Jihadist Insurgent Governance in the Sahel

During the fourth reporting period, the following activities have taken place: - Meetings with project participants on Teams, to update each other on ongoing work, country situations, analytical issues, challenges related to fieldwork, and the way forward. - The Alliance for Rebuilding Governance in Africa (ARGA), African Security Sector Network (ASSN), Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD have conducted fieldwork. - On June 13-14, 2023, the second academic seminar was held in Oxford, UK. The project partners who participated were Niagalé Bagayoko (ASSN), Stathis Kalyvas (University of Oxford), Natasja Rupesinge (University of Oxford and NUPI), and Kari Osland (NUPI). Unfortunately, Abdoul Wahab Cissé (ARGA), Idayat Hassan (CDD), and Morten Bøås (NUPI) had to cancel their participation. - As we're working on a Special Issue on jihadist governance in the Sahel, we also invited some renowned researchers who will contribute articles to the Special Issue. They are Yvan Guichaoua (University of Kent), Alexander Thurston (University of Cincinnati), Marte Beldé (University of Ghent), and Claudia Wiehler (ETH Zurich). - During the seminar, we invited the renowned Sahel journalist from France24, Wassim Nasr, to give a keynote speech on ongoing challenges in the Sahel. He participated in the entire workshop and commented on all the presented articles, along with the rest of the researchers. - We have drafted and submitted a proposal for a Special Issue to the Journal of Peace Research. Despite sending several reminders, we have not yet received a reply from them. Therefore, we have decided to explore other journal options. Our alternative choices include International Affairs, Security Studies, and African Security. - PhD candidate Natasha Rupesinghe has submitted her ongoing work for the "Confirmation of Status" evaluation at the University of Oxford. The committee that evaluated her work consisted of two professors, Thomas Hegghammer and Andrea Ruggeri, who recommended that her status be confirmed. This means that they believe she is getting closer to submitting a thesis that will pass. - During the autumn season, the project partners have been working on their planned deliverables. - The photographer in Mali has delivered pictures as per the contract, albeit with a slight delay due to an injury and the worsening security situation in Mali.

This project analyses jihadist insurgent governance in the Sahel in a comparative perspective. More specifically, we seek to answer the following research question: what explains variations in jihadist insurgent governance? JIGOV-Sahel will provide original data gathered through extensive fieldwork on jihadist insurgencies that have not been researched systematically or comparatively. This will be the first study to analyse variation of jihadist insurgent governance across and within cases including the Katiba Macina (Mali and Burkina Faso), Ansarul Islam (Burkina Faso), Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso) and Boko Haram (Niger and Nigeria). The research project is motivated by two identified limitations in the study of rebel governance. First, jihadist insurgents are often analysed merely as ‘Islamic terrorists’ who rule through brutal violent force and sustain their operations through criminal activities. Scattered evidence in the Sahel suggests that this is not the case: jihadist insurgencies do govern, and even develop social contracts that are considered to be more relevant, and sometimes even more legitimate than that of the central state. Second, we argue that the institutionalist approach to rebel governance, which suggests that for rebels to govern they must control territory, develop institutions, and provide public services, is not sufficient to explain these Sahelian cases. We observe that these jihadist insurgencies govern instead by apply varying levels of coercion, provide some minimal services like courts, develop rudimentary Islamic institutions/practices, instrumentalise rights-based conflicts and development of social bonds with communities.