Paper short abstract:

This paper explores in how far the security assistance project of an US-American QUANGO establishes complicities and contentions between state security actors and the vigilante group "Koglweogo" in the light of their local power struggles.

Paper long abstract:

In 2017, the US-American QUANGO "United States Institute of Peace" (USIP) launched a "Justice and Security Dialogue Process" in the capital of Burkina Faso. The main objective of this security assistance project is to establish trust between the police, the military, civil society and the nationwide, vigilante self-defence group "Koglweogo", who recently attracted attention because of their physical punishments of delinquents. A secondary objective of the project is to reinforce a closer collaboration of these actors, in order to address ruptures like growing crime rates and terror attacks.

This civil-military 'assemblage' of actors has three dimensions of governance: On a global scale, the project mirrors the advancing transnationalization of security efforts in West Africa. On the national level, the project is a unique example for state fragmentation, because the USIP actively cooperates with a self-defence group that is not fully acknowledged by the state, though supported by a majority of the population. With regard to the action level, the projects' exceptionally broad spectrum of ethical notions is particularly noticeable, ranging from physical torture to state-legal norms and international human rights guidelines by the USIP.

Against this background, the present paper focuses on the local power struggles between the participants of the project. It highlights how competing interests between the state security actors, civil society and "Koglweogo" are negotiated, mediated and concealed. By doing this, the key research questions are, how the USIP is evaluated by the participants and in how far its involvement establishes complicities and contentions between them.