Insurgency as Protest and Resistance and its Nexus with Education Provision

• In Event: The education sector in response, resilience and recovery during and after violent conflicts

Proposal

This summary of a study argues that insurgency is a form of extreme protest and resistance against the state. It gathers strength through collective action engendered by a common cause. It ranges from manifestation of civil disobedience to outright resistance and illegal disruptive actions (ARIS, 2012). As protest intensity increases it challenges government authority, manifests a higher level of organization and seeks to control over territory (U.S. Army 2009).
In Nigeria, the challenge of 10.5 million out-of-school children (United Nations Children’s Fund, 2017a) is particularly felt in the north-east, where Boko Haram first targeted education stakeholders as a form of militant protest against the state, morphing into a conflict. Similarly in other parts of Africa (Egypt and South Africa as cases in point) militant protests using education, knowledge production and learning as a rationale to challenge the state. In Nigeria’s case, the violent protest and resistance against secular education hearkened back to a colonial past, that Boko Haram contended was emulated by neocolonial elites that sought to impose secular education on pietist communities, thereby corrupting their way of life (Thurston, 2018). Further, through a post-colonial lens, the choice not to follow rules and processes laid out by dominant forces is a manifestation of protest and a process of emancipation by the perceived other (Combes, 2022). This violent protest and resistance by Boko Haram were met with a retaliatory militant response by the State that created a terrain of contestation and negotiation that has implicated education provision.
The research uses a qualitative case study approach and the application of a counterinsurgency framework as an analytical tool to a) generate in-depth understanding of how insurgency as a form of protest has shaped education provision in local contexts. The question that this study seeks to ask are: What dynamics and settings engender protest and how does it implicate the provision of education? What are the knowledge and theoretical underpinnings that support militant and violent protests that threaten to destabilize states? How can violent protests evolve to nonviolent action and peacebuilding? And how can education be leveraged to become the bridge? The analysis reveals that overlapping contradictions and convergence of influences during protests have wide repercussions: the state paying insufficient attention to education provision, stakeholders manipulating the educational domain and youths’ trust in the state diminishing. The research posits that using education as a lever, protest dynamics can morph into conflict, but can also engender new pathways and synergies for dialogue, negotiation, facilitation, etc. The research offers policymakers, academics and practitioners’ insights into the evolving nature of protests and how these complicate educational outcomes and efforts to achieve peace. It highlights that policies made in the educational domain have ripple effects in other domains. Further, the research suggests that insurgencies as protests should not be dismissed, or addressed only via military means, for underlying these violent protests are grievances that should be addressed or negotiated. Boko Haram’s violent protest, and insurgency using education as the rationale provides lessons for now and for the future.

Author

• Vanita Datta, USAID