Literature Paper: Jihadist Armed Governance in Mali

An HRW report details the massacre of at least 300 civilians in the central Malian town of Moura — the deadliest single atrocity in the country’s decade-long armed conflict. Most of the victims were from the Peuhl ethnic group. The widespread political and social exclusion of the Peuhl puts them at further risk of this type of violence and drives a cycle of grievances and fear that empowers violent extremist organizations (VEOs) and impedes peacebuilding. National governments and in ...

Of all the regions included in this report series, Tillabéri is the region that scores best when it comes to both general community resilience, as well as traditional and religious authorities’ functioning. The region is not as exposed to shocks as Est (Burkina Faso) and Ménaka (Mali), and its ability to recover from shocks is high compared to the other regions. Trust in traditional and religious authorities is comparatively high as is their equal treatment of different subgroups in ...

More than two years ago I wrote in a report: “The current downward security trends in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso should serve as a wake-up call for the states in the Gulf of Guinea, mainly Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, and Benin.” Recent attacks in the northern Ivory Coast and Benin show that signs of earlier years now have taken on unique characteristics. Signs of the expansion of violent extremist organizations (VEOs) to coastal states have been there since at least since 2015. The ...

Dans un contexte de gouvernance complexe, où autorités traditionnelles et modernes se côtoient même si leur pouvoir décroît, le Mali connait depuis de nombreuses années une situation sécuritaire alarmante, notamment dans le centre du pays. La montée des tensions entre communautés agricoles et pastorales est aggravée par la présence de groupes extrémistes. La population du Cercle de Niono, dans la région de Ségou, a été victime de violences inouïes pendant plusieurs mois avant que de ...

Almost ten years after the beginning of the security crisis in the Sahel, Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger face a graver predicament than ever before. In the throes of multiple insurgencies, they and their foreign patrons, including France, have shown the limits of military containment. While these three countries are the victims of terrorist aggression, their crises also have deep domestic roots, including long-standing patterns of state abuses of their populations, even in the more d ...

Events in the Sahel, and Mali especially, are taking an uncertain and worrying turn. Mali witnessed two coups d’état in less than a year, while the West African Sahel went through its most violent year yet and there are no signs that the violence is slowing down. In the midst of this unprecedented instability, recent developments involving Mali’s transitional government and the international community, France in particular, provide no assurances that things are likely to improve any ...