- 1 Our analysis is based on qualitative data collected by our respective fieldwork – in Djenné and Ko (...)
- 2 Sets of power relations in specific “space/times” (Bayart, 1989: 317-318), i.e. singular combinati (...)
- 3 The 2012 crisis marked the start of an open conflict “situation” between armed groups, security fo (...)
1In contrast with analyses that approach the “Malian crisis” through the lens of ethnic and sectarian conflicts, this article argues1 that the cause of the rise in violence in Mali is a series of transformations in “rural governmentality” (Chauveau, 2017), which are symptomatic of a more general disempowerment of the “bush” institutions throughout the State formation process. This article explores how violence bursts forth as a public policy and governance instrument (Grajales, 2016) by leveraging ethnic, religious – particularly “Jihadist” – and land repertoires specific to “historical terroirs”2 such as those of autochthony and “belonging” (Boone, 2017; Geschiere, 2005). We tackle these subjects by analysing three cases of land conflict in Mali within the timeframe of the 2012 crisis:3 the conflict between the villages of Mougna and Kossouma (Djenné) over the control of 69 agricultural fields; the involvement of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA) in the Gourma and Ansongo land conflicts; and the clashes between Fulani and Dogon in Koro District. These cases point up the array of combinations of economic, political and religious configurations triggering land tensions. They also show the range of different interactions between violence and land conflicts and their interconnection with the forms of government involved in identity-making in the State formation process.
- 4 On the history of “jihad” in Saharan and Sahelian areas and especially in livestock farming enviro (...)
- 5 For example, economic specialisation, the political economy of trade between different lineages, t (...)
2The escalation of violence in rural areas since the 2012 crisis (ICG, 2016), much like the reappearance of the “Jihadist” register,4 need to be placed in the context of the more general State formation process in Mali affecting “bush” institutions5 and nomadic ways of life – especially the social and political role of the “livestock link” (Baroin & Boutrais, 2008).
3The colonial conquest disrupted the “bush” institutions (De Latour, 1982) by bringing the historical terroirs into the “globalised” space of French western Africa. These changes intensified with the establishment of the nation-state structures in 1960. Livestock farming was integrated into the national Malian space in the midst of a dual crisis: the material crisis in nomadic herding (impoverishment of herders, reduction in grazing grounds, etc.) and its regular drought-induced recurrences went hand in hand with an identity crisis that affected the nomadic ways of life more generally. The 1963 Tuareg rebellion (Boilley, 1999) was possibly the first outward sign of this crisis, as the Malian nation-state was built in rural areas by public policies – especially at the time of Modibo Keita’s socialism (1960-1968) – that promoted the development and sedentarisation of agriculture to the detriment of pastoralism by means of a vast campaign for the civic “re-education” of the nomads (Lecocq, 2010), in the North of Mali at least.
4The purpose of this policy under Modibo Keita’s socialist government was to weaken nomadic institutions. Malians had to be “forged” in keeping with the “good farmer” repertoires extrapolated from both Bambara and socialist worldviews. Following independence, sedentary, even formerly servile, circles were hence regularly given precedence – a few exceptions aside – in access to key administrative and political positions in nomadic lands at the expense of political institutions of nomadic people legally recognised and systematised under colonial domination. Although these distinctions eased off under Moussa Traoré, this development did not stop the land and livestock grab (Amselle, 1987) by crop farmers, merchants and civil servants, who gradually bought up the impoverished pastoralists’ herds, particularly during the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s (De Bruijn & Van Dijk, 2003).
- 6 Starting in 1996, the “decentralisation” phenomenon strengthened the power of the local elites “co (...)
5The massive land and livestock grab by the sedentary population marked the height of the socio-political upheaval affecting the 19th century configuration of political relations between lineages. The links between accumulation, access to grazing and lineage-based hierarchies were disrupted by internal and international waves of migration, the agricultural development projects, the human and material loss resulting from the rebellions, and the regular outbreaks of violence in the north of Mali (Grémont et al., 2004). Nation-state integration marginalised nomadic herding6 and mobility-based lifestyles, since State structures were unable (or unwilling) to deploy throughout the entire geographic and socioeconomic “bush” space, especially those vast and sparsely populated territories such as Gourma and the three regions of the North. Still today, the herding sector continues to escape any kind of census or income tax. The pastoral sector is still largely informal with a low level of banking. Paradoxically, then, the pastoral economy still goes it alone despite being an essential space for the elite substitution process brought about by State formation: stockbreeding guarantees a stable and virtually tax-free return, while the animals can be converted into cash at any moment by selling them in Mali or abroad.
6Therefore, the developments in the political environment in which the “livestock link” is set do not render the economic and symbolic role of livestock obsolete. Being both a source of wealth as an investment and a vital symbolic resource, livestock remain a crucial element in the political mindset of the historically nomadic societies in the Niger bend and Gourma, yet also prove highly prized by the new urban elites. Despite the integration of nomadic societies into globalisation and the nation-state, livestock continue to play a pivotal role in pastoral ethos and identity within the historical arrangement of “social links” between lineages (Grémont et al., 2004). So the current phase of armed land conflicts reflects both the profound crisis in pastoral “government” and radical opposition to this identity-based and economic marginalisation of nomadic societies.
7The land conflict between Mougna and Kossouma in the Cercle of Djenné illustrates a first configuration. In this case, local conflicts are exacerbated by the integration of the historical terroirs into the nation-state. Rivalries are intensified at the juncture of a spread of “Jihadist” discourse, massive circulation of weapons and exacerbation of lineage-related divides. Whereas resources were historically allocated in keeping with regularly renewed agreements between lineages and villages (Coulibaly, 2015), the introduction of a positive property right has fuelled legal pluralism. This has produced a “stacking of rights” (Le Roy, 1994), which has benefited the elites capable of leveraging both the customary right and positive right repertoires.
8On 25 June 2016, a violent clash broke out between the villages of Mougna and Kossouma, some four kilometres apart on the right bank of the Bani River, a tributary of the Niger River. In terms of local agricultural geography, Kossouma is on the floodplain and Mougna upland. This topography makes for entirely different agricultural practices. Rice-growing dominates the floodplains while dryland farming, essentially pearl millet, is practised in the uplands.
- 7 It is important to note that a number of populations live alongside the village’s founding group: (...)
9The conflict developed over the right to access and farm 69 agricultural fields around the upland village of Mougna. The majority of the inhabitants of Kossouma are Bozo7 who practise rice-growing and fishing. They claim to be the first to have settled in the area, “opening up the land” (Kopytoff, 1987). They hence claim the customary rights to allocate farmlands, notably the “distant fields” of Mougna – a village considered to be part of Kossouma’s historical terroir even though the majority of its inhabitants are Bamanan of pearl millet-growing Tangara lineages. It holds that the Bozo granted the Bamanan the right to settle in Mougna and farm the surrounding lands without relinquishing their ownership of them. One farmer in the area reported that the Bozo’s autochthony is generally held as fact:
- 8 Interview in Djenné, December 2016.
The village of Kossouma is the first to have been founded. Then Mougna was founded. So it’s the people of Kossouma who gave the land to Mougna. It’s on the uplands that we grow the rainfed crops: millet, sorghum and maize. As the inhabitants of Kossouma grew rice in the main, they were more interested in the floodplain than the uplands, which they chose to leave to Mougna. It’s always been that way. But today, with the drop in rainfall, the people of Kossouma wanted to recuperate their fields so that they too could grow rainfed crops on the uplands.8
Figure 1: Location of the villages in relation to Djenné and the Delta Region
Source: Detail drawn from De Zborowski (1988: 23b).
- 9 Literal translation from Bambara of “ka zuzi da mu”, which means to offer something in return for (...)
10For their part, the Bamanan consider that they are the ones who historically granted revocable and non-inheritable farming rights to the Bozo. In 1950, the two parties referred the land dispute to the colonial court and then, following independence, to the court of Djenné. The court handed down a first ruling in 1964, which was challenged by the losing party (the Bozo of Kossouma); the fields were thus farmed by Mougna until 1988, when the conflict flared up again: a bloody clash between the two villages left one dead among Kossouma’s inhabitants. The case was then referred to Mali’s supreme court, which ruled that the people of Mougna owned the 69 fields under customary law, but that the people of Kossouma had the right of usufruct, albeit without demarcating the fields. The court ruling’s ambiguity – combined with both parties’ suspicions that the judges were bribed – fuelled the frustration and mutual hatred that built up during the 20 years of farming granted to the people of Kossouma from 1988 to 2008. In 2008, mounting tension led the Justice de paix à compétence etendue of Djenné to forbid all access to the lands concerned, preventing any farming pending a definitive solution. From 2008 to 2012, neither party farmed the fields. In 2012, the appointment of a new judge in Djenné provided the opportunity to reopen the case. The lineage-based solidarity networks were approached for assistance: a prominent marabout (spiritual leader), originally from Kossouma but living in Bamako, covered all the costs relating to the proceedings for his village. He paid for all the trips and visits to Mopti and Bamako, lawyers’ fees and bribes: you need to “anoint the judge’s mouth”.9 In 2014, a new ruling lifted the ban on access: the Bozo of Kossouma were recognised as legitimate holders of both the customary rights to and the rights of usufruct of the 69 fields. To enforce this ruling, police officers were deployed from Djenné in June 2015 to protect the Kossouma farmers under threat of attack from Mougna.
112015 was also the moment when a number of armed groups, including “Jihadist” groups (ICG, 2016), made their appearance in central Mali in the wake of the 2012 crisis. The Cercle of Djenné reported a substantial presence of these groups, driving up the circulation of firearms. A local administrator explained it in these terms:
- 10 Interview in Djenné, December 2016.
The group in the Cercle of Djenné is demanding independence for Macina [Katiba Macina]. They are in Mougna, Moura, Kouakourou, Ouro Aly and Taga too. They are pretty much scattered across the Cercle.10
- 11 Family names do not always correspond to ethnicity. General Kéba Sangaré of the Malian Army belong (...)
- 12 Created in 2015 as the Macina Liberation Front (MLF), this group operated mainly in Macina. It mer (...)
12The conflict over the fields of Mougna now took on a whole new dimension due to its integration into the broader regional conflicts. In June 2016, the people of Kossouma turned up to start work on the season to find the people of Mougna waiting in the fields, armed with Kalashnikovs. Bekaye Sangaré11 – originally from Mougna and a senior commander of Amadou Kouffa’s Katiba Macina12 – may have been the connection behind the procurement of the weapons as Mougna was a Katiba Macina stronghold from 2016 to 2018. On 25 June 2016, the clash between the villagers left 20 dead and 40 injured, nearly all on the Kossouma side. The introduction of Kalashnikovs by a connection to the Jihadists was, as a local judicial officer saw it, the trigger for the escalation of violence:
- 13 Interview in Djenné, August 2017.
In the conflict between Kossouma and Mougna, there were people with military weapons [Kalashnikovs] that were seized by the police when we [from the local court] went there after the clash. But these people can only buy those sorts of weapons under the counter. It’s extremely rare to find those sorts of weapons in the villages. In Mougna, it’s possible the weapons could have come through the Jihadists. The villagers could have bought from them or some young people from Mougna who are members of the group [Katiba Macina] might have taken part in the battle to defend their village.13
13However, a Bamanan farmer of Bouaré lineage from a village near Mougna – allied with the Tangara – felt that:
- 14 Interview in Djenné, August 2017
It is easier for the Bozo to get hold of military weapons in our area because their mori [marabouts] are the only ones who have a close relationship with the famaw [authorities], who often need their expertise for their personal affairs. If you’re a chief of police and your marabout asks you to get him a military weapon, you do it.14
14This clash therefore brought to bear new registers in the use of violence to settle land-related issues, with “Jihadist” terms cladding the political divides underlying the local conflicts. The embedding of “Jihadist” discourse in the historical terroir changed the historical power relations among the lineages and social groups. Penetration by the “Jihadists” offered an emancipation repertoire to part of the social lineages who were marginalised or seeking to renegotiate land-use rights. They could challenge all forms of resource-related rights (farmlands, rangelands and fishing) in the name of God’s ownership of natural resources. The arming of the villages around Djenné and the floodplains of the Inner Niger Delta through the actions of the impoverished nomadic herders was driven by the performative power of the armed groups’ emancipation rhetoric.
15“Jihadist” violence is not driven purely and simply on an ethnic basis, but rather on the basis of a combination of cross-cutting side issues such as opposition to (historical or recent) natural resource exploitation arrangements; the gradual impoverishment of certain villages and lineages; and aversion to a slow, inefficient, corrupt justice system and to resource grabbing by traditional dignitaries or the State. By lineage reckoning, distant or close cousins who are members of the “Jihadists” procure the weapons. In 2014, these herders started turning up in front of the crop fields they considered to be illegal, located as they were on former transhumance routes. They carried Kalashnikovs over their shoulders and fired on farmers who tried to prevent the herd from entering the fields. Opposition to the rights of usufruct and transhumance fees then drove them to target certain local dignitaries and marabout lineages deeply rooted in the historical terroir of Djenné, in both cases mainly Fulani. The “Jihadist” narrative forms an original strand of a multitude of local trajectories of opposition to the resource arrangements; it cross-cuts the so-called ethnic basis of the terroir and establishes violence as a way of managing the conflicts.
16The case of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA) illustrates a second configuration. Here, the “Jihadist” narrative is found running alongside numerous historical terroirs – geographically scattered and featuring multiple dynamics – all of which share the use of violence as a response to all the contradictions underlying the “livestock link” developments in Mali’s recent history.
- 15 Berabich Arabs settled for generations in the Tilemsi Valley in the Gao Region.
17Founded in 2011 by former senior members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), MOJWA emerged at the junction of a number of land, trade and political issues. With its base in the Gao Region, it was assisted, promoted and funded by the Arab traders of Tilemsi,15 whose involvement in trafficking dated back to the 1990s. Although the Tilemsi elite were admittedly looking to secure the smuggling routes when armed conflict broke out in 2012, their engagement tied in with a broader-based process of upheaval in the political statuses of local lineages (Scheele, 2012), associated with a string of unsolved historical terroir land issues.
Figure 2: Historical pastoral movements in the Delta, Gourma and the Menaka area
Source: Detail drawn from De Zborowski (1988: 22).
- 16 Fulani herders who are said to have left Fouta Djallon for Nigeria with Usman dan Fodio before mov (...)
18The Toleebe Fulani16 joined MOJWA in 2012 in the wake of disputes between Toleebe and some Dawsahak and Bellah lineages over access to pastures. From 2007 to 2012, before the rebellion broke out, the Tin-Hama conflict between Toleebe and Bellah had already left 57 dead. With the Malian justice system having been unable to settle the dispute, the support from MOJWA gave the Toleebe the upper hand for a while. Yet the roots of this conflict ran deeper. The emancipation of the Bellah from their former Tuareg masters, often with their livestock, had redefined the grazing ground access arrangements, creating tensions for both the former masters and the Fulani. These tensions came amidst armed livestock raiding between Fulani and Dawsahak lineages during the 1990 rebellion, a phenomenon exacerbated by the resulting integration of the former rebels into the Malian army. In March 1997, a Dawsahak clan chief was killed by a Toleebe Fulani in a conflict over a well in the Menaka area. The response by the Dawsahak left 55 Fulani herders dead and caused the Toleebe herders to flee to Niger. The children of the survivors – called Minikabe (“people of Menaka”) – formed a militia and killed Dawsahak in the Inates area in Niger on the Malian border.
- 17 According the definition given by Bobin (2017).
19The episodes of lineage violence continued sporadically until some Toleebe joined MOJWA. The Toleebe militia counted some 500 members at the time, who were unarmed or barely armed. Joining MOJWA offered an unprecedented opportunity to become trained and experienced in the use of weapons. The case of Petit Djafori – “a prominent Jihadist”17 – provides an illustration of this. As a long-standing Fulani militiaman put it:
- 18 Militia founded by former members of Ganda Koy – founded in 1994 to fight the rebel raids – operat (...)
- 19 Interview in Gao, September 2017.
Petit Djafori is a third-generation militiaman. He was with me when we signed the peace agreements [with the Dawsahak in July 2011]. Thirty-eight militia members left to join MOJWA with him. Why? My enemy’s enemy is my friend. MOJWA had the money and was supported by major Nigerien traders such as Rimbo. Many of the former members of Ganda Izo18 and our old militia members joined MOJWA.19
- 20 An excellent example of a brother-in-arms, this Tuareg fought in the Lebanon War and the Chadian-L (...)
20Some of these militiamen, including Petit Djafori, first went through Ganda Izo before joining MOJWA, which also gathered Ganda Koy and Menaka Fulani militiamen as well as the Minikabe. Other Ganda Koy militiamen moved to the region of Gourma, joining first MOJWA and then Katiba Macina. In 2013, when Gao was taken by the French army (Operation Serval), the militiamen who had moved there returned to Ansongo and the lineage tensions resurfaced. In November 2013, 46 Fulani herders were killed in retaliation for the murder of an uncle of General El Hadji Ag Gamou20 by one of his Fulani herders whom the former had repeatedly refused to pay. Further Fulani reprisals on 6 February 2014 left 30 dead in Tamkouta. Subsequent counter-reprisals resulted in a further 30 fatalities.
- 21 Charles Grémont, oral brief, June 2018.
21Several attempts to pacify the situation failed, while the remaining militiamen (formerly of MOJWA, including Petit Djafori) reorganised under the banner of Islamic State (IS), “Greater Sahara” branch. In 2017, there was a succession of clashes between these militiamen and a Barkhane-supported alliance between the Movement for the Salvation of Azawad (MSA) led by the (disputed) chief of the Dawsahak tribe, Moussa Ag Acharatoumane, and Ag Gamou’s Imghad Tuareg and Allies Self-Defence Group (GATIA). In July 2018, GATIA and MSA, with logistical support from Niger, swept into the Ansongo-Menaka area leaving a heavy toll of 43 Fulani dead. In retaliation, the Fulani militia, helped by reinforcements from Katiba Macina (former Ganda Koy), managed to drive out GATIA. Whereas the notion of intercommunity violence implies by definition the virtually unanimous involvement of the “ethnic” community, the case of MOJWA and these Fulani militiamen quite clearly shows a lineage-based structuring of the networks of armed violence. The conflicts over pastures between Fulani and Tuaregs around Ansongo do indeed resemble conflictual situations specific to lineages and terroirs, which took on a major political dimension with the founding of MOJWA and the other armed groups in the wake of the 2012 rebellion. These groups offered unprecedented technical and financial resources not to Fulani and Tuaregs in general, but to “some Fulani and some Tuaregs”21 who were members of the lineages involved in the conflicts. This support enabled them to accumulate the weapons and money required to leverage this lineage-based solidarity and hence redefine political direction in the community, in a climate of escalating violence. The armed rifts placed violence at the heart of politics as a prime means of political action within and without the lineage perimeter.
22Contrary to the tendency that some authors have to associate these phenomena with banditry (Sangaré, 2016) or radicalisation (Carayol, 2017), the fuelling of violence produced by “Jihadist” groups gains traction as a primary expression of political identity and emerges as a form of government. Despite the historicity of violence in these contexts, the case of MOJWA shows, at this stage, a greater contamination of the nomadic world, as stressed by a senior representative of a stockbreeders’ association in the region, himself involved in setting up a number of Fulani militia groups:
- 22 Nomadic herders of long-horned cows found mainly in Djelgodji, Soum Province, in Burkina Faso.
- 23 Interview in Bamako, September 2017.
All these young people [Toleebe, Seedobe and Djelgobe]22 are bushmen. They have never attended school, but they know how to make bombs and explosives and can handle any weapon. We got wind that there are drug traffickers [among them] and they might be protecting the convoys … […] If they’re not stopped, they’ll turn into real bandits, stronger than the Sahraoui.23
23These young Fulani transhumant herders are “bushmen”, unaware of either state codes or urban life (De Bruin et al., 1997), “they know nothing of urban life-style”. However, they are excellent herders and have become proficient in the use of firearms.
24Living by the gun and the pastoral rationale appear to be more important than belonging to “bureaucratised” armed groups, as the historicity of violence is interwoven with the long-run political and socioeconomic marginalisation of herding activities. In Gourma, some Djelgobe also joined MOJWA initially. Following its break-up, they joined first Katiba Macina and then followed Malam Ibrahim Dicko, a Djelgobe from Soum, in his Islamist movement Ansarul Islam. The different labels aside, these nomadic herders move mainly in a pastoral zone stretching across either side of the border separating Mali from Burkina Faso, where they control the pastures following the blueprint of the historical transhumance routes (Riesman, 1974). A group such as Ansarul Islam appears to be situated at the junction of the social uprising against the marginalisation of the Fulani in Burkina Faso and the Islamist movement (ICG, 2017). It consequently forms an economic and socialisation zone for the nomadic lineages seeking animals, pastures and protection. Lineage ties are more important than hierarchical issues between leaders: the Katiba Macina reinforcements – the former Ganda Koy elements – who helped their Fulani “cousins” in Menaka against GATIA were ejected from the group on their return to Macina, since Koufa criticised them for helping IS while they were part of the JNIM (Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims). Now without a base, these militiamen set themselves up on the border between Mali and Burkina Faso, taking advantage of the open space.
25The particular dynamics – both material and symbolic – of nomadic herding played a key role in the MOJWA’s establishment in the Douentza area. From August 2012 to January 2013, the MOJWA Islamists leveraged the nomadic identity register to attract a majority of nomadic herders, mainly Seedobe and some 50 youths from the village of Boni (Hayré) alone (Sangaré, 2013). The ban on smoking, drinking, listening to music, and dressing like Westerners only concerned urbanised sedentary individuals (Sangré, 2013), in Douentza as in Gao, while the “pure” customs (piety, simplicity, frugality, respect for “tradition”, etc.) extoled by the pastoral ethos bore a close resemblance to the lifestyle promoted by the “Jihadist” movements. This mark of domination went hand in hand with “material” support in the land conflicts against the Tuareg of Dourgama, co-opted by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA), and against the Riimaybe and Weheebe, sedentary Fulani now farmers and land owners, but also owners of livestock that they entrusted to the nomadic Fulani.
26The case of conflicts in the Cercle of Koro (Mopti) illustrates a third configuration: violence established as a form of governing land conflicts is also at the heart of the (re)forging process of the Dogon community’s ethnic identity boundaries. Violence morphs from a strategy for governing rural resources into the means by which the lineages’ ethno-religious identities are reshaped and new political links are created.
27As mentioned previously, 2012 triggered the gradual arming of land conflicts in the Cercle of Koro and, more broadly, in the Pays Dogon where the transformation of the historical “livestock link” and the expropriation of the pastoral societies’ symbols of prestige – such as cattle – are key concerns.
28The 1980s droughts decimated a large part of the herds owned by the Seno nomads, already weakened by integration into the State and the advance of the Dogons’ agricultural front. The nomads’ impoverishment consequently gave rise to the subservience of a fraction of the herders to wealthy Dogon merchants and local civil servants, whose herds they tended without owning them. This phenomenon was accompanied by widespread cattle rustling by a sort of corporation of cattle thieves, the Terere (Cissé, 2018) targeting both the Dogon owners and their own lineages. The identity implications of these pastoral dynamics were key to the development of political divides between lineages. The herders’ loss of herds and their subordination to Dogon owners, historically farmers, and to now-urbanised Fulani removed from the “bush” way of life triggered identity tensions that found an answer in the “Jihadist” narrative of opening up the grazing lands on the Seno Plain. This narrative tied in with the historicity of terroir violence and renewed the political divides. It introduced important distinctions into the Fulani lineages by refuting the political heritage of the lineages that derived their nobility from the Fulani Empires but were now sedentary. At the same time, this sparked an identity reaction among Dogons. Whereas herding activities were now part of many Dogons’ everyday lives, the mental image of pastoralism remained associated with the notion of the threat of a return of the raids of the past.
Figure 3: Seno Plan, theatre of military operations and strategic space
Source: Detail drawn from De Zborowski (1988: 23b).
29It is therefore in the interconnection between lineage rivalries, land conflicts and armed groups that the reason can be found for the string of murders committed by “Jihadists” in the Mopti Region starting in 2016, targeting state civil servants and local dignitaries as well as merchants and veterinarians. The murder of two Dogon hunters – Théodore Somboro from Séguè village (Bankass) and Souleymane Guindo from Gondo Oguru village (Koro) – by “Jihadists” marked the start of hostilities. Renowned for being close to the Malian army, the former served as a guide in the region while the latter had made a name for himself tracking down bandits and cattle thieves. In retaliation, a group of hunters from Gondo Oguru then attacked two hamlets suspected of being the murderers’ home communities: over 30 people were killed, for the most part Fulani.
- 24 Literally “Hunters who trust in God”. This expression is a diminutive of the Dogon language phrase (...)
- 25 See, for example, the case of Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire (Hellweg & Médevielle, 2017).
30Founded by Youssouf Toloba in July 2017, the Dan Nan Ambassagou militia,24 while seeing themselves as a response force to the “Jihadist” groups, are part of the historicity of violence in the historical terroir and more generally in the sub-region’s historical terroirs. Antithetical to the Jihadist register, the violence wreaked by the associations of hunters is on a continuum with the Donso-Ton in that they claim legitimacy on the basis of their “historical” mission to protect the sedentary villages (Cissé, 1994). Nevertheless, although the use of these registers is expressed in accordance with the timeless norms of the hunters who support the “universal” protection of all populations living in the Pays Dogon irrespective of ethnicity, the readjustment of these historical norms in the violence of the present situation makes military instruments of them:25 the principle of “universal” protection gradually becomes equated with the defence of “Dogonness”. In this respect, a Dana (hunter) met near Koro put forward that:
- 26 Interview in Koro, July 2018.
We [the Dana] only attack a Fulani village or hamlet in retaliation. We are not against them, but those who attack us or help the terrorists to attack us are accomplices and therefore the enemies of the Dogon, even if they are Dogon themselves.26
31Although appropriation of the antiterrorist register enables the militiamen to join with regular forces – such as the Malian army – in the fight against the “Jihadist” threat, this appropriation is more generally instrumental in redefining the boundaries of the Dogon community, whose “ethnic” component proves secondary. The militiamen tread a fine line between respect for the legitimacy of certain community norms and violation of others: for instance, they reserve the right not to intervene to protect a village reputedly opposed to their presence. Defence of “Dogonness” – or God… – thereby takes on much more prosaic connotations which make sense in the light of the short-term imperatives of politics, without this preventing the militia from claiming continuity with the historical norms of Dogon society or nomadic herding society when it comes to the “Jihadists”. These social changes do not in fact entail a complete redefinition of the social values and norms.
32The life courses of these brothers-in-arms provide a good illustration of the historicity of the “living by the gun” lifestyle and its independent logics. Some Dan Nan Ambassagou militiamen are reported to have fought in conflicts in Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire, then to have joined Ganda Koy; while others are remobilised soldiers – if not all these things at once. The “government in violence” therefore emerges from the interface between developments in “rural governmentality” insofar as the undertaking to defend the “imagined” historical terroir of “Dogonness” calls for the non-observance of certain historical codes, such as respect for one’s elders, but also of certain diatiguiya relations between Fulani and Dogon lineages (De Bruijn et al., 1997).
33The circulation of brothers-in-arms therefore embodies a political economy of violence that is interwoven with the processes of ethnic and identity construction. In a socioeconomic complex where lineage interconnections between societies – if not the “chain of societies” (Amselle, 1977: 274-276) – remain one of the registers of politics, “government in violence” of land and pastoral issues exacerbates political identity-making via the ethno-religious repertoire. Ethno-religious identities are claimed and monopolised by the brothers-in-arms to legitimate the use of violence in the name of self-defence against the enemy who would secure their own “survival” and “integrity” (Sémelin, 2007). We stress the discourse aspect: over and above the performative, unifying and galvanising dimension of the militiamen, the composition of these militias is irreconcilable with mere ethnicity and religion or mere material factors. In fact, it is rather the fact of joining the militia that produces ethnic and religious identities. We could even go so far as to say, granted provocatively, that – for example – it is not the Dogon or “Jihadists” respectively who rally the militia: it is the exercise of violence by the militia – framed within land conflicts – that imposes ethno-religious identities on political relations between lineages.
34The forms of government put in place by the self-defence militia and “Jihadist” groups are political responses to the upheavals in the historical “bush” institutions and arrangements governing access to natural resources: climate change, the socio-political changes induced by the creation of the Malian State, the formation of a national political space vis-à-vis transnational interconnections, etc. Identity, and economic, reshaping go hand in hand with the disintegration of the historical institutions and the integration of the “bush” into the nation-state. The outbreak of violence in the land conflicts, while a product of a specific history, nonetheless generates a quest for identity made “at gunpoint”: the identity-making process channels through weapons and, more specifically, armed rifts over lineage terroirs. Analysis of the economic dimension of the land conflicts cannot be isolated from the exploration of identity dynamics, especially within societies – such as those discussed – where the separation of political identities and economic specialisations remains relatively recent.
35Contrary to exclusively ethnic, cultural and security considerations, we consider this land violence as an indubitably “political” fact insofar as the brothers-in-arms, despite bureaucratic public policies, make use of identity rhetoric in the violence as public policy. Framed in this way, the ethno-religious categories seem to produce the politics and “essentialise” the historical terroirs in a constant back and forth between timeframes: the contingency of the “Jihadist” or “Dogon” present – with its power relations between lineages and its material constraints – is projected into the distant past as a political narrative claiming to belong to a historical terroir that is nonetheless custom-built. This historical terroir therefore appears as both real – since reference to it is a political instrument in the present – and imagined. It is therefore the use of violence that imposes a reconstruction of ethno-religious identities on political relations between lineages rather than the other way round.
36At the same time, where the “Jihadist” narrative appears to have a clear – but not exclusive, as we have seen – rapport with the pastoral world in terms of registers used, resource access arrangements and socioeconomic profiles, other movements – such as the hunters and the armed “community” groups – also lend themselves to this “(re)invention of tradition” (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983).
Flux RSS
