Abstract:
By 2000, ‘radicalisation’ had become a major global issue. Although ‘9/11’ was still a year away, the
American Embassies in East Africa had been bombed in 1998 and violent conflicts simmered in many
parts of the world. At just about the same time, bitter civil wars, resource-centred conflicts and intraethnic
strife raged in West Africa. Against the background of research being undertaken at King’s
College London, 1. the mutually reinforcing links between ‘radicalisation’ and
‘violence’ (potentially sensitive terms, discussed below) in West Africa became clearly obvious and
a successful application to investigate this was submitted to the UK Economic and Social Research
Council (ESRC). 2. This Special Issue contains articles emerging from that work, with a set of country
studies complemented by overarching synthetic analysis.
