Successful discourses of fear and truths

The US-inspired War on Terror and Africa

Roos Keja

Course: Development and Social Change

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Ir. G. E. Frerks

Leiden, 27 January 2008

Introduction

Since the attacks on the Twin Towers on the 9th of September 2001, the United States has
declared war on terrorism and a discourse is built around this to justify US interventions in
the internal affairs of other nations. In a speech on 20 September 2001, Bush announced: “Our
war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist
group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.” (White House 2001). Where wars
used to be declared to one or more nations, this war is declared to terrorism. One of the main
difficulties with this is that it is not located in a specific area; terrorists can be everywhere.
This has given the US a mandate to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, and to pump billions of
dollars in extended counter-terrorism programmes throughout the world. With the
implementation of these programmes, the power of the US in the internal affairs of various
nations has expanded considerably. In this paper, I will discuss the aims of the US-led
discourse on terror and the consequences this has in Africa, particularly in the Sahel region.
As will be shown, there are reasons to believe that the discourse is designed by the US
merely to cover up its real interests: securing natural resources.
Firstly I will discuss the concept of ‘discourse’ and subsequently link this to the ongoing
‘discourse of fear’ produced by the US. The power of this discourse is demonstrated in the
surge of programmes like the Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative. Then I discuss the
issue of Islamic schools, that are increasingly being seen as ‘breeding schools for terrorism’.
Does this valuation have an effect on the Islamic populations of the Sahel, are there any
strong counter-discourses being created? The general question that evolves, is what the
consequences are of the discourse of fear for the population of the Sahel.

A US production: the powerful discourse of fear

In the social sciences, a discourse is considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking.

Doorman and Nauta (2003: 184) give the following definition:

The speaking of a certain group on a certain level, with which the group structures reality and
(implicitly) establishes what it takes for morality and truth.

Foucault was one of the first to introduce the concept in the social sciences in the 1970s, and
underlined the link between discourse and power. A discourse can be seen as a network of
written and spoken words that is used to ‘explain’ reality, with its own logics and system.
Effects of truth are produced within discourses, which are themselves neither true or false.

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The representation of reality is turned to the advantage of the group that is in control of the
discourse (Foucault 1980: 118). A hegemonic, dominant discourse usually comes with one or
more counter-discourses, which are alternative representations of reality that oppose the
dominant discourse. The United States, being largely in control of the discourse on terrorism,
is shaping reality to its own advantage.
This discourse on terrorism, a ‘discourse of fear’ as I would like to call it, has a lot of
influence in the daily life of millions of people around the world. Fear means power; if a
government can make its citizens very afraid of the invisible danger that surrounds them,
they will accept all kinds of government interventions to let this danger disappear. This is
what is happening in the US; laws that affect the privacy of individuals have been enacted
with the aid of this discourse.
A good example of this are the increased safety measures on airports. At Hartsfield-
Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, all passengers are obliged to take off their
shoes when passing through security check, leave a finger print and have a photo taken of
them. When one wants to have liquids in their hand luggage, these should not exceed 100 ml
and are to be put in a transparent plastic bag. These security measures are supported by
different announcements, that can be interpreted as a linguistic part of the discourse. Five
different announcements were registered at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on 16
January 2007, as showed in the table. The texts are not registered word by word, but the
message is captured.

Message Time interval Voice

Department of Homeland Security remembers Every 15 minutes Neutral man’s voice
you that the present state is Code Orange
For security measures, liquids are only Every 15 minutes Neutral man’s voice
allowed in a transparent plastic bag
Please watch your belongings and report Every 10 minutes Neutral man’s voice
unattended luggage and suspicious persons
immediately to the closest security officer
Smoking is not allowed at this airport Every 10 minutes Neutral woman’s voice
Help us keep the airport clean Every 30 minutes Happy man’s voice

Every two to four minutes one of these messages is played. This means that being at the
airport for only 15 minutes, one will have heard three different versions of the message of
insecurity. The word ‘terrorism’ does not resound, but it slips into the unconsciousness of the

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people. It is interesting to note that the three safety messages are voiced by a man, while the
more neutral message that smoking is prohibited is voiced by a woman. The last message is
even accompanied by music, which reinforces the harmless-ness of this message. It would be
logical to conclude that one or more persons have thoroughly thought about the design and
the broadcasting of these messages.
The power of discourse is enormous; institutions that know how to influence the thoughts
and actions of others will become more powerful. If they are more successful than other
institutions, they ‘win’ and can push their agenda further to their best interest. Going back to
Foucault, who stated that no discourse is untrue; I will argue that the discourse of fear, that
cannot be untrue, is indeed supported with untruths.

Untruths and interests in the discourse of fear

Worldwide, 42 groups are labelled as terrorist organisations, most of them being Islamic
groups. One of them is the Algerian ‘Groupe Salafiste Pour la Prédication et le Combat’
(GSPC) that appears to be active in the Sahel region (Office of Counterterrorism 2005). The
Pan-Sahel Initiative, recently renamed the Trans-Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative, is the
result of ‘evidence’ found of the activity of Islamic terrorist movements, notably the GSPC, in
the Sahel. Since 2004, it has provided training and equipments to Niger, Mali, Chad and
Mauritania. The programme has been expanded to include Nigeria, Senegal, Morocco,
Algeria, and Tunisia, and its budget has been increased from a modest US$6 million to
between US$350 million and US$400 million per year. It has also been provided with more
troops and sophisticated surveillance (Kane 2007: 8).
In an excellent article, Jeremy Keenan (2007) describes the untruths that have been
deliberately created by Algerian and US intelligence services in the hostage drama that took
place in the Algerian desert in 2003. 32 German tourists were allegedly taken hostage by the
GSPC, led by a man named El Para. The tourists were released after a few months, after the
payment of 5 million euros ransom by the German government, that has always been
reluctant to admit this. The terrorists are said to have been chased by the Algerian army from
Algeria to Mali, across Niger to Chad. Most of them were said to be killed during a fight in
the Tibesti Mountains. El Para appears to have fled, was captured and transferred to
Algerian authorities and sentenced to life imprisonment. Keenan (2007: 32-41) describes in
detail that there is no evidence that all of this has really happened, except for the launch of
the Pan-Sahel Initiative and the capturing of 32 hostages. For instance, no traces have been
found of the fight in the Tibesti Mountains, not even one cartridge case. About 3000 articles

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have been produced about these events, which can be considered as the outer layer of the
very powerful discourse (Ibid.). A question that comes to mind immediately is ‘why’? What
are the underlying reasons for Algeria and the United States to invent things that have never
happened and what are the consequences?
The innate reason behind the entire US foreign policy has since long been the reassurance
and protection of its own interests. Since the end of the Second World War, the US has
adopted a ‘strategy of openness‘, which consists mainly of promoting worldwide free trade
in goods and services, unhindered by government-imposed restrictions (Bacevich 2002).
There are many arguments that this trade is not as free as it seems and has had an adverse
effect on the lives of millions of people (Willett 2005: 576).
It looks as if the US are securing natural resources all around the planet, under the pretext
of the War on Terror. In South America for instance, a US army base is installed at the Triple
Border, located between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil. The Triple Border has been defined
as ‘the center of Middle Eastern terrorism in South America’ and ‘a community under the
influence of extreme Islamic beliefs’ with Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda all training on the
spot. Funny enough, arguably the biggest reservoir of fresh, potable water in the world is
located right under the soil of the Triple Border (Escobar 2006).
Nigeria, the biggest petroleum producer on the African continent and the provider of one-
fifth of all US oil imports, has recently been included in the Trans-Saharan Counter
Terrorism Initiative (Willett 2005: 586). Arguably, Islamic terrorist activities are reported
wherever there is a good amount of natural resources. Of course, the discourse of terrorism
is provided with strategies to eliminate the sources of Islamic terrorism. For instance, Islamic
schools, where children learn to recite and memorise the Koran, are now considered to be
amongst the breeding grounds for terrorism. Let us have a closer look at the valuation of
Koranic schools in the Sahel.

Breeding grounds for terrorist activities?

The US Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (Dean 2004: 6) argues that ‘major social,
economic and attitude problems throughout the Muslim world’ have been coming together
to ‘form powerful emotional and intellectual trends contributing to Muslim extremism’. A
part of the strategy of governments and NGO’s alike to fight this ‘objectionable’
development, is to promote programs of modern secular education ‘designed to counteract
the negative effects of some fundamentalist Islamic schools in spreading a message of violent
hatred’ (Dean 2004: 6). Apart from ‘attitude problems throughout the Muslim world’, it is of

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course worrisome that fundamentalist ideas of hatred and violence are apparently being
spread in some Islamic schools. What is even more worrisome, is the implicit consequence
that these ideas could be spread in all Islamic schools throughout the world. Wherever there
are Muslims, there is Islamic education; Muslims have to learn at least the verses of the
Koran that are obligatory to recite during their prayers. If Koranic education becomes
suspect, it seems like there is a lot of work to do, not only in Pakistan and Iran, but also in the
Sahel and even in a French or Dutch neighbourhood, just around the corner.
Following Hunt (2007: 2) of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, conservative
Islam appears to have solidified in the Sahel by the ‘external sponsorship of mosques,
religious schools, and scholarships for locals to study religion in countries such as Saudi
Arabia and Iran’. This influence has apparently been particularly evident in countries that
lack a strong central government or that have a less rigidly doctrinal tradition of Islam, including
Mauritania and Nigeria. She goes on to argue that support for Al Qaeda’s message has
grown ‘exponentially’. What is interesting about this, is that countries with a strong
conservative Islamic influence, like Iran, are perceived to be dangerous to ‘the free world’,
but now, countries with a weak influence of conservative Islam have also become dangerous.
In Senegal, a country where 90 to 95 percent of the population is estimated to be Muslim,
Islamist extremism does not seem to have a great influence until now. Senegalese are of
course aware of the discourse of the War on Terror and the negative ideas about Muslims.
More than once, people explained to me that African Muslims are no terrorists, but the Arabs
are more aggressive, and that Arabs are indeed terrorists. When doing research among
Koranic schools in the third largest city of Senegal in spring 2005, I as a white woman mainly
encountered hospitality. Only two Koranic teachers asked me to explain why Christians do
not accept Mohammed as a prophet, while Muslims do accept the existence of Jesus.
In general, Muslims in Senegal live together in harmony with other religious minorities
and different groups respect each other. In recent years, some have converted to a more
conservative Islam. Main differences in their behaviour are the conscious avoidance of body
contact with the other sex and women wearing the hijab veil. This is accepted but the burqua
is considered ‘too much’. The account of Mamadou is telling: ‘I saw three girls walking here
in Dakar, completely covered in black, I could not even see their face, nothing, they are caged
like an animal. This is crazy, how can they live like this!’1 This sustains the argument of Kane
(2007: 9), that Salafi jihadism and Islamic extremism have not been particularly successful in
sub-Saharan countries, though they did spread in a few Muslim countries of the Middle East.

1
Informal conversation in Dakar, 27 October 2007.

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However, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO 2005: 13) designates the entire
Sahel region as ‘potentially vulnerable to Islamist terrorist groups, due to its vast, low
density geography, nomadic populations, and porous borders’. The GAO advices the state to
give development assistance and expand public diplomacy campaigns in order to counter
the perceived danger of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. In the next section, the
consequences of this assistance and campaigns on the population of the Sahel is examined.

Consequences for African states and their citizens

One of the counter-discourses To the dominant discourse of the War on Terror deals with the
sordid question why African states like Algeria accept, take over and help to create a
discourse that brings into discredit a part of their citizens. People that take on this counter-
discourse want to show the adverse effects of the War on Terror, not only for local people
but for political stability throughout the world.
There are several reasons of African governments to accept programmes like the Trans-
Saharan Counter Terrorism Initiative. These programmes bring poverty reduction and
education, the training of military personnel and the supply of national armies with modern
army material, things that the majority of the African states is lacking. Tyson (2005) for
instance describes Chadian soldiers wearing flip flops or even nothing on their feet. Of
course when the opportunity is there, African governments will welcome aid to strengthen
their army and put up with the security measures. Even more so, African countries are not in
a favourable position of contradicting the US; if they do not accept this conditional aid, they
do not receive anything at all.
A more important reason for heads of states to embrace the discourse on terror and to act
upon this, is that they can use this to consolidate their power. Keenan (2007: 46-47) argues
that all the governments that have received US support to fight presumed terrorist factions
in their country, have actually seized the opportunity to oppress their citizens even more.
They ‘used the pretext of the war on terror to strengthen their security establishments, target
legitimate political opponents as Islamists or terrorists, and provoke rebellion amongst
ethnic minorities’. So instead of bringing security and stability, the US intervention has
increased the political instability and insecurity of the entire region (Ibid.). Willett (2005: 587)
presents a gloomy picture of the new world order:

The hypocrisy of world leaders that have co-opted a language of humanitarian principles,
yet violate the same principles in prosecuting their ‘war on terror’ have produced a

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 ‘backlash’ of anti-Westernism which provides a powerful incentive for marginalised and
aggrieved groups to use terror as an instrument of asymmetric warfare. This is the new
global disorder in which barbarism is writ language.

African terrorism, if it is there, is internal. Willett (2005: 577) describes the widening of
income inequalities and social injustice as a major cause of tension and conflict in African
countries. That many dissatisfied citizens in Africa are Muslims has nothing to do with their
grief. By taking on this discourse of terrorism, local malcontent about local situations is
transformed into an international issue. This can only make matters worse; the result of the
stigmatization of groups will be their radicalization. This will become a self-fulfilling
prophecy and in this way the US and some African governments have created their much
wanted international terrorists (Keenan 2007; Willett 2005).

Conclusions

As has become clear, no one can escape the discourses that are fabricated and acted upon by
different groups of people. It is important to be aware of the existence of different discourses
and of the fabrics that they are made of, especially if a discourse is so powerful that it affects
the lives of millions of people. One discourse is not more true than another, but as Keenan
(2007) has shown, the discourse of the War on Terror is partly constructed on lies and
unproved assumptions. This is not only problematic for international politics, but also for
normal people trying to live their lives. The influence of the discourse of fear is so big that a
Tuareg herding cows in the Algerian desert can soon call himself a terrorist. It is then only a
few steps away to put the label ‘terrorist’ on a child that is trying to recite the Koran.
As we have seen, the US has a giant interest in promoting its War on Terror; natural
resources. Its discourse provokes fear in its citizens and in the world gives the US
government a pretext to militarize different regions of the world, of which the Sahel is but
one. There is evidence that the US is securing its access to natural resources, notably oil, and
covers up its activities by inventing the existence of dangerous terrorist movements. There is
no verification of independent sources that international terrorist movements are indeed
active in the Sahel. However, there is enough reason to believe that US activities have led to
more instability and insecurity for the local populations. This leaves us with the distressing
sensation that the construction of Bush’s War on Terror has only just begun.

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