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Crime, Coping, and Resistance in the Mali-Sahel Periphery

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Abstract

The Mali-Sahel periphery is not an “ungoverned space” captured and preyed on by the transnational forces of global “crime-terrorism” nexuses but an area of overlapping and competing networks of informal governance. Some have an agenda of resistance, others are more aligned with coping and criminality. What they share is that they are neither entirely state nor nonstate but somewhere in between. Different competing “big men” vie for the role of nodal points in different networks of informal governance: some mainly profit-driven, others combining income-generating strategies with social and political objectives, and yet others simply aiming to cope (and hopefully thrive in the future).

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... The area's weak governance, social divisions, and corruption created a supportive environment for AQIM, which garnered support by offering change to the marginalised population (Wehrey, 2018). AQIM strengthened its local ties by leveraging pre-existing connections with Tuareg and Arab networks, thereby increasing its knowledge of the vast desert terrain and enhancing its intelligence-gathering abilities (Bøås, 2015;Boeke, 2016). ...
... After the merger, AQIM utilised existing social structures to further integrate itself into local communities (Bøås, 2015). In the absence of Mali's government, AQIM established an alternative system of governance, offering services and addressing local grievances, thereby portraying itself as a solution to the local populations (Bøås, 2015). ...
... After the merger, AQIM utilised existing social structures to further integrate itself into local communities (Bøås, 2015). In the absence of Mali's government, AQIM established an alternative system of governance, offering services and addressing local grievances, thereby portraying itself as a solution to the local populations (Bøås, 2015). By 2011, AQIM was operating with minimal interference across a vast area, including southern Algeria, eastern Mauritania, northern Mali, and parts of Niger. ...
... Second, while Mali was relatively peaceful in the 1990s, neighbouring Algeria was not. 4 In fact, the 1991-2002 civil war in Algeria gave birth to a jihadist movement that had serious implications for Mali. When Algerian government pushed back its jihadists, they retreated into the Saharan hinterland (Bøås, 2015). By 2002, the extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) was the only significant jihadist group left in Algeria, and it had retreated south towards the ungoverned Malian border region. ...
... By 2002, the extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) was the only significant jihadist group left in Algeria, and it had retreated south towards the ungoverned Malian border region. On its heels, the GSPC launched a lucrative kidnapping-for-ransom campaign (Bøås, 2015). With its ransom moneys, these Algerian jihadists then built relationships with both Tuareg rebel leaders and smugglers in the border region. ...
... Not only can armed groups provide protection for traffickers operating in active conflict zones, but they often also bring forward new investments and connections that can expand business opportunities. As noted earlier, AQIM earned tens of millions of dollars in kidnapping for ransom, which then allowed it to invest in revamping the smuggling industry in the Malian-Algerian border region (Bøås, 2015). Within a few years, the traditional smuggling community in northern Mali had mutated into the hub of the cigarette trafficking across West Africa (Raineri and Strazzari, 2015). ...
... Most movements start as insurrections against state power and foreign military interventions and organize as guerrilla movements. In addition, they engage in all kinds of other activities, such as trade, smuggling, and kidnapping to fnance their activities (see for example Bøås 2015). Typically, these movements emerge in areas where state authority is weak, such as in the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in remote areas in Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Somalia, and in the Sahara and Sahel of West Africa. ...
... However, the fragmentary nature of politics in tribal societies is at the same time an explanation for the importance of extremist and jihadist ideology, because this ideology may be the key element that holds these movements together-given that the extremist ideology acts as a moral framework to counter the fragmentary tendencies in tribal political organization (Bøås 2015). Another case to illustrate this point is the Naxalite rebellion in Central India, a rebellion that draws on a plethora of ethnic minorities held together by a Maoist ideology (Kennedy and Purushotham 2012). ...
... This move to decentralization, however, did little to improve the position of the poor and subordinate classes in Tuareg society, as the new wealth and incoming development funds were monopolized by the traditional elites. In addition, this created ample opportunity for all kinds of non-state actors to develop illicit activities and their own forms of authority, with power concentrated in a number of families and clans (Bøås 2015). ...
Chapter
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Over the past decades, extremist violence and jihadism/religious movements have become an important factor in the political and economic developments of drylands. This evolution has been attributed to a variety of underlying dynamics that are typical for drylands, including increasing scarcity of land and water due to climate change; a growing population; the poor performance and authoritarian character of states; increasing displacements and resettlements related to large-scale investments; and progressive marginalization and exclusion of specific social groups. In addition, increasing levels of conflict between population groups have provided a fertile ground for recruitment by armed groups for self-defence and religious purposes, often along ethnic lines, and also to secure access to natural resources. The chapter discusses the backgrounds of these movements and shows how a jihadist movement in the Sahel transformed from a terrorist movement into a rural insurgency.
... At times throughout the 20th century, there has been fierce competition between these interpretations of Islam, but this rarely mattered much in the political contestations of electoral campaigns and public protests. This changed when the country descended into violent conflict and near collapse in 2012 after a secular Tuareg rebellion in the north was followed by a coup d'état and the subsequent infiltration of large parts of the country by jihadi insurgents (see Bøås 2015). Based on a call for support from the transitional Malian government, France intervened militarily through Operation Serval in early 2013. ...
... While our theoretical ambitions are relatively modest in this article, we want to present how useful recent interpretations of the classical 'Big Man' literature of Marshall Sahlins (1963) within African conflict studies (see Utas 2012;Bøås 2012Bøås , 2015 can be for our attempt to understand events and actors in an unsettled and sparsely institutionalised state, such as Mali. 7 The conceptual terms that framed our initial conversations on unfolding events in Mali were centred on the concept of the Big Man and to what degree a religious actor such as Imam Dicko could be understood as one in the making. ...
... As the crisis of 2012 has unfolded for almost a decade with no endgame insight, the political system has deteriorated even further. What used to be neopatrimonial state of regulatory hierarchical type of pyramidic patron-client relations (Murray 2016;Mkandawire 2015) has been clearly weakened in the capital of Bamako and almost vanished in some peripheral areas (Bøås 2015). What has replaced this is a looser Big Man type of politics, not unlike what Sahlins (1963) identified on the Melanesian Islands (Bøås 2012). ...
Article
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In the lead up to the military coup in Mali in August 2020, Imam Mahmoud Dicko solidified his status as one of the country’s most important power brokers. How did a religious leader achieve this in a country where politics is considered ‘dirty’, the social capital of religious leaders rests on being seen as honest and pious, and politics and religion are considered constitutionally separate? Drawing on recent work in African Studies that utilises the classical ‘Big Man’ concept of Marshall Sahlins, this article tracks the political engagement of religious leaders with a particular focus on the political career of Imam Dicko. We document both his failures and how he learned to play politics without tarnishing his image as a pious man of God. We argue that Dicko’s hybrid mix of theology and politics led his followers into new terrain that even the secular opposition could buy in to. In turn, this opens up space for Salafi actors to navigate the straits between resistance and collaboration with the state.
... Second, while Mali was relatively peaceful in the 1990s, neighbouring Algeria was not. 4 In fact, the 1991-2002 civil war in Algeria gave birth to a jihadist movement that had serious implications for Mali. When Algerian government pushed back its jihadists, they retreated into the Saharan hinterland (Bøås, 2015). By 2002, the extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) was the only significant jihadist group left in Algeria, and it had retreated south towards the ungoverned Malian border region. ...
... By 2002, the extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) was the only significant jihadist group left in Algeria, and it had retreated south towards the ungoverned Malian border region. On its heels, the GSPC launched a lucrative kidnapping-for-ransom campaign (Bøås, 2015). With its ransom moneys, these Algerian jihadists then built relationships with both Tuareg rebel leaders and smugglers in the border region. ...
... Not only can armed groups provide protection for traffickers operating in active conflict zones, but they often also bring forward new investments and connections that can expand business opportunities. As noted earlier, AQIM earned tens of millions of dollars in kidnapping for ransom, which then allowed it to invest in revamping the smuggling industry in the Malian-Algerian border region (Bøås, 2015). Within a few years, the traditional smuggling community in northern Mali had mutated into the hub of the cigarette trafficking across West Africa (Raineri and Strazzari, 2015). ...
... Second, while Mali was relatively peaceful in the 1990s, neighbouring Algeria was not. 4 In fact, the 1991-2002 civil war in Algeria gave birth to a jihadist movement that had serious implications for Mali. When Algerian government pushed back its jihadists, they retreated into the Saharan hinterland (Bøås, 2015). By 2002, the extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) was the only significant jihadist group left in Algeria, and it had retreated south towards the ungoverned Malian border region. ...
... By 2002, the extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC) was the only significant jihadist group left in Algeria, and it had retreated south towards the ungoverned Malian border region. On its heels, the GSPC launched a lucrative kidnapping-for-ransom campaign (Bøås, 2015). With its ransom moneys, these Algerian jihadists then built relationships with both Tuareg rebel leaders and smugglers in the border region. ...
... Not only can armed groups provide protection for traffickers operating in active conflict zones, but they often also bring forward new investments and connections that can expand business opportunities. As noted earlier, AQIM earned tens of millions of dollars in kidnapping for ransom, which then allowed it to invest in revamping the smuggling industry in the Malian-Algerian border region (Bøås, 2015). Within a few years, the traditional smuggling community in northern Mali had mutated into the hub of the cigarette trafficking across West Africa (Raineri and Strazzari, 2015). ...
Book
Full-text available
The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling offers a comprehensive survey of interdisciplinary research related to smuggling, reflecting on key themes, and charting current and future trends. Divided into six parts and spanning over 30 chapters, the volume covers themes such as mobility, borders, violent conflict, and state politics, as well as looks at the smuggling of specific goods – from rice and gasoline to wildlife, weapons, and cocaine. Chapters engage with some of the most contentious academic and policy debates of the twenty-first century, including the historical creation of borders, re-bordering, the criminalisation of migration, and the politics of selective toleration of smuggling. As it maps a field that contains unique methodological, ethical, and risk-related challenges, the book takes stock not only of the state of our shared knowledge, but also reflects on how this has been produced, pointing to blind spots and providing an informed vision of the future of the field. Bringing together established and emerging scholars from around the world, The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of conflict studies, borderland studies, criminology, political science, global development, anthropology, sociology, and geography.
... Such a focus may help explain how some conflicts are sustained, but it rarely tells us much about why conflicts start in the first place. It would be a mistake, for example, to assume that the current conflict in the Sahel is only a by-product of the collusion of the forces of transnational crime with regional/international jihadists in the guise of a crimeterror nexus (see Bøås 2015;Strazzari 2014). The way in which more or less licit trade historically underlies phenomena of state-making and unmaking in the Sahara-Sahel region is much more complex (Strazzari and Zanoletti 2019). ...
... Some of the people involved in this business are mainly profit seekers; others mainly aim to fund resistance projects. However, many are also involved to some extent in both smuggling operations and resistance projects as a coping strategy (Bøås 2015). Nor does an exclusive focus on illicit goods or natural resource extraction explain why these incentives would have come to play such an important part in recent wars: in other words, the economic agenda research assumes that there is a profit motive on the part of the belligerents without exploring why or to what extent political-military actors become profit-seeking, market-based actors. ...
... Thus, his status as a Big Man was not based only on one of these activities, but on the totality of them. The result was his ability to, if not control, at least influence and maintain different and also partly overlapping networks that in their own right did not have much commonality with regard to long-term objectives and strategy (Bøås 2015). ...
Article
Full-text available
Once a region that rarely featured in debates about global security, the Sahel has become increasingly topical as it confronts the inter- national community with intertwined challenges related to climate variability, poverty, food insecurity, population displacement, trans- national crime, contested statehood and jihadist insurgencies. This Special Issue discerns the contours of political orders in the making. After situating the Sahel region in time and space, we focus on the trajectory of regional security dynamics over the past decade, which are marked by two military coups in Mali (2012 and 2020). In addressing state fragility and societal resilience in the context of increasing external intervention and growing international rivalry, we seek to consider broader and deeper transformations that can be neither ignored nor patched up through the framework of the ‘war on terror’ projected onto ‘ungoverned spaces’. Focusing espe- cially on the mobilisation of material and immaterial resources, we apply political economy lenses in combination with a historical sociological approach to shed light on how extra-legal governance plays a crucial role in the deformation, transformation and reforma- tion of political orders.
... In the desert economy the boundaries between what is legal and illegal, legitimate and illegitimate, are blurred (Brachet 2018: 20;Raineri 2016;Scheele 2012;McDougall and Scheele 2012). Cross-border trade in licit and illicit goods is interwoven in a complex political economy which involves non-state and state actors, but mostly actors somewhere inbetween (Bøås 2015): for instance, the same person can simultaneously have a formal position within the state apparatus, be a regional 'big man', rebel group member, and drug trafficker. Rather than being separate categories of activities and actors, there is a certain continuity 'between different contours of criminality, coping, and resistance and the subsequent logic behind these activities' (Bøås 2015: 300). ...
... The amount of money generated by trafficking drugs, cocaine in particular, through the Sahara (as opposed to the 'traditional' contraband such as in fuel and foodstuffs) has reshaped societal structures and political life in northern Mali and Niger (Raineri 2016;International Crisis Group 2018). The sudden influx of cash has weakened traditional hierarchical structures and traditional power configurations of Touareg societies as drug traffickers with money are attaining higher positions, thus diminishing the authority of village elders and religious leaders (Bøås 2015;International Crisis Group 2018). It is important to note that the trafficking in drugs is often regarded a legitimate profession and a source of prestige, it offers a major source of economic opportunity in a region with high unemployment, and constitutes one of the only possibilities for upward social mobility (Reitano and Shaw 2014;International Crisis Group, 2018;Micallef et al. 2019;Raineri 2016 The fall of Gaddafi in 2011, instigated by NATO's bombing of Libya, significantly altered the security landscape in the Sahara-Sahel and was among the causes of the 2012 Touareg rebellion in northern Mali (Bøås and Utas 2013). ...
... Indeed, Gaddafi's large weapons arsenals were looted and distributed across the whole MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa and have played a key role in a number of conflicts and the weaponization of the Sahel region (Micallef et al. 2019). These weapons have also armed the complex landscape of Islamist insurgencies that have emerged in the Sahel, such as Al Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar Eddine and the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) (see Bøås 2015) and later groups such as the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and the Macina Liberation Front. Some of these groups have also gathered revenues by kidnap for ransom of Westerners, something that, in addition to the Touareg rebellions, contributed to a decline of tourism to this region. ...
Thesis
This thesis investigates how Western crime control policies and models are exported to the Global South, and what the power implications are herein. More specifically, it explores crime control as European Union (EU) external policy, and the role of internal security issues in the EU’s relations with the Sahel region of West Africa. Travelling crime control is studied through various stages of empirical exploration and levels of analysis. Empirically, the most central contributions of this thesis are broadly threefold. First, the thesis constitutes the first mapping of EU aid to crime control and internal security across regions and over a period of 15 years. Second, based on fieldwork and interviews in Senegal, Mali, Niger and Brussels, it provides in-depth empirical knowledge about the micro-politics and practices of the EU’s export of its crime control models to West Africa. Third, it empirically documents the meeting point between European crime control models and Sahelian social realities, including resistance to Eurocentric forms of control. In terms of theory, the thesis makes contributions across Criminology and International Relations (IR): encompassing analyses of the constitutive as well as structural forms of power implicated in the EU’s export of crime control and border security to West Africa and the wider southern neighbourhood. In so doing, it simultaneously advances transnational criminological theory on the relationship between crime control/penal power and state/sovereignty.
... Such a focus may help explain how some conflicts are sustained, but it rarely tells us much about why conflicts start in the first place. It would be a mistake, for example, to assume that the current conflict in the Sahel is only a by-product of the collusion of the forces of transnational crime with regional/international jihadists in the guise of a crimeterror nexus (see Bøås 2015;Strazzari 2014). The way in which more or less licit trade historically underlies phenomena of state-making and unmaking in the Sahara-Sahel region is much more complex (Strazzari and Zanoletti 2019). ...
... Some of the people involved in this business are mainly profit seekers; others mainly aim to fund resistance projects. However, many are also involved to some extent in both smuggling operations and resistance projects as a coping strategy (Bøås 2015). Nor does an exclusive focus on illicit goods or natural resource extraction explain why these incentives would have come to play such an important part in recent wars: in other words, the economic agenda research assumes that there is a profit motive on the part of the belligerents without exploring why or to what extent political-military actors become profit-seeking, market-based actors. ...
... Thus, his status as a Big Man was not based only on one of these activities, but on the totality of them. The result was his ability to, if not control, at least influence and maintain different and also partly overlapping networks that in their own right did not have much commonality with regard to long-term objectives and strategy (Bøås 2015). ...
Article
Full-text available
Once a region that rarely featured in debates about global security, the Sahel has become increasingly topical as it confronts the international community with intertwined challenges related to climate variability, poverty, food insecurity, population displacement, transnational crime, contested statehood and jihadist insurgencies. This Special Issue discerns the contours of political orders in the making. After situating the Sahel region in time and space, we focus on the trajectory of regional security dynamics over the past decade, which are marked by two military coups in Mali (2012 and 2020). In addressing state fragility and societal resilience in the context of increasing external intervention and growing international rivalry, we seek to consider broader and deeper transformations that can be neither ignored nor patched up through the framework of the ‘war on terror’ projected onto ‘ungoverned spaces’. Focusing especially on the mobilisation of material and immaterial resources, we apply political economy lenses in combination with a historical sociological approach to shed light on how extra-legal governance plays a crucial role in the deformation, transformation and reformation of political orders.
... As for more recent years, Keenan (2006b) has gone to great lengths to demonstrate the role of hydrocarbons in the current process of securitization that is overtaking the Sahara-Sahel, adding renewed interest in it. 7 This weak territorial control has presented itself as a threat to more Weberian notions of sovereignty prominent in the West (Bachmann 2015;Bøås 2015;Clunan & Trinkunas 2010;Keister 2014;Raineri & Strazzari 2015Raleigh & Dowd 2013). Post-independent Mali, that is, 1960 onwards, has responded to its weak grip on power in the north through attempts at heavy-handed measures rooted in the centralized apparatus of French colonial rule. ...
... territories not effectively ruled by the central government of a defined territory (Bachmann 2015;Bøås 2015;Clunan & Trinkunas 2010;Keister 2014;Raineri & Strazzari 2015Raleigh & Dowd 2013). ...
... Indeed, in Mali, the absence of the Malian government and its services in the north-due to its divide-and-rule or remote-control policy (or "Bamako policy" [Chauzal & Van Damme 2015, p. 41]) (Briscoe 2014, p. 27;Delsol 2019;International Crisis Group 2012, p. 7; also cited by Lebovich 2013)-from what came to be the unrecognized State of Azawad in 2012 directly led to the "alternative governance" (Clunan & Trinkunas (2010) of puritanical Islamist groups or organized crime. Bachmann (2015), Bøås (2015), Keister (2014), Raineri & Strazzari (2017), and Raleigh & Dowd (2013) have also noted to misleading characterization of such regions as being "ungoverned". 86 Routes can shift in very surprising manners. ...
Preprint
Full-text available
The purpose of this research has been to examine the era of securitization in the Sahara-Sahel meta-region of West Africa. It begins with an executive summary of the research, followed immediately by a historical perspective on the Sahara-Sahel, one that is crucial to understanding the current (socio)political economy of the wider region and the crises that are manifest there. It then discusses the role of an energy-security nexus in heralding the securitization era of the Sahara-Sahel, and the role the United States and Algeria played in prompting it. This discussion gives way to the stepped-up role of the European Union in the region, which increasingly views the Sahelian countries as an externalized, southern border of the supranational bloc largely through the prism of a supposed security-migration-development nexus. This nexus is examined (as is, briefly, the alleged climate-conflict nexus) and, while it certainly exists, this research demonstrates current approaches of securitization in the region have wreaked much harm on the local communities there, while encouraging rent-seeking behavior from corrupt governments and leading to proliferation of instability, especially by pushing average people into the fold of organized crime and smuggling to eke out a living. Focus is on Mali, a state which has faced numerous revolts since independence by alienated communities in its northern regions, most recently in 2012 which captured international attention. It concludes with a series of recommendations that American and EU policymakers ought to heed in order to avoid fanning the flames that have already spread from Mali and seem to be shifting southward, towards states such as previously tranquil Burkina Faso. It is hoped this research may provide crucial insight into a widely misunderstood region in both Western popular imagination and policymaking circles.
... One can argue that the post-colonial systems reflected a degree of stability because they were tied by their parasitical relationship to formal state institutions. Today's networks, however, are characterised by their flexibility and adaptability, where actors compete for the role of the nodal point in between various networks of attempted informal governance that collaborates, but also competes and at times are in violent conflict with each other over the issue of control (Bøås 2015a). Thus, we maintain that an understanding of contemporary MENA insurgencies requires both an awareness of the ongoing crises of established systems of governance and the realisation that these insurgencies reflect not the absence of authority but the emergence of alternative and competing modalities of rule and governance. ...
... Note that even if 'big man' status in the MENA region most often will be based on an ability to use force, this is not a sufficient criterion. The 'big man' cannot rule solely by force, he or she also must provide (see Bøås 2012;2015a). ...
... He could also reportedly be heard in the communication, declaring allegiance to al-Qaeda and praising its current leader Ayman al-Zawahri and Osama bin Laden, but also curiously the slain Jordanian Abu Mussab Zarqawi (whose al-Qaeda group in Iraq later morphed to become IS). The process of fragmentation and merger of different insurgent groups and factions that we have seen and continue to see in this region may therefore also be a process where different big men struggle to become the nodal point of different networks in the region that in complex processes of collusion and conflict navigate the ambiguous borders between crime, coping and resistance (Bøås 2015b Mapping and assessment of Islamic insurgent groups in the MENA region ...
Research
Full-text available
This working paper analyses a broad range of Islamic insurgents, spanning from the Sahel and North Africa to the Middle East, examining the threat that these groups represent on a regional and global scale. We assess their local, regional and global strategies and evaluate the extent to which they make use of Jihadist discourse to further local/regional aims, or whether they are more truly devoted to a global struggle, operationally as well as in discourse and rhetoric. We make use of several analytical dimensions and factors in a way that allows us to develop a threat assessment that seeks to disentangle the local, the regional and the global levels. In doing so, our aim is also to develop a methodological framework that may be used for analytical updates and future research in this region and elsewhere.
... Critical security studies scholars have enhanced our understanding of these processes by analyzing the production of Sahelian (in)securities in powerful Western intervention discourses (Lacher, 2008). In line with the 'local turn' (Mac Ginty, 2010;Mac Ginty and Richmond, 2013), fine-grained studies of local security agency in the Sahel have also revealed multiple agendas that sometimes align with and other times contrast to Western security interests (Baldaro, 2020;Bøås, 2015;Charbonneau and Sears, 2014;Cold-Ravnkilde, 2021;Raineri and Strazzari, 2019). The resulting multiplicity and heterogeneity of actors, practices, rationalities, and technologies have been productively theorized as (in)security assemblages (Frowd, 2018;Frowd and Sandor, 2018;Sandor, 2016). ...
... Especially contributions from anthropology, area studies, and peace and conflict studies show the complexity of so-called local agency, where different actors may have a variety of agendas and security interests (e.g. Bøås, 2015;Lecocq, 2013). For example, Baldaro (2020) explores security region-building in the Sahel from three different local perspectives -armed Islamist groups, political elites, and local populations -showing that the first views the West as the security threat, the second uses security-focused regional organization-building (G5 Sahel) to ensure regime security through extracting rents from international aid, while, for the third, regional circulation and mobility are crucial for securing livelihoods. ...
Article
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Contemporary security interventions in Africa are characterized by an increasing pluralization of external actors, bringing with them new security rationalities, practices, and technologies, sometimes with profound influences on local security dynamics. While studies have focused empirically on East and South Africa, this article explores the roles of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey in the Sahel region of West Africa. To make sense of their engagement, we develop the notion of ‘transnational security entanglements’ by bringing the literature on (in)security assemblages into productive dialogue with scholarship on transnational entanglements in the fields of global history and law. Both literatures depart from relational ontologies, eschew methodological nationalism, and emphasize the interplay between the human and the non-human in the making of the social world. At the same time, we argue, the focus on entanglements adds a specific analytic of South–South connections and transregional circulations to extant scholarship on (in)security assemblages. To illustrate the importance of these transregional connections beyond the North Atlantic, we draw on interviews and media reports about the myriad ways in which connections between the UAE and Turkey with various actors in the Sahel shape current transformations of political orders in the region.
... These Big Men function as nodal points within networks of relevance to governance, markets, and violence. As Bøås (2015) argues this leads to pragmatism and shifting alliances, rather than lasting and ideologically coherent allegiances. Iyad Ag Ghaly is an example of a regional Big Man who was a Tuareg rebel commander in the 1990s, took on government positions, subsequently joined Ansar Dine in 2012 and now leads the jihadist umbrella organisation, JNIM. ...
... While short-lived, this experiment in implementing jihadist governance proved to be one of AQIM's most important successes in the region (Thurston, 2020). Case studies have provided valuable insights into specific insurgent groups who ruled northern Mali (Ba, 2020a(Ba, , 2020bBøås, 2014Bøås, , 2015Bøås, , 2017Desgrais et al., 2018Desgrais et al., , 2018Lebovich, 2013;Raineri & Strazzari, 2015;Solomon, 2015;Svensson & Finnbogason, 2020;Thurston, 2020), though few have explored how governance varied sub-nationally (for an exception see Bouhlel & Guichaoua, 2021). Due to the scarcity of empirical research, this case draws not only on scholarly work but also on reports from various non-governmental organisations. ...
Research
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The ways in which jihadist insurgents in the Sahel govern is rarely considered in the academic literature. They have often been portrayed as ‘Islamic terrorists’, who achieve their objectives by using brutal force against the civilian population and who finance their activities through criminal networks and activities. However, scattered empirical evidence reveals a different picture. Jihadist insurgents, like other insurgent groups, often use a variety of strategies to rule territory and populations. The scale, character and form of how such groups govern differs not only between countries but also at the sub-national level within the same group. Nevertheless, until recently jihadist insurgent governance in Africa and particularly the Sahel region has largely been overlooked. This synthesis reviews the existing literature on jihadist governance in West Africa, with a particular emphasis on the understudied region of the Sahel. The review is organised as follows: first, we clarify key concepts and provide definitions. Second, we provide a brief overview of Islam and politics in the Sahel, contextualising the rise of Salafist-jihadism as well as historical cases of jihadist governance. Third, we provide a brief overview of the literature and synthesise the existing research on jihadist insurgent governance in the Sahel. Fourth, we examine some key cases of jihadist governance in northern Mali, Nigeria and the Liptako-Gourma region straddling Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Finally, we conclude by summarising our findings, discussing the implications for the study of civil war and insurgency and consider avenues for future research.
... At the time of writing, foreign elements related to Islamic State (IS) are slowly taking over these rural insurgencies with more radical and violent insurgency strategies (Cold-Ravnkilde & Ba, 2022). These groups use a variety of tactics and means to ensure the flow of resources, weapons and recruits for the continuation of their operations (Bøås, 2015) Other armed groups that are organized for self-protection, such as vigilante groups, tend to degrade into violent behaviour, including human rights abuses and other crimes against the people they are supposed to protect (Meagher, 2012;Hagberg et al., 2019;Poudiougou, 2023). ...
... The excessive presence of the Sahel States in densely populated areas, with ignoring of low-density areas, have generated areas conducive to all kinds of trafficking and terrorism (Bassou, 2017), where the Sahel's communities broadly did not recognize economically motivated trafficking to be criminal acts (Reitano et al. 2014), with the prevalence of informal governance (Bøås, 2015), and bad governance and considerable economic, social and environmental disparities which has -fostered the growth of violent extremism, armed militancy and the proliferation of transnational crimes in the region‖ (Dentice, 2018). ...
Article
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Based on the results of comprehensive interdisciplinary research on the Sahel crises, this paper aims to outline them within the diversity of underdevelopment and to build for sustainable development by empowerment of renewable sources of energy. The diversity of underdevelopment was explained under the economic dimension, population growth, environmental degradation, and international intervention. The results suggest for their imperative influences on the Sahel crises which could be resolved by the empowerment of renewable sources of energy.
... Some of them became involved in the transport of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa to the north (labelled as 'human traffcking'), illicit activities such as the arms and drug trade, and the 'business' of kidnapping 'expat' mine employees to negotiate political infuence and ransom payments (Scheele 2012). Since 2011 many have also joined Muslim extremist groups (Bøas 2015;Thurston 2020; Chapter 9, this volume). Such activities obviously play into the framing of the region as home to 'unruly tribes', which dates to colonial times, and a renewed negative labelling as an 'extremist' and potential 'terrorist' space, seen from a European, especially French, perspective. ...
... Some of them became involved in the transport of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa to the north (labelled as 'human traffcking'), illicit activities such as the arms and drug trade, and the 'business' of kidnapping 'expat' mine employees to negotiate political infuence and ransom payments (Scheele 2012). Since 2011 many have also joined Muslim extremist groups (Bøas 2015;Thurston 2020; Chapter 9, this volume). Such activities obviously play into the framing of the region as home to 'unruly tribes', which dates to colonial times, and a renewed negative labelling as an 'extremist' and potential 'terrorist' space, seen from a European, especially French, perspective. ...
Book
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This edited volume examines the changes that arise from the entanglement of global interests and narratives with the local struggles that have always existed in the drylands of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia/Inner Asia. Changes in drylands are happening in an overwhelming manner. Climate change, growing political instability, and increasing enclosures of large expanses of often common land are some of the changes with far-reaching consequences for those who make their living in the drylands. At the same time, powerful narratives about the drylands as 'wastelands' and their 'backward' inhabitants continue to hold sway, legitimizing interventions for development, security, and conservation, informing re-emerging frontiers of investment (for agriculture, extraction, infrastructure), and shaping new dryland identities. The chapters in this volume discuss the politics of change triggered by forces as diverse as the global land and resource rush, the expansion of new Information and Communication Technologies, urbanization, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the spread of violent extremism. While recognizing that changes are co-produced by differently positioned actors from within and outside the drylands, this volume presents the dryland's point of view. It therefore takes the views, experiences, and agencies of dryland dwellers as the point of departure to not only understand the changes that are transforming their lives, livelihoods, and future aspirations, but also to highlight the unexpected spaces of contestation and innovation that have hitherto remained understudied. This edited volume will be of much interest to students, researchers, and scholars of natural resource management, land and resource grabbing, political ecology, sustainable development, and drylands in general.
... Some of them became involved in the transport of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa to the north (labelled as 'human traffcking'), illicit activities such as the arms and drug trade, and the 'business' of kidnapping 'expat' mine employees to negotiate political infuence and ransom payments (Scheele 2012). Since 2011 many have also joined Muslim extremist groups (Bøas 2015;Thurston 2020; Chapter 9, this volume). Such activities obviously play into the framing of the region as home to 'unruly tribes', which dates to colonial times, and a renewed negative labelling as an 'extremist' and potential 'terrorist' space, seen from a European, especially French, perspective. ...
Chapter
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Drylands are characterized by high rainfall variability, both in time and space. Long dry seasons, large fluctuations in annual rainfall, and intra-seasonal and localized droughts result in even more extreme fluctuations in resource availability. Typically, dryland inhabitants respond using a range of strategies, including investments in land but also extensive mobile use of natural resources such as nomadic pastoralism. This flexible use of natural resources is also reflected in the flexible set-up of natural resource governance regimes. Yet these flexible regimes increasingly run counter to formal systems of land tenure and land allocation and are affected by increasing climate variability and progressive climate change. In this chapter, an overview will be provided of the main issues at the intersection between climate variability and resource governance regimes and the linkages with present-day climate change.
... In this case helping us to understand why this led to an outcome where competing informal regimes of power, locally and nationally, set in motion a complex, competitive struggle among current and aspiring Big Men to become the very nodal points in emerging shadow-like semi-hidden informal networks of governance and control. 89 What this suggests is that conducting combined political democratization, economic liberalization and administrative decentralization in a weak state runs the risk of turning the state into an easy prey for a combination of national elites and regional Big Men. 90 While our paper has put some light on how weak states work, we need more and better-situated studies of how weak rulers actually rule, and why some succeed in preserving the rule and their regime, why others fail, and what happens when long-time rulers, as Compaoré, eventually fall. ...
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Not so long-ago Burkina Faso was considered an “island” of stability in a conflict-prone part of Africa. This is not the case anymore as armed insurgencies have caused widespread insecurity. While spill-over effects from the conflict in Mali clearly play a role, we argue that the sudden demise of the rule and regime of Blaise Compaoré also is an important contributing factor. To decipher to what extent regime transition shaped the current state of affairs, we show that what kept Burkina Faso stable and out of the conflicts in the region was a “big man deep state” of formal and informal networks of security provisions. When this “deep state” vanished with the ousting of Compaoré and his allies, local security providers have sought new solutions, and this strengthened the role of self-defense militias but also led them to compete against each other, at times also violently. This provided fertile terrain for jihadi insurgents. Therefore, this paper is an attempt to provide a conceptual understanding of how weak rulers actually rule, how some succeed in preserving their rule for a lengthy period of time, and what can happen when they eventually fall.
... Weak states, or 'ungoverned spaces' within states, have been conceptualised since 9/11 as a source of insecurity which facilitates rebellion, terrorism, and transnational criminal networks by providing secure bases away from state oversight (Aning and Pokoo 2014, 2;Bleck and Logvinenko 2018, 601;Bøås 2015, 300). This understanding has been challenged in the academic literature as both shallow and universalistic (Barakat and Larson 2014;Bøås 2015;Raineri and Strazzari 2015, 250) and critiqued for favouring particularly securitised policy choices (Barakat and Larson 2014;Zimmermann 2017, 226). Raleigh et al. are particularly critical of this understanding in the context of the Sahel, arguing that rather than problematic state military weakness, it is in fact predatory and arbitrary exercises of power that have acted as a major driver of recruitment for rebel groups (Raleigh, Nsaibia, and Dowd 2020, 8). ...
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Drawing on newly collected empirical data, this article explores the complex long-term political relationship between the state and the military in Mali. It argues that post-2013 French intervention has lacked an understanding of the place of the military within state structures. This led to an approach to statebuilding premised on the false idea that Mali has historically been a weak state, with weakness defined in military terms. It challenges this understanding and provides a counterargument rooted in a historical approach. It highlights how the French focus on military strengthening post-2013 inadvertently created the conditions for the 2020 coup d’état.
... The background to the current crisis in Mali since 2012 and the subsequent rise of a "jihadist" insurgency has been extensively described and discussed in international scholarly and journalistic writings. This insurgency has led to various armed groups taking control over the northern and central parts of the countries except the urban areas (for more on the background to this crisis, see for instance Gonin, Kotlok, and Pérouse de Montclos, 2013;Lecocq et al., 2013,;Bøås, 2015). ...
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Violent clashes between Fulani and Dogon have recently escalated in the Seeno plains in central Mali. After failing to defeat a “jihadist” insurgency dominated by Fulani, the Malian army has sponsored and trained a Dogon militia, which has systematically attacked Fulani villages, and again caused counterattacks. In addition, internal conflicts within Fulani and Dogon society have emerged. This demonstrates the complexities of the current crisis in Mali and how simplistic narratives about its causes are unhelpful. It also shows how views of the enemy as “terrorists” or “jihadists” are dangerous and able to further fuel violent conflicts.
... The delays and deficiencies in implementing the DDR programme and the lack of economic opportunities in northern Mali, in addition to climate change, are pushing people to trade increasingly in illicit goods. 184 Trade and trafficking in licit goods have historically been a part of adapted livelihoods in Mali. 185 For example, the Tuareg's salt caravans have existed for many years, and trade and caravans are part of traditional life. ...
... On the other hand, these same actors actively participated in the control of the territory, creating alliances with big men and political elites, and guaranteeing a certain order so far as trans-Saharan trade and exchanges were concerned (Bøås, 2015). As previously noted, in a semi-desert environment with little infrastructure, territorial control and security delivery are not built around the full command of the space, but rather on the exercise of ruling power over nodal points and exchange places, which shape mobility, and where most of the economic and political activities are concentrated; AQIM demonstrated its ability to participate in this informal and cooperative system of space control. ...
... MUJAO had undoubtedly gained some local support in and around Gao, and it cunningly appropriated local grievances concerning land rights, taking the side of Fulani pastoralist groups in a local land rights conflict (Bøås 2015b). In this process, MUJAO also welcomed and gained the support of Fulani fighters from northern Tillabéri. ...
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The Tillabéri region in Niger has quickly lapsed into a state of violence and come under the control of ‘violent entrepreneurs’ – that is, non-state armed actors possessing some kind of political agenda, which is implemented in tandem with different types of income-generating activities. Violent entrepreneurs rule by force and violence, but they also distribute resources, provide some level of order and offer protection to (at least parts of) the population in the areas they control, or attempt to control. In many local communities in peripheral areas of the Sahel, these violent entrepreneurs have a stronger presence than international community actors and their national allies. This situation is partly the result of spill-over effects from the war in Mali and local herder-farmer conflicts, but the key factors are the ability of jihadi insurgents to appropriate local grievances and the failure of the state to resist this.
... On the other hand, these same actors actively participated in the control of the territory and in the delivery of security to local populations, creating alliances with big men and political elites and guaranteeing a certain order as far as trans-Saharan trade and exchanges were concerned (Bøås, 2015). As previously noted, in a semi-desert environment with little infrastructure, territorial control and security delivery are not built around the full command of the space but rather on the exercise of ruling power over nodal points and exchange places, which shape mobility and are where most economic and political activities are concentrated. ...
Article
The African Sahel is a region whose geopolitical dimensions are constantly changing and evolving as a result of new intersections of international, regional and local security dynamics. In this context, various actors have initiated different regional projects in an attempt to reframe the area according to their interests and specific interpretations of security and to impose the form of order that best fits with their goals. The discursive, normative and material struggle about the definition of the region is having obvious effects on security and conflict, furthering regional instability. This article disentangles the different region-building initiatives at work in the area by identifying the four groups of actors advancing a specific project around the Sahel, namely: (1) international security deliverers, (2) jihadist insurgent groups, (3) regional governmental elites, and (4) local communities and populations. In so doing, it explores how the different spatial and security imaginaries advanced by these four collective agents struggle and interact, and shows that the Sahel can be considered the unintended result of a competitive process that is furthering conflict and violence in a shifting regional security system.
... However, contrary to the idea of 'ungoverned space,' socio-political order in Maliparticularly beyond the urban centres of the south -is the product of linkages between an array of state institutions and ethno-cultural leaders and authorities (Lecocq et al. 2013). Over time, and particularly since the armed insurrection in 2012, this has become intertwined with organised criminal networks and jihadist organisations, as well as powerbrokers beyond Mali's boundaries (Bøås 2015). Rather than fall into strict state/non-state patterns, violent conflict in Mali tends to be manufactured between and across groupings and communities, creating settings where a political leader can be a chief, a warlord, a criminal, and a state actor simultaneously. ...
Article
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In recent years, the United Nations (UN) has increasingly turned towards stabilisation logics in its peace operations, focusing on the extension of state authority in fragile, conflict-prone areas. However, this concept of stabilisation relies upon a series of binaries — formal/informal actors, licit/illicit activities, governed/ungoverned space — which often distort the far more complex power relations in conflict settings. As a result, UN peace operations tend to direct resources towards state institutions and ignore a wide range of non-state entities, many of which are crucial sources of governance and exist at the local and national level. In response, this article places the UN’s stabilisation approach within a recent trend in peace research focused on the hybrid nature of socio-political order in conflict-affected regions, where non-state forms of governance often have significant and legitimate roles. Rather than replicate misleading state/non-state binaries, the article proposes a relational approach and develops a novel analytical framework for analysing a wide range of governance actors in terms of different forms of symbiotic relationships. It then applies this approach to specific examples in Mali and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), demonstrating the highly networked power arrangements present in conflict settings. The article posits that a relational approach would avoid many of the false assumptions at the heart of today’s stabilisation interventions and would instead allow the UN to design more effective, realistic strategies for pursuing sustainable peace in modern conflict settings. It concludes that relationality could be used more generally, including to explain the waning potency of the so-called ‘third wave’ of democratisation.
... In reality, hybrid (security) orders, including 'big men' and their patronage networks, control or compete to control trade in all kinds of commodities, and the distinction between legal and illegal is often blurred (Raineri and Strazzari 2017). These actors are sometimes non-state, sometimes state, and often something in-between (Bøås 2015). Cracking down on all kinds of activities defined in international conventions as 'transnational organised crime' may upset a fragile micro-political stability that these hybrid actors ensure. ...
Poster
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The pursuit of internal security objectives has become increasingly important in EU foreign policy and external relations. The EU now invests a growing number of efforts towards fighting ‘security threats’ and transnational crime in the (extended) neighbourhood. This is particularly evident in the Sahel region of West Africa, where initiatives focusing on bolstering internal security apparatuses and borders are mushrooming. The question is whether the EU’s emerging role as a ‘global crime fighter’ contributes to fostering human security or satisfying the internal security priorities of the member states, and whether the two are at all compatible. A closer look at EU policies in the Sahel suggests that solutions based on criminalisation and repression can have harmful unintended consequences which can even destabilise the region.
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Discusses the Sahel Population development and conflict problems
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This article contends that the appropriation, cooptation and creation of resources was a key element for the jihadist success during the 2012 Tuareg uprising in Mali. Based on the Resource Mobilization Theory (RMT), the article states that AQIM, MUJAO and Ansar Dine successfully appropriated and coopted moral and socio-organizational resources that were previously controlled by the Tuareg movement and, simultaneously, self-produced new resources taking advantage of the abandonment of local communities by the Malian government. Firstly, this article studies how the jihadist movements coopted legitimacy resources from the MNLA Tuareg movement: these groups provided an alternative political project for the Azawad, joined the Northern families through marriages and spread new trafficking networks. Secondly, the article analyzes how the jihadist organizations developed social assistance programs that integrated them within the Northern Mali communities and facilitated the spread of their ideology. Finally, this article concludes that the emergence and spread of jihadism in the Azawad region can be better explained by applying a RMT approach, focused on how jihadist organizations produced, coopted and appropriated moral and socio-organizational resources.
Chapter
After studying Indonesia’s African approach’s redefinition and its main instigators, then making parallels between Indonesia’s African foreign policy and that of other major Asian powers, this chapter reevaluates the multiple drivers and conceptions of Indonesian foreign policy in general and towards Africa in particular, while interrogating the possibility for Indonesia of being a model in Africa, the necessity of holistic approaches to co-construct meaning and long term success in Africa, and the road to great power for Indonesia as passing through Africa. Before being able to develop a comprehensive African strategy, Indonesia will need to enrich its engagement with Africa, making it more holistic, which means learning more while producing more knowledge on the continent to fulfil its ambitions; otherwise, Indonesia’s African engagement risks bringing disappointment in Africa. Indonesian infrastructural promises made in Africa have, for example, not been delivered, given Indonesia’s lack of financial capacities.
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Established as a regional collective security organization by Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso, the five countries of the Sahel, one of Africa's eco-climatic regions, the G5 Sahel is a sub-regional international organization that aims to harmonize security and development strategies and activities among its members. This promising initiative, which ultimately targeted regional security integration, is now at risk of becoming a dysfunctional and failed initiative. This paper seeks to analyze the challenges facing the evolution of the G5 Sahel towards regional security integration. Following the first part, which examines security regionalism or the regionalization of security in a conceptual and theoretical framework, the context in which the G5 Sahel Organization was created is examined within the approach of the Copenhagen School's Regional Security Complex. It focuses on what the G5 Sahel means in the Sahel as an example of a regional security complex in which violent extremism is securitized. Finally, the reasons for the current dysfunctional appearance of the G5 Sahel and the challenges to its future evolution towards regional security integration are debated around the arguments from the problems of member states, the internal dynamics of the G5 Sahel Organization, and the overabundance of international actors and activities in the region.
Article
How do rebel organizations capitalize on transit migration? While numerous studies have examined the role of refugees, this article explores a broader yet significant category of mobile populations in civil conflict. Focusing on Mali, I argue that transit migration increases rebel capacity based on three causal mechanisms: Obstacles in transit, camping banditry, and dynamic recruitment. Obstacles are an enabling mechanism by facilitating the intersection between rebels and migrants. As camping bandits, rebels move between violent extortion and systematic exploitation depending on levels of competition. Finally, I argue that rebels recruit transit migrants using dynamic strategies, including coercive incentives and short-term contracts in which social and ideological requirements are relaxed. Combining quantitative analysis with original interview data, I find significant support for the causal argument and preliminary evidence for my conceptual framework. The findings improve our understanding of rebel organizations and the role of mobile populations in civil conflict.
Article
Purpose: The study sought to analyze the impact of globalization on leadership and governance in Mali Materials and Methods: The study adopted a desktop methodology. Desk research refers to secondary data or that which can be collected without fieldwork. Desk research is basically involved in collecting data from existing resources hence it is often considered a low cost technique as compared to field research, as the main cost is involved in executive’s time, telephone charges and directories. Thus, the study relied on already published studies, reports and statistics. This secondary data was easily accessed through the online journals and library. Findings: The results show that globalization has had a profound impact on leadership and governance in the world today. Globalization is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, and its effects can be seen in virtually every sector of society. From economic and political systems to social and cultural norms, globalization has altered the way in which we view and interact with the world. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practices and Policies: The functionalism theory, realism theory and constructivism theory may be used to anchor future studies in the leadership and governance sector. The study results will also benefit other stakeholders such as the policy makers as well as researchers and scholars from different parts of the world. The top management of private and public industries in the country will also use the study findings to improve leadership and governance performance in all their activities and programs. The study recommends that the adoption of effective development policies in the leadership and governance will help to improve efficiency in their major operations and activities.
Chapter
Global governance has come under increasing pressure since the end of the Cold War. In some issue areas, these pressures have led to significant changes in the architecture of governance institutions. In others, institutions have resisted pressures for change. This volume explores what accounts for this divergence in architecture by identifying three modes of governance: hierarchies, networks, and markets. The authors apply these ideal types to different issue areas in order to assess how global governance has changed and why. In most issue areas, hierarchical modes of governance, established after World War II, have given way to alternative forms of organization focused on market or network-based architectures. Each chapter explores whether these changes are likely to lead to more or less effective global governance across a wide range of issue areas. This provides a novel and coherent theoretical framework for analysing change in global governance.
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The article will discuss the patterns that jihadism has followed when spreading throughout sub-Saharan Africa, addressing the major scholarly debates but also to bring forward the elements that various African cases seemingly have in common. The discussions over African Jihadism has seen several great debates, over the ungoverned space theory, a dichotomous discussion of the local and the global as opposing explanatory models, and a discussion of the role of ‘greed’ and economic incentives. The article argues that these discussions need to be transcended, and that dichotomous discussions fail to see more complex patterns of interaction between various factors, and the complexity of social relations that at times depend on the different contexts we study. Understanding how global networks can harness local conflicts to gain support is key to understanding African jihadist groups, and how those harnessing strategies can be limited. The article also suggests that there is an emerging consensus over several of the factors that do occur in sub-Saharan African jihadism and present the implications of these findings for the ongoing conflict in Mozambique and Tanzania.
Research
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This report builds on the insights of a key expert on the history and politics of West Africa, Kwesi Aning, professor and director at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC). It explores key challenges and megatrends of security in West Africa, ranging from illegal mining and organized crime to international interventions and piracy. Aning’s main point is that the West African states are in crisis – more so than in the early years of the post-Cold War era. A key reason for this is popular disappointment in the face of economic inequality; reversals in the application of democratic principles; a demographic boom; and climate change resulting in environmental disasters and degradation. Together, these factors compound the failure of states to maintain optimism and live up to the expectations of their populations. In turn, countries from outside the region that make the decision to intervene, and that design the interventions, must have a fundamental understanding of the contexts in which they intervene and of their own limitations. Only then will external actors be able to support further steps taken in the region to mitigate some of the challenges that West Africa faces, challenges which have led to conflict in the past, and may presently lead not just to new and renewed conflicts, but also to the spread of existing ones. The report is split into 8 sections: the state, organized crime, illegal mining, climate change, demographics and urbanization, armed robbery at sea and piracy, security and interventions.
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This report builds on the insights of a key expert on the history and politics of West Africa, Kwesi Aning, professor and director at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC). It explores key challenges and megatrends of security in West Africa, ranging from illegal mining and organized crime to international interventions and piracy. Aning’s main point is that the West African states are in crisis – more so than in the early years of the post-Cold War era. A key reason for this is popular disappointment in the face of economic inequality; reversals in the application of democratic principles; a demographic boom; and climate change resulting in environmental disasters and degradation. Together, these factors compound the failure of states to maintain optimism and live up to the expectations of their populations. In turn, countries from outside the region that make the decision to intervene, and that design the interventions, must have a fundamental understanding of the contexts in which they intervene and of their own limitations. Only then will external actors be able to support further steps taken in the region to mitigate some of the challenges that West Africa faces, challenges which have led to conflict in the past, and may presently lead not just to new and renewed conflicts, but also to the spread of existing ones. The report is split into 8 sections: the state, organized crime, illegal mining, climate change, demographics and urbanization, armed robbery at sea and piracy, security and interventions.
Article
In spite of several international interventions to contain and degrade militant groups in the Sahel region, al-Qaeda affiliated groups have managed to retain their alliance and even spread and intensify their use of violence. This article explains the cohesion of the insurgency alliance as the outcome of a number of sound strategic decisions. By applying a framework of irregular strategy, the article examines the processes of early adaption to pre-existing social networks and the subsequent shaping through political, violent, and communicative lines of effort. Although the primary purpose of the strategy was not alliance cohesion, the result is that al-Qaeda related networks cooperate across ethnic and social cleavages, despite the many setbacks and dilemmas that local politics generate. The article adds an agency-oriented perspective to the growing literature on insurgency fragmentation and cohesion, which are major factors in the outcome of civil wars.
Technical Report
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Over the past decade the impact of climate change on people’s everyday lives have become tangible. Its effects have contributed to loss of human life, it has undermined livelihoods, destroyed infrastructure, harmed national economies and stressed state budgets. Across the globe, its impacts have contributed to widened gender inequalities in different contexts. Climate change is also transforming and redefining the global security and development landscape. The implications of climate change for security and development has become increasingly recognized within the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU) and Regional Economic Communities (REC). The framing of climate change in the security and development discourse is undergoing an important change. In some spaces it is moving away from seeing climate change as a security ‘threat,’ and instead frames it as climate-related security and development ‘risks’. This approach, which is also the approach we take in this paper, emphasizes that climate change must not be seen as predominantly external in its cause, but rather that it exposes and compounds risks that are inherent in social-ecological systems, – especially in fragile and conflict-affected environments.
Article
This article discusses the trends and micro-dynamics of violence in northern Mali. Using a mixed research design, we focus on the violence used by jihadist groups during the first phases of the Malian civil war (2012–2015). Integrating research on civil war and terrorism, we distinguish between direct and remote violence. Quantitative analyses show that the involvement of jihadist groups in this conflict had a strong impact on the level and intensity of violence of all warring parties. Qualitative analysis of data collected during field research done in Mali between 2016 and 2017 complements the quantitative work. It enlightens that relational dynamics strongly influence the decision to resort to violence within non-state armed groups, including jihadist ones, while local contexts often explain temporal and geographic variations in violence.
Research
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There are often assumptions made about the role of climate change impacts in aggravating insecurity in the Sahel. In this report, we investigate those assumptions by focusing on the increasing insecurity in northern Niger. We carried out life histories with 29 smugglers of people, drugs and arms to find out what factors influenced them to take up smuggling. Where possible we also interviewed smugglers' fathers to understand how their livelihood choices differed from their sons. We find that, rather than being a recent trend, a major shift out of pastoralism occurred during the smugglers’ fathers’ generation. The life history data also shows that most smugglers were attracted to the smuggling industry, not out of desperation to escape desertification and resource scarcity, but because of the potential to earn substantially more than what they were earning as day-labourers at the mines, or as gardeners, mechanics or motorcyclists. Our study shows how, rather than climate change being a dominant driving factor behind the proliferation of armed networks in northern NIger, global politics interact with trading practices and corruptible state officials to produce a political economy that incentivises young people to become smugglers. We argue that this matters as assuming that climate change increases conflict justifies a securitised response to climate change.
Technical Report
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This paper explores the complex and tangled links between climate variability/change and the proliferation of armed networks operating in northern Niger. It does so by examining the factors influencing livelihood choices among 29 smugglers of people, arms, drugs and gold, working across northern Niger. The report focuses on these smugglers because they are armed and operate in coordinated networks. To understand how factors may be changing over time, the report also includes interviews with smugglers’ fathers. The report analyses whether extreme weather events and climate variability influence livelihood choices, and pays attention to how changes in the political and economic context impinge on their life trajectories.
Article
The wave of jihadist insurgency in West Africa: global ideology, local context, individual motivations The recent rise of jihadist movements in West Africa has puzzled many observers. The easy spread of the jihadist ideology, the jihadist movements success in massively recruiting followers among the local population as well as their ability to conquer territories are unprecedented in the region’s contemporary history. This report attempts to shade light on the factors and processes that contribute to the emergence of these movements. It argues that the phenomenon of jihadist insurgencies in West Africa emerge as a result of a series of processes at the global, local, and individual level. At the global level, there is the formation and dissemination of the global ideology of Jihadism, conceptualized by Muslim activists and scholars based on a particular understanding of Islam and the challenges that are facing contemporary Muslim societies. At the local level, the appropriation of Jihadi ideologies by local « Islamic activists » who then use it to formulate a discourse that taps into local social and political demands to mobilize followers is key. For a wide range of reasons, areas of Africa have experienced weakened state capacity and increased local conflict, and it is in these areas that Jihadi insurgencies have emerged. And at the individual level, the process by which African individuals decide to enroll in Jihadi groups include ideological, situational, and strategic motivations, and these have all been facilitated by deteriorating conditions of life in marginalized areas.
Chapter
Somali women's participation in peace-building and conflict resolution in Somalia has been very limited, and they have been marginalized in all aspects of decision-making and governance. However, their political participation is closely linked to peace-building and state-building in Somalia, hence the need to study the various factors which promote or inhibit women's involvement in mainstream peace and reconciliation in Somalia. This chapter summarizes broader research conducted in Galkayo (South and North) and Kismayo, and a focus group discussion conducted in Garowe. The study addressed four research objectives: (1) levels of women's participation in peace-building; (2) factors constraining women's participation; (3) policies, frameworks, rules, and regulations encouraging women's participation; and (4) UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and an agenda to catalyse action and bring about positive change.
Article
The debate concerning the Nigerian terrorist Boko Haram is typically simplified across two false dichotomies. First, it is treated as either a local conflict in northeast Nigeria with its epicentre in Borno State or part of a broader conflict in Northwest Africa (and beyond), encompassing northern Cameroon, southern Chad, Niger, and reaching into Libya and Mali. The second dichotomy concerns whether it is animated by local material conditions on the ground, or is part of a broader anti-West jihad. The Boko Haram insurgency is not that simple. It is, rather, a multidimensional conflict and can change overtime.
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