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Abstract by the author: This article critiques the increasingly popular concept of the “safe legal pathway” in refugee politics, policy and law, using European engagement and intervention in the Sahel as its primary case study. It draws upon neo-colonial studies, necropolitics, border studies and the legal literature on sovereignty and extraterritoriality to explore the function, structure, and import of the “safe legal pathway”, and its compatibility with contemporary understandings of international legal history and argumentation. Divided into four sections, the article focuses on the drivers behind Europe’s migration-development-security objectives in the Sahelout of which the pathways discourse emerges, the EU’s concomitant insistence on criminalising the illusive “people smuggling business model”, and the role which the traditional tropes of sovereignty, territory, and civilisation play in determining policy parameters. Noting the multidirectional nature and multifunctional purposes of pathways, and focusing on the policing of migrant communities both within and outside Europe, this article provides a comprehensive and critical overview of the nature, structure, function, and regulation of the pathway, its susceptibility to being leveraged for the commodification, extraction, discipline and transformation of non-European bodies and narratives, and its place in the creation of differentiated, suspended, and anomalous legal zones for the transfer and manipulation of global norms.
Abstract by the author: The European Union (EU) has been attempting to promote stability in the Sahel since 2011 through capacity-building missions in the security and defence sectors. These policy instruments have been criticised for their limited effectiveness. To explain it, a common argument claims that ‘local elites’ lack ownership and political engagement. This article opposes such rationale and suggests that we need to rethink the agency of non-European actors beyond a Eurocentric conceptual toolbox (‘resistance’, ‘fragility’, ‘ownership’). Building on an ethnography of the European capacity-building mission in support of security forces in Niger (EUCAP Sahel), this article shows that Nigerien elites regard the EU as an economic resource rather than a genuine security actor. Therefore, they primarily seek economic profits, material advantages, and professional opportunities from EU security policies. The argument proceeds in three steps. The first part intends to refine the broad category of ‘local elites’. I suggest an inductive distinction that helps simplify our understanding of the agential practices of non-European actors. The second part uses this inductive distinction to foreground different strategies of Nigerien elites to make the most out of EU security policies. Third, the article discusses both the theoretical and policy implications of these empirical findings.
Abstract by the authors: The effectiveness of security operations often depends on cooperation between different national armies. Such cooperation can be particularly important when international borders are porous. In this project, we investigate how the creation of an international armed force that could operate across international borders (the G5-Sahel Joint Force) affected conflict dynamics in the Sahel region. Relying on a regression discontinuity design, we find that the G5 mission lowered the intensity of conflict locally in its zone of operation. Further analysis of geographical conflict propagation patterns indicates that the G5-Sahel force facilitated security operations in border areas.
Abstract by the authors: The article discusses the various political, economic and social challenges facing the Sahel region since 2012 as of January 2021 due to violence. Also cited are the terrorist activities of groups like the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS) and Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), the counter-terrorism actions of militias, self-defense groups, and vigilantes, as well as the efforts by the governments of countries like Niger, Mali and Nigeria to resolve the issues.
Abstract by the authors: 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.
Abstract by the author: Este artículo analiza el humanitarismo en el Sur Global a través de los proyectos de resiliencia en el Sahel y en la cuenca del lago Chad. Se aborda el modo en el que el humanitarismo reciente se ha alejado de las intervenciones ascendientes -que pretenden o bien intervenir para salvar a aquellos definidos por el poder como "vidas desnudas" (Agamben, 1998, p. 4) o bien mejorar la capacidad de gobernar del estado, especialmente aquellos frágiles y fracasados- hacia proyectos basados en la sociedad que buscan producir sujetos resilientes. El principal argumento del artículo es que el movimiento hacia la resiliencia supone no solo un reconocimiento de las imperfecciones cognitivas del sujeto liberal, sino que también -lo que es aún más importante (Chandler, 2013b)- plantea algunos cuestionamientos sobre la subjetividad liberal en sí misma (...)
Abstract by the authors: Despite years of ongoing interventions by multiple external and regional actors, the security situation in west Africa's Sahel region is dramatically deteriorating. In this introduction to the special section of the July 2020 issue of International Affairs, we zoom in on four major external international intervention actors (France, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations) in the Sahel region's escalating ‘security traffic jam’. We argue that the diversity of intervention actors makes the Sahel a paradigmatic case for exploring a set of often-overlooked constitutive intervention effects. By adding new temporal, relational and spatial dimensions to the notion of ‘constitutive effects’ as introduced by post-structuralists in the 1990s, we (re)launch constitutive effects as a conceptual framework for approaching the study of ongoing intervention engagements. From this perspective, and as further illustrated in this special section, intervention continuity and escalation cannot be explained simply with reference to frameworks of ‘success’ or ‘failure’, but require a broader conceptualization of effects, including how specific threat perceptions, rationales and problematizations get constituted and consolidated through and during ongoing intervention practice. Contributions to this special section each unpack a diverse set of constitutive effects including the contested performance of security actorness, the (un)making of security alliances and partnerships, logics of choices produced by ongoing intervention practices, as well as the constitution of conditions for continual international involvement.
Abstract by the authors: In the past decade, the EU has significantly stepped up its profile as a security actor in the Sahel. Drawing on historical institutionalism, we conceptualise path-dependencies and lock-in effects as elements of a "foreign policy entrapment" spiral to analyse the EU's policies towards the Sahel. Specifically, we seek to explain the EU's increasingly widened and deepened engagement in the region. Hence, this article traces the evolution of the EU's Sahel policy both in discourse and implementation. We identify a predominant security narrative as well as a regionalisation narrative and show that EU action has followed these narratives. Based on this analysis, we argue that the evolution of the EU's Sahel policy can be understood as a case of "foreign policy entrapment". Initial decisions on the overall direction of EU foreign policy have created strong pathdependencies and lock-in effects that make it difficult for EU policy-makers to change the policy course.
Abstract by the authors: This article studies the bitter diplomatic sequence arising in the fall of 2019 between France and the Sahelian countries where France has been conducting military operations since 2013. Far from being just one more hiccup in the troubled relations between France and its former colonies, the article interprets this sequence as a constitutive effect of French protracted military presence in the Sahel. Specifically, it argues that although France has a rather clear security-driven agenda, its operational moves produced by bureaucratic thinking are questioned by influential sections of Sahelian public opinions who frame the French military presence as a deeply political issue over their country's sovereignty. In addition, being the de facto military guarantor of the security of Sahelian regimes, France constrains the domestic political conversation through the ‘red lines’ it imposes on actors. This externally-induced distortion of the domestic political landscape eventually places Sahelian authorities in front of a dilemma. Pleasing their foreign patrons might cost them the support of the section of public opinion most attached to national sovereignty, and expose them to nationalist entrepreneurs.
Abstract by the authors: Because of its geographical proximity to the EU, the Sahel region's perceived cross-border security threats of terror, migration and organized crime have become a top European security policy priority. Contributing to existing debates on EU external actions, the article develops the idea that the EU's engagement in the Sahel has become an attempt to construct and confirm the Union's ability to act as a global security actor. Through the analytical lens of 'translation' emphasizing the continuous transformation of norms and ideas by actors and contexts, the article examines how EU staff implement shifting policy objectives in their security practices in Mali; the effects these intervention practices produce; and how, in turn, these effects reflect back upon the EU's role as a security actor. The article shows how the EU's actorness and ability to perform security are hampered by the lack of buy-in from their local partners, as narrating success in a context of escalating violence becomes increasingly implausible. Thus, we argue that while the EU's activities in Mali reinforce the idea of the EU as a security actor, the limited character and impact of the EU's activities on the ground also reinforce the idea of it as a limited or even ineffective actor. The article thereby provides fruitful input to discussions of the constitutive effects of everyday practices in interventions and the production of EU security actorness as played out in the Sahel.
Abstract by the authors: This paper highlights the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] mode of response to the Malian conflict between 2012 and 2021 and identifies various gaps therein. It seeks to explain why ECOWAS has found it difficult to resolve the Malian conflict in spite of its commitment and experience in conflict resolution in the subregion. Secondary data are used for the study and presented qualitatively. The study reveals that the towering interest of Algeria and other neighbors in the chaotic northern Mali, as well as French interest in its former colony hindered ECOWAS initiative and its effectiveness in resolving the conflict. The paper recommends ECOWAS’ involvement in negotiations at the next peace agreement, and the drawing up of a roadmap for implementing such agreement. Besides, ECOWAS needs to address governance deficits in Mali and elsewhere in the subregion through peer review mechanism; and increase its capacity to respond to violent conflicts beyond microstates and Anglophone enclaves in the region
Abstract by the authors: This work is an attempt to look at the Boko Haram Insurgency in the North- East part of Nigeria with a view to unraveling how the activities of these insurgents impinge on the educational and economic development of the country. The study adopts the ex-post facto research design. Data from articles, books, magazines etc. were gathered and analysed using content analysis. The findings revealed that Boko Haram insurgency adversely affects Nigeria's educational sector as it has led to the death of teachers and students alike; shortage of qualified personnel, massive destruction of school buildings and other academic facilities, exodus of academic experts from the region under review, disruption of academic calendar and the like. To this end, the study also shows that the sect's activities also have negative effects on the economy drastically, which still find negative expression on the educational sector. Based on the findings, it was recommended that religious extremism, inequality, poverty, unemployment and hunger which are the underpinning causes of insurgency should be tackled head on by the government, the civil society and other relevant stakeholders.
Abstract by the authors: This study proposed the use of Terrorist Resources Model in countering Boko Haram financing, with the overall aim of cutting off the insurgents resources flow with the hope of upsetting their efforts and disrupting their operations as this approach does no longer focus on money trail alone but extends to men and materials with which the insurgents carry out their activities. This strategy is the latest trend in global terrorist counter financing. This approach became imminent given the continued wreck of havoc despite government's efforts to cut off the financing lines of the Boko haram sect based on recommendations of renowned counterinsurgency strategists and researchers. What is more is the replication of deadly groups with wanton destruction of lives and livelihood in the country such as the armed herdsmen; the armed bandits and the unknown gunmen (UGM) who are rapidly wasting lives as if life has lost its sanctity. Thus, the objectives of this study are to highlight the conventional Boko Haram financing and locate the suitability of the Terrorist Resource Model in countering Boko Haram financing in Nigeria. With the use of documentary data, qualitative analysis and descriptive evaluation approach, this study found that while the government tried to block the financial flows of Boko Haram sect through the Money Laundry Act, the group evolved other covert financing strategies to make up for those conventional financing, such as forceful or/and persuasive recruitment of members, stealing for logistics and operation of quasi governmental role in occupied territories to generate money. Thus, Money, Materials and Men are still generated unfettered; hence we recommend the application of the Terrorist Resources Model that will enable the government to block the entire resources flow of the sect instead of concentrating on money trails alone.
Abstract by the authors: The article explores the foreign and security policies of Nigeria in response to the terrorist activities of the Boko Haram Islamist group. Topics discussed include the membership of Nigeria in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the reconceptualization of the national security policies of the country by then Nigerian Minister of External Affairs Ibrahim Gambari, and the establishment of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) to address the Boko Haram crisis.
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