By James Hall
If the heating and drying effects of global warming are not reversed, areas of northern, eastern and southern Africa will be unfit for normal human life. As they are doing in Libya’s wastelands, terror groups will move in, undaunted by the physical hardships.
In the cosmology of the fanatical Islamic militant, even the grand caliphate envisioned by fundamentalist groups and under which they will subjugate all human society is not meant to be paradise on earth. True paradise comes in the afterlife, they believe, and earthly imperfection is to be endured. For that reason, al-Shabaab has no qualms operating out of parched and backward rural lands in Somalia, and the Islamic State (ISIS) is happy to have a foothold in North Africa in Libya’s desert wilderness
Photo courtesy Stephen Morrison/Flickr
Of course, the real reason for those jihadist groups’ occupation of areas largely unoccupied because they are harsh and inhospitable, is that the governing authority of the countries that these groups invade will probably not be actively enforced in those wastelands. This can be witnessed at the start of 2016 in Libya, where rival governments which have taken the first steps toward a reunified country by signing a UN plan to end their disputes have been unable to police the vast country during the political schism. In Somalia, government is unable to secure the capital Mogadishu without the presence of African Union (AU) peacekeepers.
As global warming renders more areas of Africa unfit for farming, commercial development and normal daily life, the locations in which terror groups might thrive expands. There is a further effect of climate change that benefits terror groups: rising temperatures wreak economic destruction, drying up farms, causing water and power crises that inhibit commercial and industrial activities, thereby increasing unemployment. A growing population of poor people will contain the seeds of jihadist expansion by creating reserves of jobless, idle young people, the very profile of an insurgency recruit.
The 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21) held in Paris in December 2015 was attended by high-ranking government officials from all African countries. Like the rest of the conferees, the Africans focused on the economic and humanitarian effects of global warming. However, the security danger posed by rising temperatures should not be overlooked. From food riots when agricultural production is compromised to military confrontations over shrinking water resources and contested territories, global warming inspires several threatening scenarios for conflict in Africa. Amongst these is the way that climate change benefits terrorist organisations.
This article is extracted from the January 2016 edition of IOA’s Africa Conflict Monitor (ACM) –. The essential +70 page monthly report that dissects conflict developments and trends across the African continent to guide businesses, governments, academics and other stakeholders in Africa’s growth and stability.
Current ACM subscribers include AFGRI, AngloAmerican, BP, CNN International, eNCA, Halliburton, IBM, KPMG, MSF, various international government departments and major universities around the globe, ranging from UCT here in South Africa to MIT in Boston, USA.
Areas of Africa made vulnerable to terrorism takeovers by climate change
Politics and not global warming has allowed ISIS to occupy the town of Sirte on the Mediterranean coast and less populous areas further to the south. International awareness of ISIS’ acquisition of more territory in Libya in the absence of any national army to effect a counter-insurgency grew acute in December 2015, as did diplomatic pressure exerted on the country’s two rival parliaments to accept a UN-brokered national reunification blueprint. ISIS will likely be expelled from Sirte, although possibly not before the obliteration of the nearby Roman ruins at Sabratha that the jihadists took on 12 December 2015 with the stated intention of destroying another UNESCO World Heritage Site.
However, ISIS may lose such battles only to win the longer war against modernity due to a poignant irony: modern lifestyles depend on the burning of fossil fuels that create emissions that are warming the planet, making desert areas like those in Libya more uninhabitable for any people but fanatic groups like ISIS. A reunified Libya will establish a functioning military to take territories back from ISIS in the short term. Yet, ISIS thinks in terms of millennia, calling its Western opponents “crusaders” as if the militaries aligned against them were continuing the epic battle of cultures of one thousand years ago. By 2050, at present rate of ecological damage wrought by global warming and if the COP21 agreements prove ineffective, vast sections of the Sahara Desert will be wastelands not worth governing. The fertile portions of the Sahel will shrink in size as the Sahara pushes southward. These areas will also be undesirable for residency, unsuitable for other uses and impossible for agriculture. As isolated areas, they will be ideal for jihadist training camps.
In Somalia, al-Shabaab jihadists have had to prove their credentials as desert survivors. Before their expulsion from the coastal town Kismayo by the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) by 2012, al-Shabaab fighters were in the habit of commandeering the finest houses for their use, driving showy vehicles paid for with proceeds from piracy off the Horn of Africa, enjoying the companionship of local beauties and otherwise living the high life. Such decadence has largely ceased, and al-Shabaab has adapted to enable its forces to thrive in rural lands. While still occupying some coastal areas, the militants controlled large sections of Somalia in January 2016 and have proved formidable opponents for AMISOM. As Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamoud noted, “Al-Shabaab has been battered relentlessly … but it has not been annihilated. It has scuttled off and is now hiding in dark areas, out of sight for the moment but desperate to reassert itself.”
In fact, judging by relentless attacks on AMISOM targets in Mogadishu, carried out seemingly at will, al-Shabaab has not been in hiding by any means, but has shown recuperative ability. Given any deterioration as a result of global warming in the arid country in decades ahead, the militants will gladly take over abandoned territories, and utilise these areas as bases.
Semi-arid nations along the Sahel, as well as Ethiopia and Sudan, face land degradation due to global warming. As these areas are abandoned, permanent police posts will also disappear because there will be no residents whose safety must be secured. Rather, when militant groups move into the caves, mountain crevices and abandoned buildings, security can only be maintained with anti-insurgency military engagements and the establishment of permanent military posts. The cost of such efforts may prove difficult to carry for nations economically devastated by climate change effects.
Several Southern African nations with arid or semi-arid climates face the prospect of losing great swathes of territories to global warming. Botswana and Madagascar are the largest of these, but small nations like Lesotho and Swaziland face the same fate. Jihadism reportedly taking root in South Africa, whose history of harbouring radical Muslim factions with anti-Western agendas dates back to the fall of apartheid in the 1990s, would send forth militants to occupy areas destroyed by desertification. Poor nations faced with unprecedented social havoc wrought by global warming’s effects on their countries’ economies and food production may not have the resources to expel the newcomers, or feel the price in bloodshed and spent capital worth the effort.
Global warming seeds conditions where jihadist recruits multiply
The issue of social collapse due to climate change is a nightmare scenario not far from the minds of those forecasting the ultimate effects of global warming. Social disintegration is easier to achieve when a country is already a fragile state, as is the case in Africa in Eritrea, Libya, Somalia and elsewhere.
A World Bank report released in November 2015 forecast that if the world’s countries do not create and pursue policies to reduce greenhouse gases that are responsible for global warming, an additional 100 million people will be added to the ranks of the impoverished by 2030. Africa’s island nations will not be completely immersed by rising ocean levels by 2030, but their fishing and tourism sectors would be devastated. Storms made larger and more destructive by a rise in temperatures will have a negative impact on agriculture, transportation and other industries. From farmers unable to cultivate increasingly marginalised land to workers at tourism enterprises dependent on African flora or fauna decimated or made extinct by global warming, the effect on employment as Africa’s population increases will be profound. The World Bank notes that Africa’s poor are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change on the continent because, historically, the poor have suffered most from crop failures and concomitant food price hikes, storm damage from extreme weather and weather-related diseases. A few weeks earlier, the World Bank projected that the number of people living in poverty in 2030 is expected to drop to 9.6% of the world’s population, down from 12.8% in 2012. However, that forecast is dependent on several factors, and can be undermined if the adverse effects of rising temperatures are not mitigated and reversed.
Amongst the impoverished will be youth, and those sufficiently resentful that their ambitions have been thwarted and their potential to achieve meaningful and prosperous lives has been frustrated will find motivation to fall to jihadist enticements. They may not actually believe that 72 virgins await them if they martyr themselves – no poll has ever been conducted with present or former jihadists to ascertain their true acceptance of this promise – but any type of activity for a cause is preferable to the demoralising grind of poverty-compelled idleness. Resentful, impoverished youth look for individuals and institutions to blame for their wasted lives. They can be induced into a cultural/religious war if told they are victims with an obligation to avenge their victimhood. Global warming will create a larger number of potential jihadist recruits by creating millions more hungry, impoverished Africans.
This article is extracted from the January 2016 edition of IOA’s Africa Conflict Monitor (ACM) –. The essential +70 page monthly report that dissects conflict developments and trends across the African continent to guide businesses, governments, academics and other stakeholders in Africa’s growth and stability.
Current ACM subscribers include AFGRI, AngloAmerican, BP, CNN International, eNCA, Halliburton, IBM, KPMG, MSF, various international government departments and major universities around the globe, ranging from UCT here in South Africa to MIT in Boston, USA.
Global warming as a security threat to Africa
Climate change in Africa should be seen not solely as an economic and humanitarian dilemma. The security of individual African countries can affect regional and even continental security. Furthermore, in an inter-connected world where European recruits to jihadist movements train in Africa and return to their home countries with their deadly acquired skills, Africa, with its indigenous terror groups like al-Shabaab and Nigeria’s Boko Haram, is a contributor to the ranks of terror group antagonists. Wherever poverty and inequality is widespread, the resentment of populations can be stoked by religious fanaticism.
While continent-wide efforts have succeeded in raising the percentage of Africans living in the middle class, these efforts will be reversed through the economic damage wrought by global warming. COP 21 addresses the source of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions. Terrorism as one consequence of global warming was not discussed with the same prominence as rising sea levels and mass extinctions. For Africa, long plagued by insurgencies, the malady of rising temperatures and the concomitant strengthening of terror groups is a serious long-term concern.
James Hall, Founding Editor of the Africa Conflict Monitor (ACM) and critically acclaimed author, columnist and filmmaker, pioneered insider coverage and analysis of Africa, in Africa, with six books and thousands of articles and news stories for publications worldwide.