Members
of a Senegalese Formed Police Unit (FPU) of the UN Multidimensional Integrated
Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) participate in training on maintaining
and restoring public order at the Police Academy in Bamako. Credit: Flickr/UN Mission in
Mali. CC BY-NC-SA
2.0.
A recent spate of extremist attacks in
Mali has once again underlined the need to rethink the hard security approach that
dominates the response to terrorism in the Sahel.
The end of June saw attacks in Mali on
French forces as well as the headquarters of the G5 Sahel Joint Force, a security
force made up of five regional countries to combat jihadist insurgents and
criminal groups. The attacks overshadowed the African Union (AU) summit in Mauritania,
which also hosted French President Emmanuel Macron keen to discuss the region’s
burning security problems.
Over the first four months of this year,
more
people were killed in terrorist attacks in Mali than the whole of last
year. The country has been plagued by violence since 2012, when an armed
rebellion by Tuareg-led jihadists with links to al-Qaeda broke out in the north.
A peace agreement negotiated in 2015 remains extremely difficult to implement.
The UN’s peacekeeping mission established in 2013, known as MINUSMA, has the highest
rate of casualties of such missions in the world.
So we desperately need to talk about
security in Mali. But equally urgently, and indeed to get successfully to
stability, we need to talk about why people join armed groups in the first
place. Efforts to build peace in Mali will not be possible without addressing
the root causes of conflict.
Mali has long struggled with weak
governance, poverty, youth unemployment, droughts and food insecurity. Ethnic
tensions have been exacerbated through lawlessness and marginalisation. With more
and more schools being shut in some areas by Jihadis, children face an
uncertain future. Porous borders over which arms, drugs and people are
trafficked create a major security headache that is felt not just in the region
but globally.
In an effort to understand what is
happening and why, International Alert went to a number of communities that are
struggling with violent extremism in the Sahel region, and asked
young people from Fulani (herder) communities why they may or may not choose to join armed
groups.
The answers had little to do with
religious ideology. A great majority of those we interviewed in Mali, Niger and
Burkina Faso strongly blamed
the state’s inability to provide security and services.
They said state abuse and corruption
with impunity drives some young people to join armed groups. Last week, the
UN mission in Mali said that Malian troops from the G5 Sahel had “executed
12 civilians” at a market after a soldier was killed in May.
Such incidents provoke grievances which violent
extremist groups use to incite communities to embrace an alternative political
and social model inspired by the Sharia.
Our research also found a complete lack
of trust in the defence and security forces among the communities we work with.
This lack of trust runs across all sections of society, both feeding off and
exacerbating ethnic tensions.
Therefore it
is important to rebuild trust between communities and security forces. Dialogue
is one way to achieve this. Over the past few years, International Alert has established and supported community-based
forums that for the first time, bring together women, men and young people
with some of those they fear the most: the Malian military.
I attended one of these forums
during a recent visit to Mali. Around the table were representatives of farmers
and foresters, and different religious communities. One participant told me
that after his Fulani friend was killed by the security forces, he was so angry
that he went to join the armed groups. He didn’t, in the
end, as he felt their vision did not represent the Islam he believed in. He is
now one of a brave group of community leaders that regularly discuss local
issues with the security forces.
A female participant told me
she had never sat in a room with the military before. “This has transformed my
opinion of them and their role in protecting us. I now understand that they
have problems too,” she said.
This initiative is
successful locally, but as the participants told me, such trust building needs
to be undertaken more widely. International military support in Mali is driven
by a desire to stabilise the region, push back the armed groups, re-open
schools and restore the State. But to succeed in any of these areas in the
long-term these forces need to win the trust and support of the communities
they wish to serve.
The G5 Sahel
Joint Force is without a doubt a core pillar of stabilisation in the region, but
it has to be accountable or risk undermining its aim to reduce violence, and
could instead weaken regional stability. The European Union and the UK
government need to ensure that their support for the Force goes beyond
providing funds and training, to insist on assurances that it interacts with
the local population in non-abusive ways that can build trust over time.
There
also needs to be much more investment in addressing the root causes of the
conflict. The international community needs to support Mali’s government to
improve access to justice, reduce inequality and create job opportunities for
young people. Without these long-term solutions peace will prove elusive.
International Alert’s latest report "If victims become perpetrators" is available to download here.