Review Article
Returning home: the reintegration dilemmas of female Al-Shabaab defectors in Kenya
Abstract
Gendered responses to the disengagement and reintegration of female defectors are needed to respond to trends that indicate increasing female radicalisation and growth in the recruitment of women into terrorist networks. The development of successful gender-sensitive amnesty policies and reintegration programmes is crucial, not only to prevent recidivism and re-engagement among female defectors, but also to mitigate the risk of further female radicalisation and recruitment at community level. This article, based on research conducted with female Al-Shabaab defectors in Kenya, explores women’s gendered motives for joining the Al-Shabaab network, their experiences within it and their reasons for quitting in order to inform an evidence-based reintegration process. It identifies the gendered nuances involved in recruitment, disengagement and deradicalisation, and it also considers gender-specific aspects of reintegration, highlighting the need to focus on gendered needs, norms and the expectations of female Al-Shabaab defectors and the communities in which they are reintegrated.
Keywords
reintegrationdefectorsAl-Shabaabdisengagementamnesty policygenderCopyright statement
© The author(s) 2023. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International LicenseCite this article
Badurdeen (2023), ‘Returning home: the reintegration dilemmas of female Al-Shabaab defectors in Kenya’, Journal of the British Academy, 11(1): 037 https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/011s1.037crossref
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It has been claimed, often without evidence, that women have flocked to Al-Shabaab to work as fundraisers, cooks, intelligence officers, suicide bombers and sex slaves, and have even recruited others into the group. After attacks, such as that on Mombasa’s Central Police Station, which have involved women, their motivations have been ascribed to factors including ideological commitment; the desire for financial gain, fame or danger; love; the pursuit of vengeance; curiosity; coercion; and kidnap. Attention paid to women’s motives tends to be informed by the perception that women are automatically victims of violence, but the phenomenon is more complex than that. In this article, the testimonies of Kenyan women who have participated in Al-Shabaab’s activities are used to explore the complex and multifaceted realities and multiple factors that enabled their mobilisation. Three motivational pathways that led Kenyan women into Al-Shabaab are identified, and Al-Shabaab’s mobilisation strategies are also addressed.
Islamic feminism is a budding ideology in Kenya that conservative Muslims perceive as a distortion of pure Islam. Despite its prospects for empowering Muslim women, its utility for preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) is largely unexplored, and security agencies and non-governmental organisations prefer to engage with mainstream patriarchal Islamic ideologies that reinforce the gender vulnerabilities Al-Shabaab successfully exploits to engage women in violent extremism. This study draws on research conducted with Muslim clerics, scholars, women’s associations, feminists, government officials, and female returnees in Nairobi and Mombasa counties to demonstrate that Al-Shabaab is exploiting traditional gender constructions including marriage, sisterhood, motherhood and women’s religious obligations to recruit, radicalise and exploit women. While Islamic feminism exposes and contests gender inequalities, it remains unpopular, is often dismissed as secular, and meets resistance from both extremists and moderate Muslims, and therefore further studies are needed to validate its rightful role within Islam.
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