Rashomon in the Sahel: Conflict dynamics of security regionalism

Introduction

In Akira Kurosawa’s masterpiece Rashomon, the same event, involving the rape of a woman and the murder of her samurai husband, is narrated by four different witnesses. The four accounts provide subjective, contradictory and self-serving versions of the incident, making it impossible to distinguish what is effectively ‘real’ and ‘true’. Ultimately, the movie is a powerful allegory that shows the impossibility of establishing a unique and shared truth in human affairs.

When I started to approach the study of the African Sahel and to analyse external security interventions and local conflict dynamics, a comparison with Kurosawa’s movie came vividly to mind. A review of the literature showed that every scholar and expert seemed to have their own vision of the geographic boundaries of the Sahel, a space that has historically been a poorly defined and shifting land in between two worlds. ¹ Moreover, the identification of the elements characterizing the Sahel as a ‘region’ changed depending on who was being interviewed. In particular, different ideas about the region seemed to be strongly influenced by different interpretations of the (in)security at stake in the area. This was transforming the Sahel into a cacophonic ‘discursive practice’ (ÓTuathail and Agnew, 1992), where different actors were – and still are – struggling to impose their own geopolitical and ordering interpretations of that bounded space.

In this article, I claim that the Sahel is not a unique example of a contingent intersection between security and regionalism, but rather a crucial case, able to shed light on the effects of the interlinked processes of regional formation and the redefinition of security in the post-9/11 international system. Security studies has tackled the relationship between security and regions with various strategies, ² all of which tend towards a functionalist approach to the study of region-building processes – which are mainly seen as the rational and functional security responses of nation-states to a diverse combination of factors (Kelly, 2007). Partly moving away from previous approaches, in recent years various scholars have embraced the argument first advanced by Pinar Bilgin (2004) and begun to investigate the co-constitutive relationship between security and space and to explore the struggle for power and ruling positions that lies behind security regionalism (Charbonneau, 2017a; Döring and Herpolsheimer, 2018; Lopez Lucia, forthcoming). At the same time, most of these contributions focus their analysis on the regionalizing and security discourses and practices of formal agents – international interveners, regional organizations or governmental elites – implicitly privileging a top-down approach to their object of inquiry. Moreover, the politics of security regionalism is described as a competition between different security and spatial imaginaries, where a dominant project clearly emerges and forces the other actors involved to adapt their strategies. I maintain here that our understanding of security regionalism, and of the specific issues at stake in the Sahel, could be furthered in two ways: First, non-state and informal actors of different natures should be added to the analytical equation, as these are agents able to implement their regional projects regardless of those advanced by local governments or international actors (Söderbaum, 2011). Second, I suggest that the dynamics of security regionalism could be better grasped if framed as a Bourdieusian ‘field’, whose effects will not correspond to the will of a dominant actor, being instead the original and unintended result of a process implying resistance, mutual transformation and conflict (Bigo and Tsoukala, 2008) – all elements that characterize the security landscape of the Sahel.

Following these premises, in this article I aim first to unravel the politics of security regionalism in the Sahel by asking who were the actors that were able to ‘activate’ the processes of regional formation (Bøås et al., 2003), with what objectives, and in the pursuit of whose security against which threat. For this purpose, I identify four groups of actors able to enact competing regional projects. These are: (1) international interveners, (2) jihadist insurgent groups, (3) regional governmental elites, and (4) local communities and populations. These four collective agents do not occupy the same position within the ‘field’ of security regionalism, and they do not have the same means for pursuing and executing their projects. The relations of power among the actors play a crucial role in informing and crafting the different regional imaginaries about the Sahel, as they shape both the interests and the security perceptions of the agents. In this sense, every project implies a specific vision of the world and a peculiar identification of security’s referent object. These four ‘stories’ about the region encapsulate a distinct set of discourses and practices that affect the management of the territory and its borders and influence the system of governance and patterns of cooperation and conflict within the regional space. Moreover, all four projects revolve (more or less implicitly) around and are influenced by two powerful international narratives that define the ‘organizing principles’ of space and territory in different ways (Agnew, 1994) and shape academic and policy debates on global security. These are the ‘fragile state’ and the ‘ungoverned space’ discourses. As will be shown in the discussion, these two narratives frame the strategies and threat assessments of the four groups. Consequently, they highlight the existence of two contrasting approaches to the management of lands and populations. On the one hand, the ‘fragile state’ narrative identifies forms of geopolitical and social order – or their partial absence – based on state sovereignty and ‘territoriality’ (Paasi, 2009), implying the presence of boundaries and statehood. On the other hand, the notion of ‘ungoverned spaces’ refers to regional projects that are free from statehood and built on the idea of the control of space and its sociopolitical nodal points rather than territory (Walther and Retaillé, 2010). In the present study, the main distinction between territory and space relates to the fact that a territory implies the presence of boundaries and statehood, whereas space is free from a hierarchical ruling order, potentially does not have frontiers, and is generated by bottom-up social and economic activities and relationships (McDougall and Scheele, 2012; Walther and Retaillé, 2014).

The approach discussed here pursues the double purpose of furthering our understanding of the current crisis in the Sahel and giving us new insights about the (in)security dynamics that characterize the new wave of ‘regionalism at the margins’ of the international system (Mattheis et al., 2019). The article is organized as follows: the next section deals with the theoretical approach informing this work; the four subsequent sections present the different regional projects; and the final section discusses the interactions between the four projects and highlights the main consequences of their interplay on the current crisis in the area.

A note on methodology: Information for this article was partly collected during different research periods spent in Paris, Brussels, Washington, DC, and Bamako between 2015 and 2019. I conducted more than 70 semi-structured interviews and have also used material from non-structured exchanges as background material. The interviews targeted Western policymakers and practitioners and Sahelian decisionmakers, practitioners, members of civil society and – to a limited extent owing to restrictions on access – local witnesses. ³ In order to identify and deconstruct the various narratives about security and space in the Sahel, I did not pose direct questions on the topic. Rather, I investigated perceptions and ideas about the reasons for, and spaces of, action, intervention and resistance. Accordingly, I tried to explore how different discourses on security regionalism in the Sahel were created and legitimized. Because of the sensitive nature of the topic, anonymity has been guaranteed to all the interviewees. Details in the list of interviews cited at the end of the article have therefore been anonymized.

The struggle around security regionalism in the Sahel

According to one of the most important analytical assumptions of the New Regionalist Approach (Söderbaum and Shaw, 2003), ‘geographical designations . . . are socially constructed and politically contested and thus open to change’ (Katzenstein, 1997: 7). Consequently, regions should not be treated as ‘natural’ elements of the international environment but rather as ‘emergent, socially constituted phenomena’ (Jessop, 2003: 183). Within security studies, which shares similar epistemological bases, the notion of threat as a social construction has also developed and spread. This has led to the broadening of the research agenda and the assessment that security is an ‘essentially contested concept’ that may have various ‘meanings’, ‘uses’ and ‘referent objects’ (c.a.s.e collective, 2006).

Drawing on this common theoretical background, different approaches in international relations have explored the relationship between regions and security. In particular, linking the identification of regions to processes of securitization, Buzan and Wæver (2003: 44) have advanced the concept of the ‘regional security complex’, described as ‘a set of units whose major processes of securitization, desecuritization, or both, are so interlinked that their security problems cannot reasonably be analyzed or resolved apart from one another’. This definition attributes to security the capacity to ‘create’ regional complexes, but it still tends to anchor security dynamics in the distribution of material capabilities and gives only limited agency to the actors (mainly states) to modify their threat perceptions, their space, and their patterns of cooperation and conflict (Lopez Lucia, forthcoming). As Charbonneau (2017a: 410) correctly remarks, however, ‘practices of security do not simply respond to “threats” somehow, somewhere . . . [They] participate in the production or constitution of the objects and subjects that ought to be secured and governed’. For the purposes of this article, I thus rely on the region-building approach and the Paris School of security studies to disentangle the politics of security regionalism and explore its effects.

According to the region-building approach, the geopolitical dimension of a specific territory cannot be determined without a consideration of the process of construction of meaning and the relations of power that lie behind it, as regions result from the political ambitions – and the connected historical developments and practices – of specific groups of actors (Neumann, 2003). Applying a similar analytical logic – which focuses on agents, power and context – the Paris School also invites us to investigate the process of threat construction by analysing the struggle involving the actors that own the positional, material and symbolic resources that allow them to participate in the field of (in)security.

More specifically, three elements are key to understanding the politics of security regionalism. First, ‘the “field” is determined by the struggles . . . about the boundaries and definition of the term “security”, and around the prioritization of the different threats, as well as the definition of what is not a threat but only a risk or even an opportunity’ (Bigo, 2008: 24). This means that actors and their power games are at the centre of the analysis, as they are the two principal factors that create, conserve or transform the field and its internal configuration of forces. Accordingly, in this article, attention is devoted to the discourses and practices of the different region-builders identified above, namely, those actors who effectively own the necessary resources to participate in the ‘field’ of security regionalism in the Sahel. Second, for the Paris School, security is first and foremost a ‘technique of government’, which implies the employment of a mix of practices, discourses and contexts that enable the production of specific forms of governmentality (c.a.s.e collective, 2006: 457). The attempt to ‘form’ a region in fact means that regionalizing actors try to define the kind of order that will rule interactions within the borders of a specific area. As underlined by Adler and Greve (2009), different practices and ideas about security can be implemented within the same geographical space. In the case of the Sahel, the idea of order must be applied to the whole system of governance. In a similar vein, every regionalizing project is inspired by a specific threat assessment and the identification of a particular referent object. Finally, a third element concerns the fact that struggle among the actors who participate in the field mainly implies the attempt to impose a partisan ‘truth’ about security (Bigo, 2002: 76). At the same time, ‘any action undertaken by one agent to shift the economy of forces in his favour has repercussions’ on the field as a whole (Bigo, 2008: 24). Consequently, the effects of the field are not under the full control of any of the actors involved. In this article’s conclusion, the effects of this conflicting politics of security regionalism will be assessed and employed to explain the current crisis in the area.

As shown in the introduction, I maintain that the four groups that are pursuing a more or less coherent regional project are the external powers (the USA, France and the EU), regional ruling elites, local communities and jihadist insurgents.

The best way for international security deliverers to achieve their aim – avoiding spillover effects that could threaten national and international security – is through the construction of a regional complex that is formed by efficient and effectively sovereign states that are capable of controlling their borders and containing security threats (Frowd, 2018). However, regional governmental elites have expressed their preference for the construction of a ‘shadow regionalism’ (Söderbaum, 2013) that will improve their legitimacy and maximize their material and symbolic utilities, guaranteeing each regime’s security. In opposition to these projects, local communities and insurgent actors will more or less openly oppose regionalizing moves that are based on the reinforcement of statehood, borders and central control. The regional imaginary of jihadist fighters in the Sahel aims at reviving a system of norms and rules based on a presumed Sahara–Sahelian Islamic identity, which would find its origins at the intersection between the current ‘global jihad’ narrative and memories of various precolonial Islamic kingdoms such as the Songhai Empire of the 15th–17th centuries or the 19th-century Massina Empire (Amselle, 2017). The main goal of local communities, in turn, is principally inspired by the will to safeguard a specific system of spatial and social organization based on transborder/transnational exchanges and kinships.

The Sahel as a liberal governing initiative

Western security initiatives in the Sahel tend to share a similar ideational basis and show a convergence towards common security priorities and practices, which allows us to define the external interveners’ project as a liberal governing initiative.

This regionalizing project is directly linked to the strategic and cognitive frameworks created by the ‘war on terror’ (Buzan, 2006), which sees ‘fragile states’ and ‘ungoverned spaces’ as among the main triggers of global insecurity (Rabasa et al., 2007).

Since the publication of the National Security Strategy of the United States in 2002 (White House, 2002), fragile and failed states have been framed as pressing threats to the international order. According to this narrative, states that are incapable of ‘projecting power and asserting authority within their own borders’ (Rotberg, 2002: 128) fail to guarantee internal order, thus furthering grievances and violence among their populations. This lack of governing power not only generates internal conflicts but is also considered a direct threat to neighbouring countries and the international system as a whole. Accordingly, the distinction between external and internal security becomes blurred, and terrorist activities and non-state violence – in the Sahel and elsewhere – are transformed into a direct threat to Western states and citizens (Patrick, 2011). Fragile states are also understood to generate the conditions for ‘ungoverned spaces’, namely, those (peripheral) portions of the territory of one fragile state (or more) where the ‘absence’ of a central authority’s governing capacities potentially leaves room for violent and/or criminal non-state actors to manoeuvre and further develop their activities (Keister, 2014).

The ‘fragile state’ discourse is based on a dichotomy that distinguishes between ‘norm’ – the ideal-typical Western state – and deviation – fragile states (Bøås, 2016). Consequently, security is associated with ‘state capacity, which means the ability of states to enact sovereignty through surveillance of territory and population’ (Frowd, 2018: 11). International policies inspired by this interpretation have focused mainly on the reconstruction of the security capacities of the state and on the recreation of efficient, Western-like governance arrangements (Chandler, 2013). Transformative in nature and normative-oriented, the ‘state-building approach’ to security and conflict management characterized international security policies during the 2000s (Call, 2015). Accordingly, I claim that region-building should be seen as a continuation of this approach and a strategy for containing threats from ‘fragile states’ and ‘ungoverned spaces’.

Regarding the Sahel, since the beginning of the 2000s the area has been described as an almost paradigmatic example in which all the elements that characterize fragility and its connected threats are concentrated (Harmon, 2014). The first external actor to launch a regional security initiative was the United States: At the end of 2002, the Office of Counterterrorism of the US Department of State briefed the governments of Chad, Niger, Mauritania and Mali about the Pan-Sahel Initiative (PSI), described as ‘a programme designed to protect borders, track movement of people, combat terrorism, and enhance regional cooperation and stability . . . through training, equipment and cooperation’ with local security forces. ⁴

The PSI rapidly opened the way for the further development of the American regional approach to security in the area. In 2005, the USA launched the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative (later renamed the Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership), aiming to enhance regional security governance and enlarge the geographical scope of the PSI, extending its membership to Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Cameroon (Warner, 2014). Even if the four original countries remained at the centre of the strategy, the USA started to reframe the region following the perceived ‘enlargement’ of terrorist and criminal threats (Whitehouse and Strazzari, 2015). Moreover, as part of its security strategy in the area, the USA has recently developed a monitoring and rapid intervention system supported by a drone base built in Agadez (Niger) and special forces operations (Turse, 2015). In brief, through security and defence cooperation, the USA promoted the idea of the Sahel as a unique ‘regional complex’, where shared threats and institutional conditions were transforming local security into a regional, interlinked issue with potential international repercussions, and advanced regional sovereignty and the reinforcement of surveillance capacities as the main solutions to be pursued.

From the beginning of the 2000s, a similar approach, based on the identification of fragile states and ungoverned spaces as causes of global insecurity, also shaped the French official discourse (see, for example, Assemblée Nationale, 2004). Moreover, already in the 2008 Defence White Paper (Présidence de la République, 2008), the Sahel was identified as the ‘geometrical place’ that gathered together all the threats linked to state fragility. In this sense, the French – and then the European – regionalizing move was shown to share the same normative basis as that of the Americans, becoming a different expression of the same regional security project.

According to different interviewees, ⁵ an inter-ministerial task force was already elaborating a ‘Stratégie Sahel’ in 2008. This strategy had a dual purpose: first, it had to prevent the worsening of local crises and fight terrorist groups; second, it was to be submitted to European institutions and allies, with the objective of ‘Europeanizing’ French initiatives as quickly as possible (Interview 1). This move encountered the interest of several European agencies and stakeholders: the European strategy for the Sahel – strongly inspired by the French approach – was definitively adopted in 2011, with a specific focus on Mauritania, Niger and Mali (Helly and Galeazzi, 2015).

In the following years, French and European approaches to the region partially diverged, even if the two sets of actors still maintain similar goals and visions about how to pursue security in the area. On the one hand, France deepened its security engagement through the military operation ‘Barkhane’, which followed the 2013 intervention in Mali and presented a specific focus on counter-terrorism initiatives. Partially reviving a historical tradition of military interventions on the continent, Operation Barkhane redefined the French spatial and security engagements in Africa, creating a new interconnection between them (Charbonneau, 2017b). On the other hand, the EU deployed its own policy in the area, maintaining an approach inspired by the notion of the security–development nexus (Helly and Galeazzi, 2015). Nevertheless, security quickly became the main concern for the European institutions, too, as the expansion and reinforcement of the three Common Security and Defence Policy missions – one in Niger and two in Mali – demonstrated (Raineri and Baldaro, 2019). Furthermore, the importance ‘regionalization’ obtained in the official European discourse vis-a-vis security in the Sahel is quite striking (Interview 4). Nowadays, EU institutions are trying to further at different levels and through various practices – from high-level political pressures to security cooperation on the ground – the creation of a ‘functionalist’ region, with security as its principal raison d’etre. And if the G-5 Sahel is probably the local answer to these expectations (see below), European practitioners are already changing their geographical threat perception, converging toward the American vision of a Northwest African security complex (Interview 5).

In sum, in the stabilization of the Sahel, border management and the reconstruction of local states’ security capacities are the main goals for almost all external interveners. Consequently, even after the Malian crisis, the USA, France and the EU are promoting region-building as the preferred security-building approach for the Sahel.

The Sahel as an Islamic caliphate

According to various observers and security practitioners, a few years before the implementation of the first external security initiatives, various members of the GSPC (Groupe Salafiste pour la Prédication et le Combat, Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), a terrorist group established during the Algerian Civil War, had moved the group’s area of operations to Northern Mali, Eastern Mauritania and Western Niger (Harmon, 2014).

During a first phase, the group consolidated its settlement in the region and furthered its linkages with local communities, alternating violence – mainly targeting local security forces – with more peaceful strategies of cooptation directed at the local populations (Harmon, 2014). In the same period, the GSPC also started to establish contacts and contingent forms of collaboration with criminal groups involved in various sorts of illegal trafficking in the area (Ba and Bøås, 2017).

In 2007, the GSPC declared its allegiance to Al-Qaeda and officially rebranded as AQIM (Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) (International Crisis Group, 2012). Following this change, the group transformed its objectives and its line of action. With regard to the former, AQIM’s emir Abdelmalek Droukdal declared to the New York Times (2008) that AQIM had been created with the main aim of fighting against local corrupt states and their Western patrons. The goal was to replace an externally imposed and unfair system, based on rules and principles that did not belong to the traditions of local populations, with an African Islamic caliphate. In accordance with this renewed ambition, it should be remarked here that AQIM played a central role in supporting – at a logistical, material and doctrinal level – the consolidation and development of the Nigerian insurgent organizations who in 2009 founded Boko Haram (Brigaglia and Iocchi, 2017). This initiative was in line with the doctrine of the ‘global jihad’ pursued by Al-Qaeda. At the same time, it also confirms the regional nature of AQIM’s strategy, which was acting in an area where the memories of the ancient Islamic kingdoms of the Sahara and the Sahel were – and still are – present among the populations. ⁶

In tactical and operative terms, the affiliation with Al-Qaeda drove AQIM to launch a campaign of open confrontation against its ‘enemies’ and to significantly increase attacks against local armies and Western targets (International Crisis Group, 2012). Simultaneously, the jihadist group reinforced its ‘kidnapping industry’, once again mainly directed against Western tourists and officials. The results of various academic studies and investigative reports show that AQIM obtained somewhere in the region of US$90–150 million in ransom money between 2003 and 2012 (Nünlist, 2013). The organization used its capacity to move between different countries, redistributing some of the ransom money among local populations, as a way of strengthening its presence in the area.

The strategies implemented by jihadist actors contributed to their successfully contesting the very legitimacy of local states and their ruling elites. On the one hand, the radical and anti–status quo Islam proposed by AQIM resounded as a tempting message for all those groups and communities who felt marginalized by central powers for economic, geographical, ethnic or religious reasons (Baldaro, 2018). This ability to exploit local grievances can be observed even today, as it is one of the factors fostering the violent escalation taking place in the transborder area between Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger (International Crisis Group, 2016).

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. AQIM demonstrated its ability to participate in this informal and cooperative system of space control.

The regionalizing project promoted by insurgent actors appears ‘revolutionary’ vis-a-vis an interpretation of order based on the Westphalian and Weberian features of statehood. AQIM refuses the colonial borders and Western-centred idea of sovereignty that have allegedly been imposed on the area and rejects laws and conventions fixed by local states. This project is also informed by a specific construction of threats and the referent object of security. In jihadist discourse, in fact, imperialist powers and impious and predatory ruling elites represent an existential threat for the Sahelian ummah, whose cultural identity and political unity is presumably perverted and repressed. Accordingly, jihadist insurgents identify themselves as ‘liberators’ engaged in a just war against apostate tyrants (Interview 6).

It is thus interesting to remark how, starting from the Malian crisis, these actors have elaborated and implemented their own system of rule and governance. When AQIM, MOJWA (Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa) – a group formed by former members of AQIM and drug traffickers – and Ansar Dine – a ‘Tuareg–jihadist’ formation – occupied Gao and Timbuktu in 2012, they eliminated taxes, customs and land registers, in addition to replacing French-inspired civil laws with sharia law (Lecocq et al., 2013). If these choices appeared as a means to gain support among local merchants, preachers and farmers, they also seemed to be an attempt to affirm an alternative form of order in the conquered lands. In a similar vein, in the territories currently under their control – corresponding to vast areas of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – violent Islamist actors are reinforcing and improving their efforts to enact a sort of ‘jihadist governance’ based on the delivering of basic public services such as spatial control, justice, health and education, all in accordance with their ‘literalist’ interpretation of Islam (Interview 6).

Based on a ‘state deconstruction’ approach, aiming to create a space free from ‘external’ norms and rules, regionalism promoted by jihadist actors has mirrored and simultaneously subverted external strategies for stabilization. The regionalizing move of the jihadist insurgents has contributed to a reinforcement of the same regional complex identified by external interveners, and their actions have led to a competition whose main objective concerns the forms of authority and norms that should rule the regional space. In recent years, this regionalizing dynamic has been strengthened by two factors. On the one hand, jihadist groups are experiencing a process of ‘Sahelization’ – in terms of both their membership and their grievances – that is reinforcing the regional scope of their initiatives (Pellerin, 2019). On the other hand, the emergence of an Islamic State branch in the area in 2015 has generated and furthered competition among jihadist groups. Their fight is delimiting the spatial limits of their presence, which now approximately correspond to those of the same Northwest Africa complex identified by the external interveners (International Crisis Group, 2019).

The Sahel as ‘prey’

At the end of a summit held in Nouakchott (Mauritania) in February 2014, the presidents of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Burkina Faso issued a joint press release announcing the creation of an institutional framework that would be responsible for the coordination and monitoring of regional cooperation. This was the G-5 Sahel (Desgrais, 2019).

The G-5 Sahel aims to improve peace and prosperity in the region, taking into consideration the interconnected challenges to security and development that affect the area. Consequently, cooperation and solidarity in the security, governance and general development domains are considered prerequisites for pursuing the ambitious purposes of the organization. The internal structure of the organization should further coordination and common socialization among its member-states. ⁷

At first glance, the G-5 Sahel appears to be a typical top-down process of regionalization driven by central governments and based on a functionalist approach to peace, security and development. Different international actors and donors are now adopting strategies for the Sahel that implicitly recognize the G-5 Sahel as the ‘more legitimate’ organization representing the region (Bagayoko, 2019). Moreover, the fact that the organization pursues development and security, and aims to fight against terrorism, criminality, human trafficking and the contextual factors causing violence and radicalization, fits perfectly with the international community’s expectations and interests.

Before the creation of the G-5 Sahel, the five member-states were not part of a unique subregional framework: Mauritania is part of the Arab Maghreb Union; Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso belong to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); and Chad is a member of the Economic Community of Central African States (CEMAC). Therefore, the G-5 Sahel could be considered as the local answer to different external pressures. While jihadist and criminal actors introduced new elements of threat, the USA, France and the EU insisted on the need to strengthen local cooperation and enhance security and sovereignty capacities, investing diplomatic and material incentives for this purpose. After the Malian crisis and the French military intervention, the dominant approach suggested that only a regional organization could manage ongoing insecurities in the area.

This interpretation of the formation process of the G-5 Sahel tends to deny the agency of local governments. The latter appear as ‘second movers’ of a region-building process implemented by other subjects. The G-5 Sahel corresponds with the geographical scope of the French Operation Barkhane, and it adopts the same priorities and lines of action as the EU’s comprehensive approach to crisis. In fact, the G-5’s strategic guidelines are fully consistent with the European approach to conflict and crisis (Helly and Galeazzi, 2015).

However, other interests and motivations could be ascribed to the G-5 Sahel. This organization incorporates the same interpretation of threats and conflict dynamics that inspires the ‘fragile state’ discourse. We should remark here that different authors have shown how local regimes can use the ‘fragile state’ label as a powerful tool to increase their room for manoeuvre in interactions with external donors and security deliverers (Bøås, 2016). Moreover, the same neoliberal framework that shaped external interventions in the area has the potential to open unexpected spaces for the development of autonomous political initiatives (Jabri, 2012). Consequently, the G-5 Sahel could be seen as another self-serving strategy, implemented by regime actors who aim to strengthen their power and increase their personal wealth and legitimacy. ⁸ In other words, the G-5 would be another example of ‘shadow regionalism’:

Shadow regionalism suggests that regime actors use their power positions in order to erect a complex mode of regionalism, driven by rent-seeking and personal self-interest . . . [R]egional organizations constitute a means for ‘resource capture’ and international patronage . . . Regionalism is thus used as a discursive and image-boosting exercise. (Söderbaum, 2011: 60–61)

Different Sahelian regimes have already demonstrated their ability to attract international aid and support. On the one hand, ruling elites partially modified their behaviour and rhetoric to comply with requests coming from external donors (Fisher and Anderson, 2015; Jourde, 2007). On the other hand, they used these new symbolic and material resources to reinforce their power positions and nourish their networks, strengthening their regimes and their personal rule (Bergamaschi, 2014). In particular, international patronage and legitimacy, along with the capture of external resources, are central elements for assuring the survival of the regimes in power. In an area that has experienced numerous military coups d’etat, and where governing power is usually exerted through clientelist schemes, control over the state’s budget and the redistribution of international aid is key for reducing the risk of regime change. Consequently, governmental elites are more concerned with threats generated by domestic oppositions than by terrorist activities (Interviews 9 and 10).

Consequently, the G-5 Sahel could be regarded as another way of capturing international resources, promoting an artificial regional project that is apparently coherent with the expectations of the international community. As suggested by one interviewee, the G-5 was proposed and implemented to ‘give satisfaction’ to external donors, and especially the EU and France (Interview 7). The evolution of the initiatives, as well as the discourse surrounding the G-5, seems to confirm this impression. In February 2017, the five countries that comprise the regional organization began taking steps to establish a G-5 Sahel joint force. This initiative offered ‘African solutions to African problems’ in the security and counter-terrorism domains, in line with the requests advanced by international partners. While the funding of the multinational force is still a debated issue (International Crisis Group, 2017), the first military operation deployed by the G-5 in the cross-border area between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – the so-called Liptako-Gourma region – has already raised deep concerns not only about its effective capacities but also with regard to the potential destabilizing effects on intercommunity relations and patterns of radicalization caused by what is essentially a repressive military initiative (Maïga, 2019).

It is probably too early to determine whether the G-5 Sahel will actually be an effective tool for furthering regional cooperation in the security and development domains. Nevertheless, two elements must be highlighted here with regard to the regionalizing ambitions of the governmental actors. First, regionalization is not intended only at an institutional level. If the joint force represents an effort to regionalize security and defence, planned investments – in particular in the infrastructural sector, as demonstrated by the project for the construction of a ‘trans-Sahelian’ railway – should reinforce the material basis of this integration process (Desgrais, 2019). Moreover, the discursive identification of an autonomous Sahel within the Northwest Africa complex is also becoming a power strategy, implemented by governmental elites to gain support and legitimacy vis-a-vis other regional organizations such as the African Union or ECOWAS (Bagayoko, 2019).

The Sahel as networked micro-regions

Historical practices, transboundary contacts and allegiances, and the need to adapt to climatic and political changes are the main forces affecting the strategies and behaviour of local societies in the Sahel. In turn, these practices, linkages and strategies have an influence on regional boundaries, social interactions and security dynamics, creating another possible definition of the Sahel. The regional project of the local communities can hardly be defined as an intended one, as it mainly results from everyday social and economic practices and historical imaginaries and connections. At the same time, I claim that this project fully participates in the politics of security regionalism, as it delineates a specific form of spatial order and internal governance, has a clear referent object – local societies and their livelihoods – and interacts with and influences the other regional projects. Moreover, it is also based on an implicit process of threat identification: externally imposed practices of control, government-led systems of governance and the upsurge in violence imposed by jihadist insurgents all participate in menacing the organization – and even existence – of local communities and their livelihoods.

Given these premises, I suggest that the Sahel can be seen as a networked archipelago of micro-regions, where substate and/or cross-border autonomous systems are interconnected and create a peculiar regional space thanks to various economic, political and migratory exchanges.

The emergence of micro-regions is connected to the fading primacy of the state as the most important structure of economic and political organization, and they are considered as existing ‘between the “national” and the “local” level’, being ‘both formal and informal – and often both at the same time’ (Söderbaum and Taylor, 2008: 13).

Moreover, African micro-regions tend to emerge in those spaces that are far from national capitals and other centres of political and economic power. Nonetheless, these regions should not be seen as ‘marginal spaces’, as ‘their position at the fringes of formal constructions such as nation states . . . enable these borderlands to establish their own economic, social and political realities’. Therefore, a ‘marginal position can be a key feature in its constituting the centre of its own region’ (Mattheis et al., 2019: 2). The different micro-regions become akin to autonomous subsystems within one or more national territory, and they allow us to move beyond the static centre–periphery vision widely employed by the literature dealing with the dynamics of marginalization and radicalization. Micro-regions tend to be built around informal, particularistic and usually cross-border networks that interact, producing contingent structures of governance and building peculiar forms of order. Furthermore, thinking in terms of micro-regions and fringe regionalism allows us to problematize the ungoverned space discourse, as it underlines that alternative forms of political, security and space governance can be built even in the absence of the state (Raleigh and Dowd, 2013). By this, I am not suggesting that ‘local’ regionalism is a more ‘genuine’ or peaceful process of region-building; ‘hybrid’ (Boege et al., 2009) or ‘mediated’ (Menkhaus, 2007) systems of governance do not imply the absence of conflict. As the case of the Sahel shows, micro-regions can favour internal cooperation as much as they can further intercommunity violence. Central elements to be considered are the interactions these regions build among each other and with other – formal and/or informal – centres of power.

In the case of the Sahel, nomad, pastoral or ‘merchant’ communities and populations, such as the Tuareg, the Fula or the Hausa, have structured a web of transboundary contacts, routes and allegiances, creating the institutional and organizational conditions necessary to further the development of interconnected micro-regions (McDougall and Scheele, 2012). Moreover, regional mobility and exchanges have been reshaped by the diminished presence of the state, especially in frontier zones, where crossing borders becomes a profitable activity because of the price and political differentials characterizing the different national territories (Scheele, 2012).

The cross-border area between Northern Mali and Southern Algeria is a classic example for illustrating the ‘logic’ that sustains micro-regions in the Sahel. Here, exchanges and trade are carried out by different networks formed by local entrepreneurs and members of cross-border communities, usually exploiting pastoral and caravan routes. Furthermore, even if a certain level of coordination and interdependence among different actors is needed, most of the individuals who participate in trans-Saharan exchanges are not part of criminal organizations. The exploitation of the frontier as a ‘natural resource’ has its roots in trans-Saharan trade, though it continued after the independence of Algeria and Mali. This has happened for decades, with the compliance, or even the participation, of local security forces (Harmon, 2014).

Economically speaking, Northern regions are more an Algerian district than a part of Mali . . . If you visit the city markets in Timbuktu or Kidal, you will see that everything comes from Algeria . . . pasta, semolina, fuel, but also household appliances. (Interview 11)

Starting from this situation, local communities have tried to deal with the need to elaborate a code of conduct, defining what is wrong and what is acceptable, in a context where state laws are fading and generally inapplicable. As observed by a Dutch diplomat, ‘if everything is illegal, well, then potentially nothing is illegal’ (Interview 12). Non-state actors – local chiefs and entrepreneurs, but also religious and political leaders – have actively participated in the definition of binding rules and ‘business principles’ for local communities (Baldaro, 2018).

The Northern Mali/Southern Algeria cross-border region is only one among many other established micro-regions in the Sahel. Another micro-region is currently at the centre of local and international conflict-management and counter-terrorism efforts, namely, the Liptako-Gourma. In this case, too, the micro-regional subsystem has been built on historical exchanges and ethnic kinships, and with the informal support of local administrations (Trémolières, 2007). At the same time, a dangerous mix of political and economic marginalization, the fading presence of formal institutions, the radical reactivation of conflicting sociocultural identities and the severe repression exercised by local armies is nourishing dynamics of violence and conflict, whose effects are bypassing micro-regional boundaries (International Crisis Group, 2016).

Overall, every micro-region presents its own attributes and internal dynamics. Nevertheless, it is still possible to identify some shared characteristics, though regarding them as different expressions of the same phenomenon. Local order and governance are produced by the complex interaction of formal and informal actors, micro-economic interests, survival strategies, and a constant reproduction of norms and rules. Moreover, every micro-region encapsulates specific struggles and forms of competition for the obtainment of decisive material and symbolic resources. At the same time, the main strategies for improving livelihood and reducing political, economic and physical uncertainty rely on the exchanges established between these subregional systems. In a similar vein, migratory and trade flows show that interconnections between these micro-regions, based on clan, ethnic, historical and economic bonds, circumscribe a geographical and social space (Molenaar and El Kamouni-Janssen, 2017). By adopting an organizing principle based on space rather than territory, micro-regions interact and influence each other through a mechanism of diffusion built on different socio-geographical nodal points – which can be physical exchange places as much as big men and other customary leaders (Utas, 2012). As Northern Mali and the Liptako-Gourma suggest, grievance and conflict can ‘travel’ along the same routes exploited by people and goods, and they consequently co-participate in the redefinition of the whole regional system.

Conclusion: An ‘impossible truth’ for the Sahel?

In the movie Rashomon, the story revolves around the impossibility of determining a retrospective ‘truth’ about an event that has taken place. In the Sahel, meanwhile, conflicting narratives and imaginaries compete to ‘create’ a social and factual reality. Nevertheless, this analogy still captures an essential element: social realities do not exist as such. The social production of knowledge and truth – not only about security and space – is a battlefield, involving conflicting agents that own different material and symbolic resources, as well as potentially contrasting agendas (Bliesemann de Guevara and Kostić, 2017). In Rashomon, as much as in the Sahel, this produces a result that does not correspond with the will of any of the actors involved and is instead an unintended and ‘incomplete’ truth.

Starting from these premises, the last step to be undertaken concerns the analysis of the interactions of the four competing projects within the field of security regionalism. Considering their material capabilities and the position of strength from which they articulate their regional imaginaries, international initiatives must be taken as the point of departure for the discussion. The region-building project of the external interveners is based on the assumption that the Sahel is an almost paradigmatic ‘ungoverned space’ that should be contained and, in the longer term, eliminated through the (re)introduction of state authority and strong border regimes. This set of discourses and practices has impacted on the strategies and behaviours of all the other actors. First, by seeing the reinforcement of local states and central governments as the main solution for tackling the different security threats, external actors have created new room for manoeuvre for the self-serving strategies of the regional governmental elites. Thanks to international support, Sahelian governments have been able to sustain their clientelist schemes of authority and wealth redistribution, which have furthered grievances among those parts of the population excluded from the system of power built by governmental rulers. Second, in relation to issues such as border management, migration and radicalization, local needs and perceptions do not necessarily coincide with the priorities of the external interveners or their governmental allies. For example, migrations and business activities related to these have historically been among the most important strategies of economic survival for Sahelian populations, along with transborder exchanges and smuggling (Molenaar and El Kamouni-Janssen 2017). A stricter border regime made it more difficult for local populations to conduct their informal exchanges across borders. The costs linked to these activities increased because of the renewed controls, which threatened to exclude small businesses from this market, while it did not affect bigger entrepreneurs, who could usually count on well-established – and usually ‘grey’ – contacts with the regional governmental elites (Cantens and Raballand, 2016).

These elements have produced two principal effects: On the one hand, they have increased criticism of the presence of the international interveners among local communities, diffusing the perception of external powers as ‘imperialist invaders’ (Charbonneau, 2017a). On the other hand, they have dramatically impacted on the political legitimacy of the governmental elites and their local clients and representatives (Jourde et al., 2019). As a result, the presence of jihadist fighters could be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy vis-a-vis the international region-building project: the strong international security engagement in the area and the indirect support the international actors are providing to dysfunctional governmental practices have turned the Sahel into an ‘ideal’ theatre for developing a Sahelian branch of the global jihad (Pérouse de Montclos, 2015). In a similar vein, the reinforcement of these same violent insurgents legitimizes and ‘justifies’ the transformation of the Sahel into one of the most important battlefields of the ‘global war on terror’. Nevertheless, various studies have underlined how the corrupt and/or repressive behaviour of the delegitimized local states plays a far greater role as a driver of radicalization and violence than the activities of jihadist actors (Sandor, 2017). Even if civilians remain the main victims of both jihadist and governmental violence, in various areas of the Sahel local communities are enforcing a certain collaboration with, and accepting the rule of, violent Islamist groups, whose system of spatial and political order is somehow perceived as being more fair and legitimate than the one implemented by local states (Sandor and Campana, 2019; Interviews 6 and 9). For its part, the jihadist regional project has also gone through an unexpected evolution. In the growing competition opposing the groups affiliated to Al-Qaeda to those linked to the Islamic State, we can identify a conflict about the scope and the geographical objectives of the insurgency. While for those groups who have experienced an increasing process of ‘Sahelization’, a Sahelian caliphate is apparently becoming the main goal, others – principally those allied to the Islamic State – continue to pursue the unbounded ideology of the global jihad, where the Sahel represents only a intermediate step. These contrasting imaginaries can be retraced in the different approaches to governance and rule that the various groups are implementing in the areas under their control.

To sum up, the current evolutions suggest that the Sahel remains a ‘disputed idea’, a spatially bounded security system where the principles of order are constantly contested and redefined. None of the actors involved are able to master the consequences of their interactions with the other regionalizing agents, and conflict emerges as the main element characterizing the internal dynamics of the field of security regionalism. At the same time, through their presence and actions, every actor unintentionally justifies its competitors’ pursuit of their regional projects. As a result, the Sahel is experiencing an unprecedented level of violence, and no solutions will arise unless all the actors involved are able to modify their agendas and their mutual perceptions.