Very grateful for @aruggeri_eu‘s Spring 2018 grad seminar titled Collective Political Violence. There’s been a lot of brilliant writing & analysis on the #Sahel recently and Andrea’s seminar and teaching have provided me with a great interpretative lens:

This @SIPRIorg commentary on the effect of the Sahel crisis on the border zones between Mali and Mauritania shows how even outside of “hot” zones conflict can dramatically alter social and economic relations. https://sipri.org/commentary/blog/2020/high-cost-insecurity-case-hodh-el-gharbi-mauritania

Elizabeth Wood’s 2008 paper “The Social Processes of Civil War: The Wartime Transformation of Social Networks” traces 6 processes altered by conflict. @SIPRIorg’s analysis neatly pivots away from the violence of the war itself to society transborder society! Read both!

It’s definitely hard not to think of James Scott when you read about the imposition by national authorities of biometric border checks that disrupt migration and #transhumance patterns in the #Sahel.

Some great @_Will_Brown reporting in #TheSahelTrap edition of @TheAfricaReport discusses (among other issues) armed militias in #Mali and the #BurkinaFaso - accused of massacres prompting new cycles of violence drastically changing the nature of the conflict.

Reminded me of @pstanpolitics on state strategies re militias. The Malian & Burkinabé states mostly pursue containment w/ militias & (deep) collusion with vigilante. They pursue both strategies in combination bc these groups are less ideologically threatening than jihadist groups

This @AfricaACSS piece on #Fulani perspectives shows how the Fulani = a community trapped in the middle of this nightmare & stigmatized by the ‘Fulani Jihad’ narrative. Meanwhile: jihadists, militias, & vigilantes have all attacked Fulani communities https://africacenter.org/spotlight/understanding-fulani-perspectives-sahel-crisis/

Recruitment into these groups is complicated and the role of Fulani communities = anything but simple (see screenshots). However, work by @JocelynViterna work on pathways to mobilization and @aruggeri_eu’s work on emotion sheds light on why some choose to join and others do not!

These were a few of the things that I was reminded of from grad school when reading reporting & analysis on the #Sahel. @aruggeri_eu provided me with a rich foundation on which to analyze & interpret the current trajectories of events in the complex series of crises in the region

Something that won’t ever be lost on me is how incredibly complex these things are. No matter how much I read and learn about the subject matter, I always marvel at how narrow my overall understanding is and how enormous my blind spots and biases are!