The violence in the West African Sahel has continued to increase since 2012 when ‘jihadist’ groups took control of northern Mali. The insurgency has spread leading to various armed groups taking control over the northern and central parts of the country except the urban areas. In addition, the insecurity has spill over into Niger and Burkina Faso and it has sparked counterinsurgencies from the state including support to militia groups to fend off jihadist control over land. This session will use a lens from political ecology and critical agrarian studies to investigate the ongoing insurgency and counterinsurgency as responses in historical and political-economic context. The point of departure is that violence needs to be seen in its wider context with a focus on access and control over land and natural resources. In such a study of the materiality of natural resources governance and politics, the dialectic of actors and land represent the main object of study. This type of materialist political ecology moves beyond studying conflicts as simple causal chains with resource scarcity having negative consequences for livelihoods and again leading to migration and conflicts. The session is sponsored by the Landresponse project at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences funded by and Advanced Grant from the European Research Council.

A MORAL ECONOMY OF PASTORALISTS?
UNDERSTANDING THE ‘JIHADIST’ UPRISING IN MALI

Tor A. Benjaminsen, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway
Boubacar Ba, Centre d’analyse sur la gouvernance et la sécurité au Sahel, Bamako, Mali


Since 2012, so-called ‘jihadist’ groups have taken control over large parts of northern and central Mali. In addition, the rebellion has spread to the neighbouring countries of Burkina Faso and Niger. Various explanations of the rapid growth of this insurgency have been proposed ranging from grievances resulting from government mismanagement to a global rise of violent Salafist interpretations of Islam. In this paper, we suggest revisiting some classic contributions to Marxist-inspired peasant and agrarian studies from the 1960 and 70s in order to better explain the roots and rational of this uprising. Based on E. P. Thompson (1963) and J. Scott (1976), we argue that rapid expansion of the insurgency may, at least partly, be explained by a threat to a moral economy based on the notion of economic justice and exploitation. This notion is also guided by a certain ethic emanating from a perceived right to subsistence. However, such a threat is not sufficient in itself for rebellion to take place – otherwise insurgencies would be endemic in the Global South. It also depends on some external actor to challenge the power which constrains resistance. Such external power happened to emerge with some individual leaders entering the stage with links to global jihadist networks.

KEYWORDS: insurgency, violence, Sahel