African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
Politics
Home›African Arguments›Politics›Northwest Africa kidnap claims by new groups suggest growing competition for ransoms – By Exclusive Analysis

Northwest Africa kidnap claims by new groups suggest growing competition for ransoms – By Exclusive Analysis

By Uncategorised
December 16, 2011
1907
0

AQIM hostages captured in 2010 in Niger

In December 2011 two new groups claimed responsibility for kidnaps in northwest Africa. On 7 December, the Mauritanian ANI news agency said it had received a video from a group called ‘al-Qaeda in Nigeria’, showing a British engineer kidnapped on 12 May 2011 in Birnin Kebbi, near Nigeria’s border with Niger. On 10 December a second new group called ‘Monotheism and Jihad in West Africa’ contacted ANI to claim responsibility for the kidnap of three European NGO workers from the Tindouf refugee camp in western Algeria in November 2011.

Up until now al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been the only Islamist group involved in kidnap in this region. It has successfully secured multi-million dollar ransoms and prisoner releases for a string of Western tourists, diplomats, and NGO workers captured in Mauritania, Mali, Niger and Algeria, via its network of negotiators in northern Mali. Most recently, it claimed responsibility for the kidnap in Mali of two French nationals near Hombori on 24 November 2011, and of three European tourists in Timbuktu on 25 November 2011. Its success has increased the incentive for unaffiliated individuals to capture hostages and sell them to AQIM. For instance, the captor of three Spanish aid workers in western Mauritania in November 2009 described himself as a ‘mercenary’ acting for AQIM.

This financial incentive is also likely driving the emergence of new groups hoping to emulate AQIM’s success. The Nigerian kidnap was probably originally motivated by local political concerns, as it targeted a government contractor company at the height of violent unrest in Nigeria’s Muslim north over the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan, a Christian southerner. The group probably thinks that use of the al-Qaeda name will increase its chances of getting a ransom, but there is no evidence of any connection between this group and AQIM or other established al-Qaeda affiliates. This Nigerian group, together with the apparently Western Saharan-focused Monotheism and Jihad in West Africa group, are likely to have less well-established negotiation networks and less ability than AQIM and its Tuareg cohorts to move around and hold hostages in the desert for long periods, heightening the risk that hostages will be killed if negotiations look set to fail. Competition between groups to acquire Western hostages, including journalists, NGO workers, and tourists, will also raise risks of collateral harm to hostages.

Exclusive Analysis is a specialist intelligence company that forecasts commercially relevant political and violent risks worldwide.

TagsN
Previous Article

‘Pray the Devil Back to Hell’ and ...

Next Article

African Election Map 2011 – 2012 – ...

Uncategorised

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Côte d'IvoirePoliticsThe Gambia

    Two presidents and an intervention: Gambia is not Côte d’Ivoire, but it can learn from it

  • Politics

    Would an arms embargo help end South Sudan’s civil war? – By James Copnall

  • Politics

    REVIEW: The Hard Road to Reform: the Politics of Zimbabwe’s Global Political Agreement — reviewed by Timothy Scarnecchia

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • Afrobeats: The birth of Afro-Adura
  • Sudan: How the generals disappeared the people on the way to the economy
  • Is a Peaceful Somalia Possible? Alternatives to Total War on Al-Shabaab
  • “Economic bondage”: E Africa farmers worry over what GMOs might mean
  • The unexpected success of Somalia’s new fight against Al Shabaab

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksSociety

How white are the newsrooms working on Africa? We asked them.

All the international outlets that responded agreed that diversity is important, but do they practice what they preach? International newsrooms that report on Africa are often full of white journalists, ...
  • Tunisia fake news decree threatens free speech

    Tunisia’s decree won’t stop fake news. It will stop free speech

    By Ines El Jaibi
    October 27, 2022
  • Rasha Mekky with her adopted son Mostafa. Credit: Rasha Mekky.

    “People said it’s haram”: Happy mums show reality of adoption in Egypt

    By Lara Reffat
    May 25, 2022
  • Africa coronavirus covid A woman in Mali wearing a mask. Credit: Photo: World Bank / Ousmane Traore.

    Africans don’t just live to die. A response to the New York Times.

    By Mamka Anyona
    January 8, 2021
  • african films

    Best of the 2010s: African films

    By Wilfred Okiche
    December 20, 2019

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.