Ghana’s resilience to terrorism: Costly signalling of terrorist groups or strength of counter terrorism strategy?

Abstract

West African countries show some degree of readiness to combat terrorism; however, not all countries in the subregion have encountered direct terrorist attacks. This raises the question of what experiences inform counter terrorism strategies of terrorism resilient countries and why such countries seem to avoid terrorism despite sharing borders and histories as well as combating terrorist groups alongside countries devastated by terrorism. This paper explores Ghana’s resilience to terrorism and seeks to understand whether such exceptionalism is due to costly signalling of terrorist groups or strength of the state-led counter terrorism strategy. The paper demonstrates how Ghana’s resilience is linked more directly with the socio-political set-up of the nation-state. The construction of the nation-state provides prohibitions against identity-based extremism, a dynamic that increases the cost of home-grown terrorism, unlike the state-led counter terrorism strategy which sometimes seems to be vulnerable to terrorism. The paper concludes with insights for sustainable management of terrorism resilience.