Islamism and Its Enemies in the Horn of Africa (review)

The subject of this edited volume is militant Islamism, especially its neofundamentalist, jihadist variant in Northeast Africa. There are four contributors to this book, but its unifying vision is that of the editor, who wrote and coauthored five of the seven chapters. Drawing on his long-standing and critical engagement with local human-rights issues and activists and intellectuals from the region, he has produced a highly informative and insightful book of great relevance to current affairs.

After an introductory chapter explaining the book's focus, chapter 2, "On the Failure and Persistence of Jihad," by Abdel Salam and de Waal, traces the history of Sunni militant Islamism from Egypt's Sayyid Qutb (executed in 1964) onward. The authors focus on what they see as a neofundamentalist stage and brand of Islamism, which is even more authoritarian, anti-intellectual, intolerant, and anti-Western than its parent, and is characterized by a commitment to violent jihad. They associate this ideology with particular thinkers, including the chameleonlike and highly opportunistic Sudanese jurist Hasan al-Turabi. In spite of Turabi's oral and written rejection of such a neofundamentalist agenda, it is this ideology that has inspired and justified the violent excesses committed by Sudan's Islamist government in the civil war it has fought primarily against Sudan's south (and is still waging in Darfur). In Egypt, where the security forces suppressed a militant uprising in the 1990s, Mubarak's government has nevertheless gradually accommodated neofundamentalist Islamism to such an extent that cultural and intellectual life and many remaining political freedoms have been, and are being, violently stifled.

This analysis of the emergence of neofundamentalist Sunni Islamism forms the backdrop to the two core chapters of the book, both on the Sudan. Chapter 3, by de Waal and Abdel Salam, tells the story of how militant Islamism came to dominate the Sudanese government with the coup of 1989, and traces the consequences and excesses of this regime, including its brutal program of "comprehensive da'wa"—a totalitarian and ethnocidal experiment, if ever there was one—and its "civilizational project," based on a deeply racist and Arab-Islamic supremacist mind-set. Chapter 6 analyzes the foreign relations of Sudan's jihadist government in the region. Mengistu's Ethiopia and Museveni's Uganda were its implacable enemies, and all three regimes actively supported each other's domestic opposition movements, the SPLA in Sudan, the Eritrean EPLF in Ethiopia, and the LRA and ADF in Uganda; however, after the defeat of Mengistu's Ethiopia and, especially, the failed assassination attempt on President Mubarak in Addis Ababa in June 1995, Sudan's front-line states (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Rwanda) allied against the Sudan. Had they—and the United States—been quick enough, Sudan's Islamist government would have fallen right then, but the outbreak of war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in May 1998 caused the alliance to fall apart and ended Sudan's political isolation. Sudan's willingness to help the United States fight international Islamist terrorism has further remedied its international position.

Chapter 4, by Roland Marchal, deals with "Islamic Political Dynamics in the Somali Civil War." First produced for a conference in 2001, it is an important, but not fully successful, attempt at cataloguing Islamist movements in Somalia, especially al-Ittihad al-Islami and al-Barakat, the financial institution closed down by the United States after 9/11. Although Marchal acknowledges the reality—or is it the possibility?—of al-Ittihad's links to al-Qa'ida, especially in the East African embassy bombings of 1998, he argues that Islamism in Somalia does not have an autonomous power base and is subject to more powerful local political dynamics, such as those based on clan politics. This thesis is illustrated by two fascinating case-studies—based on fieldwork in challenging circumstances—of experiments with Islamic courts in northern and southern Mogadishu. Though Marchal's analysis of the civil war and the...