Tag Archives: Mali

"The Army: National Shame" caption held by protester in Mali against the 2012 coup. Source: Wikipedia

Too Quiet on the Western Front? The Sahel-Sahara between Arab Spring and Black Spring

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While the world’s attention has been focused on the US-led military interventions in Iraq and Syria a quieter build-up of military assets has been ongoing along the newer, western front of the War on Terror as the security crises in Libya and northeast Nigeria escalate and the conflict in northern Mali proves to be far from over. In the face of revolutionary change in Burkina Faso, the efforts of outsiders to enforce an authoritarian and exclusionary status quo across the Sahel-Sahara look increasingly fragile and misdirected.

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Somaliland Shillings, Hargeisa, 2008. Source: Tristam Sparks (Flickr)

The Costs of Security Sector Reform: Questions of Affordability and Purpose

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In considering security sector reform, questions of affordability have often been subordinated to questions of effectiveness and expediency. A recent series of reviews of security expenditures by the World Bank and other actors in Liberia, Mali, Niger and Somalia has highlighted several emerging issues around the (re)construction of security institutions in fragile and conflict-affected states.

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U.S. soldiers and French commandos marine conduct a reconnaissance patrol during a joint-combined exercise in Djibouti. Source: Wikipedia

Beaux Gestes and Castles in the Sand: The Militarisation of the Sahara

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Whatever the benefits for Mali, the French-led eviction of jihadist groups from northern Mali may have made the wider Sahara a less safe place, and has done little to lower the capacity of such groups to threaten European interests.. In 2014, France is implementing a major redeployment of its forces in Africa into the Sahel and Sahara. Meanwhile, the US has been quietly extending its military reach from Djibouti to Mauritania. However, as elsewhere, the western military approach to countering Islamist insurgency in the Sahel rests on very unsteady foundations and the potential to provoke wider alienation and radicalisation is strong.

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