THE RISK OF VIOLENT INTER- COMMUNAL SPILLOVER IN WEST AFRICA

Summary

community against another are increasing.” 6 The dramatic breakdown in security was already present in Given the tragic humanitarian and security situations in Mali 2018, as exemplified by the deadly events in Yirgou in Burkina and Burkina Faso, national and international leaders need to Faso.2 In Moura, in 2022, over 600 people, mainly civilians, acknowledge the risks and level of threats associa. [...] Notably, in the other analysts contacted for this article estimate that the 1990s and 2000s, the Malian government built and nurtured aftermath of the elections as well as Obi’s ostensible defeat community-based militias, still active to this day, to fight in a highly contested result could lead to inter-community several Tuareg rebellions in the northern part of the country. [...] Indeed, Benin has gone so far as to create a high commission In addition to counter-insurgency responses, the other critical for the sedentarization of pastoralists.53 element generating inter-community violence in West Africa is the political instrumentalization of community issues, In the Gulf of Guinea, the authorities seem to be repeating the employed by the authorities to govern and maintain. [...] same mistakes made in the Sahel and could potentially end up with the same dismal consequences.54 This is particularly the Although colonial and post-colonial political elites laid the case of Togo and Benin,55 which, like Mali and Burkina Faso, foundations for and fueled these inter-community tensions, have for the most part addressed the jihadist threat in static national authorities have repeat. [...] In the wake of the appointment of the Malinké- inter-community tensions between southern and northern supported candidate Alpha Condé as president and in the run- communities could heighten in the coming months and up to the 2013 parliamentary elections, Guinea was marred lead to deadly clashes as well as a possible new claim for by inter-community clashes, primarily affecting the Fulbe independen.