02 December 2020
14:00 Europe/Oslo
Event
WEBINAR: Launch of special issue of International Spectator
We are happy to promote the launch of a special issue of the "International Spectator" journal on Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making, guest edited by Morten Bøås and Francesco Strazzari.
Language: English
Microsoft Teams
Seminar
REGISTER HERE
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. Sahel is in fact a political order in the making, where extra-legal governance influences the nature of political competition and multiple threats challenge international stakeholders.
The special issue includes the following articles:
- Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making (Bøås & Strazzari)
- The Fragility Dilemma in the Sahel (Osland & Erstad)
- Counterinsurgency Practice in Niger and Nigeria (Berlingozzi & Stoddard)
- The Great Illusion: Security Sector Reform in the Sahel (Venturi & Touré)
- Al-Qaeda & Islamic State Clash in Central Mali (Baldaro & Diall)
- The Dangers of Disconnection: Oscillations in Political Violence on Lake Chad (Iocchi)
- Gold Mining in the Sahara- Sahel (Raineri)
- Insurgent Appropriation of Grievances in Niger (Bøås, Cissé & Mahamane)
Related publications
Publications
Publications
Scientific article
Governance, fragility and insurgency in the Sahel: a hybrid order in the making
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.
Publications
Publications
Scientific article
The Fragility Dilemma and Divergent Security Complexes in the Sahel
Despite an exponential increase in international resources devoted to the Sahel, the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate. This is largely due to the so-called “fragility dilemma”, faced by fragile states that are in critical need of external assistance, but have limited absorption capacity and are governed by sitting regimes that dictate the terms and upon which external actors must rely. This dilemma has contributed to an increasing divergence between a state-centric regional and a people-centric transnational security complex. In particular, a heavy-handed approach to violent extremism and external policies aimed at curbing “irregular” migration have had a number of unintended consequences, disrupting livelihoods and further exacerbating instability in the Sahelian states.
Publications
Publications
Scientific article
The Dangers of Disconnection: Oscillations in Political Violence on Lake Chad
Narrations on fragility and resilience in the Sahel paint a picture about the region’s inherent ungovernability that lead to consider an endless state- and peace-building process as the most feasible governance solution. Everyday practices of violent entrepreneurship, coalescing with inter-community and land-tenure conflicts, now inform social relations and are transforming moral economies around Lake Chad. While competition over territory suitable for farming, grazing and fishing has intensified, dispute-settlement practices organised by community-level authorities have proven ineffective and lacking the necessary means to respond to the encroachment of a wide range of interests claimed by increasingly powerful actors. Meanwhile, communities organised in self-defence militias are undergoing a process of progressive militarisation that tends to normalise violence and legitimise extra-judicial vigilante justice, further empowering capital-endowed arms suppliers gravitating in the jihadi galaxy, such as the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
Publications
Publications
Scientific article
Explaining violence in Tillaberi: insurgetn appropiration of local Grievances
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.
Related projects
Research project
2017 - 2021 (Completed)
Fragile states and violent entrepreneurs: conflict, climate, refugees (FRAGVENT)
What forms of authority underpin, enable, and extend violent entrepreneurs in fragile states, and how do the combined effects of fragile states, conflict, and climate impact this?...
02 December 2020
14:00 Europe/Oslo
Language: English
Microsoft Teams
Seminar