Farmer-herder relations, land governance and the national conflict in Mali

ABSTRACT

Farmer-herder conflicts have been long standing in Mali’s rural areas. It has been shown that it is mostly herders who support and join jihadist groups. By analysing land regimes in farmer-herder contexts and merging studies on different scales of violence, the paper investigates how local dynamics interact with national political violence. It argues that historical precedents and pastoralist grievances related to land governance have created a fertile breeding ground for jihadism to take root and spread. It also contends that local land-related issues can have a considerable impact on state fragility and the eruption and dynamics of violence.

KEYWORDS:

• Pastoralism
• decentralisation‌
• land governance
• conflict
• state fragility
• institutional multiplicity
• jihadism

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Correction

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor James Putzel for his invaluable guidance and support throughout my studies in international development at the LSE and during the course of this research. His profound expertise, insightful feedback, and patient mentorship have been crucial in shaping the direction and quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2023.2283249)

Notes

1 Institutions are the humanly designed constraints that shape human interaction in a society (North 1990; Knight 1992).

2 This was for instance the case in indirect colonial rule, which was described as decentralised despotism by Mamdani (1996, Chapter 3).

3 Other indicators of state fragility include the failure of the state to: exercise a monopoly over the legitimate use of force, which is the key defining characteristic, but also to develop basic bureaucratic capacity and to exercise territorial control (idem).

4 For instance, the definition of the OECD does not differentiate general conditions of underdevelopment from conditions of fragility (Putzel 2010, 2).

5 Islamic State in West Africa Province.

6 Literal translation: local land management.

7 During colonialism, the imposition of new borders for administrative purposes led to the unprecedented articulation of identities along ethnic lines (Hesseling and van Dijk 2005).

8 The main terrorist groups active in Mali include ISIS in the Greater Sahara (ISIS-GS) and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). JNIM is an umbrella group including Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar al-Dine and Katiba Macina among others (Nsaibia 2020a).

9 The deployment of Dogon militias is extremely problematic, as Dogons have historically opposed Fulanis in farmer-herder conflicts (Benjaminsen and Ba 2021).

10 Putzel and Di John (2012) argue that understanding the incentive structure and organisational dynamics of armed groups is essential to defeat them or bring them into peace processes, rather than solely analysing their motivations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eva Hansen

Eva Hansen is a professional in the field of international development. She holds a BSc in Anthropology from University College London (UCL) and an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Through these degrees and her professional experience, she developed her interest in the anthropology of conflict and in analysing expressions of political violence from multiscalar perspectives. Eva currently works for the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in the Global Risks and Resilience team.