Masahiro Kubo (CERDI, Université Clermont Auvergne)

Masahiro Kubo
CERDI, Université Clermont Auvergne

Coauthor: Shunsuke Tsuda

Abstract

This paper studies the origins of Islamist insurgencies, commonly known as jihad. In West Africa, water access in ancient periods predicts the locations of the core cities along inland trade routes—the trans-Saharan caravan routes—flourishing until the 1800s, when historical Islamic states played significant economic roles before European colonization. In contrast, after European colonization and the invention of modern trading technologies, along with the constant shrinking of water sources, landlocked pre-colonial core cities contracted or became extinct. Employing an instrumental variable strategy, we show that these deserted locations have now been replaced with battlefields for jihadist organizations. We argue that the power relations between Islamic states and the European military during the 19th century colonial era shaped the persistence of jihadist ideology as a legacy of colonization. Individual-level surveys examining religious ideologies associated with jihadism among Muslims support this mechanism. Moreover, the concentration of jihadist violence in “past-core-and-present-periphery” areas in West Africa aligns with a global-scale phenomenon. Finally, spillovers of jihadist violence beyond these stylized locations are partly explained by organizational heterogeneity among competing factions over time.

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