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Since 2017, the jihadist group JNIM has made sieges one of its favourite weapons in Mali. Dozens of towns and villages have been cut off from roads, markets and fields, and the insurgents’ territorial reach has expanded dramatically. But sieges are not only a military tactic. A new report from the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC) shows that they are long, eventful processes aimed at the population itself. Communities seen as hostile are squeezed until they comply, and sieges end with so-called local agreements on the insurgents’ terms. The study did not find a single case where the state durably lifted a siege. The result is what the authors call an “archipelago state”: government rule in shrinking pockets, while the hinterlands belong to JNIM.
What do these local agreements tell us about how conflicts end in the Sahel, and on whose terms? Join us when Yvan Guichaoua presents the report’s findings, followed by a response from Peer Schouten drawing on his research on banditry and armed governance.
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SPEAKERS
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Yvan Guichaoua is a Senior Researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC). His research focuses on insurgency formation, rebel governance and state responses in the Sahel. Since 2007, he has studied the recurring Tuareg rebellions in Niger and Mali and the rise of jihadism in the Sahel. He was previously Senior Lecturer at the Brussels School of International Studies (University of Kent).
Peer Schouten is a Senior Researcher at DIIS, an associate researcher at the International Peace Information Service (IPIS) in Antwerp and a professor at the Conflict Research Group, Ghent University. He studies order in conflict: roadblocks and transit taxes, conflict economies and the politics of logistics. His recent DIIS work maps banditry in northwest Nigeria as a political geography. He is the author of Roadblock Politics: The Origins of Violence in Central Africa (Cambridge University Press), winner of the 2024 Conflict Research Society book award and the ISA STAIR book prize.
Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde is a Senior Researcher at DIIS. She researches conflicts and Western interventions in the Sahel, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Mali and Niger, including the links between local resource conflicts, state formation and jihadist insurgencies. She led the Carlsberg Foundation-funded project In War Without Allies: The EU’s Role in Global Security and is part of the TRANSJIHAD project on transnational jihadism.
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PROGRAMME
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14.00-14.05 Welcome and introduction, Signe Marie Cold-Ravnkilde
14.05-14.30 Presentation of Conquer, Punish, and Govern: The Logic of Jihadist Sieges in Mali, Yvan Guichaoua
14.30-14.45 Intervention, Peer Schouten
14.45-15.30 Q&A and open discussion
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PRACTICAL INFORMATION
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The seminar will be conducted in English and take place in DIIS Auditorium, Stockholmsgade 45, 2100 Copenhagen. Everyone interested is welcome, and participation is free of charge. However, registration is required and must be completed via our registration system. Register here: https://www.diis.dk/en/node/28725/
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Stockholmsgade 45, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark, Stockholmsgade 45, 2100 København Ø, Danmark, Copenhagen , Denmark
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