Chinese approaches to counterterrorism in Africa show complex interactions between state and nonstate actors
In this chapter of China and Conflict Mediation, Cobus van Staden analyzes Chinese counterterrorism activities in Africa, taking a close look at the role of nonstate actors. Van Staden assesses China’s approaches to terrorism on multiple levels, ranging from subnational to multilateral, and the role of Chinese nonstate actors like corporations.
China and Conflict Mediation Series
The China and Conflict Mediation series collects eight papers by senior experts on China’s evolving approach to conflict mediation around the world. Presenting case studies from four continents, each chapter examines the drivers, frameworks, and outcomes of China’s efforts to engage in conflict mediation. With analysis drawn from the historic context and current events that influence China’s decision to attempt mediation, this series provides insights into why China is increasingly active in this area, and what it means for China’s role in the international community.
Editor’s Note: Stimson invited Dr. Cobus van Staden, a scholar and journalist with extensive research on China’s relationships with African countries, to assess how China approaches counterterrorism on the continent. With his expertise on how China-Africa engagement has evolved, Dr. van Staden offers a compelling analysis of one of the most pressing issues in this relationship.
By Pamela Kennedy, Deputy Director, China Program
Introduction
Terrorism in Africa is escalating, with violent nonstate actors increasingly targeting civilians. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED) project estimates a rise in violent attacks against noncombatants on the continent from 381 in 2015 to 7,108 in 2020, with fatalities rising from 1,394 to 12,519.1 A prominent subset of these attacks has targeted Chinese-led projects and businesses on the continent.
There are concerns that crises like the ones in Israel and Ukraine are drawing security resources provided by traditional partners away from counterterrorism efforts in Africa.2 This is despite the wave of coups in West Africa that has driven renewed attention to security gaps in the region. Amid these worries, some stakeholders have raised the possibility of greater Chinese involvement in counterterrorism in Africa.
For example, at the 2021 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) ministerial meeting in Dakar, Senegal’s Foreign Minister Aїssata Tall Sall called on China to become more involved in African counterterrorism and regional peacemaking: “We would like China’s influence to be a strong voice in support of Senegal and all the countries involved in the problem of insecurity in the Sahel, so that our forces there have even more legal means to fight against terrorists and irredentism, and we hope that China will accompany us.”3 This call is arguably emblematic of a key framing of China’s possible future role in Africa’s peace and security landscape, in that it frames Chinese involvement as strengthening state capacity in Africa against the assaults from violent nonstate actors. Expectations for greater Chinese involvement in African antiterrorism have been bolstered by initiatives like 2022’s Horn of Africa peace conference, and China’s ongoing involvement in multilateral peacemaking efforts under the auspices of the United Nations.
China’s broader state-centric approach in Africa, one that has been overwhelmingly characterized by bilateral government-to-government engagement, also seems to point to this realist conception of counterterrorism as bolstering the legitimacy of the state against nonstate actors. However, a closer look at Chinese responses to the actions of violent nonstate actors in Africa reveals that Chinese actors frequently face a confusing slippage between terrorist and criminal violence that defies traditional conceptions of the two as distinct. Rather, the situation on the ground veers closer to what more recent research has labeled the crime-terrorism nexus, characterized by ideology-driven terror groups using criminal activity as a form of fundraising, while organized crime bodies employ violent crime both to stake a reputational claim and for profit.
Chinese actors—including state-owned and private corporations as well as individual entrepreneurs—find themselves increasingly targeted by both kinds of violent nonstate actors, increasing concern among Chinese government representatives and Chinese communities in Africa. There have in turn been calls from Chinese state representatives for greater involvement from African governments to ensure the safety of Chinese actors and assets in Africa. Although this arguably opens the door to closer state-state cooperation as mentioned above, a broader survey of recent Chinese counterterrorism activity in Africa reveals state-linked factors that complicate such an approach, most notably the blurring of lines between crime and terrorism on both sides of the relationship. This is an emerging issue receiving more attention in the African context, for example as shown by the UN’s launch of a dedicated project aimed at the nexus between terrorism and transnational organized crime in Africa, focusing on North and West Africa.4
This chapter examines the current extent of Chinese counterterrorism activities in Africa from a nonstate-centric perspective. By emphasizing the role of non-state actors in the context of low state capacity, it aims to explore some of the factors informing the limitations of Chinese counterterrorism approaches in Africa.
The chapter starts with a brief literature review contrasting the traditional state-centric framing of terrorism and counterterrorism with approaches emphasizing nonstate actors, including the emerging field emphasizing what has come to be known as the crime-terrorism nexus. It then maps current Chinese approaches to terrorism and broader security issues in Africa on the sub-national, bilateral, regional, and multilateral levels. In line with the chapter’s broader emphasis on the role of non-state actors, this mapping shows the complex interactions between various state representatives (for example, the key role of embassies) and the emerging role of Chinese nonstate actors such as private security companies and multinational corporations. Finally, the chapter provides brief case studies that operate as snapshots informing how violent nonstate actors in Africa complicate the distinction between organized crime and terrorism, and how in the process they affect Chinese counterterrorism responses.
Literature Review
Mainstream approaches to terrorism and counterterrorism in international relations and related fields have traditionally been dominated by realism. While these approaches diverge on key points, they are generally united by their central focus on the state. Realism tends to view states as primary actors in international relations and frame them as being preoccupied with their own survival and as always seeking to maximize their national interests. The realist tendency to view states as the most legitimate actors in international relations in turn led to the definition of terrorist groups as illegitimate nonstate actors and terrorism as a direct threat to state power. In other words, because realism views states as holding a monopoly on the legitimate use of power, terrorism is in turn defined as acts perpetrated by subnational or nonstate entities that threaten that monopoly.5
In addition, realist scholars like Caleb Carr6 and Walter Laqueur7 have characterized terrorism as driven by shapeless nonstate groups, frequently with little national identification, and driven by generalized aggression. These acts were framed as aimed at noncombatant populations, with the goal of destroying popular support for governments.
The relatively narrow view of terrorism as attacks against state legitimacy and driven by violent nonstate actors gained traction in the wake of the September 11 attacks. At the same time, these attacks triggered much debate about “new” terrorism, and about the links between terrorist movements and transnational criminal funding networks and rogue states operating outside of conventions ruling government-to-government interaction.8 The fact that these attacks also contained an element of media spectacle strengthened conceptions of terrorism as a form of mediatized influence-building—for example, as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.”9
In the African context, realism’s state-centricity raises a few issues. First, it tends to exclude the possibility of state-driven terrorism. In the second place, it is also complicated by Africa’s long history of antistate activism as a form of anti-colonial struggle. A key example here is South Africa. Even though the African National Congress (ANC) and its then-leader Nelson Mandela were widely seen as driving a legitimate struggle against the illegitimate state terrorism of the apartheid government, Mandela and other key ANC leaders remained on U.S. terrorist registries long after the ANC took power following legitimate multiparty elections. For this reason, the African Union’s definition of terrorism10 excludes movements fighting for self-determination—a distinction frequently absent in broader realist conceptions.11
More broadly, the frequently low level of state capacity in Africa, worsened by porous borders, weakened government mechanisms, low levels of state revenue generation, and high levels of corruption, raise questions about the applicability of realism’s assumption about the legitimacy of state power, and the coherence of the state as an actor. This assumption is troubled by the prevalence of state capture and the erosion of the state’s ability to provide social goods. In this context, the distinction between state and non-state actors can become blurry.
Realism’s state-centricity also characterizes liberal approaches to terrorism. Liberal approaches differ from realism in seeing international relations as the pursuit of a system of cooperation between states in order to avoid conflict (in contrast to realism’s view that states maximizing their national interest tends to make a certain level of conflict inevitable). Whereas liberalism differs from realism in lending more legitimacy to nonstate entities such as nongovernmental organizations and multinational corporations as actors in international relations, the state remains central in liberal conceptions as a key guarantor of rights. This means it tends to view terrorism as a form of criminality or irrationality that disrupts the harmonious pursuit of shared security and economic integration both within and among states.12
While liberalism’s broad reach contains various approaches, for example, the difference between positivist and normative liberalism, the state’s role as a central actor tends to shape views of terrorism as fundamentally directed against state legitimacy, and in the process lessens its focus on state-driven terrorism, in favor of a focus on how to improve the cooperation between states against the actions of illegitimate nonstate actors. Critics of this approach in the wake of the Global War on Terror have argued that it tends to subtly delegitimize opposition to powerful Western interests driven by a combination of Western states and multinational corporations, while also underplaying the role of Western power in multilateral governance bodies.13 More pertinent to this chapter, it raises similar questions about weak or fractured state capacity in the African context to realist approaches.
In contrast to these state-centric approaches, critical terrorism studies have used the tools of historical materialism, critical theory, and poststructuralism to reframe the relationship between violent state and nonstate actors away from an assumption of state legitimacy toward viewing terrorism as a dialectical exchange where the state’s discursive power to label certain groups as terrorist or certain populations as harboring terrorists is open for questioning.14 This reframing is rooted in a larger rejection of the positivist underpinnings of both realist and liberal approaches, which again tend to deflect questions about various state actors as the possible authors of terrorism.
The critical terrorism approach allows a robust focus on the power dynamics involved in how struggles for (for example) self-determination can be labeled as terrorism by state actors, also allowing insights into the complex interactions between different state actors in fractured or weakened states. Instead of assuming a core state legitimacy and overly policy-focused approach, critical terrorism studies frame terrorism as a dialectical struggle between state and non-state actors that in turn shapes differing views of both sides’ legitimacy. It also allows for a contextual view where terrorist actions are seen against the background of a particular community’s broader relationship with state power, where violence may only form a subset of a nonstate grouping’s wider actions, and where such actions may be framed quite differently by various state and nonstate stakeholders.15
More broadly, this view’s decentering of state legitimacy as the core issue at the heart of terrorism allows for a more comprehensive inquiry into the interactions between various nonstate actors in terrorist activities. Specifically, it coincided with the redefinition of war in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the Global War on Terror. For example, Kaldor argued: “Old wars were fought by the regular armed forces of States whereas new wars are fought by varying combinations of networks of State and non-State actors—regular armed forces, private security contractors, mercenaries, jihadists, warlords, paramilitaries, etc.”16
A similar focus on the interlinkages between different kinds of violent nonstate actors characterized investigations into the overlap between terrorism and organized crime emerging in the 1990s and gaining much prominence in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.17 These approaches allow for a more nuanced mapping of terrorism in countries with weak state capacity, where a diverse group of state actors of various levels of legitimacy interact in complex nonbinary ways with a broad set of nonstate actors.
The recognition of cooperation and peer learning between nonstate actors deemed terrorist (that is, as primarily driven by ideology) and those seen as criminal (that is, violent nonstate actors primarily driven by profit, which includes transnational organized crime organizations and funding networks) grew into the development of a scholarly focus on what has been termed the crime-terrorist nexus. Definitions of this “nexus” have ranged from limited forms of interdependence between distinct types of nonstate actors (for example, terrorist groups using organized crime networks as sources of weapons) to claims that terrorist and organized crime networks have merged to the extent that some are now indistinguishable and that cooperation and interdependence between them have become structural.18 Although many scholars have acknowledged crime-terror links, some have also questioned conclusions that the two have fully merged.19
While the issue of the exact level of interdependence between these groups remains controversial, indications are that terrorist groups in Africa, such as Boko Haram in West Africa and Al-Shabaab in East Africa, do draw on the tools of organized crime and banditry as a way to raise funds.20 This leads the current chapter to align itself with approaches that have framed terrorist actions as forms of rational choice (rather than ideological derangement) aimed at enlarging influence and gathering material resources, via a complex set of interactions between various violent nonstate actors. In addition, it sees these actors as falling along a continuum from ideological motives to profit motives, where some fall on the far ends of this spectrum and others harbor a complex (and possibly shifting) mix of both motives. The chapter’s argument is also undergirded by the acknowledgment of pervasively low levels of state capacity throughout many African societies and with it the recognition that this reality necessitates a stronger focus on nonstate actors than one would take in a more conventional realist or liberal analysis.
More centrally, this chapter operates from an assumption that whatever the set of motives driving the perpetrators of terrorist violence in any specific case, they are frequently not legible to outsiders resident in those societies, especially when they do not speak local languages. The Chinese expatriates who frequently become the target of both terrorist and organized crime actors may not have the tools to distinguish between the two, and this could also be true for Chinese state actors working with African governments to try to ensure the safety of Chinese projects, assets, and citizens in African countries. A certain level of on-the-ground confusion becomes an inevitable side effect of low state capacity in Africa.
The following section will provide a basic mapping of these efforts, ranging from the sub-state to the multilateral levels.
Mapping Chinese Responses to Nonstate Violence in Africa
Security Engagement on the Subnational Level: Private Security
The rapid expansion of Chinese companies across the Global South can be seen as a response to broad direction-setting by the Chinese government via successive initiatives like the Going Out policy and the Belt and Road Initiative. However, this global expansion seldomly comes with government security guarantees, leaving these firms at the mercy of frequently limited security services in Global South countries.
Beyond the limits of China’s official overseas capacity, Chinese firms are also moving into a changing global security landscape, where traditional security providers like the United States are reassessing aspects of their engagement in regions like Africa. Chinese private security companies are increasingly filling this gap, by guarding Chinese construction and mining sites as well as Chinese fishing and other vessels.21
According to the security researcher Alessandro Arduino, this work primarily involves risk assessment, crisis mitigation, and the protection of personnel, especially from kidnapping.22
However, tracking the extent of their deployment remains challenging. Although estimates of the number of private security companies registered in the People’s Republic of China vary from 5,00023 to 7,000,24 only an estimated 20 to 25 firms have been cleared to operate internationally.25 The factors limiting their expansion include the fact that private security companies have only been allowed to operate overseas since 2010, and regulation governing their activities went through a process of refinement, following the Ministry of Commerce’s directives in 2011 and 2017 stipulating that Chinese companies operating overseas need proof of security.26 The disjuncture between Chinese domestic law and international law means that these companies sometimes operate in a legal gray zone.27 Factors holding back the global expansion of these companies include high costs of domestic registration, onerous tax regulations, a lack of international experience, and laws prohibiting Chinese nationals from carrying weapons in foreign countries.28
The rule against Chinese carrying weapons in foreign countries is one of the most significant barriers to the activities of Chinese private security firms. Very few Chinese companies have been cleared to do so. They include Hua Xin Zhong An, which focuses on maritime security; the Haiwei Group, which provides security to construction companies in East Africa; and Beijing DeWe Security Services, which protects rail projects, among others.29 Their services include risk assessment, technological security protection, training and personnel management, security checks at venues, VIP protection, and the overseas dispatch of personnel for security escorts and support.30 Receiving the clearance to carry arms overseas opens the opportunity for more comprehensive training, and high-level cooperation with other security actors in Africa. It also unlocks significant commercial opportunities because of the scarcity of Chinese security companies that can offer armed support.
The relatively low supply of licensed Chinese overseas security providers coincides with increasing attacks on Chinese interests, raising demand. Although the number of attacks is difficult to quantify, Zheng and Xia estimate 300 violent attacks against Chinese workers in Africa between 2006 and 2016, leading to about 1,000 injuries and deaths.31 Anecdotal evidence based on press surveys suggests the real number could be higher, and increasing.32
The gap between supply and demand raises the possibility of unregulated Chinese security providers operating in the field. For example, in 2018, five Chinese nationals were arrested in Nairobi with uniforms, weapons, and other security equipment, sparking suspicion that they were planning to start a security company despite having no work permits.33
The demand for security and Chinese actors’ relative lack of combat experience can also lead to botched actions with collateral damage. For example, in late 2017, a group of illegal miners entered a Chinese-owned mine in Zambia in order to hunt for discarded emeralds. Chinese mine personnel fired warning shots, but used live ammunition, and several of the intruders were wounded.34 The incident shows how some Chinese firms depend on what Arduino has called “DIY security” through collaboration with local militias, or by attempting to arm themselves. He points out that these makeshift solutions are the result of the relatively long presence of small and medium Chinese enterprises on the continent, who had to depend on ad hoc solutions that better-funded Chinese state-owned enterprises tend to avoid.35
These dynamics raise serious questions for African countries, because they hazard undermining the role of governments as primary security providers.36 They also raise the danger of civilian casualties and other human rights violations, as shown above.
Security Engagement on the Bilateral Level: Law Enforcement Engagement
China’s pursuit of bilateral cooperation on terrorism expanded in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and initially focused on its neighbors in Southeast, Central, and South Asia.37 This cooperation includes bilateral agreements on training police, sharing intelligence, and extradition.
However, bilateral cooperation on counterterrorism between individual countries and China was conditioned by the relatively late adoption of a standalone counterterrorism law in 2015, which provided the legal basis for Chinese overseas troops to cooperate in bilateral and multilateral counterterrorism efforts.38 On the ground, however, China has tended to focus its counterterrorism cooperation at the regional and multilateral levels (see below).
That said, bilateral cooperation is emerging as a front in Chinese counterterrorism activities in Africa on three levels. First, counterterrorism training has become a part of the People’s Liberation Army’s outreach to African counterparts, folded into the broader use of skills transfer as a vector for Africa-China cooperation across a range of fields, including military-to-military training.39 Second, the expansion of “Safe City” and “Smart City” projects led by Chinese companies in about 12 African countries40 opens the possibility for greater cooperation between Chinese and African law enforcement via data sharing,41 although it remains to be seen whether such cooperation is actually happening.
In the third place, there are increasing indications of closer coordination between Chinese authorities and African law enforcement bodies. This includes direct government-to-government coordination between law enforcement and counterterrorism institutions on both sides, frequently coordinated by Chinese embassies. In addition, it frequently also includes the close involvement of Chinese nonstate actors, notably corporations and business communities, the latter coordinated via Chinese-language WeChat groups that serve as de facto spaces for community engagement and embassy outreach. These coordination efforts involve a broad range of African state actors, frequently extending to the ministerial level, as well as police, counterterrorism, immigration authorities, and other organs of state.
Three case studies, involving African perpetrators in Kenya and Nigeria, and a Chinese organized crime/terrorist group in Uganda, are provided below to sketch this cooperation in more detail.
Security Engagement on the Regional Level: Experiments in Coordinating Peace
China’s growing participation in multilateral peace and security initiatives (detailed in the next section) overlaps to a certain extent with its relatively limited focus on regional conflicts, which is frequently undertaken in cooperation with the UN.
In Africa, China’s mediation in the South Sudanese peace process in 201442 and its engagement with conflict resolution in the Sahel reveal the drive toward responding to conflicts in regions where China has significant investments, while also revealing a limited appetite for involvement.
Chinese engagement in West African peace and security started expanding during the 2010s in dual contexts. First, it was a moment when China’s domestic counterterrorism focus in Xinjiang started drawing calls for revenge from organizations like al-Qaida, in the Islamic Maghreb.43 In the second place, it was also part of greater engagement with Africa on peace and security because of the impact of the Libya crisis and in response to African demand.
Even though Libya is not a part of the Sahel, its influence looms large over China’s involvement in the region. First, the NATO invasion of Libya in 2011 triggered an unprecedented Chinese military intervention in the form of the evacuation of 36,000 Chinese nationals by the People’s Liberation Army Navy from the country.44 It was an early indicator of the centrality of protecting Chinese people and assets in China’s evolving security relationship with the continent, and arguably informed the expansion of formal peace and security engagement under FOCAC a year later, which eventually manifested (for example) in additional funding and technical assistance to the African Union under the China-Africa Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Stability.45
More directly, the spillover from the Libya crisis worsened the security landscape in the Sahel, through westward flows of arms and combatants.46 Because of space constraints, this chapter is unable to fully explore the complexities of the ongoing crisis in the Sahel. However, a few key factors have exacerbated the conflict. In the first place, weak government capacity among regional states has left opportunities for armed groups to recruit among local populations suffering from fractured and underdeveloped service delivery. This is especially true in rural areas. Second, a number of foreign nonstate actors have aggressively established themselves in the region, through collusion with various local constituencies. These include the establishment of local militias affiliated with transnational jihadist groups like IS and al-Qaida,47 and the ongoing presence of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries.48 Third, multilateral efforts to contain the insurgency were weakened by the presence of some of these insurgent actors within regional state apparatuses, notably the capture of large parts of Mali by a military junta and their close cooperation with Wagner forces.49 Fourth, the security landscape is significantly complicated by the ongoing formation and mutation of local armed groups, both in the form of militias linked in different ways to the transnational actors mentioned above, and in the growth of civilian self-defense groups of various sizes.50
Since 2020, these factors contributed to a wave of successful coups and coup attempts from São Tomé and Príncipe to Sudan. By then, China had been involved in the region’s conflict resolution efforts for several years.
China dispatched its first combat troops to a UN peacekeeping operation in Mali in 2013.51 Since then, its involvement in peacekeeping in the region included funding of roughly $45 million to support the establishment of the G5 joint peacekeeping taskforce made up of Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Mali, and Niger.52 In January 2020, China also committed to providing $7 million in equipment and aid to each of the G5 members53 and $1.5 million to support the operations of the G5 Permanent Secretariat, in Mauritania.54
While Chinese financial commitments to peacekeeping are significant, their troop presence in the region is relatively contained. For example, 426 Chinese troops were stationed in Mali in 2020, as part of UN operations.55 In comparison, until a drawdown announced in April 2022, France had more than 10 times (5,000) as many troops in the country.56 Overall, the UN maintained 14,000 troops in Mali, operating alongside local forces, as of April 2022.57
As noted in the introduction, African demand for greater Chinese involvement in the ongoing crisis has been clear.58 But China largely avoided pressure to contribute more to formal antiterrorism initiatives in the region, notwithstanding the alarm caused by attacks on Chinese nationals as detailed above.59
China seemed more willing to get involved in East African peace efforts, especially via the June 2022 China-Horn of Africa Peace, Good Governance and Development Conference. In the runup to the event, Xue Bing, China’s special envoy to the region and the conference’s convener, said: “I am ready to provide mediation efforts for the peaceful settlement of disputes based on the will of countries in this region.”60 This comment, as well as his criticism of the role of the United States in the conflict, seemed to presage a more robust role for China in resolving regional conflicts, some of which (for example, the Ethiopian civil war) also affect significant Chinese investments, and where Chinese worksites have been targeted by militants (for example in Kenya, as noted below). However, following the conclusion of the conference, Xue Bing acknowledged that the gathering “did not discuss a specific conflict [or] dispute,”61 and it remains unclear whether China will, can, or wants to play a larger role in counterterrorism in the region at present, despite its own nationals being targeted in attacks there.
Lina Benabdallah argued that this contrast between engagement in West and East Africa reveals a pattern: that China is likely to get more deeply involved in areas of high Chinese commercial and security interest, and where the chance of diplomatic disputes with Western powers is lower. She suggested that France’s prominence in West Africa lessened China’s involvement in regional efforts there, even as these stances aid China’s strategic ambiguity.62
Overall, these choices also reflect an unwillingness to deploy large numbers of Chinese personnel in conflict roles. Sharply negative domestic reaction to the death of two Chinese UN peacekeepers in South Sudan in 2016 revealed that Beijing’s greater international engagement in volatile regions like Africa could trigger popular unhappiness among Chinese citizens.63
Security Engagement on the Multilateral Level: Coordination and Norm-Setting
China’s growing domestic focus on counterterrorism has developed in tandem with building support and representation in multilateral fora like the United Nations. The overlap has seen China forcefully promoting its view of counterterrorism in these fora, even as Western concern about both trajectories increased. A significant aspect of this activity has been to deflect criticism of its policies in Xinjiang, and to link the Uyghur organizations it is targeting in the province to multilateral campaigns against recognized terrorist groups like ISIS.64
More broadly, China has also promoted its particular conception of antiterrorism. This includes a framing of terrorism as rooted in systemic underdevelopment (and therefore promoting economic development as a form of action against terrorism), a focus on “deradicalization” initiatives, and the advocating of stronger internet controls as a means to this end.65
Overall, China’s approach to counterterrorism at the UN level has evolved in key ways. First, although in earlier decades it primarily emphasized the role of individual governments as counterterrorism actors, this continuing emphasis has been folded into calls for the UN to play a core role as a forum for coordination among member states on counterterrorism. In this regard, China’s funding of the African Union’s African Center for the Study and Research of Terrorism, via the UN Peace and Development Trust Fund, can be seen as contributing to counterterrorism training at the multilateral level, in tandem with its bilateral training mentioned above.66 Second, the central focus of Chinese thinking about counterterrorism has become increasingly domestic, and relatedly its conception of the root causes of terrorism has shifted more toward national underdevelopment (in contrast to the Mao era’s focus on external imperialism). With this shift came a significant reduction in support for separatist movements, as the core focus on terrorism evolved toward Chinese domestic concerns from the 20th to the 21st centuries.67
Beyond the United Nations, other multilateral fora have served as spaces for Chinese “norm entrepreneurialism” on counterterrorism issues. These include the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Regional Anti-Terrorism Structure. The mechanism was designed to foster cooperation against the “three evils” (terrorism, extremism, and separatism) without significant ceding of state sovereignty. It has subsequently provided an increasingly prominent space for regular joint antiterrorism exercises,68 action against international financial and drug-smuggling networks that fund terrorist organizations, and police coordination.69 While Russia has attempted to use the SCO to appeal for cooperation with Africa in order to block Western influence,70 this has largely remained on the discursive level, and does not seem to be echoed by Chinese spokespeople. At present, the SCO seems focused on Central and South Asia, and its engagement with Africa remains limited.
The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping provides another platform for coordination on counterterrorism. The bloc’s Counterterrorism Working Group formulated its Counterterrorism Strategy, which was published in 2020. Aimed at coordinating preexisting bilateral and multilateral agreements between the member states, the strategy focused on prompting joint action on “preventing and combating terrorism, radicalization, financing of terrorism, misuse of internet [sic] by terrorists, curbing travel of [sic] terrorists, border control, protection of soft targets, information sharing, capacity building, international and regional cooperation etc.”71
BRICS cooperation on antiterrorism was further formalized in 2021 via the BRICS Counter Terrorism Action Plan, which took early steps toward formalizing measures to implement the strategy.72 Although the plan was quite vague (mainly focusing on setting up subgroups and similar measures), by the 2022 BRICS summit, there was mention of an upcoming BRICS police training program, and coordination on “strengthening counter-terrorism capacity building in developing countries,”73 and in 2023 for the finalization of a UN Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.74 However, at present, BRICS engagement with Africa on counter-terrorism remains limited, and largely framed in relation to the United Nations.75
FOCAC is another key multilateral platform for the coordination of peace and security initiatives between China and the African continent. It facilitates Chinese coordination with security initiatives under the African Union, including the African Peace and Security Architecture and the African Standby Force. The fifth FOCAC summit in 2012, coming in the wake of the Arab Spring and the Libya evacuation, marked the formal expansion of the FOCAC agenda toward peace and security. The subsequent establishment of the China-Africa Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Security became a space for greater Chinese involvement.76
By the eighth FOCAC summit in 2021, the cooperation had grown to include joint police training and coordination, including formal cooperation between police departments on both sides, and Chinese cooperation with the African Union Mechanism for Police Cooperation (Afripol), as well as coordination in the fields of small arms control, narcotics, community policing, extradition, and asset recovery.77 In July 2022, China’s ambassador to Kenya, Zhou Pingjian, wrote: “China will undertake 10 peace and security projects for Africa, continue to deliver military assistance to the AU, support African countries’ efforts to independently maintain regional security and fight terrorism, and conduct joint exercises and on-site training between Chinese and African peacekeeping troops and cooperation on small arms and light weapons control,” but did not specify which countries would be involved.78
At present, cooperation with Africa on counterterrorism under the FOCAC banner seems defined by China’s reluctance to appear as if it is dictating to the continent. Statements tend to de-emphasize China’s leadership role, in favor of expressing support for African-led peace efforts like Silencing the Guns79 and “African people in solving African issues in the African way.”80 It is also notable that China does not commit itself to spearheading antiterrorism in Africa. Rather: “The Chinese side calls on the international community to provide financial and technical support to counterterrorism operations led by Africa in accordance with the mechanisms of the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).”81
Finally, it should be noted that China seems to be weaving its African counterterrorism engagement into its Global Security Initiative (GSI), announced by President Xi Jinping on April 21, 2022, at the Boao Forum in Hainan. President Xi introduced the initiative formally to African defense leaders via a letter read at the China-Africa Peace and Security Forum in July 2022.82 As framed to African officials, it highlighted cooperation on technical issues, training, and maritime cooperation. It also foregrounded areas of cooperation that facilitate the protection of Chinese nationals and business assets: military training, intelligence sharing, and cooperation on counterterrorism.83
Chinese peace and security engagement with Africa is increasingly dovetailing with the promotion of the GSI via Chinese envoys in Africa,84 and during the China-Africa Peace and Security Forum in August 2023.85 However, at present the exact function of the GSI in Africa remains unclear.
The Crime-Terrorism Nexus in Bilateral Engagement
Kenya’s Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) project is a transfrontier logistics corridor, linking Ethiopia and South Sudan (both landlocked) to Kenya’s Lamu port. Chinese construction companies have been involved in the project since 2013, when a consortium headed by China Communications Construction Co (CCCC) won a $476 million contract to construct three berths at the port.86 Ultimately, the project is envisioned to add a total of 29 berths, an oil refinery, pipelines, and roads.87
However, land disputes and religious conflicts contributed to making the LAPSSET project the target of Somali militants, specifically the Al-Shabaab movement. In January 2022, attackers from the group set fire to eight construction vehicles at a CCCC worksite, and engaged in a firefight with Kenyan Defense Force members guarding the site.88 The attack was only one in a wave of violence that left several local residents dead. In response, the Kenyan government imposed a 30-day curfew and conducted raids in the area.89 In March 2022, Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for another attack on a LAPSSET construction site run by CCCC. It killed five people and wounded three more, including a Chinese national.90 The latter was abducted with another Chinese colleague and mutilated by the attackers before being released.91
The prominence of the LAPSSET project and the presence of foreign companies arguably played a larger role in these attacks than specific anti-China bias. The researcher Oscar Gakuo Mwangi argued that beyond adding pressure on the Kenyan government, which Al-Shabaab is targeting for a 2011 incursion into Somalia, attacks on foreigners help the movement to raise its profile, which aids it in raising funds.92 This means that the status of the LAPSSET project as one of the largest infrastructure initiatives in East Africa and the presence of foreigners in the Lamu region allow the movement to gain more exposure through the attacks. These include not only the CCCC attacks, but also the kidnapping of tourists and a 2020 strike against U.S. military personnel in nearby Manda Bay, which killed a soldier and two contractors.93 In this sense, the very prominence of Chinese projects in Africa heightens the risk posed to Chinese nationals, even if they are not official targets for militant movements.
The prominence of Chinese projects and nationals in some African countries makes them the targets of both criminal and politically motivated terrorist violence. This becomes clearer when comparing the Kenyan incident with an incident in Nigeria in January 2022, when three Chinese nationals were abducted and two Nigerians killed in an attack on a worksite of a hydroelectric transmission project in Niger State, outside the capital of Abuja.
Even though police spokespeople referred to the attackers as criminal “hoodlums” and did not mention ideological motivations, the attack resembled the Lamu incident discussed above in key respects, including the fact that it took place at a worksite of a Chinese state-owned enterprise (the Zungeru hydroelectric dam project is being constructed by a consortium including Sinohydro and China National Engineering Co.94), that it was perpetrated by an armed gang, and that local residents and workers were caught in the crossfire.95 Both cases also prompted interventions by Chinese government actors, as detailed below.
In the Kenyan case, China’s ambassador, Zhou Pingjian, and a delegation from the China-Kenya Trade Association met with Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i on March 15, 2022, to discuss the targeting of CCCC’s worksites along the LAPSSET route, which forced the company to temporarily halt its work there.96 The meeting was also attended by the Inspector-General of the Kenyan Police Hillary Mutyambai, the Transport and Infrastructure Cabinet Secretary James Macharia, and his counterpart focused on ICT and Innovation, Joe Mucheru.97 While it is difficult to gauge how proactively Chinese antiterrorism methods were promoted in the meeting, it seems that they were at least involved in setting the agenda for a response to the attacks. According to the Kenyan Interior Ministry, “The Chinese ambassador to Kenya Zhou Pingjian and senior government officials identified priority action points to ensure timely completion of the projects.”98
Similar high-level coordination took place in Nigeria. In late December 2021, as attacks against Chinese nationals increased, the Chinese embassy in Abuja convened a virtual meeting between Chinese stakeholders in Nigeria and a working group of the Ministry of Public Security in China to discuss the security situation. Attendees in Nigeria included the Chinese ambassador, the Consul General in Lagos, representatives from Chinese business associations, and prominent Chinese companies in the country.
The meeting was framed as strengthening communication on the security situation between the Chinese government and the Chinese community in Nigeria. Topics included how to strengthen PRC-Nigeria security cooperation, anticrime measures including preventing crime before the act, how to mitigate attacks once they have started, and postattack operations. It also touched on fighting crime through development, and how state-owned enterprises, large (Chinese) private companies, and Chinese small and medium enterprises can cooperate “to jointly build a security barrier.”99
While the meeting seemingly focused on ensuring the Chinese community in Nigeria of the ongoing concern and engagement of the government and Communist Party authorities in Beijing regarding the security situation, it also signaled an increasing willingness to engage the Nigerian authorities directly about these issues. This included a direct intervention from the Chinese embassy, similar to that following the Lamu attacks. China’s ambassador to Nigeria, Cui Jianchun, met with Usman Alkali Baba, Nigeria’s chief of police. According to reports, he urged a “zero tolerance” approach to the attacks.100 Similar embassy-led interventions related to criminal attacks have also been seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.101
While the attacks by Al-Shabaab in Kenya seem to fall more conclusively under terrorism, and the Nigerian case seems driven by criminal motives, the on-the-ground reality of the two attacks, as well as their impact on Chinese actors, is strikingly similar. More research is needed into the internal workings of these groups, but an initial comparison seems to support characterizations of both incidents as falling within a crime-terrorist nexus, where ideological and reputational motives overlap with profit/fundraising concerns.
More important for this chapter, the two cases also seem to have drawn similar interventions, in the form of government- or embassy-led coordination with African government officials. However, these efforts also included Chinese nonstate actors such as companies and local business communities, and were closely reported on and mediated by Chinese community WeChat groups, which helped to facilitate coordination between Chinese state and nonstate actors. This form of hybrid bilateral coordination involving nonstate actors in an effort spearheaded by Chinese state actors in direct bilateral engagement with African state actors seems to be emerging as a response to the challenges posed by a highly ambiguous crime-terrorist nexus in Africa. The role of African government actors in this ambiguity is briefly touched on below.
Conclusion: The Crime-Terrorist Nexus in Bilateral Government Discourse
In January 2022, the Nigerian government announced that criminal gangs seen as driving a spate of recent kidnappings would be officially designated as terrorist gangs. Nigeria’s then-President Muhammadu Buhari was quoted: “I think the only language they understand—we have discussed it thoroughly with the law enforcement agencies; the security chiefs, the inspector general of police—is to go after them [. . .] We labelled them terrorists . . . we are going to deal with them as such.”102 This semantic blurring between crime and terrorism seems to echo scholarly approaches emphasizing cooperation between different violent nonstate actors along the crime-terrorism nexus.
A similar blurring has also emerged on the Chinese side. On December 26, 2021, Chinese armed commandos took part in a rare transnational operation in Uganda. The action targeted a Chinese gang listed on an Interpol Red Notice for kidnapping, cyberattacks, and murder in China, Cambodia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Vanuatu, the United Kingdom, and the Central African Republic.103
Chinese law enforcement authorities reportedly alerted their Ugandan counterparts that the gang had slipped into the country, and the subsequent joint action was reportedly approved by both Presidents Yoweri Museveni and Xi Jinping, as well as by Interpol. Fifteen armed Chinese commando members were dispatched to Uganda, where they cooperated with Ugandan Special Forces. Four suspects were eventually arrested, and four more slipped across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo or South Sudan. Subsequently, another 32-member team arrived from China to oversee the four arrestees’ deportation back to China, in coordination with Ugandan authorities. Meanwhile, Ugandan officials were reportedly arrested for aiding their entry into the country.104
In a press conference, the deputy director of Uganda’s Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID), Moses Taremwa, stated that the operation involved “a joint team comprising detectives from CID, counter-terrorism Police, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Chinese embassy in Uganda.” In a subsequent security report issued by the Chinese embassy, the eight suspects were repeatedly referred to as “terrorists.”105
This incident, and the attacks in Kenya and Nigeria noted above, presents intriguing glimpses into what might be an emerging field of engagement between Chinese and African authorities in response to what this chapter has characterized as an ambiguous crime-terrorist nexus. While the criminals/terrorists were African in the earlier cases and Chinese in the Ugandan operation, striking similarities emerge.
First, these cases all triggered interventions on the bilateral level between Chinese and African state actors. In the earlier cases, this intervention also included close coordination with Chinese nonstate actors. Second, although some of the alleged perpetrators seem more ideologically driven than others, they all arguably fall within a crime-terrorist nexus where distinctions between violent nonstate actors are blurred. Third, this blurring was further echoed by state actors on both sides, who actively conflated organized crime and terrorism. In this sense, the on-the-ground confusion between organized crime and terrorism that characterizes the crime-terrorist nexus in the context of low state capacity in many African countries seems to be echoed by a deliberate merging of the language of counterterrorism/anticrime law enforcement on both sides of the bilateral divide.
This chapter approached the issue of Chinese counterterrorism in Africa from two directions: by mapping Chinese approaches on four levels (subnational, bilateral, regional, and multilateral) and by contrasting China’s state-led approach to the on-the-ground prominence of a diffuse set of violent nonstate actors in Africa. The cases presented hint at an emerging front of bilateral state-state coordination in counterterrorism/law enforcement, with increasing confidence from Chinese state actors to intervene in African territories, in close coordination with African counterparts.
Much more research is needed to confirm these conclusions, especially to unpack the role of African state actors in order to verify the chapter’s working understanding of pervasive low state capacity in African countries. In addition, the close coordination between Chinese state and nonstate actors in dealing with the security challenges sparked by the prominence of Chinese projects and people in the African landscape, particularly as coordinated via WeChat communities in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo,106 South Africa,107 Zimbabwe,108 and Angola,109 deserves far more attention.
Dr. Cobus van Staden is the Managing Editor at the China-Global South Project. Previously, he was the senior China-Africa researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) in Johannesburg. Cobus completed his Ph.D. in Japanese studies and media studies at the University of Nagoya in Japan in 2008. He focused on comparisons of Chinese and Japanese public diplomacy in Africa during postdoctoral positions at the University of Stellenbosch and the SARCHI Chair on African Diplomacy and Foreign Policy at the University of Johannesburg before joining the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2013. His academic research focused on media coverage of the China-Africa and Japan-Africa relationships, as well as the use of media in public diplomacy in the Global South.
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