The ADF in Congo: the Islamic State in Africa or local militia?
Speaker: Kristof Titeca
Much has been debated about the global-local linkages between African Jihadi groups and the global ‘mothership’. This paper wants to expand this debate in three ways: first, it aims to integrate other scales in analyzing the behavior of African Jihadi groups, i.e. the regional and national, and analyze how these interact with the global and local levels, in driving the groups' behavior. Second, it aims to do so through the case-study of the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), the Ugandan rebel group operating in Eastern DRC. In 2019, the ADF swore allegiance to the Islamic State, with the latter claiming the groups’ attack since the same year. Thirdly, it theoretically aims to expands the ‘global-local debate’, through the concept of ‘loose coupling’ (Weick and Norton, 1990). This concept looks at how organizations functions through interdependent elements that vary in number and strength. These linkages have some degree of determinacy are therefore ‘coupled’, but they are ‘loosely coupled’, in that sense that they are subject to changes and preserve a degree of independence. In doing so, the paper aims to empirically and analytically expand the ways in which the ADF and other African Jihadi groups are understood and conceptualized.