Alexandra Bramsen
Govt 42
Jeremy Horowitz
June 5th, 2020
Paper 3 – Conflict of Al-Shabaab in Tanzania
Al-Shabaab is a Muslim insurgent force that originated from Somalia but has since spread its influence through out eastern Africa. It first came about around 2004 as Somalia’s state government collapsed (Crisis Group, 2018). It came to hold a lot of territory in Somalia but has since lost control of the major cities (Crisis Group, 2018). African Union forces (AMISOM) and its Somali allies have done much of the work to derail Al-Shabaab’s grip on Somalia and in recent years has delivered several blows taking out leaders (Bryden, 2015). However, it has continued to operate as a cohesive terrorist organization, despite its losses as an insurgent force (Bryden, 2015). Throughout East Africa there have been devastating major attacks like those in Kenya on Westgate Shopping Mall and Moi University (Bryden, 2015 and Crisis Group, 2018). It is considered a powerful terrorist threat but is not considered an insurgent opposition in most of East Africa.
Tanzania has a very mixed bag of Muslims, Christians, and traditional animists that for the most part co-exist and tolerate each other. The Muslim majority mostly presides upon the coast with centers on the islands, particularly Zanzibar (Lopez Lucia, 2015). Islam first came to Tanzania in the 13th century with the Arabic, particularly Sunni Shafi Arabs that follow Sufism, settlement, and creation of Swahili city states (Lopez Lucia, 2015). They came to control much of the trade and eventually established the Omani Sultanate in the mid-1800s (Lopez Lucia, 2015). With the colonialization of Tanganyika, the mainland, by Germany, in roads were created into the mainland that were used by Arabs and Swahilis to spread the religion (Lopez Lucia, 2015). Zanzibar became secluded using its Islamic culture and stronger affiliation to the Arab world over the African as a divisor creating an internal hierarchy perpetuated by later British rule (Lopez Lucia, 2015). Arabs were well educated so used in high up administrative positions, then Swahilis got the next level and finally Africans (Lopez Lucia, 2015). This division went so far as having separate mosques for each ethnic group (Lopez Lucia, 2015). However, this was also simultaneously disrupted by the favoring of local African chiefs’ governmentality by the British over the Arabic administration that cut off the spread of Islam (Lopez Lucia, 2015). An influx of Christian missionaries from the mid-19th century then established an educational system that came to be favored and eventually was attributed with the reversal of power from Muslims to Christians (Lopez Lucia, 2015).
Blame for persecution of Muslim community interestingly did not tend to fall upon other religious groups rather it fell on to the government. This was a result of the ‘Ujamaa’ government of brotherhood that was prompted by president Nyerere, a one-party socialist government that neutralized identity politics, keeping religious lines out of the mix (Lopez Lucia, 2015). Tanzania was considered to have a high amount of religious tolerance, although there were tensions that spiraled mostly out of the Muslim center of Zanzibar (Lopez Lucia, 2015).Zanzibar was its own independent state that was rule by an Arabic government until a violent uprising essentially lead to the unification with the Tanganyika mainland (Lopez Lucia, 2015). As a result, it has centralized radical Muslim politics especially with the move to multi-party elections (Lopez Lucia, 2015). Nyerere’s incumbent party is still in power, but protests in Zanzibar forced a coalition government in 2010 with the Muslim dominant party the Civic United Front (CUF) in an attempt to quell violent riots (Lopez Lucia, 2015). However, Zanzibaris have taken this as CUFs compliance and roused more radicalization (Lopez Lucia, 2015). This radicalization is sourced mostly from internal conflicts as the younger generation of Muslims have been moving away from ‘primitive’ Sufism towards what has been propagated as the more refined pure form of Islam that is very much anti-Sufism ( p.4 Lopez Lucia, 2015). The anti-Sufists have not risen to any dramatic form of political power but have invoked much more tension in recent years and have spiked violent hate assaults, particularly towards the government (Lopez Lucia, 2015). Radicalization does have other significant factors as well, such as the discrimination for education, socio-economic failings of the country, along with continued historical and geographical ties to the Arabic world (Lopez Lucia, 2015).
Violence as a part of religious rhetoric has grown in Tanzania since the 1990s. Smaller attacks have grown more frequent by BALUKTA and its other Islamic group rivals (Lopez Lucia, 2015). Mostly these were riots, acid attacks, a few targeted bombings, and other forms of violence in general concentrated around election times and in Zanzibar (Lopez Lucia, 2015). The exception to the magnitude of attacks was the al Qaeda orchestrated bombing of the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam in 1998, which accordingly has been dissociated from local players and pinned on foreign al Qaeda operatives (Lopez Lucia, 2015). With democratization, Muslim groups have had to compete fervently for socio-political space (Ramadhani, 2017). This has meant an escalation in violence, resulting in the assassination of religious and political leaders and acts of arson (Ramadhani, 2017). Muslim-Christian tensions are spiking as the state no longer is seen as a liable mediator and traditions of peace are being questioned (Ramadhani, 2017). Times of political and economic chaos has prompted the expression of grief and upset using religious means (Ramadhani, 2017).
Such stirrings of chaos and unrest has left Tanzania vulnerable to the meddling of outside parties in their sociopolitical forum. Al-Shabaab, as it has done in both Somalia and Kenya have exploited the grievances of the Islamic population in Tanzania and prompted the rise in organized terrorist attacks (Crisis Group, 2018). Tanzania, while socially not being considered much of a target held significant appeal for Al-Shabaab activity. Already existing militant allies were important in the continuation of Al-Shabaab as a group fleeing from its defeats in Somalia and serious crackdown from the Kenyan government (Gatsiounis, 2012). The external links out of Tanzania were through Kenya’s Al-Hijira, then to Somalia’s Al-Shabaab, which in turn had connections to Al-Qaeda and altogether made for a very complicated network of militant groups through out Eastern Africa (Lopez Lucia, 2015). Tanzania did not contribute to AMISOM and so allowed for the escape of former militants from Somalia into its relatively safer territory fostering a space where these groups could rebuild and branch out (Crisis Group, 2018). It has been noted that the home base of Tanzanian Al-Shabaab forces localized in the Pwani region, specifically the forests of the Rufigi district (Crisis Group, 2018). While only the Ansar Muslim Youth Center (AMYC or Ansar Sunni) expressly affiliated itself and its acts of terrorism with Al-Shabaab, it was believed that other militant groups had less explicit connections (Crisis Group, 2018). All this has meant that terrorist activity has been hard to label as either Al-Shabaab, independent local militant groups or an alternative influencer like Al-Hijira, but for the most part the US intelligence agencies attribute Al-Shabaab (Crisis Group, 2018).
Al-Shabaab involvement in militant groups in Tanzania has really ramped up the tensions and levels of violence in the most recent years. Groups have generally focused on minor attacks on government and Christian targets but have significantly increased the scale and frequencies of the violence (Crisis Group, 2018). 2013 was when this ignition of increasing animosity occurred with various outbursts of poorly coordinated militant action, like the acid attacks on British tourists and a clergyman (Crisis Group, 2018). Then 2015 it spiked again as they shifted to targeting larger towns and supposedly setting up sleeper cells (Crisis Group, 2018). In the surrounding areas of Pwani, it has been suggested that Muslim youths have been disappearing, only to go and join these militant groups as recruits (Crisis Group, 2018). Ruling party officials and leaders have also been kidnapped and beheaded by Al-Shabaab associates starting as far back as 2016 (Crisis Group, 2018). Finally, what was seen as a tipping point in the government’s eyes, by Kibiti there was a brutal ambush and murder of 8 police officers (Crisis Group, 2018). However violent the assaults have been, majority of the time it has not targeted large civilian spaces as has been the case with Kenya and Somalia (Crisis Group, 2018).
Since Tanzania is not the first country to have to deal with militant forces, like Al-Shabaab, its approach to the situation can take an educated stance which unfortunately has not been the case so far. Usually, Tanzanian government reactions to Muslim uprising and violence has only resulted in more violence, as with riots that were normally dispelled by armed police that would shoot at the protestors (Lopez Lucia, 2015). So unsurprisingly its reactions to Islamic terrorist organization in the country has seen little difference. Its first reactions in 2013 were to cover up the strikes and label them as bandit activity, invalidating their importance in the large scheme of national affairs (Crisis Group, 2018). This censorship continued and Tanzania held onto its esteem as a peaceful and religiously tolerant society, until the fateful 2017 police ambuscade that roused public outcry (Crisis Group, 2018). As a result, Magafuli, the ruling president, has demanded a military crackdown on Al-Shabaab force (Crisis Group, 2018). Many reports have come back to reveal that the special forces executing these orders might be abusing this power. Unidentified bodies have previously washed up on Coco Beach shores, Islamic leaders have disappeared and been arrested (Crisis Group, 2018). Furthermore, claims have been made that opposition party members have been arrested or killed under the pretense of the counter-terrorist operations (Crisis Group, 2018). While in general the Muslim population of Tanzania has leaned to be moderate and veered away from enforcing Sharia law and Jihad, the imprecise abusive government operations that further oppress an already marginalized and unhappy population could push them into Al-Shabaab’s rhetoric (Crisis Group, 2018). Tanzania should learn from Kenya’s mistakes and find a balance of opposing radicalization and respecting real Muslim hardships in the country (Gatsiounis, 2012). It is not too late, as Al-Shabaab has not gained a strong organized foothold just yet but will do so in the case the Muslim Tanzanians face further strife.
Works Cited
Al-Shabaab Five Years after Westgate: Still a Menace in East Africa. (2018, September 21). Retrieved June 5, 2020, from https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/horn-africa/kenya/265-al-shabaab-five-years-after-westgate-still-menace-east-africa
Bryden, M. (2015). The Decline and fall of Al-Shabaab? Think again. Available from : https://somalianews.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/bryden-decline-and-fall-of-al-shabaab-22v2015.pdf
Gatsiounis, I. (2012) After Al-Shabaab. Current Trends in Islamist Ideology. vol. 14, pp. 74-89.
Lopez Lucia, E. (2015). Islamist radicalisation and terrorism in Tanzania (GSDRC Helpdesk Research Report 1223). Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham. http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/hdq1223.pdf
Ramadhani, L. (2017). Religious Tolerance, Transnational Dynamics and the State in Tanzania. Tanzania Journal of Sociology, 2 & 3, 85–102. Retrieved from http://www.journals.udsm.ac.tz/index.php/tjsociology/article/view/1501