Fragile states and violent entrepreneurs: conflict, climate, refugees

Understanding the conditions of fragility, and how to help stabilise the states of the Sahel region is a precondition for responding to some of the most important contemporary challenges to development and human security. Based on case studies from Mali, Libya, Niger and Mauritania, FRAGVENT contributes with knowledge needed to help tackle these challenges. FRAGVENT investigates how state capacity has been eroded, and how this has opened-up new spaces through which insurgents can seek local integration and gain legitimacy. The armed actors, whom we call violent entrepreneurs, have some degree of political agenda, but are also involved in different types of income-generating activities. They rule by force and violence, but they also distribute resources, provide some level of order, and offer protection for (at least parts of) the population in the areas they control. Based on ongoing work in Mali and Niger we have started to conceptualise such activities as Governance than Comes and Go. By this we mean limited service provision in combination with coercive activities articulated in a religious language that aims more to get a grip on certain populations than to achieve territorial control. In the autumn of 2018, we started to work in more detail on the ground in Mali and Niger. This work was followed up by a new round of fieldwork in the autumn of 2019, before we had planned to focus also on Libya and Mauritania. Due to Covid-19 this has not been possible, but we have published some on Libya. However, we had a large and unique material that we used to produce a special issue of International Spectator (an international peer-reviewed journal) entitled Governance, Fragility and Insurgency in the Sahel: A Hybrid Political Order in the Making that was published in December 2020. Presenting findings from our fieldworks, it consists of two conceptual articles discussing forms of hybrid governance in the Sahel (Bøås and Strazzari) and security complexes in the Sahel (Osland and Erstad); while five others discuss insurgency, counter-insurgency and armed dynamics in Niger (Bøås, Cissé and Mahamane), Nigeria (Stoddard and Berlingozzi), Mali (Baldaro and Diall), Chad (Iocchi) and Burkina Faso (Raineri); completing this issue is an article about security sector reform in the Sahel (Venturi and Touré). The Special Issue, as well as the entire fieldwork which underpins it, has been developed in tandem with partners from Sahel, notably Abdoul Wakhab Cissé (ARGA-Sahel) and Laouali Mahamane (ARGA-Niger) which have been key collaborators within FRAGVENT, but also Yida Diall (University of Bamako) and Nana Touré (independent consultant, Bamako). The scientific production for FRAGVENT has been advanced thanks to the long-term fieldwork conducted by local partners, ARGA researchers in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. Thanks to this partnership FRAGVENT has made policy-relevant contributions in the fields of political governance, international development and military cooperation between Western and Sahelian partners. First of all, FRAGVENT has shed more light on the internal workings of non-state armed groups operating in the Sahel that are the target of different counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations financed and trained by the EU; most importantly, it has singled out the main drivers of such insurgencies, connected to the management of natural resources and to the exacerbations of local grievances, while it has also identified other key variables that in fact aggravate rather than de-escalate these conflicts, i.e. poor accountability of state officials, and military and police abuses against civilians. In such a way, the project has also shed more light on the shortcomings of externally promoted security strategies in the Sahel, notably in providing evidences about how a short-term focus on stabilisation rather than a long-term process on disarmament and peace-keeping works to minimise risks but does little do end insurgencies. Finally, FRAGVENT has provided more insights on the forms of military cooperation between West and Sahelian partners which tend to take the form of a life-support system maintaining political regimes in the capital cities but incapable to boost state functions. The project leader has also an agreement with Hurst / Oxford University Press to produce a book (monograph) with the working title Sahel the Perfect Storm that is due to be published in 2022, and our post-doc Alessio Iocchi is also publishing a book with Routledge with the title Lifeworlds in Crisis by Lake Chad: Violence, Labour and Resistance.

FRAGVENT?s conceptualisation of key Sahel insurgents as violent entrepreneurs has gained international traction and attention in both policy circles and in academia. This has established NUPI and the key FRAGVENT partners (St. Ana and ARGA) as internationally recognised providers of knowledge and analyses of the conflicts in the Sahel. The work conducted in FRAGVENT on the internal organisation of non-state armed groups and the shortcomings of externally promoted security challenges in the Sahel has played a key role in this regard. This work has also been very useful for other work that this project group has embarked successfully on. The EU Horizon 2020 funded project PREVEX build on the conceptual work done in FRAGVENT and the FRAGVENT project group is committed to continue to provide cutting-edge analysis of the situation in the Sahel based on a combination of detailed field work and refining and revising the theories and concepts developed in the course of FRAGVENT.

The combined effects of fragile states, conflict, and climate change pose severe challenges to development and governance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Sahel region. Understanding the conditions of fragility is therefore a precondition for responding to one of the most important challenges to development and human security today. FRAGVENT will contribute with knowledge needed to help tackle this challenge. The project investigates how changes and breakdowns in neopatrimonial rules and networks in the Sahel have eroded state capacity, particularly in peripheral areas. These changes have opened up new spaces through which insurgents can seek local integration, via the establishment of various types of violent order. These violent entrepreneurs are armed actors possessing some degree of political agenda, which is acted out in tandem with different types of income-generating activities. They rule by force and violence, but they also distribute resources, provide some order, and offer protection for populations under their control. This project investigates the forms of authority that underpin, enable, and extend violent entrepreneurs? rule, and how different populations adapt. FRAGVENT will produce and communicate knowledge crucial for national, regional, and international attempts to stabilize the Sahel; for the efforts of humanitarian and development actors; and for the broader goals of mitigating the negative effects of climate change and the migratory push factors in the Sahel. It will push forward research agendas related to armed actors and insurgencies in Africa; political economies of international interventions; and governance and African statehood. FRAGVENT involves fieldwork in Mali, Libya, Niger and Mauritania. Conflict-sensitive methodologies will be used. Field security is a priority: all partners have strict security rules and guidelines, and participating researchers have extensive experience conducting research in conflict-affected areas.