IN DISORDER, THEY THRIVE: HOW RURAL DISTRESS FUELS MILITANCY AND BANDITRY IN THE CENTRAL SAHEL

Mathieu Pellerin, "Listening to Herders in West Africa and the Sahel: What The eviction of Malian security forces from the north of the Future for Pastoralism in the Face of Insecurity and its Impacts?," Réseau Billital country and the establishment of armed groups drove several Maroobé (RBM) and Partners, September 2021, wp-content/uploads/Edited-Report-Patoralism-a. [...] Fulani’s distrust of authorities and customary Movement for the Unity of Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) in chiefs, whom they accused of “inaction or even complicity” in search of military training and protection from the excesses past resource conflicts with the Daoussahaks and Zarma agro- of the largely undisciplined Tuareg6 fighters of the secular pastoralists, contributed to such drift into the o. [...] with the MNLA took advantage of the rebels’ early successes The root of the conflict started with the non-enforcement of in the battlefield to raid rival communities and steal their court judgments in favor of herders’ rights to access wells and livestock. [...] 8 After the May and the MNLA also drove some Fulani to join the MUJAO, attack, an appreciable number of displaced Fulani joined the ranks of the dominant VEG at the time, the MUJAO, and later the al-Qaeda-affiliated Katiba Macina. [...] The onset of the Sahel security crisis in 2012 lit the fuse that led to the political The roots of the Sahel rural breakdown lie in failing governance and security breakdown in several Sahelian rural areas.