Contribution short abstract:

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