Michaela Pelican
(University of Cologne)
Adama Ousmanou
(University of Maroua, Cameroon)
Send message to Convenors
Discussant:
Andreas Mehler
(Arnold Bergstraesser Institute)
Format:
Roundtable
Streams:
Anthropology (x)
Violence and Conflict Resolution (y)
Location:
Hörsaalgebäude, Hörssaal E
Sessions:
Friday 2 June, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Fulani as a security threat in the Sahel? How to derail established narratives and strengthen pastoralist/minority voices.
Panel Anth42 at conference ECAS2023: African Futures.
In recent years, Fulani pastoralists have been identified as a security risk in several African countries. This roundtable will discuss the effects of widespread generalisations that impact not only the perception of pastoralists in the Sahel but also our professional practices.
Long Abstract:
Over the past decade, insecurity in the Sahel has become a pervasive topic. More recently, Fulani pastoralists have been identified as a security risk in several countries, similar to the Tuareg earlier. They have been portrayed as prone to radicalisation and instrumentalisation and as actively involved in (counter)insurgencies. Several authors have taken issue with such generalizations and have provided detailed analyses of concrete conflict situations (e.g. Benjaminsen/Ba 2021, Köhler 2021), interrogated the construction of the Fulani as a “suspect community” (e.g. Ejiofor 2021, Moritz/Mbacke 2022), and developed conceptual approaches to understanding pastoralists’ engagement with insecurity (e.g. de Bruijn 2019). Nonetheless, the narrative of the Fulani as a (potential) security threat remains a looming theme.
This roundtable will address the effects of widespread generalisations that impact not only the perception of pastoralists in the Sahel but also our professional practices:
- How useful are sophisticated scholarly analyses if limited to academic journals?
- Who is supposed to speak on whose behalf? Where are the local scholars of pastoralist/minority background and how can we support them to participate in public and scholarly discussions?
- In the face of dominant narratives, how can we strengthen pastoralist/minority voices and generate acceptance for more diverse interpretations (also among local scholars)?
- When faced with challenging research conditions in conflict regions, how can we avoid the risk of methodological shortcomings and shorthand analyses?
The roundtable will bring together established scholars and analysts and will address professional challenges that apply beyond the case of Fulani pastoralists.
Central Mali and cross-border areas in Burkina Faso experience violent conflicts that are often marked by high immediate coverage and short life in the global news cycle. Digital media enable communities to build fragmented archives, which shape both the memory and interpretation of such events.
Contribution long abstract:
The ongoing and expanding conflict in the Sahel takes place in an era of mass access to digital media, which enable both the timely local coverage of events and their dissemination as raw information, statements and commentaries to the outside world. In this regard, portable devices serve the need to inform, communicate as well as construct influential narratives and opinionated arguments around the events. The spread of inter-community conflict and violence has also significantly reshaped the documentation process over the years. In effect, parallel records compete now to define the “truth” and (re)assign the roles of “victim” and “perpetrator” in each episode. In the way armed groups dispute the monopoly of violence to national armies, community-based information channels regularly contest reports published by state media and even international agencies. These parallel archives are regularly deployed in the public debate on guilt and innocence, especially following successive highly publicized massacres, reprisals and other outbursts of interethnic strife. Focusing on the record-keeping of Tabilal Pulaaku (Fulani umbrella civil-society organization) and Dan Na Ambassagou (Dogon militia and advocacy group) on events in Central Mali and border areas in Burkina Faso, we will explore the dynamics of “documentary” antagonism and its use in shaping and influencing public opinion durably at home and abroad. How do these and other local organizations use their records to build a community-based memory of the conflict? What can we learn from these disparate yet structured archives about the perception of a given conflict and a way out of it?
With the emergence of Buhari as Nigerian president of Fulani ethnic background, critics across the country have held that Buhari has promoted and foisted an ethnic or a Fulanizing supremacist agenda over the rest of Nigerians.
Contribution long abstract:
With the emergence of Buhari as Nigerian president of Fulani ethnic background, critics across the country have held that Buhari has promoted and foisted an ethnic or a Fulanizing supremacist agenda over the rest of Nigerians. By foregrounding this concern, several Fulani have been demonised and implicated in Boko Haram’s war of terror as well as kidnapping and banditry. Why this scare over the figure of the Fulani? Why this excitement? Drawing from a four-year ethnographic study at the international Christian Centre, I show in this panel how (some) survivors disrupt a stereotypical understanding of the Fulani solely as agents of death. In doing so, I argue for the widening and tracing of the figure of the Fulani as agents of life and portraits of safety. In this sense, this panel engages with the literature on labelling in which social narratives mobilizes a single understanding of the Fulani.
Key Words: Fulani (Fulanizing), Boko Haram, International Christian Centre, Labelling
The paper analyzes the transformation of social bonds in the context of insecurity in the Liptako-Gourma in Western Sahel. Drawing on joint field research recently carried out, I discuss the challenges of how to talk and write about the association of Fulani ethnicity with jihadist violence.
Contribution long abstract:
The paper aims to analyze the ongoing transformation of social bonds in the context of insecurity in the Liptako-Gourma in Western Sahel. Drawing on joint field research carried out in 2021 with Burkinabe, Malian, and Nigerien researchers regarding the impact of insecurity on social, political and cultural organization, religious practices, inter-community relations, access to resources, and relations with the State, I argue that social bonds are threatened, and the very social fabric of living together is breaking apart. During field research, we documented case studies and interviewed more than 200 people either still residing in their home areas or living as internally displaced persons (IDPs). Currently, the Liptako-Gourma counts 2.7 million IDPs. In this fieldwork simultaneously carried out in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, interlocutors referred to assailants as “those people” or “people of the bush” (that is, jihadists, assailants, bandits, etc.), and generally associated them with Fulani ethnicities. Oftentimes, stories revealed that “the assailants spoke Fulfulde,” and that “young Fulani men were committed to the jihadist cause.” Although this was nothing new per se, we soon encountered difficulties in how to talk and write about the stories of Fulani’s associations with jihadist violence. We developed some ways to address this upfront: make sociological analysis of marginalization, return to ethnographic monographs, and previous field research material. Most importantly, however, was our conversations with the many interlocutors who had stated that they [the Fulani] have to come back to restore the living together.
This essay recaps my engagement with the Sahel, from 1990 to today's conflicts and violence. It relates to the call of the Sahel population, the media and policy-makers on the 'expert', that results in a limited contribution to change the violent condition, the basis of the population’s non-futures.
Contribution long abstract:
‘Violent conditions are not the property of individuals or monolithic structures: they are the existential climates by which localized subjects and worlds condense into being’.* I have shared the becoming of the violent condition in the history/ies of the Sahel, and started to unravel this condition that confronted me with the non-future of the Fulani; Statistics show them being a majority in deaths and attacks. Their condition is understood in multiple layers: being the 'strangers', ethnic clashes, land conflicts, war on terror, etc. creating oppositions that result in ugly violence. Also contributing are the various discourses about the conflict and their influence on policy and media. These layers and discourses form the existential climate that will define the future of the Sahel. Choices in a world of oppositions will lead to radicalized positions, as I will argue, this is true for both the people who endure violence, such as Fulani or Dogon, and those who make policy in such violent conditions, such as Embassies, EU, ethnic associations, students, human rights activists, journalists. What is the role of the ‘researcher-expert’ called upon by, on the one hand the population and on the other the policy makers and the media? I will reflect on the usefulness of my own engagements. Did these interactions contribute to change the conditions of the Fulani friends and acquaintances that call me regularly and relate the violence they experience? The Sahel trauma condenses in us all, but in different ways.
*Laurie and Shaw 2018: 8, doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2018.03.005
This paper deals with the difficulties of various fulani urban representatives mostly based in capitals to speak for and/or with armed insurgents orginating from Fulani communities. It adresses the difficulties to (re)establish connections between the state and marginalised rural communities.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper deals with the difficulties of various Fulani urban representatives, mostly based in Sahelian urban cities, to speak for and/or with armed insurgents originating from Fulani rural communities. The paper looks at rivalries between different Fulani urban leaders who compete for the control of connections between the central state and marginalised rural communities. It also describes several Fulani entrepreneurs' attempt to create communication channels between insurgency movements and the central state, attempts that eventually failed and ended dramatically. Despite the capacity to serve both the State and local communities, including individuals who have engaged in insurrections, the paper highlights the increasing gap between the urbanised elite and a new generation of insurgent leaders. Case studies would be developed from field work conducted in Mali and Niger, mostly in Bamako and Niamey.
Drawing on experiences from an anthropological research project at the University of Parakou, Benin, this contribution reflects on possibilities of strengthening Fulani in the face of stigmatizing generalizations, through a participatory research approach and support of Fulani students.
Contribution long abstract:
The spread of armed groups in the Sahel has recently also affected Northern Benin, particularly the areas bordering Burkina Faso and Niger. While also exposed to this threat, local Fulani communities are often suspected of cooperation or allegiance with armed actors, and Fulani youth typically viewed as potential “terrorists”.
Based on experiences drawn from an anthropological research project at the University of Parakou, we argue that such stigmatizing narratives can be derailed by combining methodologically sound research with good science communication that includes the concerned actors’ perspectives. Our contribution will share experiences on three major pillars of the project’s approach:
1.) Working with Fulani women and youth groups to allow for local concerns to be incorporated into the research, and to foster the researchers’ integration into local Fulani networks, thus enabling them to provide useful advice based on scientifically documented processes.
2.) Cooperation with Fulani customary leaders and pastoralist associations to promote effective crisis management. While their discourse is sometimes tinged with self-victimization, they were in many ways successful in raising awareness, dispelling rumors and thus deconstructing prevailing discourses.
3.) Supporting Fulani students’ education appears as an important avenue for strengthening pastoralist voices and countering biased interpretations of the rural insecurity. Our experience in (co-)mentoring Fulani students confirms their potential role as catalysts in debates and initiatives on (in-)security, and as referees in innovative methodological processes.
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