No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

This study investigates the terror groups Boko Haram and Abu Sayyaf. The study starts with the Islamic history in both Nigeria and The Philippines in order to get a broader picture and understanding of the subject. The purpose with this research paper is to study the radicalization process of these two movements listed above. To study the radicalization process of these two movements I will be using Eitan Y Alimi, Chares Demetriou and Lorenzo Bosi, relational, dynamics and process analytical framework. The question this thesis is trying to answer is how these two social movements eventually became two notorious terror organizations. This research paper is carried out as a comparative case study in order to find similarities and differences between the two cases so it can be generalized. The research paper also applies the method of abduction. The findings show that there are many similarities between Boko Haram as well as many differences. But also that specific political decisions made by the governments in both countries helped to further radicalize Boko Haram and Abu Sayyaf.

Magister Legum - LLM / This paper will explore the history of the outbreak of religious related violence in Nigeria and the response of Nigeria and the African Union to the acts of the Boko Haram group both legally and procedurally. The intervention of the ICC as a viable option to combat the scourge of the group will also be examined. Other options such as trial in the Court of third States under the principle of universal jurisdiction and a special court jointly facilitated by the States involved will also be assessed.

The thesis focuses on the phenomenon of Boko Haram in Nigeria, attempting to give an understanding of the group based on the academical analysis that has been elaborated through time. A contextualisation of the movement’s evolution introduces two cases of study, currently under scholars’ scrutiny: the birth of the splinter-cell Ansaru and the Chibok kidnapping. The work is integrated by on-going debates among scholars and the most recently published contributions to the research.

There is a need to address current military strategies to defeat the resilience of the Boko Haram Terrorist (BHT) group. The purpose of this qualitative study was to provide a counter-ideology framework as an alternative strategy to defeat the group. The relational/vengeance and relative deprivation theories provided the theoretical foundation for the study, and the research question addressed the extent to which counter-ideology strategies can be instituted to defeat the BHT group. Data were collected through semi structured interviews from 20 participants who were Muslim clerics, community leaders, and military personnel, and data were analyzed using Nvivo software. The themes for the study were developed using a content analysis approach. The findings indicated that the resilience of Boko Haram was due to the group's ability to maintain an ideological consistency with the extreme version of Jihadi-Salafism. Thus, there is a need to develop an effective reconciliatory national security strategy that is focused on counter-ideology policies to augment the ongoing military strategy. Given that counter-ideology offers a nonmilitary counterterrorism approach, it can deescalate the security situation in Northeast Nigeria, which can lead to socioeconomic benefits for the youth in Nigeria.

Within the civil war literature, state-rebel relationships are traditionally understood as strictly contentious. However, empirical observations suggest that the two contending parties are not always in a state of total war and their collaboration is possible. Conceived in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, this study contributes to a greater understanding of state-rebel interactions during crises and seeks to explain why some rebel groups cooperate with state-led crisis response operations while the others obstruct. I propose that the nature of rebels’ political goals determine their behaviour vis-à-vis the state. The period of time after a disaster presents a window for rebels to strategically calculate and balance the costs and benefits of collaboration with the state. More specifically, I argue that the more transformative the rebel group’s goals are, the less likely the group will collaborate with the state for crisis relief. A structured comparative case study of the Taliban and Boko Haram lends preliminary support to the hypothesis. As one of the first to examine state-rebel relationships during the Covid-19 pandemic, the study invites future research to rethink how to accurately conceptualise and explain the diverse and puzzling interactions between states and rebels.

Boko Haram (BH) insurgency is driven by Islamist ideology and hegemony, nurtured mainly on failed education and sociopolitical policies and less by economic realities in Nigeria. Military counterinsurgency (hard COIN) successes are necessary but not sufficient to neutralize resurgence. The framework for this study was behavior modification by targeted holistic education policy (THEP) over ruminated frustration-aggression of drive theory. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to conduct a survey of educated participants (N = 95), randomly selected from education campuses in Nigeria, to estimate the power (relationship) of THEP over time to neutralize BH resurgence (NBHR). The data from a survey developed for this study were analyzed with descriptive, ANOVA, ANCOVA, and MANCOVA statistics. The powers of THEP applied from nursery through college (age 21) to NBHR or reduce the foot soldiers'€™ recruitment pools (FSRP) and correlations were evaluated. All 7 regression models rejected the null hypotheses. THEP and covariables including illiteracy (IL), political conspiracy (PC) or Islamic hegemony (IH), religious extremism (RE), and economic realities (ER) were related to NBHR. PC correlated inversely with THEP and IL inversely with reducing FSRP. ER had the least impetus (power) to drive resurgence. The results of this study can be used to promote positive social change by providing information on the prospects (estimated power) of THEP, acting with other COIN measures, to NBHR. The study may contribute to a better understanding of the impetus and solution to BH resurgence, but calls for further investigation into the power of nonmilitary COIN, particularly THEP, in Nigeria.

explains the reasons behind Boko Haram's unconventional tactic of kidnapping uses abductees as 'human bombs' Boko Haram's unconventional Kidnapping for at Boko Haram's martyrdom concept must have failed Overall, this dissertation concludes that Boko Haram's Kidnapping

This study assesses the problem of youth radicalization and violent extremism in the northeast region of Nigeria. The study aimed to identify and explain the major factors that make these youths in the region vulnerable to the radical ideologies of Boko Haram, how these factors have interacted and resulted in them being sympathetic to terrorism in the region or being actively involved in the act. With these factors in mind, the study also aimed to critically access the government’s non-militarized response to violent extremism in order to ascertain whether or not these factors that have lured the youths into violent extremism in the first place have been taken into consideration in the design and implementation of such programs. Designed as a case study, the study relies on secondary data for its analysis and finds that poverty, unemployment, illiteracy, the almajeri system of Islamic education, and strong religious beliefs have been major risk factors for radicalization in the region. Also, findings show that the government’s deradicalization programs are flawed in their design and implementation, do not aim to address the root causes of radicalization into extremism, and give preferential treatment to repentant terrorists at the expense of the actual victims. I conclude by arguing that deradicalization in the region is in some way having a counter-effect (serving as an incentive for people to get radicalized into extremism) and also recommend further research on this with a possible comparative focus on other deradicalization programs in the country, past and present.

There is currently a knowledge gap in terrorism research and in peace and conflict studiesregarding whether international news media use gender normative language when reporting onfemale and male suicide bombers in three different Islamic terrorism contexts. The contexts areAl-Qaeda, the Islamic State and Boko Haram. This thesis aims to highlight how internationalnews media use a language that reinforces gender norms through their portrayal of female andmale suicide bombers in the three mentioned Islamic terrorist contexts. Therefore, this thesisaims to analyze and compare a limited number of news media articles. To achieve the purposeof the study, a discourse analysis combined with a feminist post-structuralist theoreticalframework via Gentry and Sjoberg's (2015) narratives “mother, monster, and whore”, has beenused as a lens to examine the language use of news media. The study shows that the languageused by international news media reinforces gender norms and creates power relations betweenwomen and men who commit suicide bombing. Furthermore, these results may have policyimplications in terms of suboptimal efforts to combat Islamic terrorist efforts by women.