Paramilitary Governance In West African Border Regions – A Comparative Case Study Of Jnim And Isgs In The Liptako–Gourma And Ghana–Burkina Faso Regions [before doctoral defense]

Kivonat, rövid leírás

Armed non-state actors have become increasingly important to the study of security, governance, and political authority in Africa, particularly in regions where state authority is weak, uneven, or contested. Although such actors are predominantly approached through the language of terrorism, insurgency, violent extremism, and counterterrorism, scholarship on rebel and insurgent governance has demonstrated that armed groups may also perform governance functions and exercise forms of political authority over populations (Mampilly, 2012; Arjona, 2017). This is particularly significant in borderland environments, where the reach of formal state institutions is often uneven and where state, customary, religious, community, and transnational actors interact in shaping everyday political and social order (Hagmann & Péclard, 2010; Nugent, 2019). The governance activities of armed groups therefore raise questions that extend beyond the study of violence to include how authority is established, how populations are regulated, how legitimacy is sought or contested, and how communities navigate competing sources of authority. These questions are particularly important in the Sahel and wider West Africa. Traditionally, the Sahel has been understood as a semi-arid ecological transition zone between the Sahara Desert and the Sudanian savannah, extending across a broad area of West and Central Africa and characterized historically by pastoral mobility, trans-Saharan trade, and extensive social and cultural interaction that predates contemporary state boundaries (OCDE/CSAO 2014; Walther & Retaillé, 2021). Over time, however, the term has acquired a broader political and security meaning and is now widely used by governments, regional organizations, international institutions, development agencies, and security scholars to describe an interconnected space affected by conflict, governance challenges, cross-border mobility, and transnational insecurity (Lecocq et al., 2013; Walther, 2017; Thurston, 2020). West Africa similarly constitutes not only a geographical region but also a political and institutional space shaped by colonial legacies, postcolonial state formation, regional integration, and shared economic and security concerns. The increasing interconnection between the Sahel and the northern parts of coastal West Africa has consequently made the relationship between these spaces important for understanding contemporary patterns of insecurity and political authority. Borderlands occupy a particularly important position within this regional context. African borderland scholarship demonstrates that these areas are not simply geographical margins of states but spaces characterized by mobility, cross-border social and economic networks, uneven state presence, and overlapping forms of authority (Hagmann & Péclard, 2010; Nugent, 2019). Colonial territorial arrangements frequently divided pre-existing communities, kinship networks, trading systems, and pastoral routes across national boundaries, while postcolonial states have often experienced difficulties in extending administrative capacity and public services uniformly across peripheral areas (Herbst, 2000; Feyissa et al., 2010). Consequently, borderlands have remained spaces in which formal state authority operates alongside customary institutions, religious authorities, community structures, informal economies, and other forms of social and political regulation. Rather than being understood merely as peripheral spaces, they provide an important setting for examining how authority is negotiated and how competing forms of governance emerge and coexist (Hagmann & Péclard, 2010). This question has also been reflected in the literature on so-called “ungoverned spaces.” The concept became particularly prominent within security and policy debates following the attacks of 11 September 2001, where territories characterized by limited state control were increasingly associated with opportunities for terrorist organizations, insurgents, and transnational criminal networks (Rabasa et al., 2007; Clunan & Trinkunas, 2010). However, subsequent scholarship has questioned the assumption that weak or limited state presence necessarily constitutes an absence of governance. Clunan and Trinkunas (2010), for example, draw attention to spaces where state authority is contested by alternative forms of political and social authority, while scholarship on the Sahel similarly demonstrates that areas characterized as “ungoverned” may contain complex systems of customary, informal, and non-state governance (Raleigh, Nsaibia & Dowd, 2021). African-centered scholarship further highlights the importance of examining who exercises authority, how that authority is negotiated, and how state and non-state institutions interact within these spaces (Lund, 2006; Hagmann & Péclard, 2010; Meagher, 2012). Thus, African borderlands are better approached as spaces of competing, overlapping, and negotiated authority than as governance vacuums.