Mali’s peace networks: the role of Islamic religious leaders in conflict resolution

ABSTRACT

The article highlights the involvement of Muslim leaders in Mali’s conflict resolution process from January 2012 to the French intervention the following year. Built upon extensive fieldwork conducted throughout 2017, it discusses the mechanisms at play as religious mediators seek cooperation amongst three separate fault lines of potential conflict: between the state and the people, between ethnic communities, and amongst rival armed groups. Indeed, while most discussion of the role of Islam in Mali has focused on the jihadist strains threatening to tear the country apart from the North, our central conclusion is that it is in fact the more moderate, locally embedded religious forces that are partly responsible for holding the country together. Their ability to act across these three interfaces is derived from their organic ties to, and moral legitimacy with, a cross cutting matrix of ethnic and social groups that often find themselves in conflict with each other, yet nonetheless mutually acknowledge the moral power of Islam, and its local authorities, to set the terms of social interaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Mali
• conflict resolution
• religion and peacebuilding

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Appleby, The ambivalence of the sacred; Bercovitch & Kadayifci- Orellana, Religion and Mediation.

2. Huntington, Clash of Civilisations.

3. Ilo, Faith-Based Organisations and Conflict Resolution in Nigeria.

4. Haynes, Conflict, Conflict Resolution and Peace-Building.

5. British Academy, Case study I: Religion and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

6. Appleby, The ambivalence of the sacred.

7. Omer, Religious Peacebuilding.

8. Appleby, The ambivalence of the sacred, 189.

9. Ibid, 190.

10. Bercovitch & Kadayifci- Orellana, Religion and Mediation, 188.

11. Appleby, Building Sustainable Peace, 143.

12. Arquilla & Ronfeldt, Networks and Netwars; Utas, ‘Introducton: Bigmanity and network governance.’

13. Clark, ‘From Military Dictatorship to Democracy’.

14. Bergamaschi, The fall of a donor darling.

15. Lecocq, Disputed Desert.

16. Ibid.

17. Rawson, ‘Dimensions of decentralization.’

18. Wehr & Lederach, ‘Mediating Conflict in Central America.’

19. Lecocq, Disputed Desert, 357.

20. Ibid.

21. Afrobarameter, Mali.

22. International Crisis Group, ‘The Politics of Islam in Mali’; Thurston, ‘Towards an “Islamic Republic of Mali”?’.

23. Shulz, ‘Morality, Community, Publicness: Shifting Terms of Public Debate in Mali’.

24. Ibid; Lebovich, ‘Sacred Struggles’.

25. Lebovich, ‘Sacred Struggles’, 14.

26. Shulz, ‘Morality, Community, Publicness: Shifting Terms of Public Debate in Mali’, 138.

27. Lebovich, ‘Sacred Struggles’.

28. British Academy, ‘Case Study II: Mali.’

29. Religious leader. March 2017. Personal interview. Bamako, Mali.

30. Wiedemann, ‘Ansar Dine’s religious leader Chérif Ousmane Haidara.’

31. Ibid.

32. Religious leader. February 2017. Personal interview. Bamako, Mali.

33. Lecocq, Dispute Desert.

34. Boeke & Shuurman, ‘Operation “Serval”’.

35. Religious leader. March 2017. Personal interview. Bamako, Mali.

36. Ibid.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Rabassa et al., ‘Counternetwork’; Adamson, ‘Globalisation, Transnational Political Mobilisation, and Networks of Violence’; Shelley & Picarelli, ‘Methods Not Motives’.

40. International Crisis Group, Central Mali.

41. Community/religious leader. April 2017. Personal interview. Central Mali.

42. Ibid; Boisvert, ‘Failing at violence.’

43. Community/religious leader. April 2017. Personal interview. Central Mali.

44. Ibid.

45. Armstrong, ‘A tale of two Islamisms.’

46. BBC, ‘Mali Tuareg rebels kidnap soldiers amid deadly clashes’. 18 May 2014.

47. Religious leader. March 2017. Personal interview. Bamako, Mali.

48. Ibid.

49. Afrobarameter, Mali.

50. Religious leader. March 2017. Personal interview. Bamako, Mali.

51. Turay, ‘Civil society and peacebuilding.’

52. Wiedemann, ‘Ansar Dine’s religious leader Chérif Ousmane Haidara.’

53. Ott, ‘Mediation as a method of conflict resolution.’

54. Bercovitch and Kadayifci- Orellana, Religion and Mediation, 196.

55. Briscoe, ‘Crime after Jihad,’; Chauzel & van Damme, ‘The roots of Mali’s conflict’; Raineri and Strazzari, ‘State, Seccession, and Jihad’.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Hinkel

Thomas Hinkel is a PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews where he researches the nexus on conflict and migration across Northwest Africa and the Sahel. He has previously lived and studied in Cairo, Egypt, and conducted extensive field research in Mali.

Bakary Fouraba Traore

Bakary Fouraba Traore is a PhD candidate at the University of Bamako where he researches sociology and security. He has conducted extensive field research across the region, particular Ivory Coast and Mali in associated with the PointSud research centre in Bamako.