CHANGING SECURITY DYNAMICS in NORTH AFRICA and WESTERN SAHEL REGION Noureddine Jebnoun
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Portuguese 8 Journal of International Affairs SPRING/SUMMER 2014 3 CHANGING SECURITY DYNAMICS IN NORTH AFRICA AND WESTERN SAHEL REGION Noureddine Jebnoun Silver Sponsor Partners Mecenas Portuguese Journal of International Affairs Ivo Sobral Design Portuguese Institute of International Relations João Domingues Teresa Cardoso Bastos and Security (IPRIS) João Gomes Porto Rua da Junqueira, 188 Laura C. 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Diagrams and tables should be avoided, or • BRIC’s: a new bloc? PORTUGAL kept to a minimum. • NATO and African Union Email: [email protected] 3 Changing Security Dynamics in North Africa and Western Sahel Region NOUREDDINE JEBNOUN Faculty member at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies Mapping Regional Security Dynamics The Arab uprisings have changed the security dynamics across North Africa and Western Sahel (NAWS) region1 dramatically. Since December 2010 these revolts have upended the authoritarian status quo by ousting long-reigning dictators in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Ye- men. They triggered popular riots in Algeria, Morocco, Oman and Saudi Arabia, while unrest has been harshly repressed in Bahrain and Syria. In this context, the Malian crisis did not come as a surprise. The Malian crisis started as a mutiny led by Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, and quickly evolved into a full staged coup d’état, toppling the government of Ama- dou Toumani Touré on 22 March 2012. Indeed, the ingredients of instability have stirred for decades: organized crime, illegal immigration and transnational illicit activities, such as the smuggling of small arms, light weapons, fuel, tobacco, counterfeit medicines and drugs.2 Food insecurity and malnutrition is another disaster across the West Sahel that is linked to the negative security context.3 Severe droughts that started as far back as the 1960s are precursors.4 Consequently, desertification and the scarcity of resources has exacer- bated conflicts among the Tuareg people, between nomadic herders and Bambara sed- entary farmers, as well as between these groups and their respective governments in Mali and Niger.5 The land reform process implemented by the government of Bamako in the aftermath of the independence was seen by the Tuareg as an infringement upon their traditional rural areas and sparked their first insurgency that was met with harsh repres- sion from President Modibo Keïta. The weakness of national governments in the NAWS region – mainly those of Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Libya – is another piece of this bleak picture. Disproportionate projection of power from capital hubs to international legal boundaries and inadequate territorial organization/management from the center to the periphery illustrate states’ limited exercise of jurisdiction and special control. Lacking an effective command over their peripheral areas, states in the NAWS region view their borders over the Saharan hinterland as a potential source of vulnerability for their internal stability and security. Flawed infrastructures, weak governance, and recurring economic underdevelopment are driven by both defective institutionalization and limited state penetration in society. The whole of which is driven from outmoded and unsuited state centrality-security struc- 4 PORTUGUESE JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS | NUmbER 8 | SPRING/SUmmER 2014 tural development scheme, which has been in force since the early 1960s. This deficient state’s spatial configuration in NAWS region has called into question its system of gover- nance and eroded its legitimacy among indigenous local people, mainly in the unsettled and underdeveloped periphery. For many indigenous people, systems such as tribalism, customary practices and linguistic affiliations transcend international boundaries and, in many cases, their ethnic diversity and religious identity prevails at the expense of exist- ing colonial borders.6 The range of power control that NAWS states execute over their legal borders versus the level of control non-state actors can perform is a major aspect in regional power dynamics. Rather than hybrid and episodic garrisoned presence over inhospitable geographic remote regions, efficient control is more about the capability for rapid state projection over peripheral zones. The hostile Saharan environment presents