AbstractIn Somalia, the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces are engaged in a fierce counter-insurgency campaign against Al Shabab terrorists. Regional and international players such as Ethiopia and the USA support AMISOM. In northern Mali, French forces together with those of the Economic Community of West African States are involved in vicious battles with Islamists in the form of Ansar Dine, the Movement for Unity and Jihad and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. In northern Nigeria, security forces are engaged in bloody battles again the Islamist sect Boko Haram. In all three cases, success in a traditional realist sense is far from assured and traditional counter-terrorism measures are actually counter-productive since it refuses to acknowledge the underlying complexity giving rise to radical Islamist movements. Adopting a critical terrorism studies approach, with an emphasis on the emancipatory approach of the Aberystwyth School, this paper argues that traditional counter-terrorism would only ser...