaab, Lord’s Resistance Army, Boko Haram) and radicalised militias with links to terrorist groups.

The other actors are the “bearers of grievances” stemming from such factors as deprivation, poverty, unemployment, forced displacement, food insecurity, persecution, human rights violations and political marginalisation, who constitute the recruiting grounds for extremists. Young people are the majority in this category.

Paradoxically, progress wrought by globalisation is empowering the extremists as social media based on new technology provide space where a youth may make a financial donation, download extremist propaganda, enter a jihadi chat room, visit radical pages on Facebook or receive a message from twitter.

In this context, preventing and countering violent extremism, popularised by the UN secretary-general’s Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism (January 2016), is better understood as a strategy.

Prof Peter Kagwanja is chief executive, Africa Policy Institute and visiting scholar, Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies, University of Nairobi. This article is an excerpt of a paper presented in Istanbul, Turkey at the international conference Role of Youth in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism: Holistic Approaches from Education to De-radicalization.