Jacob Zenn's research while affiliated with Georgetown University and other places
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Publications (16)
This article examines more than 100 scholarly, think-tank, government, and media reports and three data-sets and finds that since the 6 January 2021 Capitol “insurrection”, War on Terror (WoT) 2.0 is conflating far-right, white supremacist extremism (WSE), and other terminologies, which have superseded “Islamic extremism” on the U.S government’s ra...
This article centers on the Guantánamo detainee assessment of diaspora Nigerian jihadist in Saudi Arabia, Umran Bakr Muhammad Hausawi (Umran), which has never been cited previously in literature on Boko Haram. Through analyzing this detainee assessment alongside Boko Haram founding members’ interviews, al-Qaeda publications about Boko Haram’s found...
Boko Haram’s founding after 9/11 was under-studied until the group reached its apex in 2015 and became an Islamic State “province.” After 2015, al-Qaeda strategically and ideologically opposed Islamic State-style excessive takfirism (excommunication) and published documents on Twitter and Telegram revealing longer-standing alliances with, and more...
Terrorist group rivalries have become widely studied since Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaeda-loyal groups began clashing in Syria. While existing literature finds such rivalries increase terrorist groups’ lethality and longevity, there are few case studies of IS provinces and al-Qaeda affiliates operating in the same geographic area outside the Middl...
This article responds to Will Reno’s review of my book, Unmasking Boko Haram: Exploring Global Jihad in Nigeria, in issue 32, 1, 2021 of Small Wars and Insurgencies by examining source validity, analytical frameworks, and international networks related to Boko Haram and jihadism more generally. The purpose of the book was to provide a more ‘panoram...
iii iii iii About ICCT The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism-The Hague (ICCT) is an independent think and do tank providing multidisciplinary policy advice and practical, solution-oriented implementation support on prevention and the rule of law, two vital pillars of effective counterterrorism. ICCT's work focuses on themes at the intersec...
Boko Haram videos are among the only windows into the group leadership’s ideology. However, previous studies of Boko Haram videos treated the group monolithically and neither distinguished between internal factions nor analyzed cinematographic settings in each faction’s videos. At a time when the two groups known as Boko Haram–Islamic State in West...
This article examines the factions, leadership, and internal organization of Boko Haram, the terrorist group which has operated to devastating effect in parts of northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon. It finds the group’s leadership has been significantly more centralized than previous literature has acknowledged. The leadership was also extr...
Boko Haram's operations and ideology have been the subject of increasing research in recent years. This article, in contrast, explores the culture of Boko Haram through an ethnographic analysis of the group's internal videos that were not intended for public release. The authors find that in their everyday lives Boko Haram foot soldiers are differe...
This article explains how al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)-trained Nigerian militants split from Boko Haram and formed a new group called Ansaru in 2011 after consulting with AQIM. Ansaru leaders however reintegrated with Boko Haram and transferred their specialized skills in kidnappings, suicide bombings and media to Boko Haram and contribut...
To Boko Haram, Nigeria is a colonial construct, lacking Islamic legitimacy and destined to lead society in a downward spiral of Western immorality. The only way to regain northern Nigeria’s former glory is through a repudiation of democracy, constitutionalism, and Western values and a return to Islamic governance on the model of the historic caliph...
This article addresses an under-researched aspect of Boko Haram’s activities: gender-based violence (GBV) and its targeting of women. It argues that 2013 marked a significant evolution in Boko Haram’s tactics, with a series of kidnappings, in which one of the main features was the instrumental use of women. This was in response to corresponding tac...
Ideological factors help to define the evolution of terrorist organisations, influenced by the domestic and global political context. Jacob Zenn, Atta Barkindo and Nicholas A Heras examine the ideological motivations that influenced the transformation of Boko Haram from local salafism to international jihadism. They seek to analyse the extent to wh...
Citations
... y actividades delictivas como la extorsión y el robo 74 . Respecto a las armas, se han encontrado recibos de viajes a Libia que sugieren que las armas llegan desde el norte de África pasando por las rutas tradicionales del imperio kanuri75 . ...
... Boko Haram's splinter groups, Jamāʿatu Anṣāril Muslimīnafī Bilādis-Sūdān (popularly called 'Ansaru') and the Islamic State in West Africa Province (ISWAP) are proxies of Al-Qaeda and ISIS, respectively. There is however a big divide in the Boko Haram literature among those who view Boko Haram as a transnational terrorist organisation (Karmon, 2014;Zenn, 2020Zenn, , 2021 and those who find Boko Haram's agenda to be overwhelmingly localised (Perouse de Montclos, 2014;Forest, 2012). Nonetheless, 'Boko Haram is at once a local and transnational terrorist group' (Nwankpa, 2020, p.49). ...
... To secure their survival and continuation, these organizations continue to utilize their platforms to fan the flames of violence and extremism. (Pieri and Zenn 2018;Prud'homme 2019, p. 8). ...
... This could be problematic because framing the Chibok incident in terms of foreign terrorism seems to ignore the fact that Boko Haram is a homegrown terrorist group, and instead, situates it within the narrative of global terrorism for which no specific nation can be blamed. On the other hand, Boko Haram had in fact grown to become a regional threat at the time of the Chibok abduction, attacking communities in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, and forging ties with terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (Zenn, 2020). ...
... In fact, some sources reported that BH was formed by one Muhammed Ali, a Nigerian student in Khartoum, Sudan who was a disciple of Osama bin Laden. The latter gave the former a large sum of money to establish a jihadist movement in Nigeria (Kassim & Zenn, 2017). Muhammed Ali's attempt at establishing a movement allegedly failed but ended up finding the young Yusuf and gave him some money and a handful of followers in 2002. ...
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... Their tasks basically were patrolling of streets, guarding of Churches (Gana, 2019). The news of this single act spread across communities and towns, and the state at large, and soon, civilians at the grassroots began to mobilise as counter forces against Boko Haram, using mostly sticks, cutlasses, daggers, bows and arrows as weapons (Pieri, 2016). This practice also spread to neighboring Yobe and Adamawa because of the moral philosophy and motivation of taking action to protect one's community against an aggressormostly considered the outsider. ...
... The first female suicide bomber used was in June 2014, shortly after the abduction of the Chibok girls with some suggesting the girls were used as bombers . Boko Haram has used more female suicide bombers since its inception than any terrorist group (Zenn and Pearson, 2014; (Zenn et.al., 2014). Women abducted have been used to get back at the main target-the government. ...
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... The first was Boko Haram's territorial expansion and its seizure of major towns in Borno State in 2013 and 2014. Some have argued that the ideology of the group has been extensively shaped by al-Qaida (Zenn et al., 2013) and that its expansion was supported by al-Qaida and al-Shabaab (Zenn, 2014). Others hold that the Nigerian army's repression and human rights abuses have fuelled recruitment to Boko Haram and facilitated its expansion (Pérouse de Montclos, 2012). ...
Reference: Reviewing Jihadist Governance in the Sahel
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