Disputed Desert

Disputed Desert
Author: Baz Lecocq
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2010-11-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004190287

This book deals with the relation between the Malian state and the Tuareg people in the late 20th century, which has been characterized by three violent uprisings against Malian authority by Tuareg nationalists: between 1963 and 1964, between 1990 and 1996, and again between 2006 and 2009. In presenting a detailed history of this conflict between an African state and a people inhabiting it involuntarily, a number of social and political tensions are brought to the fore which haunt all of the Sahel today: the heritage of slavery, local and European concepts of race and the racialisation of social and political relations, colonial rule, the inchoate process of decolonisation, and the presence of competing nationalist forces in one postcolonial state.

The Tuaregs and the 2012 Rebellion in Mali

The Tuaregs and the 2012 Rebellion in Mali
Author: Yusuf Ibrahim Gamawa
Publisher: Partridge Africa
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2017-06-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 1482878097

As this book goes to print, the BBC is reporting an attack on a luxury tourist resort in Mali by Tuareg and Islamists militants. A very short while back, in 2012, in fact, the rebellion in the North came within a whisker of seizing Mali. If it had not been for the timely armed intervention of France, Mali might have become the first state to fall totally into the hands of elements the West and African governments are still battling in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Somalia and who unleash terror on Europe on an almost daily basis. The story of ancient Mali, once one of the greatest empires Africa has ever seen, colonized by the French and now an independent African state, and its never-ending clashes with the Tuareg people in the North of the country, is as gripping and as dramatic today as then. What is really happening? Who are the Tuareg? What makes them so different? Are they really the descendants of the Almoravids, who conquered Spain and left the stunning beauties of the Alhambra and Granada as testimonies of their greatness? Unique, with their own proud and romantic culture, dominating all they come in contact with, the Tuareg refuse to be ruled. In The Tuaregs and the 2012 Rebellion in Mali, Ibrahim Yusuf Gamawa compellingly tells a story that is not yet ended. But he brings it up to date and future waits in the wings to unfold the next no doubt tragic but compelling chapters. It is an ancient story, as contemporary as tomorrows headlines.

Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel

Jihadists of North Africa and the Sahel
Author: Alexander Thurston
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 361
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108488668

Offers unique insights into the inner workings of jihadist organisations over the past three decades in North Africa and the Sahel.

Cultural Heritage in Mali in the Neoliberal Era

Cultural Heritage in Mali in the Neoliberal Era
Author: Rosa De Jorio
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2016-06-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0252098536

Up to 2012, Mali was a poster child of African democracy, despite multiple signs of growing dissatisfaction with the democratic experiment. Then disaster struck, bringing many of the nation's unresolved contradictions to international attention. A military coup carved off the country's south. A revolt by a coalition of Tuareg and extremist Islamist forces shook the north. The events, so violent and unexpected, forced experts to reassess Mali's democratic institutions and the neoliberal economic reforms enacted in conjunction with the move toward democracy. Rosa De Jorio's detailed study of cultural heritage and its transformations provides a key to understanding the impasse that confronts Malian democracy. As she shows, postcolonial Mali privileged its cultural heritage to display itself on the regional and international scene. The neoliberal reforms both intensified and altered this trend. Profiling heritage sites ranging from statues of colonial leaders to women's museums to historic Timbuktu, De Jorio portrays how various actors have deployed and contested notions of heritage. These actors include not just Malian administrators and politicians but UNESCO, and non-state NGOs. She also delves into the intricacies of heritage politics from the perspective of Malian actors and groups, as producers and receivers--but always highly informed and critically engaged--of international, national and local cultural initiatives.

Inside Rebellion

Inside Rebellion
Author: Jeremy M. Weinstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2006-10-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1139458698

Some rebel groups abuse noncombatant populations, while others exhibit restraint. Insurgent leaders in some countries transform local structures of government, while others simply extract resources for their own benefit. In some contexts, groups kill their victims selectively, while in other environments violence appears indiscriminate, even random. This book presents a theory that accounts for the different strategies pursued by rebel groups in civil war, explaining why patterns of insurgent violence vary so much across conflicts. It does so by examining the membership, structure, and behavior of four insurgent movements in Uganda, Mozambique, and Peru. Drawing on interviews with nearly two hundred combatants and civilians who experienced violence firsthand, it shows that rebels' strategies depend in important ways on how difficult it is to launch a rebellion. The book thus demonstrates how characteristics of the environment in which rebellions emerge constrain rebel organization and shape the patterns of violence that civilians experience.

Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa

Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa
Author: Charles G. Thomas
Publisher: ISSN
Total Pages: 416
Release: 2020-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781773851266

Wars fought for political separation have become omnipresent in post-colonial Africa. From the division of Sudan, to the continued fragmentation of Somalia, and the protracted struggles of Cabinda and Azawad, conflict over seccession and separation continues to the present day. This is the first single volume to examine the historical arc of secession and secessionist conflict across sub-Saharan Africa. Paying particular attention to the development of secessionist conflicts and their evolving goals, Secession and Separatist Conflicts in Postcolonial Africa draws on case studies and rigorous research to examine three waves of secessionist movements, themselves defined by international conflict and change. Using detailed case studies, the authors offer a framework to understand how secession and separation occur, how these are influenced by both preceding movements and global political trends, and how their ongoing legacies continue to shape African regional politics. Deeply engaging and thoroughly researched, this book presents a nuanced and important and important new overview of African separatist and secessionist conflicts. It addresses the structures, goals, and underlying influences of these movements within a broader global context to impart a rich understanding of why these conflicts are waged, and how they succeed or fail.

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Publisher:
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2013
Genre: Military art and science
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Exporting Global Jihad

Exporting Global Jihad
Author: Tom Smith
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2020-06-11
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1838607544

This timely 2 volume edited collection looks at the extent and nature of global jihad, focusing on the often-exoticised hinterlands of jihad beyond the traditionally viewed Middle Eastern 'centre'. As ISIS loses its footing in Syria and Iraq and al-Qaeda regroups this comprehensive account will be a key work in the on-going battle to better understand the dynamics of the jihads global reality. Critically examining the global reach of the jihad in these peripheries has the potential to tell us much about patterns of both local mobilisation, and local rejection of a grander centrally themed and administered jihad. Has the periphery been receptive to an exported jihad from the centre or does the local rooted cosmopolitanism of the jihad in the periphery suggest a more complex glocal relationship? These questions and challenges are more pertinent than ever as the likes of ISIS and many commentators, attempt to globally rebrand the jihad and as the centre reasserts its claims to the exotic periphery. Edited by Tom Smith (Portsmouth), Kirsten E. Schulze (LSE) and Hussein Solomon (UFS) the two volumes critically examine the various claims of connections between jihadist terrorism in the 'periphery', remote Islamist insurgencies of the 'periphery' and the global jihad. Each volume draws on experts in each of the geographies in question. The global nature of the jihad is too often taken for granted; yet the extent of the glocal connections deserve focused investigation. Without such inquiry we risk a reductive understanding of the global jihad, further fostering Orientalist and Eurocentric attitudes towards local conflicts and remote violence in the periphery. This book will therefore draw attention to those who overlook and undermine the distinct and rich particularities of the often-contradictory and cosmopolitan global jihad. In many of the peripheries, particularly those with intensive large-scale insurgencies, there is extensive international military alliance. The Bush doctrine to 'fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here' certainly looks to be alive and well in places like Somalia, the Philippines and Niger amongst many others. Crucially we must ask - is such reasoning sound – is the threat global and if so in what way? Furthermore - is action in the peripheries under the guise of combating the global jihad overlooking the local issues and threatening to make a wider threat where it was otherwise contained? Diagnosing nations or regions as 'breeding grounds' or 'sanctuaries' of global jihad carries the spectre of having to chose sides in a battle of civilisations, which looms over a number of developing nations reliant on good western relations.